LING 110: Exam 1
32 Cards in this Set
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Whatis the “wugtest”and what does it tell us about language?
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“test” is made up of a pair of nonexistent words whose construction ispossible in English. It isdesigned to elicit tacit knowledge about properties of language, such as pluralization rules.
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Whatis the difference between being prescriptive and being descriptive?
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Being prescriptive, claims rules for how language shouldor should not be spoken, based on some communal values or ideologies.
Being descriptive, focuses on giving an account of, or describing, how a givenlanguage or dialect is spoken, based on an understanding of the systematicity of gra…
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Whatwere Panini’scontributions to linguistics and language study?
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Panini was a scholar of Sanskrit, an early Indic language from theIndo-Iranian branch. His major contribution was to define linguistic concepts, such as word formation (morphology),phonetic description, and grammar rules, as well as helping preserve sacredreligious texts and the language …
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Whendid Panini live/write?, and
Whywere his works significant?
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Panini lived and wrote around the 5th/7th c. BC.
His works brought into focus the significance oflinguistic concepts (i.e., detailed, systematic descriptions) & historicalrelationships among languages.
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Whocoined the terms langueandparole,and what do they mean?
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Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure.
Langue refers to the abstract languagesystem,
Parole refers to the more concrete act of speaking
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Howmight this relate to our conclusions about language which we derived from the “wugtest”?
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elicits tacit knowledge of language at an abstract level (langue) that is shared by speakers.
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Whatsimilar contrastive terms did a later linguist coin which resemble these(langue/parole)?
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Concepts of linguistic competence (cf. langue) and linguistic performance (cf.parole), which were coined by Noam Chomsky
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Whyare Franz Boas and Edward Sapir important in Linguistics?,
Whatdid they encounter in their research of Native American languages?
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They emphasized the importance of oral language based on observations fromNative American languages, which lacked written records and possesseddifferent structure than Indo-European languages.
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Whatis structuralism, and who proposed it?
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Structuralism is a systematic approach to the study of language thatdominated linguistics for almost 50 years (1930s-1980s) proposed by Leonard Bloomfield
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Howdid structuralism contribute to the study of language?
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Bloomfield emphasized the study of language as scientific by relying onobservation and rejecting prescientific methods.
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Howdoes classical conditioning relate to linguistics?, and
Wheredoes the term “classicalconditioning”come from?
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Classical conditioning (Pavlov) deals with involuntary,or reflex, behavior. This finds a parallel to the development of linguistics, andeventually developed into behaviorism.
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Howdoes the stimulus relate to the response in operant conditioning?
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The type of the stimulus predicts a particularresponse.
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Howdoes classical conditioning relate to operant conditioning?
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Operant conditioning deals with voluntary behavior, in contrast toclassical conditioning. Operantconditioning is associated with behaviorism.
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What is behaviorism, and who proposedit?, and
What famous book was published in 1957that proposed a behaviorist view of language?
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Behaviorism is a psychological framework proposed by John F.Watson and B. F. Skinner, emphasizing the (contingent) relationship betweenstimulus and response, and notions such as reinforcement. Skinner’s book VerbalBehavior outlined a behaviorist model of language learning.
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Why does behaviorism fail as a model oflanguage acquisition?
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Behaviorism relies too heavily on the relationship betweenstimulus and response. the stimulus is too impoverished andflawed (quality and quantity) in order to accountfor basic features of child language production,such as its generative nature. Chomsky proposed the innateness theory in re…
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What is generative linguistics, and who proposed it?, and
What book marked the beginning ofgenerative linguistics?
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generative linguistics stems from theobservation that language users/learners are capable of generating apotentially infinite amount of sentences from a finite set of words. According to this framework, knowing alanguage amounts to knowing rules for producing sentences (i.e., grammar). …
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Who originally distinguished linguisticcompetence from linguistic performance, and to what does each refer?
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Chomsky. The former refers to(tacit) linguistic knowledge and system capability (similar to langue), while the latter refers to speech production, or actual language use(similar to parole).
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What are “surfacestructure” and “deep structure,” and why are they important?
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Two sentences look alike on the surface, to the eye but looking deeper they are different the rules applied and meaning are different
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What is the importance of syntacticstructure, and what example(s) can you give to illustrate this importance?
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syntactic structure evidences linguistic competence, which in turnimplies that something is at work in language at a deep, abstract level. Chomsky’s famous “sentence” aimed at revealing competence is ‘Colorless ideas sleep furiously,’ which alludes to an aspect of language and sentence c…
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What are the propositions ofrationalism relevant to linguistics?
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Nature, heredity, innate properties of mind, mind imposes structure onworld, and primacy of thought are all associated with rationalism.
These imply a contingent relationship between language acquisition andenvironmental input, as well as implying genetic predisposition.
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What linguists are associated withthis philosophical framework(rationalism)?
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Noam Chomsky and Jerry A. Fodor
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What are the propositions ofempiricism relevant to linguistics?
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Nurture, environment, tabula rasa, knowledge by sensory information,external sensations, and knowledge as experience are all associated withempiricism.
They imply a strong relationship between environmental input, orstimulus, and language learning/production, or response.
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What psychologists are associated with thisphilosophical framework(empiricism)?
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B. F. Skinner and John F. Watson
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What is the Indo-European languagefamily?
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group of approximately 100 languages initially spanning from Iceland tothe Indian subcontinent.
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What is the difference between “descent”and “borrowing,”and what is an example of each?
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“Descent”involves historical and genetic lineage that is tied to a common ancestor, suchas how Spanish and Italian both descended from (and are daughters of)Latin.
“Borrowing”involves importing elements from another language, such as caused by “contact.” English borrowed significantly …
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What is Proto-Indo-European?
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hypothetical reconstruction of the mother language from which all thelanguages in the Indo-European family come.
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What are some language families, otherthan Indo-European?
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200 additional language families, some are: Austronesian, Altaic, Na-Dené, Dravidian, Algonquian, Afro-Asiatic, and Sino-Tibetan
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What is the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis?
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the relationship between language andthought (and culture), and postulates that native language affects (i.e.,constrains) cognition.
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What are the two parts of Sapir-Whorf hypothesis?
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Linguistic determinism, or the idea that language determines the way wethink.
Linguistic relativity/relativism, or the idea that categories differacross languages.
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Which examples support theSapir-Whorf hypothesis, and why?
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Cardboard boxes, for speakers of Yucatec Mayan distinguish based on substance, whereas speakers of Englishdistinguish based on shape.
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Which examples do not support thehypothesis, and why?
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Color terms, since color is now considered to be a perceptual universalafter the work of (Rosch) Heider (1972).
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What are the various theories for theorigins of language?
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The divine source
The natural sound source
The physical adaptation source
The genetic source
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LING 110: Exam 1