DESIGN FEATURES
This design feature describes the ability of humans to create and understand entirely new messages.
What is openness?
These are the smallest units of sound in a language. They do not necessarily carry meaning on their own.
What are phonemes?
Language is an abstract human capacity, whereas this term refers to the specific ways groups of people communicate.
What are languages?
This is the strong version of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. It argues that patterns of thought and culture are determined by the grammatical patterns of a language.
What is linguistic determinism?
These are real groups of people who share and use a particular language.
What are speech communities?
Human symbolic languages use a system of these to encode and communicate experiences about the world.
What are arbitrary symbols?
These are meaningful units of language that are formed by organizing phonemes together.
What are morphemes?
Language involves both the biological capacity of the human brain and vocal anatomy, as well as cultural meanings and behavioural patterns. What kind of phenomenon is language?
What is a biocultural phenomenon?
This hypothesis argues that language has the power to shape the way people understand and see the world.
What is the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, also called the linguistic relativity principle?
This concept describes how shared ways of doing things, talking, beliefs, values, and power relations emerge through people's participation in mutual activities.
What is a community of practice?
This feature allows humans to discuss things that are absent, nonexistent, or located in the past or future.
What is displacement?
This term refers to the grammatical rules governing how words are arranged into phrases and sentences.
What is syntax?
Humans have six call systems that exist alongside symbolic language. Name all six. (Answer may not be formatted as a question. This is an application question.)
Laughing, sobbing, screaming with fright, crying with pain, groaning, and sighing.
One concept refers to mastering adult grammar, while the other refers to mastering the rules for socially and culturally appropriate speech. Identify both.
What is linguistic competence and communicative competence?
This feature means there is no necessary relationship between a linguistic sound and its meaning. For example, the sound /boi/ means something different in English than it does in Fulfulde.
What is arbitrariness?
This is the formal study of meaning relationships within a particular language.
What is semantics?
This field studies meaningful signs and their uses. Within it, one term refers to the physical form of a sign, while another refers to the concept it represents. Identify the field and both terms.
What are semiotics, the signifier, and the signified?
Give four reasons why the strong version of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, linguistic determinism, is considered incorrect. (Answer may not be formatted as a question. This is an application question.)
(1) Languages without gendered pronouns can still have gender inequality; (2) people can learn new languages and translate between them; (3) multilingual fluency is possible; and (4) alternative ways of describing the world are always possible.
This type of language has no native speakers, develops between communities with different native languages, and serves as a shared secondary language. It often emerges in situations involving domination or colonialism.
What is pidgin?
Identify the three remaining design features: (1) meaningless sounds combine to form meaningful units, (2) words and symbols connect to the social, cultural, and physical world, and (3) humans can make false or contradictory statements.
What are duality of patterning, semanticity, and prevarication?
Someone says, "I could eat a horse!" Literally, this means they could consider eating a horse. However, in context, it communicates that they are extremely hungry. Which linguistic concept explains the contextual meaning, and what are its two types of context? (Answer may not be formatted as a question. This is an application question.)
What is pragmatics? Its two types are linguistic context (surrounding words and sentences) and non-linguistic context (objects and activities present when speaking).
Identify three non-spoken forms of language and explain the two concepts used to study body movements and the use of personal space in non-verbal communication. (Answer may not be formatted as a question. This is an application question.)
What are sign language, writing, and Morse code? The two concepts are kinesics (the study of body language) and proxemics (the use of space to communicate).
A language may influence how its speakers organize their understanding of space and time. However, its speakers can still learn other languages and understand different ways of describing the world. Which version of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis does this support, and why does it not support linguistic determinism? (Answer may not be formatted as a question. This is an application question.)
What is the weak version of linguistic relativity? It suggests language can shape thought and worldview without completely determining what people are capable of thinking.
Identify the difference/term between these three concepts: (1) unequal treatment of languages or language varieties, (2) judging another group's language through the standards of one's own dominant language, and (3) treating one language variety as the standard against which all others are evaluated. (Answer may not be formatted as a question. This is an application question.)
What is linguistic inequality, linguistic ethnocentrism, and language ideology?