Definitions


S. M.
This flashcard set helps university-level students learn English by focusing on linguistic concepts and word formation processes. The vocabulary flashcards cover topics like compounding, grammatical gender, and morphemes, including examples such as "fingerprint," "unbelievable," and "careful-ness." The set supports both forward and backward learning, allowing users to study from the target language to the source language. Ideal for advanced learners, it aids in understanding complex linguistic structures and enhancing fluency.
Flashcards
31
Students
1
Language
English
Category
English
Level
University
Created / Updated
24.07.2016 / 24.07.2016

Flashcards

Displacement

Humans can refer to past and future or facts we are not sure about. Animal communication is related to the acutal place and time, cannot be removed. Bees can give displacement to the future --> nectar

Arbitrariness

connection between a word's meaning and its sound or form, relation between linguistic signs and object in the world. Animal langugage rellation between sign and message (ex: no-smoking sign)

Productivity

humans create always new expression (inifnite), not possible for animals, limited feature of animal communication (ex: Computer)

Cultural transmission

language is passed from one generation to the other. Humans do not inherit language (ex: girl out in the forest, no language), but nimals do theyare born with a set of specific signals (ex: Miau when cat is hungry)

Reflexivity

to consider how I use language, reflect about what we said, Interpretation of interpretation, we think about the use of language and think about itself. Only human do! (ex: what did I say)

Etymology

words come from Latin and have their origin in Greek. (ex: school from scholar)

Coinage

innovation of totally new words (Aspirin, Vaseline)

Eponyms

new words based on a name of a person or a place (Watt - James Watt)

Borrowing

taking words from another language (piano, Itlaian), loan translation: dircet translation of a word (Übermensch -->Superman)

Blending

combination of two seperate words that build a new word (smoke+fog=smog) (gasoline+alcohol=gasohol) --> New product made of these two

Clipping

When a word is reduced to a shorter form (gasoline: gas, mathematics: math) hypocorism: a longer word is reduced to a single syllable (Moving picture: movie)

(conversion)

Change of the function, noun becomes a verb without any reduction (the guess, I guess)

(backformation)

Words function is reuced to another type (ex: editor --> edit)

Acronyms

New word formed from the initial letter of a set of other words (Compact Disc: CD, Nasa, atm)

Derivation

Common word formation process (Verfahren der Wortbildung), made of "bits" --> affixes (prefixes, suffixes, ex: be-greifen)

Free morphemes

Can stand allone and cannot be divided into smaller meaning units. (tour --> tourist, open --> reopened) Element of the linguistic message (talk-ed, -ing, -s) endings are bound morphemes, that cannot stand allone

Lexical

Words (verbs, nouns) that carry the content of the message we convey (mitteilen) --> free morphemes (ex:girl, man, house)

bound morphemes

Element of the linguistic message (talk-ed, -ing, -s) endings are bound morphemes, that cannot stand allone

Derivational

use morphemes to create new words (ex: care --> careful), changes grammatical category

inflectual

to show singular or plural, present or past, never changes the grammatical category, never changes the meaning (adjective --> comperative, possessive ex: my sister's, i liked)

Allomorphs

a group of different morphs (ex: Ficsch - Fische = Plural Allomorph) any of the variant forms of a morpheme. (morphs)=forms used to realize morphemes (cats=cat-s)

Prefixes

Affixes at the beginning of a word, changes the meaning (ex: un-, mis-understand)

Suffixes

Affixes at the end of the word, changes the grammatical category (-less,-ish, careful-ness)

(Infix)

emotional expression, infixed element (un-fucking-believable)

(Grammatical Gender)

natural gender: sex (male / female), grammatical gender: type of noun (masculine / feminine)

The prescriptive approach

telling what people should do in English. The structure of the sentence is similar to Latin. (ex: woman should have long hair)

the descriptive approach

describing what people do, non-eupoean language, North America structure of the language (ex:Woman have long hair) 

Structural Analysis

Distribution (Verteilung) in forms in a language, ex: test frames, grammatical category, Latin influence

Constituent analysis

show how small constituents (Bestandteil) go together from larger constituents

Lable parts of the speech

noun phrase, verb phrase... noun article, adjective, verb, preposition, adverb, pornouns, conjunction

Compounding

joining two seperate words to produce one single word (ex. fingerprint, goodlooking)

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