ANTH 1031 Chapter Notes - Chapter 3: Phoneme, Arbitrariness, Linguistic Relativity
17 Mar 2017
School
Department
Course
Professor
Document Summary
Shared knowledge of sounds, words, meanings, and grammatical rules used to send and receive messages. All languages have properties that allow novel and complex messages to be communicated quickly, precisely, in several mediums, and even if the people or events under discussion are far away in space or time. Grammar: total system of linguistic knowledge that allows speakers of a language to send messages that communicate messages to hearers; unconscious and automatic. Dialects: variations in a single language based on factors such as region, subculture, ethnic identity, and socioeconomic class. Phonology: the study of the sound system of language. Phoneme: the smallest unit of sound that speakers unconsciously recognize as distinctive from other sounds; when one phoneme is substituted for another in a morpheme, the meaning of the morpheme alters. Tone languages: languages in which changing voice pitch within a word alters the meaning of the word; common throughout africa and eastern asia.
