Quizlet Linguistics 101 Terms Part 1

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  1. Acronym: Initials of a word of several parts
  2. Adjunction: An operation that allows for aux and transformations in sentence structure
  3. Affix: A morpheme tacked somewhere onto a word
  4. Agent: He who is doing an action
  5. Alphabetic Abbreviation: Acronyms that cannot be spoken easily as a word
  6. Anomia: A phenomenon in which one can never find the word he's looking for
  7. Antonym: A word that means the opposite of another word
  8. Argument: An NP with a VP
  9. Argument structure: The semantics and conjugation of a verb
  10. Auxiliaries: Words that cannot stand alone, but must go along with verbs
  11. Back-formations: A word formed through a mistake, formed from a morpheme that actually is not free, but appears to be
  12. Blend: A word in which two words are blended together, rather than compounded
  13. Bound Morphemes: Morphemes that cannot stand alone
  14. Broca's Aphasia: Damage to the Broca area
  15. Broca's Area: An area in the left brain that controls much of what speech is
  16. Cerebral Hemispheres: The hemispheres of the brain
  17. Circumfix: An affix tacked onto the beginning and end of a word
  18. Classifier: A morpheme designating a noun subject, object, etc.
  19. Clipping: The phenomenon whereby words are clipped to be shorter
  20. Complementizer: A word such as "that," allowing embedded sentences and recursivity
  21. Compound Head: The word in a compound that is closest to the right and that dominates the word
  22. Compound Words: Words formed from two other free-morphemes
  23. Constituent: The component parts of a sentence (can be interchanged if they are the same type)
  24. Constituent Structure: The structure of the component parts of a sentence
  25. Content Words: Words that denote objects, things, stuff: as opposed to function words
  26. Contradictions: Sentences that are always false
  27. Contradictory sentence: A sentence which is always true when another is false, and always false when the other is true
  28. Contralateral Brain Function: The concept that the right brain controls the left side of the body and vice versa
  29. Coordinate Structure: Structure in which two words of same syntactical type are connected with words such as "and" or "or"
  30. Corpus Callosum: The fibrous bridge that connects the two spheres of the brain
  31. Cortex: The surface of the brain
  32. Count noun: A noun that can be counted (one car, two cars, three cars...)
  33. Critical Period: There period of age in which a child must learn a language or be linguistically impaired forever
  34. Critical-age Hypothesis: The theory that children must acquire a language by a certain age or be impaired for life
  35. Deep Structure (d-structure): The basic structure of a sentence, before transformation rules are applied
  36. Deixis: The phenomenon whereby the meaning of certain words (such as "he") are determined entirely by context
  37. Demonstratives: Words such as this, that, and every
  38. Derivational Morphemes: Morphemes that morph a word into a different syntactical catagory
  39. Derived Word: A word that has been derived in syntactical category by means of morphemes
  40. Descriptive Grammar: A grammar that describes a language as it is spoken
  41. Determiner: A sort of article or definite article, such as "the"
  42. Dialect: A variety of speech within a given language
  43. Dichotic Listening: A way of experimenting so as to determine what cranial functions are controlled by what cranial hemisphere
  44. Discontinuous Morpheme: A morpheme split up
  45. Discourse analysis: The analysis of the broad structure of a speech, comprising multiple sentences
  46. Distransitive Verb: A verb that requires both an object an an indirect object
  47. Embedded Sentence: A sentence embedded in a larger phrase structure tree
  48. Entailment: The phenomenon whereby one sentence entails another
  49. Eponym: A word based upon a proper name
  50. Experiencer: A person receiving input through the eyes, ears, or other senses
  51. Free Morphemes: Morphemes that can stand alone
  52. Function Words: Words that are utilitarian, such as prepositions: as opposed to content words
  53. Functional Categories: Aux and Det are...
  54. Head: The "verb" in every VP, the "noun" in every NP
  55. Hemispherectomy: An impressive operation whereby a hemisphere is surgically removed
  56. Homonyms: Two words with the same sound but different meaning and spelling
  57. Homophone: Another word for homonym
  58. Hyponym: A word in the same semantic family as another
  59. Idiom: A semantic anomaly with a fixed meaning that would be otherwise uninterpretable
  60. Idiomatic phrase: Another way of saying "idiom"
  61. Illocutionary force: The intent of a speech act
  62. Implicatures: Inferences with respect to pragmatics
  63. Infix: An affix tacked into the middle of a word
  64. Inflectional Morphemes: Morphemes that never change the syntactical category of the word, but only change its tense
  65. Instrument: The instrument by which an agent carries out a theme toward a goal
  66. Jargon Aphasia: A term referring to extreme Wernick's Aphasia
  67. Language: A mode of communication unique to human beings: it is discrete and creative
  68. Lexical Gap: A word that makes sense, yet isn't a word (e.g. exobvious)
  69. Lexical semantics: The study of linguistic meaning in words
  70. Lexicography: A fancy word for "Dictionary"
  71. Lexicon: A person's vocabulary
  72. Linguistic Competence: The knowledge one has of his language: different from linguistic perfomance
  73. Linguistic Determinism: The strongest aspect of the Sapir-Whorf Theory
  74. Linguistic Performance: The competence a speaker displays when speaking his language: opposed to linguistic competence
  75. Linguistic Theory: The quest for a universal grammar
  76. Localization: The idea that cranial functions are localized in the brain
  77. Mass noun: A noun that cannot be counted (one milk, two milks, three milks...)
  78. Maxim of manner: The speaker must be concise and neat in his speech, not opaque or ambiguous
  79. Maxim of quality: Do not speak false things
  80. Maxim of quantity: A speaker must not give more or less information than required
  81. Maxim of relevance: The speaker must speak on the relevant topic
  82. Maxims of conversation: The maxims that govern real semantics in conversation
  83. Mental Grammar: The grammar speakers have in their brains
  84. Metaphor: An expression in which the speaker does not mean the listener to take his words literally
  85. Metonym: A word that may substitute for another
  86. Modals: words such as may, might, and can
  87. Monogenetic Theory of Language Origin: The theory that all languages have one origin
  88. Morpheme: The fundamental unit of meaning in words
  89. Negative polarity items: Expressions that require a negative element in the sentence to allow them to appear
  90. Neurolinguistics: The study of the biological and neural basis for language
  91. Node: A point in a constituent structure tree
  92. Noun Phrase: NP: A noun, with or without a complement
  93. Orthography: A fancy word meaning "Spelling"
  94. Paradoxes: Sentences whose truth value is undefined and/or undeterminable
  95. Paraphrase: A synonymous sentence
  96. Performative sentence: A sentence containing a speech act
  97. Performative verbs: The type of verbs that are involved in speech acts
  98. Phrasal semantics: The study of linguistic meaning in units larger than the word
  99. Phrenology: The pseudoscience that states that bumps on the skull indicate personality traits and flaws in a person
  100. Polysemous: An adjective designating words that have several meanings
  101. Pragmatics: The study of how a word or phrase's situation determines and affects its meaning
  102. Prefix: An affix tacked onto the beginning of a word
  103. Prepositional Phrase: PP: A preposition, with or without a complement
  104. Prescriptive Grammar: A grammar that describes how a language ought to be spoken
  105. Prestige Dialect: A variety of a language that has more prestige
  106. Recursivity: That phenomenon whereby sentences can be infinitely long
  107. Reference: A word in a sentence that refers to a specific object in the world
  108. Referent: That which a word refers to, a component of the referential theory of semantics
  109. Reflexive pronouns: Pronouns that refer the verb back to the agent
  110. Relational opposites: A type of antonym where two words are opposite in their relationship to eachother in their essence (i.e. teacher to student)
  111. Root: The basic unit in a word that has many components and affixes
  112. Rule Productivity: Some rules are productive in producing words, while others aren't; this is called:
  113. Sapir-Whorf hypothesis: The idea that one's language moulds the way he thinks and sees the world
  114. Semantic anomaly: A situation in which a sentence doesn't make sense, even if it is grammatical (metaphor and idiom are types of this)
  115. Semantics: The study of linquistic meaning
  116. Sense: A meaning that a word has, whether or not it exists in the real world
  117. Sentential semantics: The study of linguistic meaning in units larger than the word
  118. Sisters: Two nodes on a phrase structure tree that are of the same level
  119. Specific Language Impairment: An impairment whereby a person's language capacity is damaged
  120. Speech acts: Acts done in a word (e.g. I hereby proclaim you sentenced to death)
  121. Standard Dialect: The dialect of a language that is good to know and speak for practical reasons
  122. Stem: A root with one or more affixes
  123. Structural Ambiguity: A situation in which the sentence's tree structure is not apparent
  124. Suffix: An affix tacked onto the end of a word
  125. Suppletive Forms: Verb forms that cannot be formed from the usual inflectional morphemes
  126. Surface Structure (s-structure): The derived structure from a sentence's d-structure
  127. Synonym: A word that means the same thing as another word
  128. Synonymous: A condition in which two sentences are either true or false in the same contexts
  129. Syntactical Category: Types of words that can be interchanged without a compromise of grammaticality
  130. Syntax: The rules for sentence structure
  131. Tautologies: Sentences that are always true
  132. Tense Phrase (TP): An alternative to S-bar theory and X-bar theory that some linguists use
  133. Thematic roles: The roles played by subject and object in the context of a theme
  134. Tree Diagram: A mode of showing the two-dimensional structure of a sentence
  135. Truth conditions: Those conditions in which a sentence is true
  136. Truth value: How much truth (some, none, absolute) a sentence has
  137. Truth-conditional semantics: The study of semantics with regards to the truth
  138. Universal Grammar (UG): The rules that govern all language
  139. Verb Phrase: VP: A verb, with or without a complement
  140. Wernick's Aphasia: Damage to Wernick's area
  141. Wernick's Area: An area in the left brain that controls grammar functions
  142. X-Bar Theory: A theory that gives a basic, fundamental, abstract scheme for sentence structure