synchronic fickuistics

the form which the sign takes

a symbol has no resemblance between the signifier and signified at all. It is our framework of knowledge which helps us understand the meaning of these signs.

cause-effect relationship, This type of sign will show some sort physical relationship with what is represents and point towards its meaning

physical/ visual connection

notion of correctness, focus on mistakes and errors, associated with education, main issue: may lead to discrimination

neutral description of language, focus on linguistic analysis

language at one specific point in time

language through time

exploring natural human language with scientific methods

consideration of ones own thoughts and feelings about language; creation of made-up examples

language in relation to society and societal factors

scientific study of language from computational perspective

relation between psychology and language

the language and the law; language and crime

computer mediated communication, human communication using electronic devices, formal vs. informal language use

somewhat loosely defined, language in the 'real world'

essay 'the origin of speech' from 1960 -> design features

humans can relate to events in past & time, tell jokes and stories, and can talk about abstract things and lie

humans are creative and productive in their language use, new combinations of sound and meaning can easily be created, openness of human language

human language consists of two layers: meaningless units -> sounds, meaningful units -> words, limited set of meaningless units can be combined to infinite number of meaningful units -> efficiency of human language

unit: the phone, indicated in [], on the level of parole -> more detailed transcription

unit: the phoneme, indicated in//, abstract, on the level of langue -> less detailed transcription

air is pushed out (egressive) of the lungs (pulmonic) and released through mouth or nose or both -> most common kind of airstream

partial or complete obstruction of the airflow: voiced or voiceless

air passes through the oral cavity relatively freely: generally voiced

there is one vowel sound in a syllable, pure/simple vowels, vowel quality remains more or less constant

there are two vowel sounds in a syllable, gliding vowels, i.e. vowel quality changes in the process of articulation

unstressed bastard vowel

smallest meaning bearing unit of language

smallest meaning-distinguishing unit of language

[langue] abstract unit underlying physical word-forms

[parole] realization of a lexeme -> reads & reading: two word forms of the lexeme read

not further analysable > cannot be further split into separate, meaningful morphemes > original meaning of the word

remains when all inflectional affixes have been removed -> part that recieves immediate affix