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

1. some
2. natural
3. some
4. natural
5. NN
6. some
7. natural
8. some
9. natural
10. natural
11. natural
12. NN
13. natural
14. some
15. 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.

1. 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.

1. 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.

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

2. 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

2. 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).

3. 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.