LINGUIST 1A03 Study Guide - Midterm Guide: Canadian English, Double Articulation, Syllabic Consonant

• School: McMaster University
• Department: Linguistics
• Course: LINGUIST 1A03
• Professor: Catherine Anderson

Document Summary

What do we know when we know a language: how to make sounds, what the words sound like, how to create different word forms, how to combine words into sentences, what words and sentences mean. What do we know when we know a language: what"s polite/ impolite in a variety of situations, what things mean, how to write. Prescriptive vs descriptive if you see words like, "properly", "error", "correct", that"s a clue that you"re looking at a prescription for how language users should behave. And your mental grammar tells you that a word can end in [rp] but not in [pr]. Phonology: how the sounds of a language are organized in the mind. Phonetics: the physical properties of speech sounds and how humans produce them. Syntax: the principles for combining words to form sentences. Semantics: how the meanings of words and sentences are organized in the mind. What do linguists study: studying linguistics isn"t usually about social standards of "correctness".