LINGUISTICS TERMS (2đ)

1. Autonomy of language (quyền tự chủ về ngôn ngữ): the independence of language as genetically
conditioned cognitive system which is not derivied from the general intellectual capacities of human
species.
2. Arbitrary (độc đoán): relating to property of language, including sign language, whereby there is no
natural or intrinsic relationship between the way a word is pronounced (or signed), and its meaning.
3. Assimilation (sự đồng hóa): when a sound changes, and becomes more like another sound which
follows it or precedes it.
4. Morphology (hình thái học): the study of the form of words and phrases.
5. Phonology (âm vị học): the study of sounds in a particular language or in languages generally.
6. Syntax (cú pháp) : the grammatical arrangement of words in a sentence.
7. Semantics (ngữ nghĩa học): connected with the meanings of words.
8. “Proto-language” (ngôn ngữ nguyên thủy): language which is supposed to be the first.
9. Onomatopoeic words (từ tượng thanh): words that phonetically imitate, resemble, or suggest the
sound that they describe./words containing sounds similar to the noises they describe.
10. Monogenetic: a theory of language origin that all languages of originated from a single source.
11. Word writing: a system of writing in which each character represents a word or morpheme of the
language (e.g. Chinese). Sometimes called ideographic or logographic writing.
12. Sign languages: the languages used by the deaf in which hand and body gestures are the forms of
morphemes and words.
13. Broca’s area: a front part of the left hemisphere of the brain, damage to which causes telegraphic,
agrammatic speech ( Broca’s aphasia).
14. Wernicke’s area: posterior part of the left brain that, if damaged, causes fluent but semantically
empty speech production, i.e. Wernicke’s aphasis.
15. Jargon aphasia chứng mất ngôn ngữ: form of aphasia in which phonemes are substituted, often
producing nonsense words.
16. Lateralization: term used to refer to any cognitive functions localized to one or the other side of the
brain.
17. Hierarchy (hierarchical): having the form of a hierarchy. In the description of languages, hierarchies
that are used usually represent units which consist of sub-units. The sub-units are lower on the hierarchy.
18. Linear structure: in the form of a line.
19. Hierarchical structure: having the form of a hierarchy. In the description, it is usually subdivide into
different levels. Each level of description deals with different kinds of units, all of which together go to
make up the way language works.
20. Utterance: what a speaker says or a writer writes at a particular point in time.
21. Dialect: regional or social variety of a language.
22. Prescriptive grammar: a grammar which states rules for what is considered the best or most
correct usage. Prescriptive grammar is often based not on descriptions of actual usage but rather on the
grammar’s view of what is best.
23. Universal grammar (ngữ pháp phổ quát): a theory in linguistics usually credited to Noam Chomsky
that suggests that the ability to learn grammar is built into the human brain from birth regardless of
language.
24. Descriptive grammar: a grammar which describes how a language is actually spoken and/or
written, and does not state or prescribe how it ought to be spoken or written.

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25. Historical linguistics: the branch of linguistics that deals with how language change, what kinds of
changes occur, and why the occur.
26. Holophrastic: refers to one-word stage in which children produce one-word sentences.
27. Babbling: sounds produced in the first few months after birth which include sounds that do and do
not occur in the language of the household. Deaf children “babble” with hand gestures similar to the vocal
babbling of hearing children.
28. Critical age hypothesis: the period between early childhood and puberty during which a child can
acquire language without instruction.
29. Comparative method: the technique used by linguistics forms in an earlier stage of a language by
examining corresponding forms in several of its daughter languages.
30. Genetically related (of two or more languages): developed from a common, earlier language (e.g.
French, Italian, Spanish, all developed from Latin).
31. Syllabic writing: a writing system in which each syllable in the language is represented by its own
symbol.
32. Alphabetic writing: a writing system in which each symbol typically represents one sound segment.
33. Consonantal writing: a writing system in which only symbols representing consonants are used;
vowels are inferred from context (as in, e.g. Arabic).
34. Pictograms: a form of writing in which the symbols resemble the objects represented; a non-
arbitrary form of writing.

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 QUESTIONS (4đ)

1 Differences between human language and animal communication

Characteristic Animal Communication Human Gesture Human Language
a set of symbols used to
mostly signs rather than used as a replacement of
Symbolic form words, sentences,
symbols speech
phrases
Partly innate,
YES YES YES
partly learned
Specific context or
YES YES NO
Stimulus required
limited range of
Finite repertoire of
messages because of the No
messages
lack of creativity
Discrete unites can be
combined to produce No due to lack of
SOFT OF YES
infinite number of creativity
messages: combinatorial
Rules for combination of
units based on NO NO YES
hierarchical structure
New symbols can be gestures of another
NO YES
created or borrowed culture can be borrowed

2 What are features of human language?

a. a code

- Symbols, signals for something other than themselves. Language is a signalincy system
- Symbolic vocal sound
- Used by a group of ppl
- Communication
- For example, in the traffic light code, each of a set of 3, vertically arranged, colored light is
associated with a particular instruction to the motorist. A red light conveys the instruction ‘stop’, a
green light means ‘proceed’, a yellow means ‘prepare to stop’.
- Each word of a language is a symbol, a sequence of sounds or letters which is related by convention
to a particular meaning.
 A Language is a code for conveying a great variety of information

b. Functions and forms

In describing the structure of a sentences, each unit can be looked at in 2 ways:

- Describe the function-by seeing what part it plays in the structures of the next highest unit.
- Describe the form of the unit by examining its internal structure.

+ hierarchy: different levels orderly

Ex: peter runs (9 sound-2 words)

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+ structure: words-phrases-sentences-texts

• Rules
- d
- The sequences of sounds (snack not srack; smake not bmooth)
 It can occur in place other than initially in a word.
 There are rules which determine how words fit into sentences. For example, the sentence Mary
wheeled is somehow unfinished because the word wheel requires additional constituents to play a
role in this sentence.

c. Specifically, human

- You can safety assume that the words you hear will belong to grammatical classes, such as a noun
and verb, and that these grammatical classes will be combinable into phrases and sentences.
- There will be way to making statements, asking questions, giving commands, and making negative
assertions. All these properties are true of every human language, a fact that will help you
enormously in cracking the code of your new language.

d. Being creative

- There aren’t the longest sentences in English b.c you can add and to extent the sentences.
- Lack of vocab. Is only a minor inconvenience. You can call a student in a class by their characteristic
or st like that, ....
- L. provides a key to open the door to possible worlds, worlds which differ from the one we
currently live in any way which we might imagine

e. L. use is constrained (han che, k tu nhien)

- Each variety of l. restricts a speaker’s choices in its own way ex: a person reading the news can not
address the viewers as “dearly beloved threthren”

- Sound, grammar, words, meaning are all potentially restricts

3 Why does language change ?

+Borrowing

Lexical borrowing: Living languages never hold still. Every language is the product of change and continues
to change as long as it is spoken. For the most part, these changes escape out attention as they occur.
They are minor enough or gradual enough to be imperceptible. Over a span of centuries, however, their
cumulative effect is appreciable. Shakespeare’s English is difficult for modern readers, and Chaucer’s is
almost incomprehensible without format instruction.

One way languages change is through the influence of other languages. At one time the English words
plaza, for instance, was not part of the English vocab but now it is. The addition of plaza to English vocab
clearly results from the influence of Spanish. Speakers are familiar with the Spanish term started using it in

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English. Its use spread, and now it is a well-established word of English. In brief, Plaza was borrowed into
English from Spanish.

Borrowing is a very common linguistic phenomenon. English is a slang that has borrowed heavily. An
interesting variant of lexical borrowing is a phenomenon known as loan transition. A loan translation is a
compound in English (for example, superman) that literally translates a foreign expression. "New World
Spanish has composed a number of loan translations or calques on English models, such as luna de miel
(honeymoon), perros calientes (hot dogs), and conferencia de alto nivel (high level conference)."

Syntactic and phonological borrowing: changes in the syntax or phonology of a language also result from
borrowing, but somewhat less frequently. For a syntactic example, we may cite the languages of the
Balkan peninsula, such as Albanian, Bulgarian…They are alike syntactically in that infinitival clauses are
highly restricted in their use. Some of the Balkan languages lack infinitive entirely. Instead of the children
want to leave, one would say something like the children want that they leave.

-Causes of borrowing: +the need to find words for new objects, concepts and places. Many places names
on the north American continent, for instance, were taken from indian lang: Michigan, Chicago,
Oklahoma…

+Cultural influence, for ex, a large proportion of the Arabic words in English pertain to the realm of science:
zero, cipher, zenith, alchemy… Or Norman conquest of England, great numbers of loan words came into
English from French: *government: crown, power, state…

*military: battle, army, war…

+prestige: French constituted an upper class, English speakers who desired social advancement were
naturally led to learn French. Latin and Greek also had great prestige.

+Internal change:

+lexical change: internal change can be discerned at all levels of linguistic structure. It affects individual
lexical items as well as general rules, and it occurs in the semantic, syntactic and phonological systems of a
lang alike.

The simplest form of internal change is probably the addition and loss of lexical items. There used to be
some English words : cere means wax, maumet means idol…

In a highly technical and complex society such as ours, there is a constant need for new lexical items.
Where borrowing does not suggest itself as a wau of obtaining a new term, alternative methods are
available.

The creation of complex lexical items is such a frequent means of obtaining new terms that it is perhaps
sufficient to give a few examples. When linguists started talking about tree structure, hyper connection,
loan translation… they combined previously existing lexical items into more complex ones for use as
technical terms.

The extension of existing lexical items to new situations involves both the metaphorical side of lang and
semantic change.

Metaphorical extension is one way in which semantic change comes about, though certainly not the only
way.
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A lexical item can be characterized as a bundle of semantic, syntactic, and phonological properties. We
have just observed that it is not at all unusual for a lexical item to change with respect to its semantic
representation. It may be somewhat less common for the syntactic or phonological representation of a
lexical item to undergo change, but this also occurs.

+rule change

+Change and language acquisition: adults are thought to have limited linguistic flexibility. An adult who
learns a foreign lang can achieve near-native competence in it only with great difficulty, and hw will almost
always speak it with an accent (in part because of interference from the phonological system he already
possesses). Moreover, adults can modify their speech with respect to rule, consciously or unconsciously
patterning it after the model of another dialect. The difference between the language learning of children
and that of adults, such as it is, is no doubt more important with respect to innovations in linguistic rules.
The child who is exposed to speech characterized by rule innovations. Since the child has no previous
linguistics exp in which the innovations were lacking, he will naturally treat the new speech traits on a par
with all the other traits of the lang he is trying to learn. Consequently, the child will learn the new rules as
an integral part of the linguistic system he acquires, not as superficial appendages to it.

4 How do children acquire language ?

Imitation theory
o Learning language is a multimodal process and hence language can be picked up through imitation.
o Imitation plays an important role in problems of child development.
o Imitation helps a child in learning language as language can be seen (through lip reading) as well as
heard.
o Language can also be learnt be touching the speaker’s lips.
o Children can learn language though imitation of words and sounds.

Ex: When you clapping “yay”, the baby: “yay”

You say “no, no, no” while shake your head, the baby will understand “you don’t agree”

o However, children have an undeniable capacity to be creative with language and certainly do not
need to hear a particular sentence before saying it.
o They often utter sentences that unlikely have heard before.

Ex: they may say “he eated my candy”, “where did you found it?” But not “Mine is candy that” (candy that
is mine) [or countless other conceivable but no curing sentences]

o In fact, the errors that children make are of a very limited sort. But through these mistakes, we can
see their effort to apply the rules (simple past, in case above) to make new sentences. Because adults do
not say "eated" or "did you found" and even children who lack contact with other children do say such
things. These errors cannot raise from pure mimicry.
o Many linguists and psychologist are convinced that language is not acquired by imitation, or
imitation theory is not supported by observations and research.
Reinforcement theory
o According to reinforcement theory, there are two predictions which are about language acquisition:

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 o Adults correct children to reinforce "correct" (adult) form of language.
o Children respond to corrections by producing the correct forms.
o Each prediction can be tested by look at the reality of first language acquisition. Adults correct
children to reinforce "correct" form of language.
o Already have a command of basic sentences structure.
o However, most often, adults respond to correct the child's approximation of language.
o Children are reinforced for demonstrating sounds are words.

EX: 2-y-olds: "baa"

Mom: "good boy! Ball"

“Baa”

Mom: "very good"

o However, effort to reinforce seems to fail

Ex: Two children, one aged 6 and one 3, are talking about fish feeding:

6-y-olds: it's worse to forget to feed them

3-y-olds: no, it's badder to feed them too much.

6-y-olds: you don't say badder, you say worse.

3-y-olds: but it's baddest to give them too much food.

6-y-olds: no, it's worst to forget to feed them.

o Process of language learning: typically go through stages

 St 1: overgeneralize grammatical patterns: "I goed" or "two foots". At this stage, adults' correction
or modeling has no effect.
 St2: continue to use the incorrect forms until the stage passes and use correct irregular forms such
as "went" and "feet".
 In conclusion: Reinforcement theory
o Which believes that children are conditioned into speaking correctly
o By being negatively reinforced for "errors" and positively reinforced for "correct" usage
o It not supported by observational and experimental studies.
o Therefore, it seems internal process and not from adult's feedback.
LAD - language acquisition device- Nativist theory:
o Through language input, they acquire RULES, not only words, and CREATE new sentences,
APPLYING rules combining words.
o RULES are acquired by LAD (language acquisition device, inborn).
o LAD is a device, a 'software' program, acquires the rules, applies the rules when creating
new sentences, and adjusts the mistakes step by step.

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 MULTIPLE CHOICE (4đ)

1. What is wrong with the theory that language originated from attempts to imitate the sounds of
nature?

a. Onomatopoeic words are not the same in every language.

b. We use a specific language to describe sounds.
c. We hear sounds from the perspective of our language.

2. A basic property of human language is speakers' ability to combine the basic linguistic units to form a(n)
unlimited set of “well-formed” grammatical sentences.

3. Which one of the following characteristics of human languages is NOT true?

a. They have rules for combination of units based on hierarchical structure.

b. Specific context or stimulus is required.
c. Discrete units can be combined to produce infinite number of messages.
d. New symbols can be created or borrowed.

4. Which item(s) of the following is(are) NOT causes of language change?

o Items are causes of language change: lexicon, syntax, phonology.

5. Which of the following items is NOT true about animal language?

Answer based on the table in first question (QUESTION).

6. The sounds and meanings of words are related in a(n) arbitrary fashion.

7. Which of the following statements is NOT true?

a. Broca's patients spoke fluently with good intonation and pronunciation.

b. The so called higher mental functions are believed to be greatly lateralized.
c. Aphasia is language disorders that follow brain lesions caused by a stroke, a tumor, a gunshot
wound, or an infection.
d. Broca's aphasics show syntactic deficits.

8. Which of the following items is/are NOT true about animal communication?

a. Bees, for instance, are able to communicate to one another with great precision the location of a
food source by means of a dance done in the hive.
b. As long as bees communicate, they will only be able to exchange variants of the same message – in
what direction the nectar is and how far away.
c. One property of animal communication is ‘discreteness’ of the speech or gestural units, which are
ordered and reordered, combined and split apart.
d. The bees’ dance is an effective system of communication for bees and is capable, in principle, of
infinitely many different messages, like human language.

9. Writing systems:

04 types of writing systems:

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1. Word writing: every symbol or character represents a word or morpheme (Chinese).
2. Syllable writing: each symbol represents a syllable (Japanese).
3. Alphabetic writing: each symbol represents (for the most part) one phoneme (English).
4. Consonantal writing: (Arabic)
10. Vietnamese writing system:

o Chữ Nôm script: a system of modified and invented characters modeled loosely on Chinese
characters, which used Han Chinese characters for Sino-Vietnamese vocabulary and an adapted set
of characters for the native vocabulary with Vietnamese approximations of Middle Chinese
pronunciations.
o Quốc Ngữ script: used script of Vietnam and is based on the Latin alphabet

11. Which one is not an example of Animals' visual communication?

a. Fireflies glow to attract mates.

b. Peacocks use their elaborate talks during courting rituals.
c. Cobras inflate their hood to scare other creatures.
d. Cats rub against objects to mark them with their scent.

12. Which item(s) of the following is/are not true about properties of human language?

a. Units of a language have linear and hierarchical structures.

b. Language is made up of a series of units, each of which may have an internal structure.
c. Larger units of a language are often put together in a systematic way by means of rules that
combine or rearrange smaller units to form larger ones.
d. Language use is constrained by the number of words in a sentence.
e. Some languages are "corrupt" or "decayed".

13. Which of the following statements is/are NOT true?

a. Linguistic ability derives from more general cognitive 'intelligence".

b. Language develops against a background of deficits in general and non-linguistic intellectual
abilities.
c. A person's linguistic ability is not independent of his/her general conceptual or intellectual ability.

14. Differences between 1st language and 2nd language, foreign language?

- 8 differences:

+ the 1st language experience + fossilization

+ home environment + attitude

+ acquiring naturally + social identity

+ consciousness + motivation

15. Which of the following is not a characteristic of/stage of language acquisition?

Stages of Language Acquisition:

o Babbling: start at about 6 months

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 o One-word stage: start around 1 year old
o Two-word stage: at about 20 months of age
o Beyond two words: between about 2 years (2;0) and 2 and a half years (2;6) of age, a child’s
expressions become considerably more complex.

16. Learning a foreign language can be affected by the following factors except _____?

Learning a foreign language can be affected by the following factors:

o Contrastive Analysis: morphology, grammar, phonology
o Interlanguage
o Fossilization

17. Genie, who had lived in a state of severe sensory and social deprivation, did not have language when
she was discovered, because she was not exposed to language.

18. A child acquires language by LAD (Language Acquisition Device).

19. Which one(s) of these is/are not true?

Vietnamese language__________

a. Is from Mon-Khmer.
b. Is monosyllabic.
c. Has word writing system.
d. Has consonantal writing system.
e. Has diacritics.
f. Has syllable writing system.

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