ling 301 exam 1 Q’s and Ans

linguistic competence - our hidden knowledge of language linguistic performance - the way people produce and comprehend language performance errors - mistakes made in everyday speaking e.g. inability to remember a word, mispronunciation, jumbling words in a sentence phonetics - ability to distinguish speech sounds from other sounds phonology - interpretation of speech sounds in a particular language; deals with phonemes (smallest unit of sound) morphology - ability to break down words into smaller parts that have a particular meaning or function syntax - how words combine to form phrases, sentences grammatical - word order follows the pattern of how a native speaker would phrase something ungrammatical - word order follows the pattern of how a native speaker would phrase something, doesn't make sense semantics - ability to determine meanings of sentences pragmatics - ability to use context in order to interpret an utterance's meaning lexicon - all the words you know, what functions they serve, what they refer to, how they are pronounced, & how they are related to other words mental grammar - contains all of the rules that an individual speaker uses to produce and comprehend utterances grammar - a language system; set of all the elements and rules that make up a language language acquisition - the process of how children go about constructing mental grammars of their native languages language variation - difference/disconnect between mental grammars descriptive grammars - rules that someone has deduced based on observing speakers' linguistic performance prescriptive grammar - socially embedded notion of the "correct" or "proper" ways to use a language mode of communication - means by which messages are transmitted and received semanticity - all signals in a communication system have a meaning or function pragmatic function - communication systems must serve some useful purpose interchangeability - ability of individuals to both transmit and receive messages cultural transmission - aspects of language we can acquire only through communicative interaction with other users of the system arbitrariness - in a linguistic sign, the fact the meaning is not in any way predictable from the form; nor is the form dictated by the meaning linguistic sign - combination of form and meaning