Vocabulary and Terminology 1

Question 1

Linguistic competence

Answer 1

“Hidden” knowledge.

Question 2

Linguistic performance

Answer 2

The way that people produce and comprehend language.

Question 3

Performance error

Answer 3

When you mispronounce a word or jumble the words in .a sentence when using a language.

Question 4

Speech communication chain

Answer 4

The key elements in the communication system as outlined by Claude Shannon and Warren Weaver in 1949. They are an information source, a transmitter, a signal, a receiver, and a destination.

Question 5

Speech communication chain steps

Answer 5

1. Think of what you want to communicate
2. Pick out words to express the idea
3. Put these words together in a certain order following rules.
4. Figure out how to pronounce the words
5. Send those pronunciations to your vocal anatomy.
6. Speak: send sounds through the air
7. Perceive: Listener hears the sounds
8. Decode: Listener interprets sounds as language
9. Connect: Listener receives communicated idea

Question 6

Noise

Answer 6

Interference in the chain.

Question 7

Lexicon

Answer 7

The first part of your knowledge. Also, a collection of words that you know, what functions they serve, what they refer to, how they are pronounced and how they are related to other words.

Question 8

Mental Grammar

Answer 8

The mental representation of grammar. The knowledge that a speaker has about the linguistic units and rules of his native language.

Question 9

Language variation

Answer 9

The property of languages having different ways to express the same meanings in different contexts according to factors such as geography, social class, gender, etc.

Question 10

Descriptive grammar

Answer 10

Collections of generalizations.

Question 11

Evidence that writing and language are not the same. List four reasons.

Answer 11

1. Writing must be taught, whereas spoken language is acquired naturally.
2. Writing does not exist everywhere that spoken language does.
3. Writing is more physically stable than language.
4. Writing can be edited before it is shared.

Question 12

Reasons why some people believe writing to be superior to speech. List three reasons.

Answer 12

1. Writing can be edited
2. Writing must be taught
3. Writing is more physically stable

Question 13

Prescriptive Grammar

Answer 13

Socially embedded notion of the correct ways to use a language.

Question 14

Prescribe

Answer 14

How you should speak or write, according to someone’s idea of what is good or bad.

Question 15

Charles Hockett’s Nine Design features (necessary for a communication system to be considered a language). Provide a list.

Answer 15

1. Mode of communication
2. Semanticity
3. Pragmatic function
4. Interchangeability
   5.Cultural transmission
5. Arbitrariness
6. Discreteness
   8 Displacement
7. Productivity

Question 16

Mode of communication

Answer 16

The means by which messages are transmitted and received.

Question 17

Semanticity

Answer 17

The property requiring that all signals in a communication system have a meaning or function.

Question 18

Pragmatic Function

Answer 18

Communication systems must serve some useful purpose.

Question 19

Interchangeability

Answer 19

An individuals ability to both transmit and receive messages.

Question 20

Cultural transmission

Answer 20

There are aspects of language that we can acquire only through communicative interaction with other users of the system.

Question 21

Arbitrariness

Answer 21

A words meaning is not predictable from its linguistic form, nor is its form dictated by its meaning.

Question 22

Linguistic sign

Answer 22

Form + meaning

Question 23

Iconic

Answer 23

(Also known as “picture like”). Where the form represents the meaning directly.

Question 24

Onomatopoeia

Answer 24

Words that imitate natural sounds or have meanings that are associated with such sounds of nature.

Question 25

Conventionalized

Answer 25

Something that is established, commonly agreed upon, or operating in a certain way according to common practice.

Question 26

Sound symbolism

Answer 26

Certain sounds occur in words not by virtue of being directly imitative of some sound but rather simply by being evocative of a particular meaning.

Question 27

Discreteness

Answer 27

The property of language that allows us to combine together discrete units in order to create larger communicative units.

Question 28

Displacement

Answer 28

The ability of a language to communicate about things, actions, and ideas that are not present in space or time while speakers are communicating.

Question 29

Productivity

Answer 29

A language's capacity for novel messages to be built up out of discrete units.

Question 30

Modality

Answer 30

A mode of communication, something that every language must have.

Question 31

Myths about signed languages. List four.

Answer 31

1. Signed languages are derived from from spoken languages, rather than being languages in their own right. 2. Signed languages don't consist of words at all but rather involve individuals using their hands to draw pictures in the air or to act out what they are talking about. 3. Sign languages do not have any internal structure. 4. There is only one signed language that is used by deaf speakers everywhere.

Question 32

Differences between codes and languages. List four.

Answer 32

1. A code has no structure but instead borrows its structure from the natural language that it represents. 2. Signed languages evolve naturally and independently of spoken languages. 3. Codes never have native speakers. 4. Codes are artificial systems.

Question 33

Convention

Answer 33

A certain group of sounds goes with a particular meaning.

Question 34

Nonarbitrariness

Answer 34

Direct correspondence between the physical properties of a form and the meaning that the form refers to.