Topics for Midterm 1

Linguistics and the Study of Language

• What do linguists do? What is the study of Phonology & Phonetics? Of Morphology? Of Syntax?
o Linguistics
 Linguistics: study of language, what it is, and how it works
 They look at language objectively and descriptively
o Phonology: the cognitive categorization of abstract phonemes
 Phoneme: the basic unit of a sound that serves as a contrastive role—i.e. creates meaning
• Usually a vowel or consonant
• Vocalic space: describes where the vowel is pronounced in the mouth
o Three descriptors for vowels:
 Tongue height
 Tongue displacement (front, central, back)
 Roundedness of lips
o Phonetics: the physical description of the sound
 Diagram to remember: the IPA (international phonetic alphabet) which shows those
letters/sounds you see in word pronunciations in dictionaries
o Morphology: the study of the structure and the formation of words—of the parts that compose a word
and the processes that restrict its combination
 Morphemes: the minimal units with meaning (that is: the smallest lexical unit with meaning)
• Free morphemes: boy
• Bound morphemes: -ish (needs a free morpheme to create meaning)
 Morphological segmentation: division of morphemes within a word
• Example: worth – i – ness
o Root: (morpheme with lexical meaning) worth
 NOTE: compound words can have at least two roots
• German is notorious for making really long ones
(ULTIMATEFRANKENWORD)
o Affixes: (infixes, prefixes, suffixes) y, or i, ness, or un
• Inflectional morphemes
o Change meaning based on the inflection (letter at end of word)
 Ex. Chic-o is boy, chic-a is girl (gender)
• Chic-o-s (number is added to gender)
• Derivational morphemes
o Bake derives to baker which derives to bakery
 Another example: write, writer or swim, swimmer
o Syntax: the hierarchical and functional relationship between different elements in a sentence, and
between sentences in discourse (like a paragraph)
 Sentence is not just a series of words
• Ex. “The Red Raiders won the game against the Baylor Bears.”
o NOT syntactical: “The game against won the Baylor Bears the Red Raiders.”
 Syntax establishes the relationship between different constituents
o Building Blocks of Language
 First, we combine phonemes to create morphemes
 Second, we combine morphemes to create words
 Third, we combine words in a SYSTEMATIC ORDER to form sentences
• What comprises the field of sociolinguistics?
o Sociolinguistics: the study of language variation and change in relation to social factors
 These factors could be socioeconomic status, age, gender, sexuality, race, education,
employment, geography, etc.
• What is meant by the term “monolingual ideology”? Why is this belief so widespread in the USA?
o Everything exists in one language
  It’s widespread in the US because we do mostly everything in English despite having many
languages as part of our nation’s demographic groups

Language Families and Language History

• How would a linguist define human language? What are the three central aspects of communication?
o Expression- sounds, the words used
o Meaning- what the words refer to
o Context- how the words are used
o Language is rule-governed
o Speakers have competence
o Language is a system of arbitrary signs
o Characteristics
 Discreteness: individual sounds and words can be separated and isolated, or combined
 Duality: language consists of meaningful parts that don’t have meaning in isolation
• Ex. “th” doesn’t mean anything in English- put it with “e” and you have THE, which has
meaning
 Displacement: you can talk about the “non-present”
 Recursion/productivity: even though there are a limited number of units to form meaning, there
can be endless ideas expressed
• What languages are part of the Indo-European language family?
o There are a lot. Most European are Indo.
• What other language families are spoken in Europe? What are the other important language families in different
parts of the world?
o Top Ten World Language Families
 Indo-European
• German
 Sino-Tibetan
• Chinese
 Niger-Congo
• Swahili
 Afro-Asiatic
• Arabic
 Austronesian
• Tagalog
 Dravidian
• Southern Indian
 Turkic
• Turkish
 Japanic
• Japanese
 Austroasiatic
• Vietnamese
 Tai-Kadai
• Thai
• How many language families existed in North America before contact with Europeans?
o More than 300
• What is Proto-Indo-European? How have linguists reconstructed PIE? What has the reconstruction of the
language suggested about the culture of its speakers?
o PIE is the hypothesized common ancestor language of Indo-European
o It was reconstructed through:
 Comparative linguistics
 Identifying cognates
  Sound shifts that work in regular, predictable patterns
o Society was likely made up of tribal farmers
 They had cultivated grain, had domesticated animals, hunted
 Patriarchal culture
 Polytheistic sky gods
• Heroic poetry
History of the German language
• What defines a “Germanic” language? What is the relationship of English to the other Germanic languages?
o Germanic language: defined by the First or “Great” Consonant Shift that occurred in 500 BCE
 Now referred to as Grimm’s Law by Jacob Grimm
• How did the lack of a capital city affect the development of a standardized version of German?
o It had no central cultural focus
o Most dialects were just based on different tribes around the area
• What roles did culture, religion, technology, and politics play in the development of a standard German
language? What is the relationship of Standard German to various German dialects today?
o Religion: during Martin Luther’s Protestant Reformation, he translated the Bible into a dialect he
believed most German people could understand
 “Proper” form of German
o German literature emerged around 1770
 Johann Goethe and Friedrich Schiller
 Grimm Brothers made a dictionary
o Berlin becoming the capital
o Konrad Duden’s dictionary is revised periodically and spelling reforms are then taught in schools/used in
government documents
o Contemporary German
 Many Germans speak a local dialect at home that is NOT mutually intelligible
 School children learn standard German in school and learn English from a young age
 English words/phrases in German vocabulary are now ubiquitous

Language and Culture

• What is meant by the term “linguistic nationalism”? Can you think of recent examples of this phenomenon?
o A culture is often described and identity is tied to a language
o Dominant cultures using language to assert their dominance
 English being forcefully taught to Native Americans at residential schools
• What are the ways in which cultures have been classified? Can you explain these and provide examples of each?
o Cultures have been classified by being heterogenous, dynamic, and ever-changing
 Discourse communities that have common imaginings and a common social space and history
• What types of culture (or sub-cultures) are there?
o High culture
 Distinguish a society’s elite
o Popular culture
 Designates cultural patterns that are widespread among society’s population
o Subcultures
 Distinguish some segment of a society’s population
 Involve difference and hierarchy
o Counterculture
 Patterns that strongly oppose those widely accepted in society
• Can you explain what the “Culture Iceberg” metaphor suggests? Can you provide examples?
o Cultural iceberg means there are physical representations of culture that are on a simple level and very
understandable
 Dance, food, music, language
o The deeper part of the iceberg are behavioral and psychological characteristics of a culture that are
quite difficult to understand, and more abstract
  Parenting, morality, manners, thought patterns, etc.
• What is the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis? What evidence exists for it or against it?

Dr. Qualin: Slavic Languages

• What are the three branches of the Slavic language family? What languages are part of each?
o East
 Belarusian
 Russian
 Ukrainian
o West
 Czech
 Polish
 Slovak
 Sorbian
o South
 Bosnian
 Croatian
 Serbian
 Bulgarian
 Macedonian
 Slovene
• What is the history of the Cyrillic alphabet? Why do some Slavic languages use the Roman alphabet instead?
o History of Cyrillic
 Mid-9th century: Bulgarian empire was in the process of becoming Orthodox Christian
• They did not have a written language
 Kirill and Methodius were asked to create an alphabet for the people
• First one was Glagolitic: looks kind of weird and not anything like Cyrillic
• Thus disciples of the two brothers created the Cyrillic alphabet and named it in Cyrill’s
honor
o Based on Greek alphabet
o Some use the Roman alphabet due to Catholicism and the spread of Latin
• How is the Russian language similar to English? How is it different?
o Similarities to English:
 Both singular and plural exist in English and Russian
 Lots of cognates!
o Differences:
 Noun cases and declensions
 More gendered words
 Different alphabet sometimes
• What does it mean when Russian is described as a “synthetic-inflectional language with rich morphology”? What
are some examples of this “rich morphology”?
o There are lots of different words for verbs and nouns due to conjugations and declensions
• Why should one study Russian?
o It’s fun!
o Useful on the world stage
o Critical language so well-funded
o Important in oil, gas, and mining
o Good for double majors
o Looks good on resume
o Rich visual and literary culture

Dr. Cantor: Italian Language and Culture

 • Where was Dante from? In what language did he write his Divine Comedy (1320)? Why was that unusual? And
what role did that play in the development of standardized Italian?
o Florence, Italy; Tuscan dialect of Italian; his large vocabulary spanned many dialects so it helped to
create the standard Italian dialect
• How many different dialects are there in Italy? Are they mutually comprehensible?
o 226 dialects? No!
• When was Italy unified into a single nation? When was the language standardized?
o 1861; 14th century (1350s)
• Why did Dr. Cantor choose to study Italian?
o The culture ad people
Languages and Dialects
• What kinds of dialects are there? Can you provide examples of each?
o Regional dialects: have a historical origin
 Not all are mutually comprehensible (ex. Cantonese and Chinese)
 Language can be split for political and cultural reasons
• Highlight identities of the speakers
 Dialect continuum: as you ger father away from the standard, things might not be
comprehensible
• Ex. From Southern Italy to Northern France, it’s not going to look the same anymore
 Some languages are comprehensible, like Norwegian and Swedish
o Cultural dialects: People in Alsace speaking French instead of German because they identify more with
French Culture
• Why are dialects often associated with the concepts of prestige and stigma?
o Some are considered more “correct” than others, despite being linguistically equal
o Language of peasants, or of different races, could have stigma
o Not matching the “standard” language which is the blueprint in most cases
• How are standard languages created and maintained? Can you cite specific examples?
o Standard English: dictionaries and what not keep them maintained
• Why is a standard language useful? Why can standards sometimes have negative effects?
o Useful for teaching in a classroom to have a common baseline of grading
o Can create racial/cultural bias based on “correctness”
o Good for government documents and what not
• What are the different dialects in the United States? What is their origin?
o AAVE, Native American English, etc.
o Origins are varied; some come via migration or are created by different languages
• What can you say about your own dialect? About your idiolect?