Micro Linguistics Study Notes

Focuses on the sounds of human speech.
Articulatory Phonetics: How speech sounds are produced using the vocal tract.
Acoustic Phonetics: The physical properties of sound waves produced in speech.
Auditory Phonetics: How speech sounds are perceived by the ear and processed by the brain.
Classification of sounds:
- Consonants: Voiced vs. voiceless, place and manner of articulation.
- Vowels: Height, backness, roundedness, and tension.

Study of the structure and formation of words.
Free morphemes: Stand alone as words (e.g., "book").
Bound morphemes: Cannot stand alone (e.g., prefixes and suffixes like "un-" or "-ing").
Types of morphology:
- Derivational Morphology: Creates new words by adding prefixes or suffixes (e.g., "happy" to "unhappy").
- Inflectional Morphology: Modifies a word to express different grammatical features (e.g., tense or number).

The arrangement of words and phrases to create well-formed sentences.
Key elements:
- Constituents: Groups of words that function as a single unit within a hierarchical structure.
- Phrase structure rules: Describe how different parts of a sentence fit together (e.g., NP → Det N).
Trees and diagrams: Visual representations of syntactic structures.
Syntactic categories: Noun phrases (NP), verb phrases (VP), prepositional phrases (PP), etc.

Study of meaning in language.
Types of meaning:
- Literal Meaning: The primary meaning of words or phrases.
- Connotative Meaning: Additional meanings that a word holds beyond its literal definition (e.g., "home" connoting warmth).
Semantic relationships:
- Synonyms: Words with similar meanings.
- Antonyms: Words with opposite meanings.
- Hyponyms: Specific terms under a general category (e.g., "rose" under "flower").

Study of language use in context and the implications of meanings.
Examines how context influences comprehension:
- Speech Acts: Actions performed through speaking (e.g., requests, commands).
- Deixis: Words that require contextual information (e.g., "here," "you").
- Implicature: Implied meaning that differs from explicit meaning based on context.

Study of larger units of language beyond the sentence level.
Focuses on how language functions in communication:
- Cohesion: Grammatical and lexical linking that holds discourse together (e.g., use of pronouns).
- Coherence: Logical connections that make a text understandable.
Analysis of spoken and written discourse to identify patterns, structures, and meanings.
Consideration of sociolinguistic factors impacting discourse, such as power dynamics and cultural context.

The study of how speech sounds are produced, transmitted, and received.
Articulatory Phonetics: Focuses on the physical movements of the vocal tract to produce sounds.
Acoustic Phonetics: Studies the physical properties of sound waves created during speech.
Auditory Phonetics: How speech sounds are perceived by the human ear.
Consonants are classified by whether they are voiced or voiceless, and by their place and manner of articulation.
Vowels are classified by tongue height, tongue backness (how far forward or back the tongue is in the mouth), lip rounding, and tension.

The study of word formation.
Free morphemes: Independent units that can stand alone as words (e.g., "book", "run", "happy").
Bound morphemes: Cannot stand alone and must be attached to other morphemes (e.g., prefixes like "un-", "re-", and suffixes like "-ing", "-ed").
Derivational Morphology: Creates new words by adding prefixes or suffixes (e.g., "happy" + "-ness" = "happiness").
Inflectional Morphology: Modifies a word for grammatical purposes (e.g., "walk" + "-ed" = "walked" to indicate past tense).

The study of how words are arranged into sentences.
Constituents: Groups of words that function as a single unit within a larger structure (e.g., "the cat" is a noun phrase).
Phrase structure rules: Describe how different parts of a sentence are organized, using symbols to represent syntactic categories (e.g., NP → Det N, indicating a noun phrase can consist of a determiner like "the" followed by a noun like "cat").
Trees and diagrams: Visual representations of syntactic structures.
Syntactic categories include noun phrases (NP), verb phrases (VP), prepositional phrases (PP), etc.

The study of meaning in language.
Literal meaning: The primary, dictionary definition of a word or phrase.
Connotative meaning: The additional, implied meaning that a word or phrase carries beyond its literal definition (e.g., "home" can evoke feelings of warmth and comfort).
Synonyms: Words with similar meanings.
Antonyms: Words with opposite meanings.
Hyponyms: Specific terms that are subcategories of a broader category (e.g., "rose" is a hyponym of the category "flower").

The study of how language is used in social contexts.
Speech Acts: Actions that are performed through language (e.g., asking a question, making a request, giving a command).
Deixis: Words that refer to a particular place, time, or person in context, and whose meaning is dependent on the context (e.g., "here", "there", "now", "then", "you").
Implicature: The implied, but unstated, meaning in a conversation based on shared knowledge and context.

The study of language beyond the level of individual sentences, looking at larger units of text and how they function in communication.
Cohesion: The grammatical and lexical connections that tie different sentences together (e.g., using pronouns to refer back to previously mentioned entities).
Coherence: The logical and meaningful connections between sentences in a text, ensuring that the text is understandable and makes sense.
Spoken and written discourse are analyzed to identify patterns, structures, and meanings.
Sociolinguistic factors that impact discourse, such as power dynamics and cultural context, are also considered.