Linguistics Test #3 - Power of Babel Flashcards
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| 2328720561 | What is a Pidgin? | -Just enough X -Circumstances: trade, slavery, colonization -lacks many features of a full on language (gender, article, cases) | 0 | |
| 2328727926 | Creoles "when a pidgin becomes a language" | -when a pidgin becomes the "lived language" of a group -children are raised speaking it -full grammar and a rich vocabulary develop | 1 | |
| 2328731825 | Grammiticalization | -watching a pidgin become a creole is the closest we can get to witnessing the birth of a new language -tenses and helping verbs for tenses develop -sounds/meaning shift as vocab develops -articles develop -examples in English: "to will" and "to have" became participles | 2 | |
| 2328739392 | Creoles do everything "languages" do... | -change over time, form dialects, intertwine with other languages -Fly Taal is an example of a pidgin formed from two creoles | 3 | |
| 2328742658 | Creoles and Dialects | -dialects affect how a creole develops -creoles often form on the base of earlier stages of a language -Example: the French creole of Mauritius came from a non-standard dialect of French | 4 | |
| 2328748875 | Default Settings of Human Language as Revealed by Creoles | -creoles reveal that the natural word order is subject-verb-object (this happens regardless of the order of the native language) -Example: Berbice Dutch in Guyana has this pattern despite how both Dutch and Ijo place their verbs at the end of the sentence -we also find that particles are placed before the verb --> non-creoles tend to stray from this, such as in Standard English suffixes | 5 | |
| 2328763194 | Tok Pisin History | -name comes from "talk business" -creole spoken in PNG, which become the lingua franca -began with English colonization in the 1700s -aborigines developed a pidgin English to use during trade that expanded into a full human language -a common language among 800 other languages | 6 | |
| 2328770615 | Tok Pisin Grammar/Vocab | -meri = woman, comes from the specific name "Mary" (example of semantic shift) -hevi = heavy, sad (example of shades of meaning) ARTICLES -wanpela = "a" comes from "one fellow" -dispela = "this" comes from "this fellow" HELPING VERBS -i stap = present progressive -bin = been -pinis = finished -bai = future (by and by) -save = continuing action *PNG languages don't have [f] so substitute it with [p] | 7 | |
| 2328780700 | Gullah | -"sea island creole" spoken on the Islands off South Carolina and Georgia -English + Jamaican + West African languages -spoken by descendants of slaves -there is a Gullah Bible published by the American Bible Society | 8 | |
| 2328800620 | Degrees of Creolization... | -field working slaves spoke a reduced pidgin -artisan slaves spoke a creole -slaves plantation homes has a more developed "semicreole" -the most privileged slaves spoke Standard English | 9 | |
| 2328811439 | Shaved Languages | -frequent contact with non-native speakers -trimming away some of the more arbitrary aspects of language | 10 | |
| 2328814441 | Shaved Fula | -West African lingua franca -spoken as a second language from Senegal to Cameroon -Fula has sixteen gendered articles that are ignored by nonnative speakers | 11 | |
| 2328819336 | Shaved Swahili | -spoken by small East African communities -5-10 million native speakers, but spoken by a total of 80 million people -trade language with Arabs and Africans -shaved language, but NOT a pidgin or a creole -it is "streamlined" and less complex that other Bantu languages --> doesn't have tones and has fewer irregular forms | 12 | |
| 2328875499 | Language and Function - Unnecessary Grammar | -unnecessary grammar does NOT reflect culture -however, culture can create grammar sometimes (ex: Japanese hierarchical language) -most frill is just the "natural overzealousness of language" | 13 | |
| 2328886521 | A Little Bit of "Dammit" in Every Language | -verb endings are unnecessary --> Spanish verb endings -irregular verb forms are unnecessary --> German stem changes, Spanish irregular verbs -reflexive verbs | 14 | |
| 2328908470 | Language Frills: Inflections | -inflections (noun and verb endings) develop through creeping grammaticalization -origin of Latin tenses = habeo (I have) eroded and rebracketed into -bo ending (I will) --> an independent word became a piece of grammar -example: amabo = I will love | 15 | |
| 2328911462 | Language Frills: Tones | -the meaning of words can change based on pitch -4 main tones in Mandarin, 6 tones in Cantonese -Thai, Vietnamese and many African and Native American languages -languages become tonal when sounds erode --> endings wear off ("shitty little monkey" example) | 16 | |
| 2328953979 | Language Frills: Evidential Markers | -suffixes and prefixes -In the language of Makah the suffixes indicate the source of information -a verb must include where you got the information -suffixes are grammaticalizations that began as separate, independent verbs | 17 | |
| 2328967152 | Language Frills: To Have | -some languages distinguish two kinds of having -alienable = things you can loose and still be you -inalienable = things you cannot lose and still be you | 18 | |
| 2329011135 | Linguist Frills: Articles | -definite (the), indefinite (a(n)) -some languages have neither (balto-slavic, Latin) -only 1/5 languages have both (English is in the small minority) -they are somewhat ineficient | 19 | |
| 2328939297 | Simple Past vs. Past Perfect | -English distinguishes between two "past tenses" -simple past = event is completed and done -present perfect = event has begun in the past but may continue -Germanic and Romance languages have this distinction but most others do not (ex: Russian) | 20 | |
| 2328925276 | Maori | -has noun classes for alienable (body parts) and inalienable possessions (small portable objects) -they are very weird and each category contains random things | 21 |