Anthropology ch 5

  1. Black English Vernacular (BEV)
    A rulegoverned dialect of American English with roots in southern English. BEV is spoken by African American youth and by many adults in their casual, intimate speech—sometimes called ebonics . 75
  2. call systems
    Systems of communication among nonhuman primates, composed of a limited number of sounds that vary in intensity and duration. Tied to environmental stimuli. 60
  3. cultural transmission
    A basic feature of language; transmission through learning. 61
  4. daughter languages
    Languages developing out of the same parent language; for example, French and Spanish are daughter languages of Latin. 77
  5. descriptive linguistics
    The scientific study of a spoken language, including its phonology, morphology, lexicon, and syntax. 65
  6. diglossia
    The existence of "high" (formal) and "low" (familial) dialects of a single language, such as German. 71
  7. displacement
    A linguistic capacity that allows humans to talk about things and events that are not present. 63
  8. focal vocabulary
    A set of words and distinctions that are particularly important to certain groups (those with particular foci of experience or activity), such as types of snow to Eskimos or skiers. 69
  9. historical linguistics
    Subdivision of linguistics that studies languages over time. 77
  10. kinesics
    The study of communication through body movements, stances, gestures, and facial expressions. 64
  11. lexicon
    Vocabulary; a dictionary containing all the morphemes in a language and their meaning. 65
  12. morphology
    The study of form; used in linguistics (the study of morphemes and word construction) and for form in general—for example, biomorphology relates to physical form. 65
  13. phoneme
    Significant sound contrast in a language that serves to distinguish meaning, as in minimal pairs. 65
  14. phonemics
    The study of the sound contrasts (phonemes) of a particular language. 66
  15. phonetics
    The study of speech sounds in general; what people actually say in various languages. 66
  16. phonology
    The study of sounds used in speech. 65
  17. productivity
    The ability to use the rules of one's language to create new expressions comprehensible to other speakers; a basic feature of language. 62
  18. protolanguage
    Language ancestral to several daughter languages. 77
  19. Sapir-Whorf hypothesis
    Theory that different languages produce different ways of thinking. 68
  20. semantics
    A language's meaning system. 69
  21. sociolinguistics
    Study of relationships between social and linguistic variation; study of language in its social context. 17, 71
  22. style shifts
    Variations in speech in different contexts. 71
  23. subgroups
    Languages within a taxonomy of related languages that are most closely related. 78
  24. syntax
    The arrangement and order of words in phrases and sentences. 65
Author
gabo
ID
156920
Card Set
Anthropology ch 5
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Key terms
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