Test 4 Study Guide and Answers - The Study of Language | LING 2100, Study notes of Linguistics

Download Test 4 Study Guide and Answers - The Study of Language | LING 2100 and more Study notes Linguistics in PDF only on Docsity! Dear all, I. Some notes on the exam: Short answers are basically two sentences long w/ an example. There might be an essay question. Count on it pertaining to any of the big issues. If you KNOW your definitions and how these things fit into the larger picture you will definitely be able to answer the essay. What do I count as an essay? A paragraph. So it’s really just a longer short answer. Obviously, I don’t grade for spelling. I grade for you showing me that you know how these ideas work. If I put an essay on the exam, you will have a choice of multiple questions--meaning, you will choose from a selection. II. Know the following definitions as well as how to discuss them in a greater context (for the following list, you don’t necessarily need examples, just definitions, although examples are always helpful): Language Death: Why do languages die? --Often because of killer languages (like English) that stomp out smaller languages. --One in which a community of speakers of one language becomes bilingual in another language, and gradually shifts allegiance to the second language until they stop using their original (or heritage) language --Ex: Gothic is a dead language. No one speaks it anymore Why should we care? --Because there is culture associated with the language and when we lose it, we often lose the culture too Why would we say that Latin is not dead? --Because it is an evolved language. No one speaks it anymore, but it has evolved into the different romance languages. What is an endangered language? --Many Native American languages. They don’t have that many fluent speakers left to pass it on so it will eventually die out Chapter 10 Sociolinguistics Language attitudes (in society, many people believe that some dialects are better/worse than others--this is not objectively true-- you need to know WHY people have these attitudes--relates to “prestige” below) Dialect --ALL DIALECTS ARE EQUAL --When a group of speakers of a particular language differs noticeably in its speech from another group, we say that they are different dialects What is the difference between a dialect and a language? --“A language is a dialect with an Army and a Navy” --Language is a bundle of dialects Idiolect: be prepared to give an example of something from someone’s idiolect--could be from yourself or someone you know--something specific about someone’s speech! --How you pronounce something --The form of a language spoken by one person --Ex: Marcus says bagel funny and Magdi says mooove Slang: And why do we have it? --We only have it for taboo things: 1) Poop 2) Drinking/ Drugs 3) Sex --Use slang to indirectly talk about inappropriate things Mutual Intelligeability --2 dialects are considered different languages when they are mutually unintelligible --Dialects of same language= mutually intelligible Dialect Continuum --From Berlin (German) to Amsterdam (Dutch), it slowly changes from German to Dutch from the cities in between until it eventually becomes a totally different language --Each dialect is closely related to the next, but the dialects at either end of the scale are mutually unintelligible --Systematic differences in: lexicon, phonology, morphology, and syntax Speech Community