COLLABORATIVE HW #4
SUMMARY:
Although there were some differences in each group member’s response in the first part of the homework, we all agree that language, culture, space, and time all relate to one another. The region in which a person lives in greatly influences the way they speak. Some words and phrases are more prominent and widely used in one area than another. In our group, we are either from San Diego or Los Angeles, so our language does not vary much and we notice that by comparing our responses for number 17.
LANGUAGE VARIATION
Andrew’s Responses:
14) P, S, P, Sm, M, P
16) N=native, S= some, NN= non-native
NN, N, S, S, NN, S, S,S, S, N, NN, S, S, S, NN
17) bucket, bag, blinds, soda, fireflies, in line, straighten it up, you guys, a quarter to
Jia’s Response:
14)Phonetic; Syntactic; Phonetic; Semantic; Morphology; Phonology
16) a. non-native; b. natural; c. non-native; d. some; e. some; f. non-native; g. some; h. some; i. some; j. natural; k. non-native; l. some; m. some; n. some; o. non-native
17) a. bucket; b. bag; c. curtains & blinds; d. soda & soft drinks; e. fireflies; f. in line; g. clean it up; h. you guys & y’all; i. none, i say “five fifteen or four fourty-five”
Xiao’s Response:
14) Phonological,Syntactic,Phonetic,Semantic,Morphological,Phonological
16) a.non-native, b.natural, c.non-native, d.some, e.some, f.some, g.some, h.some, i.some, j.natural, k.non-native, l.some, m.some, n.some, o.non-native
17) a.bucket, b.bag, c.blinds and curtains, d.soda, e.fireflies, f.in line, g.clean it up, h.you guys, i.none I say “four forty-five”
Melaney’s Response:
14) Phonological,Syntactic,Phonetic,Semantic,Morphological,Phonological
16) non-native, some, natural,non-native, some, some, some, some,natural,native, some, some, some, some, native
17) a.bucket, bag, curtains, soda, fireflies, in line, clean it up,you guys, none I say “fifteen or four forty-five”
LANGUAGE CULTURE
page 479 #1,2,3
1) adjective placement, subject-predicate sentence structure, SVO sentence structure.
2) You can make performance errors and still be competent in the language
3) An adjacency pair is a when a statement is meant to be responded to
A:Nice weather
B: Sure is
A:Have a good day
B:Thanks,you too
A:See you later
B:see ya
A:Where’s SDSU?
B:Right over there
A:Good work!
B:Thank you!
page 480 #15
15)Power relationships can be established in conversation by the volume of a person’s voice or the pace s/he speaks at. From experience, people who spoke demandingly and gave out instructions tend to assume the more powerful role. Those who take on the subservient role tend to use a lot more fillers in their speech because they are skeptical about what they’re saying. People exerting power are more assertive and confident in what they are saying while those who are acquiescing tend to be more passive and indirect in their speech. These cues are usually socially determined because different cultures exhibits power in conversation differently.
page 482 #28, 29
28)a. etic- A girl twitched her face at another girl and moved her hands back and forth emic-The other day when I saw my friend, I smiled and waved at her.
- etic- A girl is eating bow shaped things from a bowl and is making loud noises with her mouth opened to another girl who keeps moving her mouth.
emic-For lunch today I ate pasta and laughed at something my friend told me.
c.etic- Teacher walked in quickly mouthed some words, turned on the screen protector and directed the students to focus on the whiteboard.
emic-My teacher rushed in late, said “good morning” to us and went over some changes we needed to make on our calendars.
29)Participant observation involves observing within a community to understand how and why people do certain things on a daily basis. An example would be trying to assimilatee with people around you when you move to a new country. Passive observation is studying the everyday life of a community without getting involved in it to cause the least disturbance ot the community. An example would be a scientist trying to study behavior within a certain community, he can only observe and not get involved.
LANGUAGE CHANGE
page 557 #10, 14
10)Even though there are no written records of proto-Germanic, we know it exists because we can trace back to it by finding similarities between english, german, dutch, danish, swedish and etc. By finding various similarities between these languages we know there must be a common language we can trace back to where english, yiddish and etc. originated from.
14) We spell the words “knife” and “knight” with a <k> because these words come from Germanic roots but people got lazy to pronounce the “k” so it became a silent k and eliminating the “k” in front of some words might cause confusion with other words such as “know” and “knight.”
page 561 #22
22) Examples of fluctuation and variation in english are “drink/drank” and “swim/swam.” The analogical process comes into to play here as it changes the vowels of both words instead of adding -ed to make it past tense. This is probably because these words have not been modified unlike “clomb” to “climbed.”
page 562 #29
29) i. When speaking about the internet and computers, there are more new words than there are old words put to new use. This is because computers and internets are a fairly new technology so people create new words to describe actions they can do on the computer such as “emailing,” “tweeting,” “vlogging,” and the most popular phrase nowadays “google it.” These words or phrases and expressions have never existed before the computer age.
ii. For those old words that have been put to new use extension has occurred because those words have been used to define a new phenomena that had never existed before. These old words have been recycled to have new meanings and connotations when talking about technology.
page 563 #33
33) a. cynical= cynicus & kunosarges// doglike, churlish: degradation
- hacker= biohacker//a chopper, cutter: reduction
- anecdote= anekdota//things unpublished: extension
- grotesque= grottesca & crotesque//of a cave: elevation
- parakeet= paroquet & parroochetto//little priest: reduction
- leer= hleor//untrusting, suspicious,alert:degradation
- captivated= captivus & captivare//to enthrall with charm: elevation
- paisley//town in southwest, Scotland: extension
LANGUAGE CONTACT
page 513 #12
12)Foreign influences and extensive borrowing can threaten a language’s purity. The preservation of traditional languages are important.
page 516 #22, 23
22)”Once upon a time there was Anansi and Tiger…” When read out loud, the words sound pretty much similar, however, certain words are harder to understand and different than English. I also understand the part in quotes which reads, “Okay then lets go.”
23) Half of the text is understandable because it is either in plain English or when we pronounce it, it sounds like what we would normally say. However, the grammar is confusing and most of the words we cannot comprehend. In Hawaiian Creole English, there is “Me I,” but in regular English, we either say “me” or “I,” we do not say both or put them next to each other in a sentence.
page 517 #29
29) It is definitely a worthwhile effort to prevent an endangered language from dying out. Language plays a huge role in determining people’s identity. Language is a very precious to a culture because it reflects its history and past. It also brings unity and community to those who speak the same language. The language people speak growing up really defines and shapes who they are later on in life.
Jia Xu, Xiao Huang, Andrew Madruga, Melaney Beene
D5 Creation
Cory Stapleton
Giovanna Alvarado
Keana Sabin
Michelle Zavestoski
Steve Juarez
Linguistics 101
Homework #4
Language is extremely dynamic. It is constantly changing and adapting. The ways in which language changes relates to the environment in which the language is being used. The environment consists of many features, such as time, place, and the people who the language is being communicated with. All these things promote change within a language. Even though languages vary, when brought together they begin to take attributes from one another. Culture is equally important in relation to language. For the culture, the language used dictates what variations occur. If people are in a hurry, they may shorten their speech in order to reflect the speed in which they wish to transmit their message, like when someone says “lol” instead of actually laughing. The people in which the language is spoken to greatly effects the type of language used. If the community is populated by children, the words used would reflect the understanding the children have in order to make communication run smoothly and efficiently. The way in which we speak represents the language we are comfortable using in order to express ourselves, i.e. emic vs etic. Depending on R.A.C.E.S., we can have a general idea of an individual and their language. For example, a higher class individual may speak with more sophistication and in a dialect with more advanced words. A gay individual may speak differently than an individual who is straight, etc. Education plays a big part in this as well. The better the schooling and home environment, the better a language may be acquired and a particular dialect may be formed. Language is an enormous part of culture that brings everyone together and lets people share their ideas and thoughts, either positively or negatively.
pg. 444 #14
Ph/S/P/M/Sm/Ph
Pg. 445 #16
a. some
b. natural
c. some
d. natural
e. NN
f. some
g. natural
h. some
i. natural
j. natural
k. natural
l. NN
m. natural
n. some
o. NN
Pg. 446 #17
(A) Bucket
(A) Bag
(B) Shades
(A) Soda
(A) Fireflies
(B) In line
(D) Clean it up
(A) You guys
(B) A quarter to 5
pg. 479
1. Some competencies parts of communicative competence are politeness, speaker roles, turn-taking roles and greetings.
2. Cultural Competence is a set of congruent behaviors, attitudes, and policies that come together in a system, agency, or among professionals and enables that system, agency, or those professionals to work effectively in cross-cultural situations. While linguistic competence is the unconscious knowledge of grammar that allows a speaker to use and understand a language; performance is the ability to produce and comprehend sentences in a language. In certain cultures, it is rude to look at someone in the eye when you speak to them—different cultures have various rules of language, and some of it doesn’t need to be spoken.
3. An adjacency pair is a unit of conversation that contains an exchange of one turn each by two speakers. The turns are functionally related to each other in such a fashion that the first turn requires a certain type or range of types of second turn.
Book definition: Adjacency pairs are pairs of adjacent utterances produced by two different speakers, in which the first utterance provokes or requires the hearer to respond with the second utterance.
Five Adjacency Pairs in American English:
1. How are you today? I’m phenomenal.
2. Are you lost? Nope.
3. Hi! Welcome. Thank you.
4. What have you been up to? Nothing.
5. Can you point me in the direction of “__?” Sure.
p. 480
15. Power relationships are established in conversation when we try to persuade, educate, and convince other individuals or attempt to gain their attention or change their emotions. It refers to one speaker being more dominant or subservient. The power relationship expressed by language is defined by those who use language rather than by any inherent properties of a language. You can tell when someone is acquiescing within a conversation because they’ll just listen to the other –who’s exerting power– without any fight or struggle. These cues are socially determined because we learn how to exert power through interactions with others. Examples of when establishing power happens within a conversation: presenting a project, selling a product, arguing your point, displaying your love towards a person, coaching, work related situations, etc.
p. 482
a) Etic: Students walked rapidly through the long pathway in between buildings, while one raised her hand to about an eye-level, palm out, fingers extended and moved it back and forth at the wrist, capturing the eye-sight of one another, joining in a same facial expression, showing their teeth to each other, followed by a raise of both of their arms, extended to one another and giving each other a slight squeeze.
Emic: Students rushed down the hall while one waved her hand capturing the attention of
another, joining each other with a smile on their faces followed by a hug.
b) What you ate, and did at lunch today.
Etic: The girl ventured in to the west commons market. It appears she took no thought into what to truly eat as she hastily grabbed a peanut butter sandwich, banana and milk to purchase. She rummaged through her purse for her wallet and card to make the purchase. She hurried to her next class.
Emic: Right before her next class, a girl bought a sandwich, banana and milk at the student store. After the purchase she hurried to class
c) how your instructor started class.
Etic: The young professor stood by the podium. Stared at the classroom clock and saw how much time there was before class started. He then took his final sip of coffee. It was time. He positioned himself away from the podium and to front of the whiteboard to gain the attention of his students and start the class.
Emic: The professor drank his coffee and soon enough started teaching his class.
28.
Passive observation: there aren’t any interviews under observation — but typically when the observation is concluded. An example could be that an observer follows a number of consumers in order to see how they use a given product. Subsequently the consumers are interviewed.
Participant observation: the interviewer takes part of the respondent’s doings with regards to a specific area/field and hereby the interviewer gains insight in the views of the respondents. An example could be that a company wishes to gain insight in how the employees use the common facilities. An interviewer is introduced in the company and shows up every morning for a week together with the employees. The interviewer is a part of the working day of the company and continuously interviews chosen employees about their activities/movements.
Book definition: Passive participation: a type of participant observation in which the researcher passively watches everyday life in the community without taking part.
Participant observation: a type of field work that consists of systematically observing within a community in order to understand how and why people do the things they do on a daily basis.
Page 557
10. No written records of Proto-Germanic exist, but the words and grammar of the language have been reconstructed by linguists.
14. Back in the days when Old English was spoken, the “k” in these sorts of words was not silent, so they would be pronounced as k’nife, k’night, and so on. This pronunciation was even common in the time of William Shakespeare! At some point, people decided that this sort of articulation was too cumbersome, so they stopped voicing the beginning consonant! The same thing happened with “gn” words such as gnome and gnarled. However, other Germanic languages such as German, Swedish, and Dutch kept the “k” and still pronounce it to this day.
Page 561
22. Swum-Swim, Drank-Drunk, Eat-Ate. These changes come about due to shifts in the functions of words. These words have been altered for the purpose of tense and time.
Analytic (language)—type of language in which most words consist of one morpheme and sentences are composed sequences of these free morphemes. Grammatical relationships are often indicated by word order. Examples are Chinese and Vietnamese.
Page 562
29) i. Many words are new but derived from old words. New words have been created as a way to explain new ideas and concepts. Old words wouldn’t be able to capture the meaning of these new concepts.
ii. Many old words have been extended to encapsulate the new meanings they are being used towards.
Examples can come from Facebook: tagging, poking, etc. Writing on walls can be put to new use because that can be related to Facebook and talking directly to someone on their Facebook page.
Page 563
33. Poppycock means nonsense, and it comes from the mid-19th century: from Dutch dialect pappekak. cognate words: nonsense, rubbish, claptrap, balderdash, blather, moonshine, garbage.
Page 513
12) It is a threat to other languages that borrow words for their language and it loses the opportunity to be used. Therefore, it runs the risk of losing the language altogether. It is killing off the original language and bringing in outside words that diminish the language and alter the culture.
Page 516
22. We were able to understand most of the piece because it is written in words that are spelled like they sound, not how the appropriate spelling is, for example the first words, “Wans apan a taim” refers to “Once upon a time.” the spelling is off, but the pronunciation is good. It is in story telling form (once upon a time…the end).
23. We were not able to understand this text entirely; some words are regular English words, for example, “get many peoples.” Words are somewhat similar but there are lots of lost or dropped letters. Dees=these udder=under newa=new.
Page 517
29. We believe that it is a worth-while effort because that way the dialects can still be heard among people. By having a variety of languages and dialects, people are able to learn other languages and dialects even though they didn’t grow up with them. This is how culture stays alive. If everything is turned into something of a neutral language, then the uniqueness of the culture will diminish.