Linguistics 2 Midterm Flashcards
(55 cards)
What is an idiolect?
The unique way of speaking of an individual.
What is a dialect?
A variety of a language spoken by a group of people, differing systematically in pronunciation, vocabulary, and grammar.
What is a regional dialect?
A dialect associated with a specific geographic area.
What is a social dialect?
A dialect associated with a particular social group (e.g., socioeconomic class, ethnicity).
What is mutual intelligibility?
The ability of speakers of different dialects to understand each other.
What is an isogloss?
A boundary line on a dialect map marking the limits of a linguistic feature.
What is a dialect continuum?
A gradual merging of dialects across regions without clear boundaries.
What is a standard dialect?
The prestige dialect used in formal contexts.
What is a prestige dialect?
A dialect considered socially superior or more correct.
What is hypercorrection?
Over-application of a perceived ‘correct’ linguistic rule, often due to social pressure.
What is an accent?
Pronunciation features that convey information about a speaker’s regional or social background.
What is r-drop (r-deletion)?
A phonological rule omitting /r/ in certain positions (e.g., ‘cah’ for ‘car’).
What is consonant cluster reduction?
Simplifying groups of consonants (e.g., ‘pas’ for ‘past’).
What is neutralization?
Loss of contrast between phonemes in specific contexts (e.g., ‘pin’ and ‘pen’ sounding identical).
What is diphthong reduction?
Simplifying a diphthong to a single vowel (e.g., ‘boil’ → [bɔ]).
What is habitual ‘be’?
In AAE, the use of uninflected ‘be’ to indicate habitual actions (e.g., ‘He be happy’ = ‘He is always happy’).
What is multiple negation?
Grammatical use of double negatives (e.g., ‘He don’t know nothing’).
What is codeswitching?
Alternating between two languages/dialects within a sentence or discourse.
What is borrowing?
Incorporating words from another language, adapting them to native phonology/morphology.
What is bidialectalism?
Fluency in two dialects, often a home dialect and a standard dialect.
What is a lingua franca?
A common language used for communication between speakers of different native languages (e.g., English globally).
What is a pidgin?
A simplified contact language with no native speakers, used for limited communication.
What is a creole?
A pidgin that has evolved into a native language with full grammatical complexity.
What is pidginization?
The process of creating a pidgin through simplification and reduced domains of use.
