Linguistic Principles
By what age does a child have an intuitive sense of what's "right" or "wrong" in a given language?
5
What is a morpheme?
the smallest units in the structural analysis of words.
What is the basic difference between "descriptivism" and "prescriptivism"?
Descriptivism studies what language looks like while prescriptivism studies what language "should" look like.
"Basque, or Euskara, a language spoken along the Pyrenees in northern Spain and southern France, has long stumped linguists due to its apparent lack of relation to any other living language. Mostly left alone over thousands of years, in large part due to its dangerous mountain range, Basque was able to develop in a linguistic vacuum."
Which force of language change is most clearly exhibited here?
Change by geographic isolation
What kind of language was Old English?
- a Romance language
- a Germanic language
- a language isolate
A Germanic language
What did the Wug Test demonstrate?
"This is a wug. Now there are two. There are two ____."
That children internalize language rules and grammar by an early age - they do not simply memorize the words around them.
quark, google, blog, tweet, grunge
The verbs above are all considered open or closed class items?
open - new words/morphemes may be freely added as they are invented.
True or False: Descriptivism and prescriptivism both analyze Standard English.
True
"Martha’s Vineyard is an island off the coast of Massachusetts. Well-known for its perfect summer weather and relaxing beaches, the Vineyard has attracted many tourists. While the year-round population (locals who stay on the island all year long) is only 15,000, the summer population swells as high as 75,000. Like many tourist locations, locals of Martha’s Vineyard want to differentiate themselves from tourists and the wealthy summertime visitors. One way they do this is through language. A sociolinguistic study conducted in 1963 by William Labov found that locals emphasize and exaggerate their pronunciations to set themselves apart from tourists. For example, they would pronounce right as r-a-ight and loud as l-e-oud. Tourists who do not use this pronunciation are then classified as outsiders and, therefore, less accepted and esteemed by the local community."
What force of language change is exhibited here?
Before the arrival of Anglo-Saxon vikings to the British Isles, which group of people was already living there?
The Celts who spoke an unrelated language that we now call Gaelic
In Spanish the word “bridge” is masculine (el puente), and Spanish speakers described a bridge with masculine adjectives such as big, dangerous, long, strong, and sturdy
In German, the word “bridge” is feminine (die Brücke) and German speakers described a bridge with feminine adjectives such as beautiful, elegant, fragile, pretty, and slender.
What might these examples provide loose evidence for?
The Sapir-Whorf Theory, also known as linguistic relativism, which claims that different languages encode different categories which can influence a speaker’s perceptions of the world.
How many morphemes are in the word "unbreakable"?
3
un
break
able
When I was in school, I was taught that one shouldn't say something like "Who are you speaking to?", rather instead "To whom are you speaking?" in order to avoid a "stranded preposition" (leaving words like "to," "on", "with," "for," etc. at the end of a sentence.). This felt unnatural and few people I knew spoke this way, but that was the gold standard.
What is this an example of?
Prescriptivism
All of these demonstrate which force of language change?
Change by cultural change/innovation.
What landmark event occurred in 1066 that would forever change the English language?
Hint: It's the reason we have two words for certain animals in English; one for the animal itself, and another for the version that we eat on our plates!
The invasion of the French led by William the Conqueror (also known as the Battle of Hastings) - they brought with them a form of Old French, which was imposed on the people and thereby injected thousands of Latin-based words into English. This radically changed the sound and vocabulary of the language we recognize today.
If a parrot learns the phrases “Polly wants a cracker” and “Polly wants a doughnut” and later learns the word “bagel,” the parrot will not be able to say “Polly wants a bagel” (Sorry.)
Which of the following features of human language is the parrot incapable of as seen in the example above? There may be more than one answer for full points.
-Discreteness
-Creativity
-Displacement
Discreteness and Creativity
What's an example of a "closed class" morpheme?
Answers will vary:
-s/es at the end of words to pluralize
-ed at the end of verbs to denote past tense
-ing at the end of a verb to denote the progressive (an action in process, e.g., I am running, jumping, etc.)
etc.
Over the last few decades, they has been commonly used as a replacement for he/she in colloquial speech. For example:
"I saw someone waiting in line at Snack Shack, but I forgot to ask what they wanted."
What would a descriptivist say about this usage of they?
It is just another example of language change in the population; another variety of English, albeit a non-standard one.
Papiamento is a Portuguese-based creole language spoken in the Dutch Caribbean. It is the most widely spoken language on the Caribbean ABC islands (Aruba, Bonaire, and Curaçao), with official status in Aruba and Curaçao.
The language is largely based on colonial-era Portuguese and Spanish and has been influenced considerably by Dutch and Venezuelan Spanish.
This is an example of what kind of language change?
Change by language contact
What are three examples of English loanwords (words we've taken and adapted) from French?
Answers may vary:
-Advice
-Congress
-Parliament
-Too many to count! Look up word etymologies for verification if need be.
Original: "What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.“ (Romeo and Juliet (II, ii, 1-2))
Plain English: "Why does it matter if we call it a "rose." If we called it anything else, it would still smell just as sweet."
What linguistic principle does this quotation demonstrate?
Most words in all languages are arbitrary (randomly chosen) connections of sound to meaning.
Some languages have a feature that for us might seem exotic: infixes. Infixes are morphemes that regularly appear in the middle of a word to alter their meaning.
Albeit rarely, English has a few instances of infixation. Name one.
Abso-f***ing-lutely!
Fan-f***ing-tastic!
In Spanish, one of these is approved by the RAE and the other isn't.
Preferiría que vinieras a visitarme más tarde hoy.
Though most of you might feel like the example below feels more "correct" or "easy on the ear" when referring to an action/event that hasn't happened yet.
Preferiría que vengas a visitarme más tarde hoy.
What would a descriptivist have to say on the matter? A prescriptivist? Provide both points of view for full credit.
Descriptivist - if people are using the second form, there's nothing inherently "wrong" with it, even if the first is considered the standard.
Prescriptivist - the first is the agreed-upon standard and ought to be enforced, even if it's underrepresented in the speech of everyday people.
English used to form the past tense by changing the vowels in the middle of a verb. For example:
sing --> sang --> sung
Now, we don't do this with new verbs that are added to the language, opting instead to simply add -d or -ed at the end. For example:
skype --> skyped
This is an example of what force of language change?
Change by internal pressures
After the Celts were killed off and before the arrival of the French, there was a period in which the Anglo-Saxon vikings (the first speakers of Old English) shared the British isles with vikings from another part of Scandinavia that spoke Old Norse.
What is a word that was adopted into English from Old Norse?
Answers may vary:
give, take, get, sale, cake, egg, husband, fellow, sister, root, rag, loose, raise, rugged, odd, plough, freckle, call, flat, hale, ugly, lake, etc.
Look 'em up to check if need be.