Download BASIC TERMS IN LINGUISTICS

BASIC TERMS IN LINGUISTICS
Prescriptive grammar: The grammar that we are taught in school. Typically a prescriptive grammar
is about the "shoulds and shouldn'ts" in a language rather than a description of what speakers
actually know when they know a language. Prescriptive grammars typically reflect the grammar of a
written standard and are concerned with making determinations about the "correct" choice when
there are potential variants (e.g. in English, we can choose to either separate a preposition from the
noun it modifies [What did you play with?] or not to do so [With what did you play]). The prescriptive
grammar of English says that only one of those is "correct" even though all speakers of English have
the option.
Standard language: The variety of a language that serves as the model for what is "correct" and
"incorrect" for a given language. The standard language is generally the one that is written.
Dialect: A variety of a language with a grammar that differs in predictable ways from other varieties of
the language. In many places, “dialects” are especially tied to different regions or geographic areas.
Generative grammar: The idea that a finite set of rules or constraints can generate [e.g. produce as
an output] an infinite number of utterances, many of them novel. This model shows that native
speakers of a language acquire a set of rules and a lexicon rather than specific sentences.
Phonetics: The study of the sounds we use to produce/interpret speech.
Phonology: The study of the sounds that occur in specific languages and the rules or constraints that
govern when they occur.
Morphology: The study of the units of meaning (words, prefixes etc.) in a language and their patterns
of occurrence.
Lexicon: The set of morphemes in a language.
Root: The main meaning morpheme in a word and the morpheme to which affixes attach (e.g. in
'untie', the root is 'tie').
Inflection: The morphology that governs grammatical relationships between words (e.g. the 3rd
person, present verb marker in English [-s] tells us something about the relationship between the
noun and the verb).
Derivation: The morphology that governs how new meanings are created (e.g. if I attach the prefix
'un-' to a verb like 'tie', I create a new meaning--namely the opposite of the original word).
Syntax: The study of the construction of sentences in a language. This includes the linear order (e.g.
Subject Verb Object vs. Subject Object Verb) as well as the relationships between the parts of the
sentence.
Semantics: The study of meaning (e.g. what does "open" mean).
Pragmatics: The study of meaning in context (e.g. "the door is open" can have different
interpretations depending on the context).
Diachronic: The study of language across time (e.g. the history of the changes in a language).
Synchronic: The study of language at a specific point in time.
Pidgin: A language that often has a simplified grammar and lexicon and that is used as a kind
oflingua franca among speakers who don't share a native language. Pidgins are typically not
anyone's native language.
Creole: A pidgin that has been expanded to fulfill all the functions of a human language and that has
become some group of speakers' native language. Of some potential confusion is the fact that
creoles are often called pidgins by their speakers.