General Concepts
the scientific study of language
What is linguistics?
a sign with an arbitrary relation between form and meaning
what is a symbol?
the study of word meaning
what is lexical semantics?
the study of the way people perceive speech sounds
what is auditory phonetics
the smallest meaning-distinguishing (abstract) units in a language, graphically represented by slashes / /
what are phonemes?
a purely human and non-instinctive method of communicating ideas, emotions and desires by means of voluntarily produced symbols
what is language according to Edward Sapir
the study of sign systems or communicative systems and the processes by which meaning is created
what is semiotics?
the study of linguistic meaning
what is semantics?
the study of the physical properties of speech sounds
what is acoustic phonetics?
the study of the meaning-distinguishing sounds in a particular language
what is phonology?
creativity, displacement, duality of patterning, prevarication and reflexiveness
a sign with similarity between form and meaning
the abstract underlying unit of different word-forms that all have the same meaning
what is a lexeme?
the study of the way the organs of speech are used to produce speech sounds
what is articulatory phonetics?
realizations of phonemes
what are phones?
informative function, expressive function, directive function
what are the three central communicative functions in Karl Ludwig Bühler's Organon Model?
something that stands for something else
what is a sign?
oppositional lexemes describing the same situation from a different perspective
what are relational antonyms?
airstream is obstructed so much that friction is caused (but no stop of airstream)
what are fricatives?
different phones realizing the same phoneme. Both phones and allophones are typically enclosed by square brackets [ ]
what are allophones?
observing language change over a period of time
what is a diachronic approach to linguistic analysis?
an entity referred to in the world
what is a referent in the semiotic triangle according to Charles K. Ogden & Ivor A. Richards?
lexemes with the same word form but with different, unrelated meanings
what are homonyms?
continuous airstream flows along the sides of the mouth, articulators move and modify the airstream (without blocking it completely or causing friction)
what are lateral approximants? (partial points: liquids, approximants, sonorants)
dropping of /j/ after /d, t, n, θ, z, s/ in the same syllable
what is Yod-dropping?