VOCABULARY AND INTERESTING INFORMATION

Prescription and description

In linguistics, prescription is the laying down or prescribing of normative rules of the language. This is in contrast to the description of language, which simply describes how language is used in practice.

For example, a descriptive linguist (descriptivist) working in English will try to describe the usage, social and geographical distribution, and history of "ain't" and "h-dropping" neutrally, without judging them as good or bad, superior or inferior. A prescriptivist, on the other hand, will judge whether or not these forms meet some criterion of intelligence, rationality, appropriateness, aesthetics, or conformity to a standard dialect. Frequently this standard dialect is associated with the upper class (e.g., Great Britain's Received Pronunciation). When these forms do not conform — as is often the case for the "ain't" and "h-dropping" examples — the prescriptivist will condemn the forms as solecisms or barbarisms, prescribing that they not be used.

Outside the field of linguistics, these terms are used in a more general sense to indicate whether a statement is merely describing a state of affairs or presenting it as desirable. For example, "a man takes responsibility for his actions and apologises to those he has wronged" is a prescriptive statement; "some men don't take responsibility for their actions" is a descriptive one.

Synchronic linguistics

The study of a language at a given point in time. The time studied may be either the present or a particular point in the past; synchronic analyses can also be made of dead languages, such as Latin.

Synchronic linguistics is contrasted with diachronic linguistics (or historical linguistics), the study of a language over a period of time. In the 20th century, synchronic description has come to be regarded as prior to diachronic description; the latter presupposes that synchronic descriptions at various stages of the development of a language have already been carried out. Previously, linguists had placed emphasis on diachronic linguistics.

The terminological distinction between synchronic and diachronic linguistics was first made by the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure (1857–1913).

Indo-European definition

A family of languages consisting of most of the languages of Europe as well as those of Iran, the Indian subcontinent, and other parts of Asia. Proto-Indo-European, also called Indo-Germanic.
A member of any of the peoples speaking an Indo-European language.

Phonological Change

Phonological change — changes in pronunciation can come in a variety of forms. Some changes merely affect the way a single word is pronounced: older speakers across the UK tend to stress the first syllable in the word controversy, for instance, while younger speakers increasingly place the main stress on the second syllable, controversy. In other cases, the pronunciation of a particular vowel sound or consonant sound changes gradually across successive generations and thus has an impact on a large group of words. A change in pronunciation might initially take place only in one particular geographic location and remain local. Or it may over time spread nationally and thus affect all varieties of English.

Observing Phonological Change

All languages change over time and vary according to place and social setting. We can observe phonological change — a change in pronunciation patterns — by comparing spoken English at different points in time. The phonetician, John Wells, introduced in his book, Accents of English (1982), the concept of using a single word to refer to the pronunciation of a particular group of English words. He calls these word-groups lexical sets and uses a key word, such as BATH to identify them. Over the last two hundred years, the pronunciation of words in the BATH set — words such as bath, grass, laugh and dance — has changed in some parts of the country. This gradual shift in pronunciation demonstrates perfectly a number of aspects of phonological change. In monitoring an ongoing change — one that has not yet been adopted by all speakers — we can track, over time, how that change moves gradually through the language itself, across geographical space and along social boundaries.

Vowel harmony

Definition

Vowel harmony is a type of assimilation which takes place when vowels come to share certain features with contrastive vowels elsewhere in a word or phrase (Crystal 1992 168 ).

Example

A front vowel in the first syllable of a word would require the presence of a front vowel in the second syllable.

Standard vs. Non-standard

Standard dialect:

Typically used by political leaders, upper classes, in the media.
Taught in schools.
Considered the dominant or ‘prestige’.

Non-standard dialect:

Any dialect not perceived as standard.

Some considered non-standard dialects:

African-American English (AAE).
Appalachian English.

Diglossia

In linguistics, diglossia is a situation where, in a given society, there are two (often) closely-related languages, one of high prestige, which is generally used by the government and in formal texts, and one of low prestige, which is usually the spoken vernacular tongue. The high-prestige language tends to be the more formalised, and its forms and vocabulary often 'filter down' into the vernacular, though often in a changed form.

The Oxford English Dictionary defines this term as:
"In many speech communities two or more varieties of the same language are used by some speakers under different conditions.
Ibid., The term ‘diglossia’ is introduced here, modeled on the French “diglossie”, since there seems to be no word in regular use for this in English."

(First citation from 1959)

Anglo-Saxons

Anglo-Saxons is the term usually used to describe the invading tribes in the south and east of Great Britain starting from the early 5th century AD, and their creation of the English nation, lasting until the Norman conquest of 1066. The Benedictine monk, Bede, identified them as the descendants of three Germanic tribes:

· The Angles, who may have come from Angeln, and Bede wrote that their whole nation came to Britain, leaving their former land empty. The name 'England' or 'Ænglaland' originates from this tribe.

· The Saxons, from Lower Saxony (German: Niedersachsen, Germany)

· The Jutes, from the Jutland peninsula.

(Apart from this information, there are other interesting links situated in activities1 and activities2)

Saturnino Figueroa

March 2009

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