ENGL212 Study Guide - Midterm Guide: Early Modern English, North American English, Language Contact
5 Dec 2014
School
Department
Course
Professor
Document Summary
Signifiers are transmitted in human language through speech and writing. Rules: pronunciation of sounds, way words are put together, how phrases/clauses/sentences are structured how meaning is created. Principles: how structures that rules create should be used. Linguistic rules: describe what people know about language, unconscious knowledge of language they possess. Pragmatics - why grammatical constructions have the structure they do. Prescriptivists - identify correct and incorrect usages of language and tell people how they should speak and write. Descriptivists - describe how language is used. Many linguists primarily concerned with developing theories that are competence based. Genetic system of classifying languages: groups languages into family trees. Typological system: focuses on language similarities and classifies languages in a way aligned with the notion of language universals. Synchronic: investigating language in its present form. Diachronic: examine the historical development of a language. Old english, middle english, early modern english, modern english, contemporary. English is one of approximated 6900 languages in the world.
