LING 15 Study Guide - Final Guide: Trans-Cultural Diffusion, Redone, Relational Operator
Linguistics 15 Final Study Guide
Week 1: Intro/meaning in language
Understand the concept of symbols in language
➔Symbols: some physical object that represents a concept other than itself
◆Phonemes: sounds used to assemble words
◆Words: linguistic forms that have semantic meaning
◆Glyphs: written characters that represent phonemes, syllables, or whole words
Differentiate semantic, pragmatic, social/indexical, metaphorical, and cultural meaning
➔Meaning: interface between symbols and the (complete) set of information and
conceptual space that they map with
➔Semantic meaning: the basic meaning retrievable from expressions (words, phrases,
and sentences)
◆Must first be aware or the arbitrariness (nothing about the form of the word
indicates the meaning) before understanding the semantic meaning
◆Semantic vs. grammatical categorization
● Semantic → words each mean something different
○ Each with different semantic meaning
● Grammatical → certain words are treated differently grammatically
○Ex: spanish el vs. la
◆Not necessarily sex-based
◆Plural markers
○ Not differentiating the meaning just the grammatical difference
○ Formerly independent words reduce to prefixes or suffixes
◆-ir verbs vs -ar verbs in Spanish
● Indicate assignment to different categories
➔Pragmatic meaning: additional meaning that can be reconstructed from an expression
◆Intent of the statement comes from the semantics BUT the extra meaning is
conventional (social norms)
◆Ex: “Wow, that’s loud” (semantic) → “be quiet” (pragmatic)
➔Indexical meaning: the social meaning that can be found in expressions
◆Ex: “rainbow” will always have the same pragmatic and semantic meanings but it
can have different indexical meanings
● Indexical meaning varies across cultures
➔Metaphorical meaning: expressing some concept in terms of some other concept
➔Cultural meaning: language differs across cultures
◆Layers of pragmatic and indexical meaning differs
◆Cultures use metaphors differently
Week 6: The physics of speech
Waveforms
➔2-dimensional plot of air pressure over time
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◆Time x pressure
➔Vowels have regularity
➔Fricatives are chaotic = turbulence = energy at a high frequency
◆Turbulence at the release of a stop
Spectrograms
➔Plots of frequency and loudness over time
◆Loudness x frequency x time
◆Dark = noise
● High dark = high frequency
◆Formant bands + regularity = vowels
➔Phonemes are abstractly represented by segments (phonemes → segments)
◆Phonemes / segments have a physical reality as it is an acoustic signal
● Categories we can group these into
○Ex: “b” in ball vs. bat
○ “b” sound is symbolic of the phoneme “b”
◆Both are symbols
● Acoustic signal → phoneme = symbolic
➔Segments are abstractly represented by acoustic signals (acoustic signal → segment)
◆Arbitrary because it doesn’t resemble the phoneme
◆Discrete because there are recognizable elements
● Nothing within a song that you can take out and identify certain elements
● Not a lot of things are not discrete
○ Mathematical equations → discrete
Recognize a sine wave and its link to pure tones
➔
➔Pure tone: sound wave is a sine function
◆It’s never a pure tone → always a whole bunch of waves that overlap to create
harmonics
Key terms: cyclicity/periodicity, frequency, complexity, resonance, vibration, pitch, and
turbulence with respect to acoustics
➔Periodicity/cyclicity: regular vibration that creates a periodic waveform
◆Vowels are periodic (regular) and complex
◆
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➔Complexity: Harmonics are waves overlapping each with their own frequency (no pure
tone that is one curve → it is a bunch of complex curves overlapping)
➔Resonance: prolongation of sound by reflection from a surface
➔Vibration: repeated cycles of smaller energetic events
◆Smaller fluctuations in air pressure
◆Repeated claps
➔Turbulence: energy at a high frequency (chaotic)
◆Not regular (shows that it is a fricative)
Relate vowels with formants, fricatives with turbulence, and stops with silence (be able to
recognize them on a spectrogram and waveform)
➔Vowels
◆Harmonics: waves overlapping each with their own frequency (no pure tone that
is one curve → it is a bunch of complex curves overlapping)
● Resonance = noise → certain areas have more noise
● Formants: resonant harmonics
○ Different formant combos = different vowels
○ Regularity
◆Shown by bands of energy and noise in harmonics
◆ (spectrogram: dark wavelengths with a lot going on lower
and higher)
◆ (waveform: regularity and periodicity)
➔Fricatives
◆All noise is at the top
◆Consonants that are formed by impeding the flow of air somewhere in the vocal
apparatus so that a friction-sound is produced
● Involves turbulence and noise
◆(spectrogram: dark on top and light on bottom)
● More frequency on top
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
Symbols: some physical object that represents a concept other than itself. Words: linguistic forms that have semantic meaning. Glyphs: written characters that represent phonemes, syllables, or whole words. Differentiate semantic, pragmatic, social/indexical, metaphorical, and cultural meaning. Meaning: interface between symbols and the (complete) set of information and conceptual space that they map with. Semantic meaning: the basic meaning retrievable from expressions (words, phrases, and sentences) Must first be aware or the arbitrariness (nothing about the form of the word indicates the meaning) before understanding the semantic meaning. Semantic words each mean something different. Grammatical certain words are treated differently grammatically. Not differentiating the meaning just the grammatical difference. Formerly independent words reduce to prefixes or suffixes. Ir verbs vs -ar verbs in spanish. Pragmatic meaning: additional meaning that can be reconstructed from an expression. Intent of the statement comes from the semantics but the extra meaning is conventional (social norms) Ex: wow, that"s loud (semantic) be quiet (pragmatic)
