Midterm 1

Question 1

What is Arbitrariness?

Answer 1

It is the idea that the icons that represent ideas have no relation to the meaning themselves

Question 2

What is discreteness?

Answer 2

A unique quality of human language, it is the concept of language being made up of units that can stack to make larger structures

Question 3

What is displacement?

Answer 3

Another unique quality of human language, it is the ability to refer to things that aren’t present

Question 4

What is creativity/productivity?

Answer 4

It is the ability to make different variations of words or sentences

Question 5

How is animal communication different from human communication?

Answer 5

s

Question 6

What is linguistic competence?

Answer 6

It is our knowledge of words and grammar

Question 7

What is linguistic performance?

Answer 7

It is how we use linguistic competence in actual speech and comprehension

Question 8

What is the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis?

Answer 8

The idea that our language structure governs how we think and perceive things

Question 9

What is prescriptive grammar?

Answer 9

Rules made to enforce or govern grammar rules

Question 10

What is descriptive grammar?

Answer 10

Rules that describe how grammar is

Question 11

What is a root?

Answer 11

The core word that hold the meaning

Question 12

What are affixes?

Answer 12

These are accessory words that modify the meaning of a root

Question 13

What is derivational morphology?

Answer 13

Form of word creation, it involves changing the morphology of a word that then completely change the meaning. Can also change the part of speech
ex. system into systematic

Question 14

What is inflectional morphology?

Answer 14

Creating a different grammatical form of a word. Doesn’t create a new word
ex. cat into cats

Question 15

What are morphemes?

Answer 15

Smallest unit of meaning for a word

Question 16

What are bound morphemes?

Answer 16

Morphemes that cannot stand on their own, can only be added to roots and such
ex. -s in cats

Question 17

What are free morphemes?

Answer 17

Morphemes that can stand alone as a unit

ex. cat

Question 18

What are content words?

Answer 18

The usual words we know that hold a meaning in nouns or adjectives and such

Question 19

What are functional words?

Answer 19

Words like articles or pronouns that specify relation and have no semantic

Question 20

What are open class words?

Answer 20

words that can be added to like new dictionary entries
content words are open class as new words with new meanings are added frequently

Question 21

What are closed class words?

Answer 21

More difficult to add to
Functional words are closed class as new conjectures or pronouns are added infrequently

Question 22

What is grammaticality?

Answer 22

The conformity of a sentence to the rules of grammar

Question 23

How do linguists represent ungrammaticality?

Answer 23

With asterisks *

Question 24

What are constituents?

Answer 24

These are units within a sentence.

Question 25

How can you identify constituents?

Answer 25

You can see if they are the answers to a question, if they can stand alone, or if they can be replaced with a pronoun. Predicates can also be replaced with do/did

Question 26

What is parsing?

Answer 26

It is the ability to split language and understand the meanings

Question 27

What is ambiguity in linguistics and how do we overcome it?

Answer 27

it is when the wording of a sentence or phrase leads to multiple interpretations. By use of structure trees, we can decipher what is meant

Question 28

What is morphology?

Answer 28

The study of language in the word level

Question 29

What is mental lexicon?

Answer 29

Mental dictionary, the words we know

Question 30

What is grammar?

Answer 30

The rules that determine acceptable sequence of words

Question 31

How do linguists speak about words separate from semantics?

Answer 31

Linguists will refer to words based on formal criteria (like the placement of the word in a phrase)