LING200 - Key Terms and People from Week 1

*You should be able to define and give examples for the terms as well as know what the people are
responsible for. Note: There is some repetition in the list to show associations.

1. Characteristics of language (arbitrary, productive, etc…)

 Language is universal – there is no culture or people without language.
 Language is arbitrary – there is no organic or natural relationship between words and
the ideas or objects they represent (you can see this in the fact that different
languages have different words for the same things). We know what things mean by
convention, in other words, by general agreement on what they mean.
 Language is discrete – it consists of small units of meaning (sound, etc) which can be
combined.
 Language has semanticity – words and utterances have meanings.
 Language is symbolic: it is a representation of ideas, objects, etc.
 Language is productive – infinite numbers of meanings can be constructed from finite
‘tools’ (sounds, words, grammar, etc). New words and sentences are created all the
time.
 Language is culturally transmitted from one generation to the next.
 Languages are based on grammar (a system of rules) – not the kind of rules we are
taught in school, but the rule sets people have in their heads about what makes a
sentence, which sounds are meaningful, which words are possible, etc. There are
some elements which are common to every language (representations of time, for
example); these are called ‘Language Universals’.
 Duality of patterning (enables productivity): a large number of meaningful utterances
can be recombined in a systematic way from discrete parts (for example, the same
root can be combined with a variety of suffixes and vice versa).
2. Charles Hockett
 American linguist who originated many influential ideas in the field of linguistics and
was responsible for the ‘design features’ paradigm used in the field. His features have
been adjusted over time; however, the basic formulation and most of the original
features are still used.
3. Descriptive vs. prescriptive grammar vs. teaching grammar
 Descriptive grammars describe what people do (the rules of different varieties of
language and how people speak) rather than trying to tell them what they should do.
This is the zone where linguists operate.
  Prescriptive grammars try to ‘prescribe’ what people should do. They consist of rules
for what is considered ‘good’ language. This is NOT what linguists do.
 Teaching grammars are those which are used to teach foreign and second languages.
They attempt to capture the knowledge of native speakers for the purpose of assisting
non-native speakers to acquire it.
4. Competence and performance
 Competence is your linguistic knowledge.
 Performance is what you can do with that knowledge. *Note: a way to remember this
is to think about people who understand a language but have trouble speaking it.
Their competence is superior to their performance.
5. Noam Chomsky
 Widely considered to be one of the fathers of modern linguistics. He originated
the theory of universal grammar, which formed the foundation for how language
knowledge has been studied since the mid-twentieth century.
6. Universal grammar – According to Noam Chomsky, UG is a set of internal constraints
which allow us to decide whether sentences are correct or not. Chomsky’s theory is that
while the mental grammar for each specific language is different, the ‘parameters’ of
language in general, and the ability to learn language, are universal and hard-wired into
the brain, separate from more general cognitive abilities.
7. Critical period – The Critical Period Hypothesis states that language learning must take
place within a ‘critical period’ of time, i.e., before puberty, or it will be incomplete (brain
changes after puberty make language acquisition slower and less complete). Evidence for
this hypothesis is taken largely from second language learning because there are so few
cases of people who were not exposed to a first language before puberty. (several famous
cases exist, however)
8. Discreteness – Language is described as ‘discrete’ because it is made up of small,
individual units which are combined into larger units.
9. Displacement – the quality of language which allows speakers to talk about things and
ideas which are not present (past, future, people who are elsewhere, etc..)
10. Syntax – rules for sentence formation in language (not prescribed rules, those which exist
in the brains of speakers)
11. Morphology – rules for word formation in language.
12. Phonology – rules which govern where sounds appear in words, which sounds are
meaningful, how sounds change when words are pronounced in different sound contexts,
etc….in other words, rules which deal with how sounds helps create meaning.
13. Phonetics –the actual sounds which exist in language, and their physical properties. (your
brain knows whether a sound is part of your language or not and exactly how to make it)
14. Semantics – rules related to meaning in language; in other words, your brain knows what
the words in your language mean, including which meanings are appropriate in each
contexts.
15. Pragmatics – rules for how language is used in a social context and which functions various
speech acts (utterances) have – for example, part of pragmatics has to do with knowing
the function of ‘How are you?’ as opposed to just the words themselves.
16. Lexicon – mental dictionary
17. Gloss – bilingual dictionary used in teaching grammars; contains equivalents of new
language words in the speaker’s native language.
18. Differences between human language and animal communication (you should be able to
list and explain) – animal language lacks discreteness, displacement (in most cases),
productivity, grammar, and cultural transmission.
19. Prestige dialect – the variety of any language which is viewed as the ‘best’ dialect and
seen as the one which all speakers should aspire to master.
20. Sapir-Whorf hypothesis – a hypothesis stating that the language we speak not only
reflects our thought but shapes it.
21. Linguistic determinism – the strong form of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, generally
interpreted to mean that language absolutely shapes thought, and that therefore
speakers would lack concepts which are not expressed in their language. This would
preclude translation and second language learning
22. Linguistic Relativism – A weaker version of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis which says that
language only predisposes us to see the world in a certain way, not that it prevents us
from seeing things in other ways.
23. Steven Pinker – cognitive psychologist who has written a great many books on the
relationship between language and thought. He has argued that language ability is an
evolutionary instinct.
24. Euphemism treadmill – term coined by Steven Pinker which refers to a phenomenon in
which an offensive word is changed and then the new word gradually takes on the
negative connotations of the original word, leading to creation of a new word, and so on.