Linguistics Quiz: Language and Linguistics Quizzes

Language as a Structured System of Communication:

Language is a structured system of communication that consists of grammar and vocabulary, used by humans to convey meaning through spoken and written forms, and sign languages.
There are estimated to be between 5,000 and 7,000 human languages in the world, with variations observed between cultures and across time.
Human language possesses the properties of productivity and displacement, which enable the creation of an infinite number of sentences and the ability to refer to objects, events, and ideas that are not immediately present in the discourse.
The scientific study of language is called linguistics and has been debated since ancient times. Major figures in contemporary linguistics include Ferdinand de Saussure and Noam Chomsky.
Language is processed in many different locations in the human brain, but especially in Broca's and Wernicke's areas.
Languages evolve and diversify over time, and the history of their evolution can be reconstructed by comparing modern languages to determine which traits their ancestral languages must have had in order for the later developmental stages to occur.
Language can be defined as a mental faculty, a formal symbolic system, or a tool for communication, and these definitions inform different and often incompatible schools of linguistic theory.
Human language is unique in its open-ended and productive nature, and its ability to refer to abstract concepts and to imagined or hypothetical events.
Theories about the origin of language differ, with some based on continuity and others based on discontinuity, and some seeing language as innate and others as socially learned.
Human language is modality-independent, meaning it can be used through several channels or mediums, such as spoken, sign, or written language.
Language and culture are codependent, with language serving social uses such as signifying group identity, social stratification, as well as use for social grooming and entertainment.
Language is a dynamic phenomenon that is always in the process of changing as it is employed by its speakers, and this is reflected in the study of linguistic typology and grammaticalization.Overview of Language and Linguistics
Language may have developed from animal communication systems, such as gestural or vocal communication to assist in cooperation, or from music.
The age of spoken languages is estimated to be 60,000 to 100,000 years old and its early development has left no historical traces.
The study of language, linguistics, is a science that examines language from different theoretical viewpoints, including descriptive linguistics, theoretical linguistics, sociolinguistics, neurolinguistics, computational linguistics, and historical linguistics.
The formal study of language started with Pāṇini in India, who formulated 3,959 rules of Sanskrit morphology, and later developed in all ancient cultures that adopted writing.
Noam Chomsky formulated the generative theory of language, which suggests that the most basic form of language is a set of syntactic rules that underlies the grammars of all human languages.
Functional theories of language propose that language structures are best analyzed and understood by reference to their functions.
The production of spoken language depends on sophisticated capacities for controlling the vocal apparatus and the ability to decode speech sounds.
The brain controls both the production of linguistic cognition and meaning and the mechanics of speech production, but our knowledge of the neurological bases for language is limited.
Spoken language relies on the physiology of the human speech organs, which consist of the lungs, the voice box, and the upper vocal tract.
Human languages display considerable plasticity in their deployment of two fundamental modes: oral and manual.
Oral language is often accompanied by gesture, and sign language is accompanied by mouthing.
Bimodal use of language occurs in mundane conversation and in genres such as story-telling.Language: A Summary of its Structure and Function
Language is a system of symbolic communication consisting of signs, meanings, and a code connecting signs with their meanings.
Signs can be composed of sounds, gestures, letters, or symbols, and can be combined into complex signs such as words and phrases.
Rules by which signs can be combined to form words and phrases are called syntax or grammar, while the meaning connected to individual signs is called semantics.
All languages contain the semantic structure of predication, which predicates a property, state, or action.
Language structure can be based on systems of sounds (speech), gestures (sign languages), or graphic or tactile symbols (writing).
Grammar is the study of how meaningful elements called morphemes within a language can be combined into utterances, and the rules of the internal structure of phrases and sentences are called syntax.
Word classes in languages include nouns, verbs, adjectives, conjunctions, articles, interjections, and ideophones.
Morphology is the study of the internal structure of complex words and the processes by which words are formed.
Morphemes can be classified as independent morphemes or roots, or as bound morphemes or affixes, which serve to modify or elaborate the meaning of the root.
Languages differ widely in how much they rely on morphological processes of word formation, with some languages having no morphological processes at all.
Most languages have words consisting of several morphemes, but they vary in the degree to which morphemes are discrete units.
The study of the ways in which languages use sounds or signs to construct meaning is called phonology.Language and its Components
Language is a means of communication that involves a system of symbols and rules for combining those symbols.
Morphology is the study of the structure of words and the ways in which words are formed from smaller units called morphemes.
Polysynthetic languages rely heavily on morphology and can express an entire sentence in a single word.
Syntax is the study of the rules for producing new sentences from known words and how those rules contribute to meaning.
Different languages use different methods to distinguish between subjects and objects.
Languages can be classified based on their grammatical types, which correlate with other syntactic parameters.
Languages are dependent on communities of speakers for transmission from generation to generation, and language perpetually changes over time.
The meaning of linguistic expressions changes depending on context, and pragmatics is concerned with the ways in which language use is patterned and how these patterns contribute to meaning.
First language acquisition proceeds in a regular sequence, but the timing of particular stages varies among infants.
Second language acquisition is influenced by languages that the learner already knows.
Communicative style is the ways that language is used and understood within a particular culture and becomes a way of displaying and constructing group identity.
Linguistic differences may become salient markers of divisions between social groups.