ISL1 Flashcards

The ability to use language to talk about language.

Also called reflexivness

communication about things not in the present time- or location (temporal, spatial, fictional)

no natural connection between the linguistic form and its meaning, language is conventional

we learn language form our surrounding environment, humans are not born with a biological language

also called creativity

creating new expressions by manipulating their linguistic resources to describe new objects and situations

= double articulation

language is organized in two levels, sound & words

limited number of sounds make up whole inventory of language

rUN ≠ fUN

ability to identify the individual sounds and the “units” of spoken language (words, sentences) out of a stream of sounds

form-meaning relation is one of similarity (e.g. animals might cross-sign), similarity between image and meaning

form-meaning relation is arbitrary (e.g. give-way-sign), no similarity 

form-meaning relation is one of cause-effect; symptom (seeing smoke, assuming fire)

 Sound-Image

Concept

Linguistic signs are symbols; an abstract sound combination gets a certain meaning

Time/temporal aspect

- Studies language at a certain point of time

- Abstraction, because language is always in transition (one can’t analyse the exact present)

- Analysing how words can be replaced within a sentence

- Axis of selection or substitution (vertical)

-abstracting, what’s valid for a lot situations, to generalize, say more about general concept 

Are we interested in what people say and produce, or rather in the system of language? Is the focus on the abstract system or on the actual use?

objective, systematic study of the properties of meaning

The study of meaning of words, phrases and sentences

Focus on what words conventionally mean rather than individual belief what words mean

conceptual

associative

People use language to organise – make sense of – the world around them.

This structuring process is culture dependent

words – things

words – concepts – things

o sense vs . reference 

o denotation vs. connotation 

o intension vs. extension

Sense: conditions that a thing needs to meet in order for the application of a particular word to be appropriate

sense is close to mental concept

Referent: object in the world picked out by a particular word or phrase

Reference: the relationship of an expression (stored in the mind of a speaker/linguistic sign) and the referent

Multiple senses can have the same referent: my co-worker, my firend

Denotation: essential features

primary meaning, dictionary meaning

▪ refers to the stable relationship between a linguistic expression and the concrete language external entities to which it refers

Connotation: associated features

▪ all associations/ideas/emotions that come to mind in relation to a linguistic expression

1. Semantic Feature Analysis (Aristotle) vs. 

2. Family resemblance (Wittgenstein) vs. 

3. Prototype Theory/ Fuzziness of Meaning (Rosch)

One wished to identify elemental/atomic features and with them describe words. 

man: + human+ male + adult  

woman: + human - male + adult  

Put forth by psychologist Rosch

- categories are not defined by features, but are organized around a prototype

 - a prototype is a “best example” of a category 

- members graded according to their typicality

- central members share many features with the prototype. 

same spelling & pronunciation, unrelated meaning

One form with two or more unrelated meanings

e.g. bat – animal, bat – piece of wood for hitting a ball

same spelling & pronunciation, related meaning

One form with two or more related meanings

 "The rock hit him on the head." – "She hit the nail on the head."

Multiple words that have the same meaning.

Paradigmatic relation:

“vertical” relationship of linguistic forms which can replace each other in a structure

syntagmatic relation:

“horizontal” relationship holding between linguistic forms which co-occur in the same structure

less aggressive expression that wont offend

die-pass away, lie-disinformation, illegal alien- undocumented immigrant

Gradable

Non-gradable

Reversives

Converses

• points on a scale which contains a midpoint -
• are open to comparison (hotter, colder)

- there is an “in-between”

- e.g. Your dog is bigger than mine. My dog is not big ≠ My dog is small.

- complete opposites

- no middle ground

- if one is true, the other is false

- e.g. It is not alive = It is dead.

- change of state

come - go, dress-undress

- reversed action

- e.g. exit ≠ enter, exit = reverse of enter

• words with opposite meanings
• one term implies the other
• same action described from different perspectives

- e.g. John is Mary’s husband = Mary is John’s wife.

Inclusion of meaning: An X is a kind of Y

a flower is a kind of plant

Often more than two levels

hyperonym (superordinate)

e.g. flower hyponym: e.g. rose, daisy, poppy (co-hyponyms)

hyponyms

contain all features of the superordinate term plus extra features, e.g. child 

(hyperonym) + female = girl (hyponym)

co-occurrence of lexical items

in text, which words go with other words, they form an important organizing principle in the vocabulary of any language

-> the idiom principle (Sinclair 1987) (vs. open-choice principle) 

hypothesized you are aware as a native speaker which words go together

can become formulaic phrases “chunks”:

- patterns learned and used as wholes

- meaning is more than the sum of the component parts

- e.g. I’m sick and tired. He kicked the bucket. (He died)

• collocations don’t need to be directly next to each other
• hold between words that are not necessarily immediately next to each other
• bridge word classes and syntactic structures
• e.g. argument – strong: a strong argument, his argument was strengthened, the strength of his argument, he argued strongly for

Expression whose

meaning cannot be derived from the meaning of its component parts

e.g. to kick the bucket

= hit the pail with one’s foot (literal)

= to die (idiomatic)

- Uncle Tony finally kicked the bucket.

- *The bucket was finally kicked by uncle Tony. -> cannot make passive

- *Uncle Tony’s kicking of the bucket was really sad. -> cannot turn into NP

- new use of a word based on a close connection between two concepts in everyday experience

- can be invented easily (e.g. He beckhamed the ball into the goal.)

- content-container: He ate the whole bag

- function-symbol: The White House announced...

- whole-part: The group counted 63 heads...

A(n) (abstract) concept is framed in terms of something more feasible and graspable

- Conceptual metaphors: e.g. I’m crazy about you. They gravitated to each other

-Non conceptual metaphors: foot of the mountain, head of department

-> result: Polysemy

• Agent
• Experiencer
• Theme
• Instrument
• Source
• Goal
• Location

1. number of arguments (obligatory participants)

2. semantic roles of the arguments

• three place verbs/predicates:

give, donate, hand, put

e.g. I put the key on the table. – Agent, Theme, Goal

•wo place verbs/predicates

steal, carry, open, see

e.g. I see the world. – Experiencer, Theme

• one place verbs/predicates

laugh, sleep, sit, fall

e.g. I laughed. – Experiencer

• zero place verbs/predicates

rain, snow, hail 

e.g. It snows. – it ≠ Agent/Experiencer

I see you to the door

Policimy, need different roles

Semantic roles as abstract functions: proto-roles

Proto-agent:

• volitional (control)

• causing a state of change in another participant

• experience (perception) etc.

• e.g. John built this house. (prototypical)

John resembles his father. (non-prototypical)

Proto-patient:

• undergoes change of state

• causally affected by other participants

• direction/endpoint etc.

• e.g. John built this house. (prototypical)

John resembles his father. (non-prototypical)

• large but finite

• (core) meanings can be listed Sentences:

• infinite number

• meanings cannot be listed

• what is coded in language

• e.g. We’re closing. – just the information

• speaker meaning/intention

• what is implied/intended

• e.g. We’re closing. – it might be implied that one should leave

• Paraphrase (≈ synonymy)

• Contradiction (≈ antonymy)

• Entailment (≈ hyponymy)

• Presupposition

Semantically the same -> same truth value

• Mary sold a car to Tom Tom bought a car from Mary.

-> if one is true, the other one is also true

- is not 100% the same, is a close fit


= synonymy

If A is true, B must be false (opposite truth values) or the other way around.

• Chris is Jane’s brother. Jane is an only child.

(≈ antonymy)

If A is true, B must also be true, but not vice versa

• Mr. Sellers killed his wife. Mrs. Sellers is dead.

= hyponymy

If A is true, then B is implied to be true. (If A is negated, B isn’t necessarily.)

I regret leaving London

->  I left London.

• Entailment can only occur in declarative sentences, statements 

- Did Mr. Seller kill his wife? (ent. disappears)

• Presupposition can be found in different kinds of sentences

- Do you regret leaving London? (pre. remains)

• Presupposition remains under negation

- I do not regret leaving London (pre. remains)

• Presupposition can be cancelled

- She died before she finished the thesis. (pre. cancelled)

• often tagged (word class) and/or parsed (phrase)

• often specialized (variety, period, style, …)

• often includes different types of texts (mode, genre)

• often includes background info on speaker • representative samples

a large, balanced collection of natural texts

• linguistic description based on the extensive accumulation of actually occurring language data and its analysis by computer

• empirical discipline, using statistical methods

• How often do different meanings of the same word occur? (Polysemy, Homonymy)

• How do the contexts & meaning in which certain words are used change? (Denotation)

• With which items does a word tend to co-occur? (Collocation, Colligation)

• What are a word’s associations that are apparent from the co-text? (Connotation)

Most corpora are tagged

• word classes: noun, verb, adjectives, preposition etc.

• noun: proper name, pronouns, count/mass nouns

Occasionally corpora are parsed

• syntactic categories: NP, clause, active/passive etc.

study of linguistic features that are of social relevance to participants in those speech communities 

We use language to come to terms with the world around us (3rd person reality)

-> classifying, organizing, referring, influencing

We use language to interact with others (2nd person reality)

-> establishing social relations, cooperating, belonging to a group

- Schneider:

A set of language habits

that is shared by a certain group of speakers for use in certain contexts

-Crystal: A term used in sociolinguistics and stylistics to refer to any

system of linguistic expression

whose use is governed by situational variables

Prescriptive

• Language use as conditioned by rules and norms
• → Results in a correct and incorrect way of speaking
• Standard variety is the representation of language use as prescribed
• Deviating varieties are labeled wrong – further associated with other negative qualities (lesser, uneducated, banal, …)
• Codified in grammars

Descriptive 

• Nonjudgmental view of any and all varieties, which tries to understand why language is used the way it is
• Prioritizes the notion that all varieties are functional and self-regulating systems of communication
• New ways of speaking, which do not correlate to the prescriptivist idea of language, are seen as mirroring societal change (to varying degree)
• Primary approach within linguistics as such

William Labov: Performance

• Language in use

• False starts

• At times ungrammatical

• Tip of the tongue

opposed to 

Noam Chomsky: Us linguist 

• Idealized conception of lang

• Intuitively known rules

• Judging grammaticality

• Innateness of lang. acq.

refers to the phonological and prosodic (= pronunciation) aspects of a linguistic variety

two separate languages: not mutually intelligible

two separate dialects: mutually intelligible (by speakers of the same language)

Generally implies cultural & historical relevance, connection to a spatially definable region, mutual intelligibility →Linguistic factors → Socio-political factors

• differ from each other in
• own grammar, lexicon and pronunciation
• often regionally separated
• mutually intelligible by speakers of another variation of the same language

socio - political aspects

- selection

-implementation

- acceptance

linguistic aspects

-codification

-elaboration

-> language norms

→ “… an idealized variety […] associated with administrative, commerical and educational centres, regardless of region“ (Yule 2017: 269).

→ “… a socially favored variety of a language” (Fasold & Connor-Linton 2006)

= a social situation that includes the use of speech/language

• Age, Gender, Ethnicity, Profession, Region, Urban/Rural, Community Activity 

regiolect/regional dialect

ethnolect

sociolect 

jargon

style

slang

idolect

• Jamestown, 1607 – foothold of the British Empire in the ‘New World’ (ideologically loaded term)

• Plymouth Colony, 1620 – Mayflower transported Pilgrims + Puritan values

• Second half of the 18th century: Australia & New Zealand

• ~1820s South Africa

English → Asia and Africa (18th/19th century):

• Colonialism & Imperialism in Africa and Asia (18th and 19th Century) • Ghana, Nigeria, Cameroon, Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Zambia, Zimbabwe • India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bhutan, Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Philippines

Global English?

economic and social importance of English (Americanization, glottophage) • globalization

- e.g. Japan, China, Russia, Brazil, the Netherlands, Austria etc.

an official (i.e. institutionalized) second language alongside other official languages in fields such as government, law, education

e.g. Bangladesh, Hong-Kong, India, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, South Africa, Zimbabwe

Tree diagram with branches – e.g. the British English branch on the top, African branch, Australian branch, ...

Inner circle:

linguistic, historical, social & economical factors

• English as a native language (ENL)

Outer circle: ~second dispersal;

• English as a second language (ESL)

Expanding circle: ~’third dispersal’

• English as a foreign language (EFL)

• English as a lingua franca (ELF)

Limitations • Inner circle as nuclear core • positions the circles along a hierarchy • determinative & reductionist (proficiency)

English as an international language (EIL) Many permutations of English through the various dispersals Synchronic (not relying on history) Limitation • “Who decides what is included in the common core?” • Non-transparent

• Model based on proficiency
• by Graddol
•  “Inner Circle” with highly proficient users
• gradual “Outer Circle” with decreasing proficiency, low proficiency on the outer edge

Difficulty: definition of high/low proficiency

Notion of ‘functional nativeness’

Jettisons any reference of a speaker’s origin, birthplace, etc.

• No locational or spatial element

Entire focus placed on a speaker’s proficiency

• Native-like proficiency even though not a native speaker

Limitations • Who measures every English-speaker’s proficiency • What are the parameters of proficiency? • How can those parameters be measured?

variation between groups of speakers (“dialects”)

traditional focus:

•  regional dialects (lexis, grammar, phonology)
•  norms (e.g. studying only the language of older white males)
•  identify “isoglosses” (concerning only particular language features at a time) and dialect boundaries (overlapping isoglosses)

Urban Dialectology:

Interested in social & regional variation

Representative respondents & elicitation

Isoglosses and dialect boundaries

How people (want to) position themselves and are positioned socially

Bottom-up perspective

• Individual X uses language in Y way because of its function Z

•  variations between groups of speakers: dialects and sociolects
•  variation within one speaker (“styles”): “style-shifting”

Investigate language use according to range of factors (e.g. socio-cultural, age, gender; speaking styles), focussing on specific linguistic features or (socio)linguistic variables

“a general expression for a kind of social dialect typically spoken by a lower-status group, which is treated as “non-standard” because of marked difference from the “standard” language” – Yule

e.g. African American Vernacular English (AAVE)

More generally:

vernacular = the kind of speech a person produces (with an in-group) when she/he is not paying attention to speech (ordinary speech, informal, relaxed) – casual style

Vernacular

• Labov: “most informal speech”

• Speech style which is used when someone pays the least amount of attention to one’s speech

• Often, the vernacular is what is trying to be elicited by ethnographers & sociolinguistics

• ALSO: social dialect with low prestige & low status; marked difference from standard

Prestige • overt: related to varieties that are socially favored – the standard; e.g. the ‘Queen’s English’

• covert: related to non-standard, hierarchically lower varieties

• Pride in the group which one (tries to) belong(s) to

•Prestige which is signaled in the in-group, and/or to stand in opposition to the standard

•  reflects the second dispersal of English
•  English as a second language in bi- or multilingual countries

• Bilingualism: “The ability to speak two languages”
• → Bilingual language competence
• → Bilingual language processing
• → Bilingual language acquisition
• Encyclopedia Brittanica named languages

Diglossia:

“A situation in which there are two distinct codes with clear functional separation; that is one code is employed in one set of circumstances and the other in an entirely differentset” Wardhaugh & Fuller 2015: 90

varieties in general

•  a simplified form of speech without any L1 speakers
•  developed between speakers of different L1s for restricted communicational purposes (e.g. trade)
•  rudimentary grammar and vocabulary (e.g. no tenses)

 are usually contact languages between speakers of “dominant”

European languages and speakers of indigenous African or American languages

“...In contrast to a pidgin, a creole is often defined as a pidgin that has become the first language of a new generation of speakers.”

- a language variety

developed from a pidgin

- used as

first language

- fully developed

grammar and vocabulary

- Language as symbolic capital in a social marketplace

A socially favored variety of language

How common stereotypes and ideologies about varieties are constructed/reconfirmed

- What is seen as proper language and is linked to the upper class is also mirrored in the opinions of the people living in the different classes

A psychological tendency that is expresses by evaluating a particular entity with some degree of favor or disfavor

- Disposition to react favorably or unfavorably to a class of objects

Inner circle

• Urban dialectology / variationist sociolinguistics

• Social & regional variation

• Attitudes towards Englishes

Outer circle

• Historical context

• High lects & low lects

• Attitudes towards English and other varieties

English as a foreign language

• Relevance due to its status as a Lingua Franca

• Americanization

• Eliminates the necessity to learn other languages

English in education and as a subject

• Code(s) used during education

• ‘English weeks’ in school

• Obligatory constituent of curriculum – ‘erste Fremdsprache’

• Multilingual schools

"The primary mechanism for organizing, managing and manipulating language behaviors as it consists of decisions made about language and their uses in society"

Manipulate: what society expects, when, where how tries to describe and advise politicians, what you can do

- corpus planning: church was only using Hebrew and Latin, then that was pushed and replaced by English

- status planning: school, are bilingual signs okay?

- acquisition planning

English as a reliable communicative medium in linguistic interactions with participants with different first languages

→ Attributes high overt prestige to English, as its status as Lingua Franca invests power

→ Pierre Bourdieu: varieties as “symbolic capital” in a “social marketplace”

→ Similar to the demand and supply correlation

→ Snowball effect

→ Effective way to deconstruct language barriers

→ vs. creation of Pidgin for example

→ Highly productive field in linguistics

- history: spread of English

- international politics

- Econmy and globalization

Economic power of the "west"

International trade and business (mobility, outsourcing)

- information exchange:

Communication technologies (internet, emails, Skype)

International conference, academic publishing

- international mobility

Travel and tourism

Migration

- entertainment and popular culture: films, Tv, music, social media, etc

-> children learn English before they are official introduced to it in school through the internet or activities in English

- rise of number of speakers of English in the last decade is due to an increase in English learning learning

- "English users from, e.g., Europe, China and Brazil use English more frequently as a contact language among themselves rather than with native speakers"

"Any use of English among speakers of different first languages for whom English is the communication medium of choice, and often the only option"

Convergence

Symmetrical style Is the most prevalent type of overall style Accommodation: signals acceptance and enables the interlocutor – to some extent belonging or at least attuning to the partner Enables more efficient transfer of information → Frames both parties as willing to communicate

Divergence

Asymmetrical style More niche than convergent styles Is used functionally in order to distance or overtly deny allegiance towards interlocutor Causes limited information transfer, which on its own could be the reason for a divergent speech style

Convergence and divergence can be symmetrical (mutual) or asymmetrical (e.g. speaker accommodates but speakers B diverges)

• reflexitivity
• displacement
• arbitrariness
• cultural transmission
• productivity
• duality
• discretness

- What other signs can be connected to a sign in order to form a sentence

- Axis of combination (horizontal) , connect them to each other

the - man - cried

- how you put simple sentences together

- Studies language over time

, i.e. the changes that can be observed in the course of the history of a language

- dealing with language in a scholar setting usually diachronic 

Onomatopoeia – iconic to a certain extent, e.g. animal sounds as words (woof, meow)

language system, mainly shared by speakers

• people can draw of it
• research in scientific way

spoken language, partly individual

• act of actually speaking

Conceptual Meaning

(denotational) meaning (e.g. human, female, adult)

Associative Meaning

(connotational) meaning

e.g. human, female, adult

dictionary descriptions

dress, long hair, emotional, dominant), culturally determined, includes stylistic/genre differences (abode – home – place)

subjective interpretations

words are only names for things; one might only use nouns if words were related directly to things (verbs etc. would be an abstraction, many nouns as well)

meaning is the relation between a linguistic expression and the entity for which it can be used; triangular relationship between symbol (string of sounds), referent and thought –

semantic triangle.

peepee and cacka

Denotation

Connotation

Sense: How we present these referents

The widely accepted objective or factual meaning of words and not on their subjective or personal meaning

Feelings or reactions to words that may be found among some individuals or group but not others

Denotative meaning

Meaning that is conveyed by the literal use of a word

Dictionairy use

needle - thin, sharp, steel instrument

Atoms of meaning: Semantic Features

Fuzzy concepts: Prototype Theory

• conveinient, useful to represent similiarities
• does not grasp whole word meaning, gradience is disregarded

• Homonymy
• Polysemy
• Synonymy

same spelling but different pronunciation

1 spelling- two or more different pronunciations

potato-potato

different spelling but same pronunciation

1 pronunciation - two or more spellings

flower - flour

• Synonymy
• Antonymy
• Hyponymy

• near synonym
• Emotional
• Regional
• Stylistic

co-occurrence of words and a grammatical feature e.g. hope + for, want + to

The phenomenon in which an utterance yields more than one possible interpretation

• Lexixal
• Referential
• Structural

due to a lexical item

due to an unclear referent of a pronoun

due to unclear sentence structure

In contrast to words, there a infinite number of sentences

sentence meaning emerges out of the combination of words

What is stated in a sentence

I this proposition true or false=?

Can a truth value be discerned

Acquisition

• unconscious
• intuitive
• "picking it up"
• informal
• procedural knowledge -> procedure is followed, steps are followed

Learning

• conscious
• deliberate
• attention to form
• formal
• declarative knowledge -> you are told what is the best way

the species

• evolutionary development and history of a species
• How dies the human species acquire language

the individual

• specific living organism
• how does a particular individual acquire language?

• prelinguistic stage
• single-word stage
• two-word stage
• simple sentences

Input:

• Pre-natal 25th week onward
• Receptive ability in new- borns

Output:

• Cooing 0-4 months
• Babbling 5th month+

Perception of mother's voice -> prosody and rhythm

• caregiver speech

• high pitch
• exaggerated intonation
• clear and slow
• overall grammatical

first intonation patterns

vows, changing position of the tounge

high vowels - i & u

by 4 months: k and g

Vows and consonants

• 8 months: child is sitting up dadada
• 11 months: express emotion and emphasis - magadaba
• children start pointing and babbling: caregiver gives feedback

= Holophrastic speech, single unit utterances

• around 12 months
• at that point 80-100 words passive
• Lexical acquisition

• Words for things of immediate importance

• e.g. people, food, body parts, toys, clothes, …

• slow growth rate until 2 y/o (50-500 words)

• rapid growth rate until age 6 (~15,000 words)

The pragmatic meaning

Food => give me food

First combinations

Telegraphic speech

-> content: words

No morphology or overt grammar

-> declaratives, imperatives, affirmatives

-> No questions or negations

• agent + object (“Mommy ball”)

• agent + action (“Mommy come”)

• entity + attribute (“Apple good”)

• entity + location (“Apple floor”)

-> Telegraphic speech

inflectional morphemes

1. present progressive –ing
2. in
3. on
4. plural –s
5. irregular past (broke, went, brought)
6. possessive ´s
7. copula is - verb to be
8. articles
9. regular past (-ed)
10. 3rd person singular simple present –s (she runs) 9. auxiliary be (he is coming)

-> 4 years

• Past tense first learned lexically • Irregular past tense words are frequently used => Overgeneralisation bringed, goed, …

• learn rule so everything is with ed

• Prelinguistic Stage 9 months – 1 y/o
• Single-word stage 9-18 months
• Two-word stage 18-24 months
• Simple sentences 24 months

Preschool

• Intensive interaction with language

• First meta-linguistic awareness

School

• Acquisition AND Learning

• Literacy – reading and writing lead to huge vocabulary growth

• Encounters with different language varieties (register)

• Puberty – social / identify-forming role of language

Nature: inborn structure

• predisposition to our behaviour
• Nativism (Plato, Kant)

Nurture: mind = blank

• behaviour is result of experience
• Empiricism (Locke)

1. Behaviourism - Skinner
2. Innativism/ Generativism - Chomsky - Language acquisition device
3. Interactionism & development perspectives - Tomasello, Vygostky

• leraning is a skill through imitation and reinforcement
• Nurture: environment provides linguisitc stimuli and (negative) feedback

Inativism/Generativism

• innate language faculty, UG,

-> principles and parameters

• nature instead of nurture

• language acquisition “happens” to a child, effortless, natural, informal, intuitive

• you can come up with sentences that has never been said before
• holistic input makes you create is much output

• children “discover” their language

• Tomasello/Vygostky
• nature + nurture
• child uses general cognitive abilities to learn correct language use
• environment and social interaction are crucial → nature and nurture
• variable and gradual acquisition
• child is active agent in acquisition

• Different parental first languages
• Home language vs. environment language
• Simultaneous vs. sequential bilingualism

• code switching
• Language mixing (mixing words, transfer errors)

1) separate system hypothesis

-> seperate representation

2) unitary system hypothesis

-> one lexicon, one grammar for both languages

• listing of each occurence of a word/phrase in a corpus along with the words surrounding it

(sarcastic: rude, condescending)

• biologically determined
• identifiable what children pay attention to according to "sucking behaviour"
• at one month infant can distinhuish between ba und pa

a single form functioning as a phrase or sentence

mulitiple word speech

• produces words but not inflectional morphology
• only give cake, not give me the cake please

overextended meaning

• tick tock used for watch then scale
• followed by a gradual process of narrowing down the application of each term as more words are learned
• child will only use the middle level term in hyponymous set animal-dog-terrier
• may say apple to all round objects but can pick out apple of group of round objects

Around 2 amd 2 1/2 years

order of the words is correct

-ing form and prepositions in on appear

First stage

• add a wh-form Where kitty?
• or utter expression with rise in intonation Sit chair?

Second stage

• more wh form also what and why?

Third stage

• Inversion

First stage

• no or not in beginning

second stage

• don't can't
• no or not used in front of verb

Third stage

• didn't and won't
• stage 1 forms disappear
• isn't

• antonyms
• distinction between buy/sell before/after
• coordinate constructions ellipting info that has been said
• some sounds later acquired

• communication of information, negotiation of meaning
• aiding cognition
• establishing groups and the social status of individuals
• expressing and negotiating social relations between individuals

Vervet monkeys: 3 different alarms

Chimpanzees: 3 varients of hoo: altert, travel, rest

syntax but no words

they dance to indicate the location of food sources

• early humans became dependent on each other
• if co-species are to be nice to you - they need to regard you as kin
• -> imitate each others vocalisation behaviour

1. learn to sound like adults
2. arms race for better imitation: parroting; produce new structures -> emergence of phonotactics, syntax; producing same structures -> emergence of meaning
3. Arbitrary, group specific vocalisation -> allow creativity and begin to carry meaning

• feature
• social, community building function primary
• communication of meaning

• first consonants that are experienced
• visible clues p, b , m, w
• pop in pronunciation of stop consonants - p, b, t, d, k, g
• sensory experience in moms arms - m, n
• fractives: f,s,h
• glide: j

-> output between 1-2

starts around 2-3

other fractives: v,z,

age 4: post alveolars sch, and ch, and j(eep)

the liquids L,r

velar nasal n ?

after 4-5: dentals th(in), th(en)

much later: rouge and treasure (s, g sound)

an indicator that non-human primates don’t have the physically structured vocal tract which would be need to articulate human language/produce human speech sounds. 

Beatrix & Allen Gardner American Sign Language

-> entails all the essential properties of human language.

• Within 3 years Washoe used more than 100 words,
• was able to combine these words to simple ”sentences“.
• came up with her own word creations -> potential for productivity

Washoe understood more signs than she herself produced and was able to hold rudimentary conversations 

Language through plastic shapes

Lana learned Yerkish on a keyboard

Kanzi, son of Matata (a female bonobo) learned Yerkish by exposure while his mother was trained the language. Kanzi eventually learned a vocabulary of 250 symbols and was able to understand spoken English on the level of a 2-and-a-half-year-old human child. He also used a distinct set of ”gentle noises” as words to refer to bananas, grapes and juice. 

• vocal-auditory

• channel use

• specialization

• non-directionality • rapid fade

• reciprocity

• prevarication 

language serves as a communication system in different sitautons

Lexical Relations

• Synonymy
• Antony,y
• Hyponymy
• Protiypes
• Homophones and Homnynyms
• Polysemy
• Metonymy

Study of the structure of meaning

Language is used to commincate meaning

Linguistic unit we associate meaning with is the word

Analogy between dictionary entry and in the way language organises meaning

e.g. “box” consists of a combination of four sounds; combination is arbitrary; taking three of those sounds and combine them in a different order we get completely different words with different meanings

= Arbitrariness

Languages differ in the way they combine sequences of sounds to refer to a given object; mapping of sound sequences onto meaning is language specific

In a different order words are arbitrary symbols 

The linguistic repertoire of individuals and groups → linguistic variables

Field-specific language

African American Vernacular English (AAVE)

Caretaker speech

Using multiple languages (code-switching)

Formal vs. informal language

Standard vs. non-standard language

The social context of texts, utterances, discourses, etc. → social variables

Age

Gender

Group membership

Occupation

World-views, values & ideologies

Social status

→ variation between groups of speakers

→ variation according to cultural & historical context

→ variation within one speaker (style-shifting)

→ the sociolinguistic factors underlying variation

→ urban dialectology

→ region → socio-economic background → certain attitudes → sexuality → age → gender → etc

Does the pronunciation of the postvocalic /r/ differ according to socio-economic status and place of occupation of the speaker?

→ Linguistic variable: production of /r/

→Social variable: Socio-economic status, place of occupation

→Social marker: [fɔ:rθ flɔ:r

Findings

→ Linguistic variable: production of /aʊ/ and /aɪ/

→Social variable: Speaker attitudes towards the island

→Social marker: [ʌʊ] and [ʌɪ] 

Socio-political / linguistic

• Selection

• Elaboration

• Codification

• Implementation

• Acceptance

• The standard serves as a monolithic concept → Is clearly defined, and can be used as a comparative ‘tool’

• Due to ubiquity a highly effective tool for communication

• Golden standard for education

• Reinforces social hierarchies → overt prestige

• Setting

→ temporal, spatial or other relevant physical aspects; cultural

significance of interaction

• Participants

→ Age, sex, social status, relationship, etc.; hierarchical organization

• Ends

→ Purpose(s) of an interaction

• Act Sequence

→ Is there a determined order/sequence regarding the speech acts?

• Key → Tone and mood of the interaction (cf. musical key) •
• Instrumentalities → What linguistic resources are available • Norms → conventionalized ‘script’ of the interaction •
• Genre → Type of event

Accent

High & low lect

• steven's family tree model
• Kachru’s circle model
• Modiano's common Core / Features
• Graddol's Proficiency Model

individual linguistic variables

• how do you pronounce… • what do you call… • one dimension – a line

– multiple variables • result of multiple isoglosses • named dialects • two-dimensional – delimits an area

– multiple variables • result of multiple isoglosses • named dialects • two-dimensional – delimits an area

Do speakers of socially lower classes use non-standard variables more frequent than speakers of socially higher classes?

→ Linguistic variable: production of /ɪŋ/, and subjectverb agreement (third person –s)

→Social variable: social class

→Social marker: [ɪn] and no suffixation of third person -s

Stratification by social class: • Lower working class • Middle working class • Upper working class • Lower middle class • Middle middle class

Does a speaker‘s way of using language change when they feel scrutinized? → Acquisition of data in both informal and formal contexts

Trudgill’s conclusion: ”One reason for this is that working-class speech has favourable connotationsfor male speakers.“

Jamaican diaspora

• English and West African varieties

• Lexis partially intelligible for English speakers

• Low overt prestige, covert prestige

Miss Lou (Louise Bennett-Coverly)

• Native speaker of Jamaican Patois

• Poet, writer, folklorist, …

• “Dutty Tough“

being capable of speaking two dialects

Style shifitng

(often) within a language Multi-Functional • to position oneself a certain way • to close/increase the distance • to elicit a certain reaction Bidialectal Still part of one’s idiolect

Code switching

(often) between languages Smaller range of functions • most often to increase the rate of information transfer • to exclude others • to attain prestige Most often in language contact situations

Context of bilingualism important

• Shapes the sociolinguistic domain

• Peoples’ perspective towards certain varieties (attitudes)

• In the case of English: often result of colonial influence/oppression

• Emergence of Pidgins (& Creoles)

• Language policy

Versus individual bilingualism

• In the case of outer circle English – social consciousness

• language varies in a systematic way according to the sitaution
• situation dependent variant
• determined by: level of formality, medium, relationship

“additional meanings conveyed by speaker (under the assumption of the CP),

while flouting one or more of the Maxims”

• Using flouting to imply something

• Related to context

• NOT the same as implication

Universal Grammar

Sociolinguistics, Department store study

Speech Acts (Constatives/Performatives)

Constatives - Convey information

Performatives - Change the status of something

Felicity Conditions - Need to be fulfilled to do a performative Arresting someone => be a cop

• Speech Acts

- five categories

• Representative

- State what you believe to be true

• Directive

- Tell someone to do something

• Commissive

- Commit yourself to a future action

• Expressive

-Show emotions

• Declarative

-Change status of something

Interactionism

4 maxims

speaker constructs the linguistic message and intends or implies a meaning,

and the hearer interprets the message and infers the meaning

Locutionary act

• The act of saying something – utterance

Illocutionary force

• The utterance exerts a certain force → e.g. ordering, imploring, warning, …

Perlocutionary effect

• Due to the exerted force, a resulting effect is achieved

1) multiple chained utterances and texts – language in use; can vary in dimension

• to discourse

• Let’s establish a discourse

2) all instances of language in use pertaining to a specific topic, often named Discourses

• Immigration Discourse • Tobacco Discourse • Gun-safety Discourse •

Static knowledge structure

Dynamic knowledge structure Involves event sequences

always entails the same ‘steps’ Causes limited information transfer, which on its own could be the reason for a divergent speech style

e.g.: ordering food, paying at the grocery store,

→ a form of knowledge

→ relevant for the situation

→ necessary in order to match the linguistic content to the implied meaning

→ what facilitates inference

Linguistic Context → e.g. deixis, co-text, collocation

• intertextual referring expressions

• semantic network (i.e. choice of words)

Situational Context → Environment, time and place of an interaction, relationship of participants

• style-shifting & code-switching

• use of different linguistic variables

Cultural Context → Language in use situated within a social/cultural frame of reference

• humor

• rules of conversation (e.g. simultaneous talk vs. sequential talk)

• Constatives - describe a status

-> either true or false

• Performatives - bring about a change of status -> real world change, legal matters have felicity conditions

-> felicitous (successful) or infelicitous (unsuccessful)

performatives can be (in)felicitous

• are the necessary requirements given in order for a performative
• -> legal punishment only if you are a judge

Constatives can be transformed into performatives

The weather is nice - I determine that the weather is nice today

• Representatives → The speaker utters a statement they consider to be true

• Directives → The speaker orders the listener to do something

• Commissives → The speaker commits themselves to a future action

• Expressives → The speaker expresses their emotions/feelings

• Declaratives → Through the utterance, the speaker changes the status of something

Direct: locutionary act macthes illocutionary force

Indirect: illocutionary force has to be inferred from the context

• a principle of interaction
• ubiquitous in spoken interaction
• fundamental part of how communication is ‘done’
• Less about rules, more about norms
• aims to show that politeness is a universal, rational, strategic, structured process

Positive Face: person's desire to be socially accepted and valued

• social, praise, group membership, validty

Negative Face: person's desire to remain unencumbered by others

• the individual, Personal space, privacy, freedom of action

• P1: who decides how many semantic roles are there
• P2: what if certain argument can have more than one

Solution 1: applying Mode of action

Solution 2: applying

action, process, position, state

Have different Modes of Action, which you then apply parameters on

dynamic

control

telic

experience

referential - pronoun

lexical - word means more than one thing -> I went to the bank

structural - "the priest married my sister" The priest can marry in 2 ways -> is a bigger chunk is structural

(metonymy - metaphor)

Metonymy: whole- part (The curly (hair) ordered there) , container contained (can you pass me the milk), symbol - function (the white house announced: association)

Metaphor: similar - find connections

Implicature: what Grice says, off record, in a way for speaker to say it without having to say it, Idioms, jokes, etc. -> flouting the maxims

Implication/Inference:

Speaker implies meaning listener infers

LAD (Language Acquisition Device - innate structure/part in brain

(universal grammar)

-> principles and parameters: depending on input you get within LAD a switch is turned in brain, come up with rule system

4 decisions to make

1) do or not to FTA? If you ask at all

2) Was it on record (clear speech, no ambiguity, maxim flouting)/ off record (ambiguity, don't use actual words, -> ends here, other person should know)

3) With or without redressive action,

With: being polite, hedging, modal verbs could, should

Without: give me, do this

4) appeal to positive or negative face

When speaker S imposes upon a Hearer's H face

• can be done redressively
• the bigger the perceived threat to one's face, the more redressive the action

• desire to communicate FTA
• desire to be as efficent as possible
• desire to maintain hearer's face maximally

The Social

Boosting ego, telling someone how amazing they are, asking them for help

The individual

People pleaser asking someone

Appealing to a person's positive/negative face, in order to minimize threat of FTA

Basic assumption: participants of interaction are fundamentally cooperative

-> distinction between social and interactional cooperation

Principle formed as an answer to guiding questions

• What is a successful conversation? What do we expect from a convo?

Entail 4 maxims

• quantity: as informative as needed
• quality: don't lie, exaggeration
• relation: relevant to what's talked about
• manner: avoid ambiguity

breaking - covert, yet intended - the other is not aware

• lying, stalling, humor

flouting - overt - the other is suspected of realizing this

• irony, emphasis, tautology
• hidden meaning - conversational implicature

sender - message (noise) - reciever

• too simple
• disregards context
• meaning just semantic
• meaning making is one sided

floor is like a commodity, the time of an action is like a resource, turn talking is like a negotiation

• simultaneous talk
• false starts
• hesitations
• pauses

• speaker intuition
• questions
• pauses
• intonation

• pauses
• simultaneous talk
• false starts
• repetitions
• Hesitations markers/ filled pauses
• Adjacency pairs - Greeting - Greeting, Question - answer
• Backchanneling the listener signals that they are paying attention (mhm, yeah, yes, …)

Analyses different interactional roles assumed by participants

speaker domain

listener domain

Animator - producer of utterance

Author - producer of message (reading a message)

Principal - responsible for message (source of idea)

3 levles

1. Reception
2. Ratified (intended) or not ratified (not intended)
3. Ratified: addressed - unaddressed
4. no ratified: perceptible - non perceptible

Discourse: goes with pragmatics -> bigger body of interactions, language beyond the sentence, domain of communication & consequently joint meaning making

Text: A term used in linguistics to refer to any passage – spoken or written, of whatever length, that does form a unified whole. A text is a unit of language in use.

wants to deal with meaning beyond sentence/preposition/ utterance boundary

• overlaps with pragmatics - but meaning is hidden in surrounding discourse of any given interaction
• local and global discursive structures
• both interested in joint meaning making in context

Divergence:

• DA places its main focus on networks of sentences/utterances/propositions
• Context in DA external to speaker, static in nature
• Context in pragmatics is individually constructed in interaction

reference: act of using language to refer to entities in Context

Referent: real world entity

Referring expression: Lexical item

Linguistic expressions which refer directly to the personal, temporal, or spatial aspect of a situation - points to smth outside the text

Spatial/Temporal/Personal

Phorics: anaphoric/ cataphoric

Lexical items that get their meaning from other lexical items in the surrounding co-text

Cohesion: text level - Phoric and Deixis

• explicit
• formal ties within a text - cohesive devices

Coherence: content level

• implicit
• the connections that readers and listeners create in their minds to arrive at a meaningful interpretation of texts

a mental construct of reality as culturally ordered and socially sanctioned

people's expectations about people, objects, events, settings, and ways to interact in the world

It includes connotational meaning.

It sets members of a category in relation to the category's best example.

Adopting a speech style that emphasizes social distance by using forms that are different from those used by the person being talked to

A stable situation where different varieties of a language are used in different situations

• everybody has an accent - idiolect
• Accent is restricted to the description of aspects of pronunciation that identify where (socially, regionally) a speaker is from

• Dialect: refers to features of grammar and vocabulary, as well as aspects of pronunciation - grammatical constructions less easily recognized

-> looked at 3 different department stores

• Saks Fifth Avenue (expensive, upper-middle-class) • Macy’s 8medium priced, middle-class) • Klein’s (cheaper items, working-class)

1. He went into each of these stores and asked salespeople specific questions (e.g. “Where are the women’s shoes?”). In order to elicit answers with the expression fourth floor to study the postvocalic /r/
2. The higher the socio-economic status of the store, the more /r/ sounds were produced, and the lower the status the fewer /r/ sounds were produced by those who worked there
3. = the frequency of /r/ marked the speech for a certain class 

When asked to repeat to illicit more formal style:

= middle-class speakers are much more likely to shift their style of speaking significantly towards the upper-middle class when using their more careful style 

also did a study on the same variable /r/ in Reading; the value associated with class was, however, quite different/the opposite. Middle-class speakers in Reading pronounced fewer /r/ sounds than working-class speakers 

= adopting a speech style that attempts to reduce social distance; using forms that are similar to those used by the person we’re talking to 

= adopting a speech style that attempts to emphasize social distance, by using a speech style/ forms that are distinctly different (e.g. to mark that you’re not the same as the other person)


= conventional way of using language that is appropriate in a specific context; situational (e.g. church), occupational (e.g. between lawyers) or topical (e.g. talking about language)

A register has specific features,

• e.g. religious register: Ye shall be blessed by Him, etc 

Culture is "socially acquired knowledge" learned unconsciously through language. It shapes how we categorize the world and what we deem relevant in our environment.  

If a category is irrelevant to a culture's environment, they may not have a word for it (e.g., no word for "horse" in some Pacific native cultures). 

Language labels groups with shared features, and vocabulary reflects the detailed distinctions of concepts important to a culture (e.g., types of rain or coconuts). 

- English uses broad terms like "uncle" for both paternal and maternal brothers.  

- Watam (Papua New Guinea) has distinct terms for each.  

- Norwegian distinguishes between paternal and maternal grandmothers (farmor, mormor), while English does not.  

 Some cultures lack terms for specific time units. For example, Hopi adapted terms like "week" from English. English emphasizes "clock time," while Hopi used traditional time concepts.  

- Linguistic Relativity: Language influences habitual thought and perception.  

- Linguistic Determinism: Language fully determines thought (mostly discredited).  

The debated claim that Inuit languages have many words for snow, possibly shaping their perception.

Language shapes worldview, such as Hopi treating clouds as "animate."  

Linguistic categories like gender or animacy don’t equate to beliefs. For example, French speakers don’t see "la pierre" (stone) as female.  

English uses phrases (e.g., "fresh snow") for distinctions that are single words in other languages.  

- Classifiers, such as in Japanese ("nihon" for two long objects), reveal cultural grouping systems.  

- English distinguishes between countable and non-countable nouns (e.g., "two chairs" vs. "two pieces of furniture").  

These terms extend beyond familial relationships, often marking social connections or group membership. 

People in higher-power positions often dominate conversations, speaking longer and interrupting more, while those in lower-power positions adapt their communication to the higher-status speaker.  

Back-channels (e.g., *yeah*, *hmm*, *I see*) signal engagement and attentiveness. Their absence can make speakers feel unheard, while their presence fosters mutual understanding.  

- In same-gender conversations, interruptions are more balanced.  

- In cross-gender conversations, men interrupt women more frequently, reflecting power dynamics and differing conversational styles.  

- Women: Tend to use collaborative styles, encouraging participation and shared activities.  

- Men: Tend to use competitive styles, focusing on dominating the conversation or “holding the floor.”  

In formal or hierarchical settings (e.g., religious events or business meetings), men often take longer turns and dominate discussions due to societal norms around gender and authority.  

Men’s competitive styles and frequent interruptions can reinforce hierarchical norms, while women’s collaborative styles may promote participation but can also lead to perceived submission in power-laden settings.  

Labov's study revealed that islanders' use of localized diphthongs (e.g., [ʌʊ] instead of [aʊ]) varied based on their attachment to island life, showing that language reflects social identity and attitudes.

Islanders with a positive attitude toward island life used the localized, centralized diphthongs more frequently, signaling their connection to traditional island life and distancing from tourists.

Language choices, such as pronunciation, vocabulary, and syntax, reflect social identity, group affiliation, attitudes, and formality, helping speakers convey who they are and how they wish to be perceived.

Islanders who felt less connected to the island’s traditions preferred standard pronunciations, while those who valued island traditions used the local, centralized variants, reflecting their social and cultural identity.

Language varies in pronunciation, vocabulary, and syntax depending on factors like group identity, formality, and attitude, reflecting the speaker’s social identity and affiliation.

Language serves as a badge of identity by signaling social group membership, personal attitudes, and cultural connections, helping speakers express where they belong or how they wish to be perceived in society.

Bidialectal = speakers who move back and forth across dialect continuum; using different varieties with ease; also: using one dialect at home and using a standard variation in school

Bilingual: people having knowledge and using two languages on a regular basis 

= Regional variation exists along a dialect continuum rather than having a sharp line which breaks from one region to the next

countries in which regional variation also means not only different dialects but also involve two or more distinct and different languages

e.g. Canada = French, English; Wales = Welsh, English 

• speaker grows up in not so spread variety (welsh) learn english to take part in larger language domain

group of people who share set of norms and expectations regarding use of language