The Study of Language - George Yule summary

Explain the Innateness Hypothesis

Answer: The belief that genetic changes caused humans to be the only species with the capacity for language

Name the features that distinguish human language from animal communication

Answer: Reflexivity, displacement, arbitrariness, cultural transmission, productivity, duality

What is reflexivity?

Answer: Using language to think and talk about language. Humans are able to reflect on language and its uses.

Explain The Rebus Principle

Answer: When the symbol for one entity is taken over as the symbol for the sounds of the word. The symbol is then used whenever that sounds occurs in any word. One symbol can now be used in many ways. Eye = ^ , causing \'I\' to also be ^ , causing defy to also end in ^

Explain what orthography is and why the English orthography is so variated

Answer: Orthography = the spelling system of a language. The English spelling system is so variated, because: - A lot of words are borrowed (Greek /ph/) - Early printers were Flemish - Pronunciation has undergone substantial changes since the 15th century

What is derivation?

Answer: Adding affixes to words to create new ones. (un-, pre-, -ful, -ish)

Explain the difference between a free morpheme and a bound morpheme

Answer: A free morpheme can stand on itself as a single word (dress, tour), they are mostly basic nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs. A boun morpheme cannot stand alone and are typically attached to another form, they are all affixes (re-, -ed, -s)

Explain the two categories of free morphemes

Answer: - Lexical morphemes: word that carry the content of the message we convey (nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs) - Functional morphemes: have a function but no content on their own (articles, conjunctions, prepositions, pronouns).

Explain the two categories of bound morphemes

Answer: - Derivational morphemes: bound forms we use to make new words or a different grammatical category (critic-ize , encourage-ment) - Inflectional morphemes: not used to produce new words, but to indicate the grammatical function (boy-s , laugh-ing)

Explain agreement and what it can be based on

Answer: Agreement = the grammatical connection between two parts of a sentence. It can be based on: number (single, plural), person (first, second, third), tense (present, past) and gender (Cathy - her)