LING 2100 Exam 4 Study Guide Language Variation Language Varieties Language Variety o Used by linguists as a cover term to refer to any form of language characterized by systematic features Sociolinguistics o The study of the relationship between language varieties and social structure as well as the interrelationships among different language varieties Extralinguistic Factors o Region socioeconomic status age gender and ethnicity that define speech communities Communicative Isolation o Results when a group of speakers forms a coherent speech community relatively isolated from speakers outside of that community Mutual Intelligibility o If speakers of one language variety can understand speakers of another language variety o Also means they are dialects of the same language Standard Dialect o Linguistically speaking no one dialect or language is better more correct more systematic or more logical than any other o Serves as the primary means of communication across dialects Nonstandard Dialect o Other dialects within a language but should not be considered inferior Prescriptive Standard o The standard by which we make judgments of right and wrong Language Contact Levels of Borrowing Borrowing o The adoption by one language of linguistic elements from another language o Can be lexical or structural Lexical borrowing of words or phrases Structural borrowing of phonological morphological or syntactic patterns Loanwords o The individual words being adopted into another language Loan Transitions or Calques o Phrases acquired through a word for word translation into native morphemes Intensity of Contact o Determined by the duration of the linguistic contact as well as by the level of interaction among the speakers Second language Acquisition o Many adult immigrants learn the language of their new home through interaction with native speakers rather than in a school setting Language convergence o Occurs when two languages become more similar due to contact between them Pidgin Languages o Languages that typically develop in trading centers or in areas under industrialization where the opportunities for trade ad work attract large numbers of people with different native tongues Creole Languages o Develop from a pidgin language when it is adopted as the first or native language of a group of speakers Nativization o All creoles seem to be languages that were initially non native to any group of speakers and were adopted as first languages by children in some speech community Language Change Synchronic vs Diachronic Synchronic o Analyzing a language at a particular point in time Diachronic o Analyzing a language over time Language Relatedness The notion that that similar languages are related and descended from an earlier common language protolanguage goes back to the late 18th century Family Tree Theory o Assumes that speech sounds change in regular recognizable ways and that because of this phonological similarities among languages may be due to a genetic relationship among those languages Wave Theory o Recognizes the gradual speed of change throughout a dialect language or group of languages much as a wave expands on the surface of a pond from the point where a pebble has been tossed in Language Acquisition Theories of Language Acquisition Innateness Hypothesis o Humans are genetically predisposed to acquire and use language o Babies are born with the knowledge that languages have patterns and with the ability to seek out and identify those patterns Imitation Theory o Claims that children learn language by listening to the speech around them and reproducing what they hear o Language acquisition consists of memorizing the words and sentences of some language Reinforcement Theory o Asserts that children learn to speak like adults because they are praised rewarded or otherwise reinforced when they use the right forms and are corrected when they use the wrong forms Active Communication of a Grammar Theory o The most influential theory of language acquisition holds that children actually invent the rules of grammar themselves o Assumes that the ability to develop rules is innate but that the actual rules are based on the speech children hear around them this is their input or data for analysis Connectionist Theories o Assume that children learn language by creating neutral connections in the brain o A child develops connections through exposure to language and by using language Social Interaction Theory o Assumes that children acquire language through social interaction with older children and adults in particular o Holds that children prompt their parents to supply them with the appropriate language experience they need