Language Change Regularity of Sound Change: Consistent change according to phonological rules; for example, the caught-cot merger, which has occurred in regular contexts in areas of North America and Scotland. see: the Northern Cities Vowel Shift affects the six short vowels in caught, cot, cat, bit, bet and but. Sound Correspondences: Great Vowel…
Category: Burlington
IMA Linguistics 540 Class 12
Psycholinguistics area of linguistics concerned with linguistic performance in speech or sign production & comprehension Nature of linguistic knowledge: not a set of fixed phrases stored in memory speech chain (brain-to-brain linking) mechanisms allow us to break stream of sounds into linguistic units Comprehension: How do we “unpack”language that is complex? Breakdowns reveal how…
IMA 540 Linguistics Class 11
Deborah Tannen: The Medium is the Metamessage Introduction Bateson – coined term Metacommunication: “the subject of discourse is the relationship between the speakers” The metamessage, according to Tannen, is implicit, and indicates how the ‘speaker’ intends the message. Same statements about the politeness of different conversational styles apply to text messages as to…
IMA Linguistics 540 Class 10
George Lakoff & Mark Johnson – Metaphors We Live By How basic is metaphor to our conceptual system? Do our metaphors define our reality? STRUCTURAL METAPHORS ARGUMENT IS WAR (But it could be dance!) Is this why pacifists don’t like to argue? TIME IS MONEY (i.e., a valuable commodity) Michael Reddy – the…
IMA 540 Linguistics Class 9
Student Exercises Exercise 14 (p.228) on The Jabberwocky Semantics: the study of the linguistic meaning of morphemes, words, phrases, and sentences Subfields lexical semantics: concerned with the meanings of words phrasal or sentential semantics: concerned with larger syntactic units There are more types which the text doesn’t cover Pragmatics: The interpretation of linguistic meaning in context. (according…
IMA 540 Linguistics Class 8
Deborah Tannen: Conversational Style Chapter 2: Theoretical Background Analysis of conversation is a subdomain of discourse analysis (which also includes written text). CA is related to Semantics – basic question is ‘how do people communicate and interpret meaning in conversation?’ Style: Hymes described as register; Ervin-Tripp as alternation. Tannen refers to choices of particular…
IMA 540 Linguistics Class 7
Chomsky 1966 Structural Linguistics Vs. Universal Grammar/Generative Grammar What is basic – Grammar or the building blocks that go into syntax? Chomsky Takes a Day Off Chomsky today Ullman Ppt Ullman-CBBC2006
IMA 540 Linguistics Class 6
The Interactive Activation Model explained Past tense Connectionists Rumelhart and McClelland were trying to model cognitive processes for computer [David Rumelhart respected in field of cognitive science] Vs generativists generative phonology and their descendents, such as those of Chomsky and Halle Vs The Words and Rules (WR) theory Pinker and Prince Stephen Pinker: in…
IMA 540 Linguistics Class 5
Neurolinguistics: the study of the biological and neural foundations of language Cortex: surface of the brain “gray matter“ white matter: connecting fibers beneath the cortex cerebral hemispheres: left/right halves of the brain corpus callosum: network of 2 million fibers connecting the hemispheres contralateral brain function: left side of brain controls functioning of right side of body and…
IMA 540 Linguistics Class 4
About Joseph Greenberg Comprehensive Biography Terms in Greenburg (relevant to language typology) Diachronic: looking at something (i.e., language) in respect to the passage of time Synchronic: looking at something at a given moment in time. See explanations here in regard to linguistics. Ways to Categorize Languages: Genetic (historical or diachronic) Morphology Word order…