LING 2P99 Study Guide - Midterm Guide: Soltyrei, Signify, Morpheme
30 Jun 2018
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● Language is the systematic and conventional use of sounds, signs or written symbols for
the purpose of communication or self-expression
● Literacy refers to visual modes of communication (reading and writing)
● Schema is a mental structure in which we store and organize everything we know about
people, places, objects or activities
○ Schemas are a collection of information called features
■ Ex the schema for a book includes handheld, printed pages, readable,
has a cover etc
■ Features include whos, whats, hows and whys
■ All concepts/schemas are related to other schemas (i.e our schema for a
book relies on our schema for a page and cover and words)
■ Schema is influenced by personal experience
● For example the schema for book would be different for a graphic
novel reader vs an audiobook listener vs e-book reader etc
● Spoken language domains
○ Phonology
■ English has 43 phonemes
■ Phonological awareness is ability to think and talk about groups of sounds
within a word
● Ex knowing rhymes, clapping syllables
■ Phonemic awareness is ability to tune into individual phonemes in a word
● Ex recognizing cat and car start with same /k/ sound
○ Semantics
■ Meaning involves more than capturing words, but interpreting them
● Because people have different experiences, meaning associated
to words change person to person
■ Acquire word meanings by developing schemas
○ Morphology
○ Syntax
■ Children use subject-verb sentences (“Daddy come”), subject-object
sentences (“daddy juice”) and verb-object sentences (“give cookie”)
■ Their questions are declarative sentences with rising intonation
■ They typically use sentences of 6-8 words in length by the time they enter
school
■ Miscues are mistakes made while reading due to anticipating a different
word
○ Pragmatics
■ Language use
■ Mechanics of conversation (i.e turn taking) and conversational styles (this
differs from person to person and from group to group)
● Halliday’s 7 Functions of Spoken Language (also work as functions for written language)
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○ Instrumental
■ Satisfies needs and wants
● Ex “Gimmie that!” or writing out a wish list
○ Regulatory
■ Controls others
● Ex “Stop that!” or list of classroom rules
○ Interactional
■ Creates interaction with others
● Ex “Anybody want to paint?” or party invitation
○ Personal
■ Expresses personal thoughts and opinions
● Ex “I like red” or journal entry
○ Heuristic
■ Seeks information
● Ex asking “why?” or survey
○ Imaginative
■ Creates imaginary worlds
● “This will be our airplane” or novel, movie script etc
○ Informative
■ Communicates information
● “This is a rectangle” or reports, newsletter etc
● Written language depends on the four systems of written language
○ Function
■ The goals of written language (Halliday’s 7 Functions of Spoken
Language)
■ Also, written language is used to express identity (i.e handwriting is one’s
own) and can make language and thinking permanent and portable (i.e
conveyed written information can be recorded and sent to people we’ve
never met)
○ Meaning
■ Children realize the written symbols they see having meaning (ex the sign
“Target” outside of the store Target says Target and refers to the place to
shop) before they even read or write
■ One difference between spoken and written language is that written
language makes more use of infrequent words in spoken language that
appear in newspapers etc and uses literary language (i.e once upon a
time) that is not found in spoken language
■ Meaning in spoken language is often assisted with gestures and facial
expressions, called contextualization clues, that written language doesn’t
have
● Conversations have context which aid in meaning even if the
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meaning is prescribed in the actual words
○ Ex A husband saying “I dropped bruno off at 9 this
morning” and wife replying “Ok, I will pick him up at 2”. This
convo has more meaning when you learn Bruno is the
couple’s dog and he goes to doggy day care every day for
a maximum of five hours, and the couple have previously
agreed to split responsibilities (with that context, you
experience the convo more like they did)
○ Forms
■ Visual and spatial aspects of written language, such as letters, words and
texts
■ This includes awareness of visual properties, spatial-directional properties
and organizational
■ Letters have curves and lines called letter features
■ Kids writing have conventional symbols while also unconventional but
letter-like symbols (mock letters that include lines and curves)
■ Kids have awareness about words (such as that they are seperated)
● Sometimes kids do not think spaces are enough to mark word
boundaries, so they use dashes etc to make it obvious
■ They also have knowledge of “thought-units” or a sentence
■ Kids gain knowledge of different text formats (a letter, poem, book etc)
and how they are organized (ex a letter has a greeting and a closing)
■Language about language refers to words like “letter” “word” “sentence”
and the understanding of and ability to use language about language is
called metalinguistic awareness
○ Meaning-form links
■ The way in which meaning is connected to written forms
● Ex sound-letter relationships (letter “b” related to sound /b/)
○ Complicated cuz one sound can be represented by many
letters and one letter can represent different sounds
■ Phonograms are combinations of letters that are
reliably associated with one pronunciation,
especially in certain word positions
● Ex “ban” “can” “fan” “tan” etc have
phonogram -an
○ Alphabetic principle applies to english, which states
sounds are systematically associated with written letters,
so the most notable meaning-form link is spelling
■ Orthography is the system in which word parts (phonemes) are
associated with individual or a combination of letters.
Spoken language Written language
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Document Summary
Language is the systematic and conventional use of sounds, signs or written symbols for the purpose of communication or self-expression. Literacy refers to visual modes of communication (reading and writing) Schema is a mental structure in which we store and organize everything we know about people, places, objects or activities. Schemas are a collection of information called features. Ex the schema for a book includes handheld, printed pages, readable, has a cover etc. Features include whos, whats, hows and whys. All concepts/schemas are related to other schemas (i. e our schema for a book relies on our schema for a page and cover and words) For example the schema for book would be different for a graphic novel reader vs an audiobook listener vs e-book reader etc. Phonological awareness is ability to think and talk about groups of sounds within a word. Phonemic awareness is ability to tune into individual phonemes in a word.
