Linguistics
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Acoustic Phonetics
Acoustic phonetics is the study of sound waves made by the human vocal organs for communication.
Prevarication :
The ability to make sentences knowing that they are false and with the purpose of misleading the receiver of the information.
Allophone
In phonology, an allophone is one of a set of multiple possible spoken sounds, or phones, or signs used to pronounce a single phoneme in a particular language.
Allomorph
In linguistics, an allomorph is a variant form of a morpheme, that is, when a unit of meaning varies in sound without changing the meaning. The term allomorph explains the comprehension of phonological variations for specific morphemes.
TheoLinguistics
The study of religious language is known as TheoLinguistics.
Approximant Sounds
Approximants are speech sounds that involve the articulators approaching each other but not narrowly enough nor with enough articulatory precision to create turbulent airflow. Therefore, approximants fall between fricatives, which do produce a turbulent airstream, and vowels, which produce no turbulence.
Neologism
A neologism is a relatively recent or isolated term, word, or phrase that may be in the process of entering common use, but that has not yet been fully accepted into mainstream language. Neologisms are often directly attributable to a specific person, publication, period, or event. In the process of language formation, neologisms are more mature than protologisms.
Phoneme
A phoneme is one of the units of sound that distinguish one word from another in a particular language.
Diachronic and Synchronic Linguistics
A synchronic approach considers a language at a moment in time without taking its history into account. Synchronic linguistics aims at describing a language at a specific point of time, usually the present. By contrast, a diachronic approach considers the development and evolution of a language through history. Historical linguistics is typically a diachronic study.
Deep Structure
In transformational-generative grammar the underlying semantic or syntactic representation of a sentence, from which the surface structure may be derived.
Tone Language
A tone language or tonal language is a language in which saying words with different "tones" (which are like pitches in music but with a smaller number) changes the meaning of a word even if the pronunciation of the word is otherwise the same.
Stress
In linguistics, and particularly phonology, stress or accent is relative emphasis or prominence given to a certain syllable in a word, or to a certain word in a phrase or sentence.
Forensic Linguistics
Forensic linguistics, legal linguistics, or language and the law, is the application of linguistic knowledge, methods and insights to the forensic context of law, language, crime investigation, trial, and judicial procedure. It is a branch of applied linguistics.
Hyponymy
the state or quality of being a hyponym, a term that denotes a subcategory of a more general class
Hyponym
A word of more specific meaning than a general or superordinate term applicable to it. For example, spoon is a hyponym of cutlery.
Pragmatics
Pragmatics is a subfield of linguistics and semiotics that studies the ways in which context contributes to meaning.
Displacement in Language
In linguistics, displacement is the capability of language to communicate about things that are not immediately present (spatially or temporally); i.e., things that are either not here or are not here now.
Form and Function
‘Form’ refers to the category labels we use for the building blocks of grammar, i.e. word classes, phrases, and clauses.
when we use the word ‘function’ when talking about language and grammar. It’s important to make clear whether we are talking about general functions, such as ‘disapproving’, ‘commenting’, ‘intensifying’, and the like, or about grammatical functions, such as Subject, Object and Adverbial.
Infix and adfix
An infix is an affix inserted inside a word stem (an existing word, or the core of a family of words). It contrasts with adfix, a rare term for an affix attached to the outside of a stem.
Difference between Connotation and Denomination
Connotation is very different because it pertains to the more loose associations to a particular word. It can also include the emotional input that is connected to a certain term or word. The connotative definition or description coexists with its denotative meaning.
Denotation is actually the word’s literal meaning. As such, it is regarded as a “dictionary definition.”
Generative Grammar
a type of grammar which describes a language in terms of a set of logical rules formulated so as to be capable of generating the infinite number of possible sentences of that language and providing them with the correct structural description.
Minimal Pairs
In phonology, minimal pairs are pairs of words or phrases in a particular language, spoken or signed, that differ in only one phonological element, such as a phoneme, toneme or chroneme, and have distinct meanings. They are used to demonstrate that two phones are two separate phonemes in the language.
Language lateralization
Language Lateralization is referred to as the localization of functions in the brain, commonly attributed to its left hemisphere and right hemisphere.
Derivational Morpheme
In morphology, a derivational morpheme is an affix that's added to a word to create a new word or a new form of a word.
Derivational morphemes can change the grammatical category (or part of speech) of a word.
Inflectional Morpheme
In English morphology, an inflectional morpheme is a suffix that's added to a word (a noun, verb, adjective or an adverb) to assign a particular grammatical property to that word, such as its tense, number, possession, or comparison. Inflectional morphemes in English include the bound morphemes -s (or -es); 's (or s'); -ed; -en; -er; -est; and -ing. These suffixes may even do double- or triple-duty.
Voice sounds or Voicing
Voicing can refer to the articulatory process in which the vocal folds vibrate, its primary use in phonetics to describe phones, which are particular speech sounds.
It can also refer to a classification of speech sounds that tend to be associated with vocal cord vibration but may not actually be voiced at the articulatory level. That is the term's primary use in phonology: to describe phonemes; while in phonetics its primary use is to describe phones.
Voiceless Sounds
In linguistics, voicelessness is the property of sounds being pronounced without the larynx vibrating. Phonologically, it is a type of phonation, which contrasts with other states of the larynx, but some object that the word phonation implies voicing and that voicelessness is the lack of phonation.
Difference between Code Mixing and Code Switching
Code Mixing is mixing of mostly words, but also phrases, clauses or even complete sentences of two languages or varieties. Code Switching is nothing but switching from one language to another to create a special effect. Note the addition of the phrase “special effect” in the definition of the latter. The key Difference between Code Mixing and Code Switching is indeed that Code Switching has a special, social pragmatic consequence while Code Mixing does not.
Auditory Phonetics
Auditory phonetics is a branch of phonetics concerned with the hearing of speech sounds and with speech perception.
Articulatory Phonetics
The field of articulatory phonetics is a subfield of phonetics. In studying articulation, phoneticians explain how humans produce speech sounds via the interaction of different physiological structures.
Language Universals
A linguistic universal is a pattern that occurs systematically across natural languages, potentially true for all of them. For example, All languages have nouns and verbs, or If a language is spoken, it has consonants and vowels.
Pidgin language
Pidgin Language is nobody's native language; may arise when two speakers of different languages with no common language try to have a makeshift conversation. Lexicon usually comes from one language, structure often from the other. Because of colonialism, slavery etc. the prestige of Pidgin languages is very low. Many pidgins are `contact vernaculars', may only exist for one speech event.
Creole
Creole is a language that was originally a pidgin but has become nativized, i.e. a community of speakers claims it as their first language. Next used to designate the language(s) of people of Caribbean and African descent in colonial and ex-colonial countries
Relexification
The process of substituting new vocabulary for old. Pidgins may get relexified with new English vocabulary to replace the previous Portuguese vocabulary, etc.
Segmental Phonology
In phonology, there is a subfield of segmental phonology that deals with the analysis of speech into phonemes (or segmental phonemes), which correspond fairly well to phonetic segments of the analysed speech.
Suprasegmental Phonology
Suprasegmental Phonology in which we study a vocal effect that extends over more than one sound segment in an utterance, such as pitch, stress, or juncture pattern.
Arbitrariness of Language
In linguistics, arbitrariness is the absence of any natural or necessary connection between a word's meaning and its sound or form. An antithesis to sound symbolism, which does exhibit an apparent connection between sound and sense, arbitrariness is one of the characteristics shared between all languages.
Feminist Stylistics
Feminist stylistics can be defined as the sub-branch of stylistics which aims to account for the way in which gender concerns are linguistically encoded in texts, and which attempts to do so by employing some of the frameworks and models pertaining in the stylistics tool-kit.
Bound and Free Morpheme
In morphology, a bound morpheme is a morpheme (the most basic unit of meaning) that can appear only as part of a larger word; a free morpheme or unbound morpheme is one that can stand alone or can appear with other morphemes in a lexeme. A bound morpheme is also known as a bound form, and similarly a free morpheme is a free form.
Semi Vowel
In phonetics and phonology, a semivowel or glide, also known as a non-syllabic vocoid, is a sound that is phonetically similar to a vowel sound but functions as the syllable boundary, rather than as the nucleus of a syllable.
Polysemy
Polysemy is the association of one word with two or more distinct meanings. A polyseme is a word or phrase with multiple meanings. The word "polysemy" comes from the Greek for "many signs."
Synonymy
Synonymy is the study of words with the same or similar meaning, or the quality of being similar.
Behaviouristic Theory of Language Learning
Behaviouristic Theory of Language Learning states that language is behavior and consiquently is learned like any other behavior via positive and negative reinforcement.
Experimental Phonetics
Experimental phonetics is the branch of general phonetics that deals with the study of the sounds and other human speech units by applying the experimental method. This scientific field covers basic areas of phonetics - articulatory phonetics, acoustic phonetics and auditory phonetics.
Language Typology
Linguistic typology is a field of linguistics that studies and classifies languages according to their structural and functional features. Its aim is to describe and explain the common properties and the structural diversity of the world's languages.
Duality of Language
Duality of patterning refers to the ability of human language, both signed and spoken, to form discrete meaningful units.
Compounding
Compounding is the process of combining two words (free morphemes) to create a new word (commonly a noun, verb, or adjective). Also called composition it is from the Latin for "put together".
Inflections
Inflection refers to a process of word formation in which items are added to the base form of a word to express grammatical meanings. The word "inflection" comes from the Latin inflectere, meaning "to bend."
Some extra Definitions related to Phonetics
Initiation: Setting air in motion through the vocal tract.
Phonation: The modification of airflow as it passes through the larynx (related to voicing).
Articulation: The shaping of airflow to generate particular sound types (related to manner)
Voice
In English we have both voiced and voiceless sounds. A sound fits into one of these categories according to how the vocal folds behave when a speech sound is produced.
Voiced: Voiced sounds are sounds that involve vocal fold vibrations when they are produced. Examples of voiced sounds are /b,d,v,m/.
If you place two fingers on either side of the front of your neck, just below your jawbone, and produce a sound, you should be able to feel a vibrating sensation. This tells you that a sound is voiced.
Voiceless: Voiceless sounds are sounds that are produced with no vocal fold vibration. Examples of voiceless sounds in English are /s,t,p,f/.
2) Place
The vocal tract is made up of different sections, which play a pivotal role in the production of speech. These sections are called articulators and are what make speech sounds possible. They can be divided into two types.
The active articulator is the articulator that moves towards another articulator in the production of a speech sound. This articulator moves towards another articulator to form a closure of some type in the vocal tract (i.e open approximation, close, etc – define)
The passive articulator is the articulator that remains stationary in the production of a speech sound. Often, this is the destination that the active articulator moves towards (i.e the hard palate).
I will now talk about the different places of articulation in the vocal tract
Bilabial: Bilabial sounds involve the upper and lower lips. In the production of a bilabial sound, the lips come into contact with each other to form an effective constriction. In English, /p,b,m/ are bilabial sounds.
Labiodental: Labiodental sounds involve the lower lip (labial) and upper teeth (dental) coming into contact with each other to form an effective constriction in the vocal tract. Examples of labiodental sounds in English are /f,v/. Labiodental sounds can be divided into two types.
a) Endolabial: sounds produced where the upper teeth are pressed against the inside of the lower lip.
b) Exolabial: sounds produced where the upper teeth are pressed against the outer side of the lower lip.
Dental: Dental sounds involve the tongue tip (active articulator) making contact with the upper teeth to form a constriction. Examples of Dental sounds in English are / θ, ð/. If a sound is produced where the tongue is between the upper and lower teeth, it is attributed the term ‘interdental’.
Alveolar: First of all, before I explain what an alveolar sound is, it’s useful to locate the alveolar ridge itself. If you place your tongue just behind your teeth and move it around, you’ll feel a bony sort of ridge. This is known as the alveolar ridge. Alveolar sounds involve the front portion of the tongue making contact with the alveolar ridge to form an effective constriction in the vocal tract. Examples of alveolar sounds in English are /t,d,n,l,s/.
Postalveolar: Postalveolar sounds are made a little further back (‘post’) from the alveolar ridge. A postalveolar sound is produced when the blade of the tongue comes into contact with the post-alveolar region of your mouth. Examples of post-alveolar sounds in English are / ʃ, ʒ /.
Palatal: Palatal sounds are made with the tongue body (the big, fleshy part of your tongue). The tongue body raises up towards the hard-palate in your mouth (the dome shaped roof of your mouth) to form an effective constriction. An example of a palatal sounds in English is /j/, usually spelt as <y>.
Velar: Velar sounds are made when the back of the tongue (tongue dorsum) raises towards the soft palate, which is located at the back of the roof of the mouth. This soft palate is known as the velum. An effective constriction is then formed when these two articulators come into contact with each other. Examples of velar sounds in English are /k,g ŋ /.
3) Manner
In simple terms, the manner of articulation refers to the way a sound is made, as opposed to where it’s made. Sounds differ in the way they are produced. When the articulators are brought towards each other, the flow of air differs according to the specific sound type. For instance, the airflow can be completely blocked off or made turbulent.
1) Stop articulations:
Stop articulations are sounds that involve a complete closure in the vocal tract. The closure is formed when two articulators come together to prevent air escaping between them. Stop articulations can be categorized according to the kind of airflow involved. The type of airflow can be oral (plosives) or nasal (nasals). I will now talk about both plosives and nasals separately.
1a) Plosives: are sounds that are made with a complete closure in the oral (vocal) tract. The velum is raised during a plosive sound, which prevents air from escaping via the nasal cavity. English plosives are the sounds /p,b,t,d,k,g/. Plosives can be held for quite a long time and are thus also called ‘maintainable stops’.
1b) Nasals are similar to plosives in regards to being sounds that are made with a complete closure in the oral (vocal) tract. However, the velum is lowered during nasal sounds, which allows airflow to escape through the nasal cavity. There are 3 nasal sounds that occur in English /m,n, ŋ/
2) Fricatives:
Fricative sounds are produced by narrowing the distance between the active and passive articulators causing them to be in close approximation. This causes the airflow to become turbulent when it passes between the two articulators involved in producing a fricative sound. English fricatives are sounds such as / f,v, θ,ð, s,z, ʃ,ʒ /
3) Approximants:
Approximant sounds are created by narrowing the distance between the two articulators. Although, unlike fricatives, the distance isn’t wide enough to create turbulent airflow. English has 4 approximant sounds which are /w,j,r,l/.
Vowels
When it comes to vowels, we use a different specification to describe them. We look at the vertical position of the tongue, the horizontal position of the tongue and lip position.
Vowels are made with a free passage of airflow down the mid-line of the vocal tract. They are usually voiced and are produced without friction.
1) Vertical tongue position (close-open): vertical tongue position refers to how close the tongue is to the roof of the mouth in the production of a vowel. If the tongue is close, it is given the label close. However, if the tongue is low in the mouth when a vowel is produced, it’s given the label open. + close-mid/open mid (see below).
Some examples of open vowels: ɪ, ʊ
Some examples of close vowels: æ, ɒ,
2) Horizontal tongue position (front, mid, back): Horizontal tongue refers to where the tongue is positioned in the vocal tract in terms of ‘at the front’ or ‘at the back’ when a vowel is produced. If the tongue is at the front of the mouth it’s given the label front, if the tongue is in the middle of the mouth it’s given the label mid and if the tongue is at the back of the mouth it’s given the label back.
Some examples of front vowels: ɪ , e, æ
Some examples of mid vowels: ə
Some examples of back vowels: ʌ,ɒ
3) Lip position: As is inferred, lip position concerns the position of the lips when a vowel is produced. The lips can either be round, spread or neutral.
Examples of round vowels: u, o
Examples of spread vowels: ɪ, ɛ
There are also different categories of vowels, for example: monophthongs and diphthongs.
Monophthongs: Monophthongs are vowels that are produced by a relatively stable tongue position.
Monophthongs can be divided into two categories according to their duration. These are long and short vowels and their duration is mirrored in their names.
Examples of short vowels: e, æ, ɪ, ʊ
Examples of long vowels: ɔ: ɜ:, i:, u:
Diphthongs: Diphthongs are vowels where the tongue moves from one part of the mouth to another. They can be seen as starting of as one vowel and ending as a different vowel.
Here are some examples: /aʊ, ɪə, ɔɪ, əʊ/
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