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 Coinage

a trade name for a product becomes a name used to refer to all the products of this kind, no matter the manufacturer/brand, e.g.

 Eponym

a name of a person / place becomes a general name for an invention (created or copyrighted by, or associated with, this person / created in this place), e.g. teddy bear, sandwich, hoover, jeans, denim, wellington boots

 Borrowing

taking over a word from another language like food

 Loan translation

a specific kind of borrowing which involves full phrases and not single words; each word in the phrase is translated into the target language to fit its syntax e.g. how come (literal translation from Dutch hoekom) or superman (from German Übermensch)

 Compounds

a very productive and economical way of making new words,

 Blending

The beginning of word 1 + the ending of word 2 = a new word, e.g.

 Clipping

Shortening a longer word to 1

 Backformation

shortening a word + changing the part of speech by adding an ending

 Conversion

a word is used as a different part of speech

 Acronyms

DIY, DUI, laser, CIA, MS, OCD, RSVP, a set of words

 Derivation

Forming new words, or new parts of speech, by adding affixes, divided into prefixes, suffixes and infixes

 Displacement

The ability to talk / write about anything which exceeds the ‘here and now’ or, in other words, our immediate environment

 Reflexivity

we can use language to talk (or write) about language itself

 Informative signals

not intentional, involuntary & not verbalised in any way (appearance, way of dressing, the manner of speaking, tone of voice, reflexes, physical reactions)

 Communicative signals

intentional and typically with the use of language involved, we want the addressee to know we are communicating sth (higher level)

 Arbitrariness

symbolic connection between the way a word is written and what it represents, or between the form and the meaning

 Productivity

finite number of linguistic symbols (sounds)  however, an infinite number of words possible

 Cultural transmission

there is probably a language gene that we are equipped with (see previous presentation, discussion on the innateness hypothesis) but it allows us to acquire a language

 Duality(Double articulation)

Human languages are organized at two levels at the same time

 Cuneiform writing

The oldest writing system, ca. 5,000 BC, the languages recorded in cuneiform  Sumerian + Accadian (the best known),

 Rebus writing

an attempt at representing sounds in a language via writing, i.e. ndspeak2u / back@ya

 Syllabic writing

writing system which employs a set of symbols each of which represents the pronunciation of one syllable, the Cherokee script, the first nation to come to use a syllabic writing system in 100%  the Phoenicians

 Broca’s area

damage to this region of the brain means extreme difficulty in speech production (slow, laboured speech with a lot of pauses), while language comprehension was unaffected

 Wernicke’s area

damage to this region of the brain means heavily impaired language comprehnsion (speech was unaffected and fluent but generally incomprehensible and incoherent, a lot of vacuous phrases, roundabout expressions, no ‘essence’)

 The motor cortex ¬

the muscles of the articulatory organs (jaw, tongue, larynx, face)

The arcuate fasciculus

damage to the arcuate fasciculus  problems with transferring information (language input) between Broca’s area and Wernicke’s area

 malapropisms

tip of the tongue phenomenon: we feel that the word we want to utter is ‘almost here’

 slip of the tongue(spoonerisms)

a switch/reversal of (usually initial) sounds in two words in a phrase (e.g. to shake a tower in lieu of to take a shower) or two whole words in a phrase (e.g. to gap a bridge in lieu of to bridge a gap)

 Slips of the ear

sounds are heard and identified, but we organize them in a different way, Intended meaning: Please bring me a grey tape

 The innateness hypothesis

we have a language gene and our brain has a capacity which helps us to acquire a language

 Overgeneralization

applying a regular grammatical rule in an irregular situation (I runned / he hitted / you buyed)

 overextension

using a word to refer to more objects than is usual in the language, i.e. papa (daddy)  all the men the child sees

agent

entity that performs the action

theme

entity involved

instrument

an entity used by another entity to perform an action

experiencer

an entity who has a feeling, perception or state

location

where something occurs

the source

where an action starts

the goal

the goal

 Hyponymy

‘hierarchies’ of words from most general to most specific

 Homophones

two or more different (written) forms with the same pronunciation (bare/bear, meat/meet, flour/flower, pail/pale, right/write, sew/so etc.), different spellings and different meanings

 Homonyms

one form (written or spoken) has two or more unrelated meanings (same spelling, same pronunciations, different meanings), i.e.

 Polysemy

two or more word swith the same form + related meanings

 Metonymy

a kind of substitution where the concept is replaced by:

 Prototypes

How every person perceives the most typical representative of a category (appearance, features, proportions), or the most prominent / characteristic member of said category