Flashcards
Words & Meaning
Cards in this deck (39)
- 1What is lexical cohesion?A cohesive device used by the author to create cohesion within a text. Choice of vocabulary.
- 2What is substitution?A cohesive device used to stop repetition. Replacing a word with a more general noun, eg. want an ice-cream? no I don't like IT
what kind would you like? the chocolate one - 3What is a referent?Referents are cohesive devices, words that refer to something else. They can be anaphoric (referring back to), cataphoric (referring to something that will be explained later) or exophoric (referring to something out of context).
- 4What is ellipsis?Ellipsis is a cohesive device which refers to the practice of omitting words that are not necessary.
e.g How is your grandmother feeling? Alright thanks! (my grandmother is feeling = omitted) - 5What is a lexeme?A lexeme is a word that can have many variants. It is often the 'headword' in the dictionary. An example is SING, variants are SUNG and SANG.
- 6What is a hyponym?A hyponym is a word that is a subset, or type of a hypERnym.
e.g A spaniel is a type of dog - 7What is a cognate?Cognates are words with the same linguistic derivation that take the same form.
e.g Pater, Father & Vater
Double cognates are words in the same language with the same 'foreign' root eg. skirt and shirt. - 8What is a collocate?Collocates are words that are used together with a frequency that is not down to chance. Words that 'go' together.
e.g Fish & Chips! - 9What is a words denotation?Denotation is the literal meaning of a word. Or the 'real world' application of the word. It does not include the evaluative load of the word.
e.g A poodle = a dog with certain hair and other traits - 10What is a words connotation?Connotation is a words figurative meaning. This includes evaluative load, and the feeling it evokes.
e.g A poodle = a fancy dog owned by older women - 11What is an allomorph?An allomorph is a 'morph' of a lexeme. Meaning doesn't change but it's spelt differently - e.g plant & plantS - not planted.
- 12AntonymA word that is 'opposite' in lexical relation to another. These can be scalar, so 'more' or 'less' something, contradictory which is exclusive, eg dead or alive NEVER both or relational, pairs that aren't exclusive, eg. doctor and patient
- 13SynonymThe meaning relation of sameness or similarity
- 14MeronymA meronym is a part of it's superordinate word. e.g heel to foot
- 15HomonymTwo or more lexeme with the same spelling and pronunciation but with different meanings
- 16HomographsTwo or more words with the same spelling, but different meanings and pronunciation
- 17HomophoneWords that sound the same, but are spelt differently and mean different things. e.g steal, steel, there, their
- 18What is a metonym?When something is given a name substitute that is because of an attribute or adjunt. e.g suit for lawyer, crown for monarchy
- 19IdiomAn idiom is a set of words that, taken together, have a specific meaning - but it is not possible to work out the meaning without 'knowing it' eg. kick the bucket = dead
- 20RegisterRegister is the formality of language choice based on social or cultural appropriacy
- 21What is the difference between diachronic and synchronic variation?Variation in language can happen over time, or at a specific point in time. Diachronic variation is generational, synchronic is something happening at that time e.g a lexical innovation such as Google
- 22What is semantic prosody?The overall 'feeling' of a text, derived from the associative, emotional or evaluative aspects of lexical choice.
- 23What is amelioration?Amelioration is the positive change in meaning over time.
- 24Semantic ShiftIs the change in meaning of a lexical item over time.
- 25What are the three appraisal types?Affect, Judgment, Appreciation
- 26How can lexis indicate group membership?Lexis can identify you as a part of a specific social group. Jargon!
- Geographical
- Gender
- Class
- Age
- Ethnicity
- Vocation - 27English is made up of lots of different varieties - which make up 'World Standard English'.Just a fact, yo.
- 28How do languages become the most dominant? e.g American English- Popular Culture
- Invasion
- Language teaching
- Language of information
- Weight of numbers
- Cultural prestige - 29What causes language to change?- Migration
- Re-assignment
- Borrowing local words
- Slang dominance
- Diachronic/Synchronic variation
- Neologisms - 30When a word is 'assimilated' into the language what does that mean?This means that, though it may be a historically geo/socio-specific word, it has been brought in and 'normalised' to the whole language - often replacing many regional variants as the 'norm' . e.g crumpet (Welsh) 'gull' (Cornish)
- 31Name some lexical variation sudies to do with genderLakoff (1973) found that women used more tags and hedges, interrupted less but spoke more. BUT this was all intuition/observation no empirical data.
Holmes (1992) found that hedging wasn't through lack of knowledge but was used to facilitate conversation and soften ftas - 32There are certain cultural norms with gendered-speech. Inter and intragender talk is different. e.g the use of specific terms of endearment - a man would never call a girl who wasn't his girlfriend 'babe', but girls use it for each other all the time?Just info
- 33Orthographic definition of a word: a string of letters bounded by a space at each end or a string of letters bounded by a space or punctuation mark at each end What are the problems with this?Not true for all languages (e.g Chinese)
Will not vs cannot, all right vs alright, pigeon hole vs pigeonhole
& non-literate cultures can still isolate words in speech - 34The phonological definition of a word is one main stress and bound by pauses. eg blackbird is one word, black bird is two What are the problems with this?Some phrases have only one stress syllable but are not all one word, e.g The White House
Words such as if, but and them have no stress
Where do we put the boundaries on regular collocates? an ewt, or a newt? - 35Semantic definition of a 'word' is 'the smallest meaningful form that can occur in isolation' What are the problems with this approach?Compounds and idioms need two 'words' for one unit of meaning
Some bound morphemes and affixes carry meaning eg. mis/less/dis
Some words don't have meaning - eg. if - 36To define words we distinguish between words with semantic or textual load We also recognise smaller sections of words, eg morphemes free/bound Refer to lexeme rather than wordJust info
- 37Semantic Shift can happen how: 7 types1. Narrowing of meaning
2. Broadening of meaning
3. Connotation can change - perjoration (-ve) or amelioration (+ve)
4. Metonymy
5. Metaphor for something else
6. Ellipsis, something can be left out
7. Folk etymology can come back - 38Words can also lose their meaning through euphemism shift and clicheJust info
- 39Why is metonymy interesting to linguists?Because it shows which aspects of the original 'thing' are most important to the speaker and shows how they classify things in their mental lexicon
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- Flashcards on Words & Meaning, created by Rowan Whittington on 02/08/2014.
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- Rowan Whittington
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