Show Menu
Cheatography
  1. Home >
  2. Education >

Intro to Linguistics Cheat Sheet (DRAFT) by

Intro to Linguistics notes

This is a draft cheat sheet. It is a work in progress and is not finished yet.

Overview

Defini­tion:
Lingui­stics is the scientific study of language and its structure. It involves analyzing language form, meaning, and context. The field seeks to understand the nature of language and how it functions in commun­ica­tion.
Key Areas of Study:
Phonetics: The study of speech sounds.
 
Phonology: The study of the sound system of languages.
 
Morpho­logy: The study of the structure and formation of words.
 
Syntax: The study of sentence structure and grammar.
 
Semantics: The study of meaning.
 
Pragma­tics: The study of language use in context.

Phonetics and Phonology

Phonetics:
Articu­latory Phonetics: Focuses on how speech sounds are produced by the human vocal tract. Key concepts include:
 
Place of Articu­lation: Where in the vocal tract the airflow restri­ction occurs (e.g., bilabial, dental, velar).
 
Manner of Articu­lation: How the airflow is restricted (e.g., stops, fricat­ives, nasals).
 
Voicing: Whether the vocal cords vibrate (voiced vs. voiceless sounds).
 
Acoustic Phonetics: Analyzes the physical properties of speech sounds, such as frequency, amplitude, and duration.
 
Auditory Phonetics: Studies how speech sounds are perceived by the ear and processed by the brain.
Phonology:
Phonemes: The basic sound units in a language that can distin­guish words (e.g., /p/ and /b/ in "­pat­" vs. "­bat­").
 
Alloph­ones: Variations of a phoneme that do not change meaning (e.g., aspirated vs. non-as­pirated /p/ in "­pat­" and "­spa­t").
 
Phonol­ogical Processes: Rules that govern how phonemes are realized in different contexts (e.g., assimi­lation, elision).

Morphology

Morphemes:
Free Morphemes: Morphemes that can stand alone as words (e.g., "­boo­k," "­run­").
 
Bound Morphemes: Morphemes that must attach to other morphemes to convey meaning (e.g., prefixes like "­un-­" or suffixes like "­-in­g").
Types of Morpho­logy:
Deriva­tional Morpho­logy: The process of creating new words by adding affixes (e.g., "­hap­py" to "­hap­pin­ess­").
 
Inflec­tional Morpho­logy: The modifi­cation of a word to express different gramma­tical categories (e.g., verb tense, plural­iza­tion).
Morpho­logical Typology:
Isolating Languages: Languages with little to no morpho­logical change (e.g., Mandarin Chinese).
 
Agglut­inating Languages: Languages with a lot of affixes that are added in a string (e.g., Turkish).
 
Fusional Languages: Languages where affixes express multiple gramma­tical meanings simult­ane­ously (e.g., Spanish).
 
Polysy­nthetic Languages: Languages where words can be very complex and consist of many morphemes (e.g., Inuit).

Syntax

Sentence Structure:
Phrase Structure: How sentences are organized into phrases (e.g., noun phrases, verb phrases).
 
Syntactic Catego­ries: The roles that words play in sentences (e.g., nouns, verbs, adject­ives).
 
Sentence Types: Different sentence structures such as declar­ative, interr­oga­tive, impera­tive, and exclam­atory.
Syntactic Theories:
Generative Grammar: A theory developed by Noam Chomsky focusing on the innate structures underlying language (e.g., Universal Grammar).
 
Transf­orm­ational Grammar: Examines how different sentence structures can be derived from a common underlying structure (e.g., "John is eating­" vs. "Is John eating­?").
 
Dependency Grammar: Focuses on the relati­onships between words in a sentence rather than phrase struct­ures.
 

Semantics

Meaning:
Lexical Semantics: The study of word meanings and their relati­onships (e.g., synonyms, antonyms).
 
Compos­itional Semantics: How word meanings combine to form the meanings of sentences.
Semantic Theories:
Truth-­Con­dit­ional Semantics: Assesses meaning based on the conditions under which a sentence is true or false.
 
Frame Semantics: Examines how language represents knowledge about the world through conceptual structures (frames).
Semantic Roles:
Agent: The doer of an action (e.g., "The cat" in "The cat chased the mouse").
 
Theme: The entity that is affected by the action (e.g., "the mouse" in "The cat chased the mouse").
 
Goal: The endpoint of an action (e.g., "to the store" in "He went to the store").

Pragmatics

Context and Usage:
Speech Acts: How utterances function as actions (e.g., requests, commands, promises).
 
Deixis: Words and phrases that require context to interpret (e.g., "­thi­s," "­tha­t," "­her­e," "­the­re").
Pragmatic Theories:
Grice’s Maxims: Principles for effective commun­ica­tion, including quantity, quality, relation, and manner.
 
Politeness Theory: How speakers manage social relati­onships and politeness (e.g., Brown and Levinson’s strate­gies).
Implic­ature:
Conver­sat­ional Implic­ature: Indirect meanings or implic­ations derived from context (e.g., "Can you pass the salt?" implying "­Please pass the salt").

Sociol­ing­uistics

Language Variation:
Dialect: Regional or social variations in language.
 
Sociolect: Variations based on social factors such as class, age, or occupa­tion.
Language Change:
Historical Lingui­stics: The study of how languages change over time.
 
Language Contact: How languages influence each other through contact (e.g., borrowing, code-s­wit­ching).
Language and Identity:
Language Attitudes: Beliefs and percep­tions about different languages and dialects.
 
Language and Power: How language reflects and influences social hierar­chies and power dynamics.

Psycho­lin­gui­stics

Language Acquis­ition:
First Language Acquis­ition: How infants acquire their native langua­ge(s) (e.g., stages of language develo­pment).
 
Second Language Acquis­ition: How indivi­duals learn additional languages beyond their native one.
Language Proces­sing:
Sentence Proces­sing: How the brain interprets and unders­tands sentences in real-time.
 
Speech Produc­tion: How language is produced and articu­lated in spoken commun­ica­tion.
Neurol­ing­uis­tics:
Brain and Language: The study of how language is repres­ented and processed in the brain (e.g., Broca’s area, Wernicke’s area).
 

Applied Lingui­stics

Language Teaching:
Language Pedagogy: Methods and practices for teaching languages (e.g., commun­icative language teaching, task-based learning).
 
Curriculum Develo­pment: Designing and organizing language learning materials and assess­ments.
Transl­ation and Interp­ret­ation:
Transl­ation Theory: Principles and methods for transl­ating texts between languages.
 
Interp­ret­ation: The process of conveying spoken language from one language to another in real-time.
Language Policy and Planning:
Language Policy: Decisions and regula­tions regarding language use and education (e.g., official languages, language rights).
 
Language Planning: Strategies for developing and implem­enting language policies.

Current Trends and Issues in Lingui­stics

Digital Lingui­stics:
Corpus Lingui­stics: Analyzing large collec­tions of texts (corpora) to study language patterns and usage.
 
Comput­ational Lingui­stics: Using computer algorithms to model and analyze language (e.g., natural language proces­sing, machine transl­ation).
Endangered Languages:
Language Preser­vation: Efforts to document and revitalize endangered languages.
 
Language Revita­liz­ation: Strategies to promote the use and transm­ission of endangered languages within commun­ities.
Global­ization and Language:
Language Contact: The impact of global­ization on language contact and change.
 
Lingua Franca: The role of languages like English in global commun­ication and trade.

Conclusion

The study of lingui­stics provides a compre­hensive unders­tanding of how language functions as a fundam­ental aspect of human cognition and commun­ication
By examining phonetics, phonology, morpho­logy, syntax, semantics, pragma­tics, sociol­ing­uis­tics, psycho­lin­gui­stics, and applied lingui­stics, scholars gain insights into the comple­xities of language structure, use, and develo­pment
As the field continues to evolve with techno­logical advanc­ements and global changes, lingui­stics remains essential for unders­tanding and navigating the rich tapestry of human language