ENG 304 Chapter Notes - Chapter 1: Animal Communication, Proto-Language
ENG 304 Linguistics
Chapter 1: Study-Guide
• Language is best defined as a conventional system of signs that allows for the creative
communication of meaning.
• Signifier-linguistic form (the string of sounds)
• Signified-concept which the signifier refers (be that a real-world object or an abstract
idea)
• Linguistic competence-refers to a speaker’s knowledge or the grammatical rules that
govern his or her language
• Linguistic performance-speakers realization of those rules in his or her speech.
• Recursion-the capacity of language to embed an infinite number of elements into its
grammatical structures; the infinite creativity of human language is one feature
distinguishing it from other animal communication systems.
• Grammatical-refers to the sentences that conform to rules in grammar or usage books for
how we should write. Linguistics refers grammar to all language constructions that
conform to the systematic rules of language and are comprehensible to another speaker
(grammar).
• Linguistics-can be defined as the principled study of a language as a system. It
incorporates both scientific approaches to language as a system and a focus on a language
as a social phenomenon.
• Phonology-the study of sound systems.
• Phonetics-the description and classification of sounds more generally and the study of
their production and perception.
• Morphology-the study of how words form
• Morphemes-the smallest meaningful unit in language
• Phonemes-any of the perceptually distinct units found in a specified language that
distinguishes one word from another.
• Semantics-is the study of meaning the relationship between the linguistic signs and the
idea they represent.
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