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Only human beings have a _______

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symbolic language

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1) Language

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the system of arbitrary vocal symbols we use to encode our experience of the world.

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There are around ______ and ______ languages

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3,000-10,000

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Human language is a __________ __________

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biocultural phenomenon

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Language is a primary interest to anthropologists for three reasons:

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- Communicate in the field - Object of study in its own right - What it reveals about cultures

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First, let's look at ____________. Anthropologists do their fieldwork among people whose language is ______ than theirs.

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communication different

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Second, let's look at the _________in its own right. Anthropologists can transcribe or______a speech and thus lift it out of its cultural context to be analyzed on its own.

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object of study tape record

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2) Linguistics

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the scientific study of language

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Third, let's look at what it _________. All people use language to ______ their experience, to ____ their understanding of the world and of themselves, and to ____ one another interactively.

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reveals about culture encode structure engage

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Language with a capital L was viewed as an ________ belonging to the human species as a whole, not to be confused with the specific languages of concrete groups of people.

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abstract property

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It remains useful, however, to distinguish _____ from speech and ________. We usually think of spoken language (______) when we use the term language, but English can be communicated in writing Morse code, or __________ to name just three nonspoken media.

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language communication speech American Sign Language

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Human communication

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the transfer of information from one person to another (can be verbal or not)

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Native speakers of a language share not just vocabulary and grammar but also a number of ______ about how to speak that may not be shared by speakers of a different language. (EX: Students learning new language, word for word translation does not work)(EX: English, "I am full". French. "I am pregnant")

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assumptions

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Studying a second language is ____ a matter of learning new labels for old objects, than it is of learning how to identify___objects that go with new labels.

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less new

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Language, like the rest of culture, is a product of ______to come to terms with _____. They generally have larger _______ for the aspects of life that is most important to them. (EX: The Aymara who live in the Andes of South America, have hundreds of words for the many varieties of potatoes they grow)(EX: Contrast Americans with words for computers)

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human attempts experience vocabularies

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However, despite the differences in vocabulary and grammar, all languages studied by linguistics prove to be _____. There is no such thing as a ______ human language.

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equally complex primitive

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Traditionally, languages are associated with concrete groups of people called _______

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speech communities

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Speech communities

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concrete groups of people

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Consequently there is a tension in language between ______ and _______. There are many ways to communicate our experiences, and there is no absolute standard for favoring one way over another. Some things that are easy to say in one language are ____ to say in another. (EX: English we use a, an , the before nouns, but that rule isn't found in all languages)

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diversity and commonality hard

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Likewise, the verb ____, called the ____ by linguists, is not found in all languages.

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to be copula

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1966: Charles Hockett listed ___different design features of human language that set it apart from other forms of ____ communication.

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16 animal

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3) Design Features

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Those characteristics of language that, when taken together, differentiate it from other known animal communication systems.

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Six of these design features seem helpful in defining what makes human language distinctive: _____, _____, ____, _____, _____, ____

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openness, displacement, arbitrariness, duality of patterning, semanticity, and prevarication

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_____, probably most important feature, emphasizes that human language is _____. Also defined as "the ability to understand the same thing from different points of view" - The importance of openness for human verbal communication is striking when we compare for example, ____ human language to the ___communication systems (or call systems) of monkeys and apes. This point is stressed in the work of _____ anthropologists who point out that modern human beings still possess a set of six calls: laughing, sobbing, screaming with fright, crying with pain, groaning and sighing.

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Openness creative Spoken vocal biological

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Openness

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the ability to understand the same thing from different points of view

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Calls, together with gestures and the changes in speech rhythm, volume, and tonality that linguists call ______, all appear to have coevolved alongside ______

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speech prosody symbolic language

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The call systems of nonhuman primates are said to be _____ when compared to open human languages. These closed call systems also lack ______ (our human ability to talk about absent or nonexistent objects and past or future events as easily as we discuss our immediate situations)

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closed displacement

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Displacement

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our human ability to talk about absent or nonexistent objects and past or future events as easily as we discuss our immediate situations

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Closed call systems also lack _______ (the absence of any obligatory link between sound and meaning in language)(EX: Boy in English in other languages means many) - One aspect of linguistic creativity is the ____, creative production of new links between sounds and meanings. Thus, arbitrariness is the ____of openness. - Arbitrariness is evident in the design feature of language that is called ______(human language is patterned on two different levels: sound and meaning).

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arbitrariness free flip side duality of patterning

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Arbitrariness

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the absence of any obligatory link between sound and meaning in language (EX: Boy in English in other languages means many)

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Duality of patterning

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human language is patterned on two different levels: sound and meaning

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- The first level is a small set of meaningless sounds that characterize any particular language are not random but systematically patterned (______) - The second level is where grammar puts the sound units together according to an entirely different set of rules: The resulting sound clusters are the smallest meaning bearing units of the language, called (______)

answer

phonemes morphemes

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Phonemes

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small set of meaningless sounds that characterize any particular language are not random but systematically patterned

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Morphemes

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grammar puts the sound units together according to an entirely different set of rules: The resulting sound clusters are the smallest meaning bearing units of the language

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Semanticity

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(the association of linguistic signals with aspects of the social, cultural, and physical world of a speech community) (EX: Use of the words ape and monkey if you are specialized in that knowledge VS general)

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The most striking consequence of linguistic openness is _______ (to make statements or ask questions that violate convention)(linguistic messages can be false and they can be meaningless)(EX: Colorless green ideas sleep furiously)

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prevarication

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Prevarication

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(to make statements or ask questions that violate convention)(linguistic messages can be false and they can be meaningless)(EX: Colorless green ideas sleep furiously)

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4) Linguistic competence

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a term coined by linguist Noam Chomsky to refer to the mastery of adult grammar

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5) Communicative competence

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a term coined by anthropological linguist Dell Hymes to refer to the mastery of adult rules for socially and culturally appropriate speech.

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Anthropologists are powerfully aware of the______of context on what people choose to say. (EX: Americans with "you" and French with "you" as tu or vous)

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influence

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______ of different languages often describe the same situations in different ways.

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Grammars

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6) Linguistic relativity principle (Sapir-Whorf hypothesis)

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a position, associated with Edward Sapir and Benjamin Whorf, that asserts that language has the power to shape the way people see the world.

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The so-called strong version of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is also known as ________(a totalizing of view of language that reduces patterns of thought and culture to the patterns of the grammar of the language we speak)(EX: Words male and female indicate they are different)

answer

linguistic determination

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Linguistic determination

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a totalizing of view of language that reduces patterns of thought and culture to the patterns of the grammar of the language we speak)(EX: Words male and female indicate they are different)

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Problems with linguistic determinism - Languages that only have ___pronouns for males and females - If language determined ____, we wouldn't be able to translate or learn another - Every language provides its native speakers with _____ ways of describing the world - One language is the _____ rather than the rule (monolinguals)

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1/3rd thought alternative exception

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7) Grammar

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a set of rules that aim to describe fully the patterns of linguistic usage observed by members of a particular speech community

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8) Phonology

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the study of the sounds of language

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Linguistic study involves a search for patterns in the way speakers use language. The most widely acknowledged components of language are ______, ______, _______, ________, ________

answer

phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics.

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Phones

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The actual sounds that come out of our mouths

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Phoneme

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Each class of functionally equivalent sounds

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Allophones

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Variant phones within each class

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Part of a phonologist's job is to ____ ____possible arrangements of speech organs and ____ individual languages. American English only uses ___ sounds.

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map out examine 38

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9) Morphology

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In linguistics, the study of the minimal units of meaning in a language (The study of how words are put together)

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What is a ____? English speakers tend to think of words as ________of sentences and of sentences as ______ ____ _____. (EX: Words are not all alike because some cannot be broken down into smaller pieces: EX: Book, boo is a word, but k is not) To make sense of the structure of languages, linguists needed a concept that could refer to ______and not be ______ into words. This led to the development of _____ ("the minimal units of meaning in a language")

answer

word building blocks strings of words both words broken down morphemes

question

10) Syntax

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the study of sentence structure

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1950's Noam _____ showed that sentence structures had properties that could ____ be explained by the rules of morphemes alone.

answer

Chomsky not

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Structural ambiguity

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smoking grass means trouble (weed or fire). We can explain this if we focus on the overall structure of the sentence in which the word is found, not the structure of the word itself

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11) Semantics

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The study of meaning

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Semantics was _____ for years because meaning is an ______ term

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avoided ambiguous

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Synonymy

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(same meaning: old and aged)

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Homophony

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(same sound, different meaning) (would, wood)

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Antonym

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(opposite meaning) (tall and short)

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They also defined words in terms of ______ (what they referred to in the "real world".) This means that meaning must be constructed in the face _____.

answer

denotation ambiguity

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Denotation

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what they referred to in the "real world

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Connotations

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(additional meanings that derive from the typical contexts in which they are used in everyday speech)

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12) Pragmatics

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the study of language in the context of use

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Michael Silverstein was one of the first to argue "that the referential meaning of certain expressions in language cannot be determined unless we go_____the boundaries of a sentence and place the expressions in a wider context of use. Two kinds of context must be considered: ____ and ___

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beyond linguistic and nonlinguistic

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Linguistic context

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(the other words, expressions, and sentences that surround the expression whose meaning we are trying to determine) (EX: I really liked it)

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Nonlinguistic context

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(objects and activities that are present in the situation of speech at the same time we are speaking) (EX: Who is that standing by the door?)

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By forcing analysts to go beyond syntax and semantics, pragmatics directs out attention to_______.

answer

discourse

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13) Discourse

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a stretch of speech longer than a sentence united by a common theme

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14) Ethnopragmatics

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a study of language use that relies on ethnography to illuminate the ways in which speech is both constituted by and constitutive of social interaction

question

Such a study focuses on ____ (human activity in which the rules of grammar, cultural values, and physical action are all conjoined) Phonemes, morphemes, syntax and semantics are viewed as ______

answer

practice linguistic resources

question

practice

answer

human activity in which the rules of grammar, cultural values, and physical action are all conjoined

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Mutually engaged people shape ______that involve spoken language but also include values and shared habitual knowledge that may never be put into words.

answer

communicative practices

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Discourse genre

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Each set of linguistic habits is called a

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Linguistic knowledge is characterized by _____

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Hetroglossia

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Hetroglossia

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the normal condition of linguistic knowledge in any society with internal divisions

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One of the most obvious ways that context influences speech is when speakers ____ their words for a particular audience (EX: Advertisement)

answer

tailor

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15) Pidgin

answer

language with no native speakers that develops in a single generation between members of communities that possess distinct native languages.

question

The study of pidgin is the study of the _____ _____of new meaning, the production of a new whole (pidgin language) that is different from and reducible to neither of the languages that gave birth to it.

answer

radical negotiation

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The shape of a pidgin reflects the ____ in which is arises- generally one of ______or commercial domination.

answer

context colonial conquest

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Pidgins are traditionally defined as reduced languages that have no native speakers. When speakers of a pidgin language pass that language on to a new generation, linguists refer to the language as ____.

answer

creole

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Moreover, ______can take place at any time after a pidgin forms, creoles can exist without having been preceded by pidgins, pidgins remain pidgins for long periods and undergo linguistic change without acquiring native speakers, and pidgin and creole varieties of the same language can _____ in the same society.

answer

creolization coexist

question

Creolization

answer

when pidgin speakers find themselves in new social contexts requiring a new language for all the practical activities of everyday life.

question

Pidgins and creoles are very _____, but often viewed as _____ and inferior languages. (EX: African Americans) _______(making value judgements about other people's speech in a context of dominance and subordination.)

answer

complex defective Linguistic inequality

question

Linguistic inequality

answer

making value judgements about other people's speech in a context of dominance and subordination

question

What are the controversies surrounding the language habits of African Americans? - Case of African children with a supposed "______" as opposed to Eastern Americans (Found that it was not defective, and they used sophisticated language) - ____ to them represented both the oppression of slavery and the resistance to that oppression

answer

linguistic deprivation AAE

question

16) Language ideology

answer

a marker of struggles between social groups with different interests, revealed in what people say and how they say it (ways of representing the intersection between social forms and forms of talk)

question

The key element of African American language ideology is the importance of ______. (EX: with slavery when speaking to whites). They also developed a _____ based on indirectness that could only be fully enacted before an audience that included both people who had been socialized within the African American setting and outsiders who had not. (EX: when asking why, they answered where)

answer

indirectness counterlanguage

question

What are the controversies surrounding the habits of women and men? Gender-based differences in linguistic habits are not ______. When studied, the speech between genders was ____. (Ritual speech (elaborate metaphors in poetic form), and some varieties of it are so demanding that the men and women were sometimes paid for performing) EX: Men were to talk to spirits in this, while women were to cause emotion and never paid.

answer

universal different

question

17) Language revitalization

answer

attempts by linguists and activists to preserve or revive languages with few native speakers that appear to be on the verge of extinction.

question

The threats to these languages range widely as well. They include the spread of ____ languages like English and the marginalization of one ____ in favor of a neighboring dialect. They also include support for a "national" sign language...

answer

"world" dialect

question

How are language and truth connected? Metaphor in Azande Central Africa is called ___ in which can be used to disguise a speech that might be taken wrong. Sanza adds greatly to the difficulties of anthropological ____. Human language is an ____and as long as human history continues, new forms will be created and old forms will continue to be put to new use.

answer

sanza inquiry open system

Cultural Anthropology Chapter 5- Language – Flashcards

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