jueves, 31 de mayo de 2012

American Structuralism Glossary


When you finish to read this glossary click on the link below in order to play a guessing game...
http://www.educaplay.com/es/recursoseducativos/636853/glossary.htm


1.     A posteriori: it is an adjective which means from particular instances to a general principle or law; based upon actual observation or upon experimental data.


2.     A priori: It is an adjective that means from a general law to a particular instance; valid independently of observation.


3.     Absolute position: it is the order of a form which is alone.


4.     Adaptation: is the analogic change that extends the use of a glosseme.


5.     Agreement: it is a narrower type of selection, which congruence or concord are simple forms.


6.     Analogic change: it is the linguistic change that may substitute sames for differents.


7.       Anaphoric: referring back to or substituting for a preceding word or group of words.


8.     Automatic alternation: it happens when a formal alternation is determined by the phonemes of the accompanying forms.


9.     Axioms: definitions or assumptions.


10. Binarist: adjective referred to the descriptive structuralist, and means a whole composed of two.


11. Bound: adjective which describes a dependent morpheme.


12. Categories: they are the functional meanings and class-meanings.


13. Circumlocution: Evasion in speech or writing (intralinguistically, interlinguistically, translation.


14. Class-meaning: these are the functional meanings in which the forms of a forms-class appear.


15. Colloquial standard: it is observed in situations lacking formal behaviors among observably privileged classes within a larger speech community.


16. Connotation: it is the subjective or socialized relation of the referent for speakers to other referents and properties.


17. Constructional meaning: it is the corresponding stimulus-reaction feature of the constructions.


18. Contamination: it is the analogic change which creates or enlarges a glosseme.


19. Cross-reference: it is a type of selection that subclasses contain and actual mention of the forms with they are joined.


20. Deduced: it means to derive as a conclusion from something known or assumed.


21. Demonstration: it is an explanation, as of a theory or product, by practical application (pointing).


22. Denotation: Something signified or referred to; a particular meaning of a symbol. It is the reference and/or referent.


23. Density of communication: it is the communication that can be empirically observed, quantified, and correlated with geography, social stratification, occupation, success in cooperation, and consequences in describable speech differences.


24. Dialect: it is the linguistic change between groups of persons in which communication is disturbed.


25. Different: adjective that describe that something is not alike.


26. Displaced or relayed speech: it is when speakers utter forms when there is no obvious, contemporary empirical stimulus.


27. Duration: it is the relatice length of time through which the vocal organs are kept in a position.


28. Endocentric: it is a kind of construction that takes place when a free forms combining can be said to produce a resultant phrase, of which the form-class of one member can be determinative of the phrase’s grammatical behavior.


29. Episeme: it is the meaning of tagmeme.


30. Evidence: it is the support of proving something.


31. Exocentric: it is a type of construction that occurs when a phrase does not follow the grammatical behavior of either constituent.


32.    Extranlinguistically: it is an adverb which describes that a word is not included within the realm of language or linguistics.


33. Facts: reals occurrences that demonstrate that something exists because it happens.


34. Feasible goals: goals which are capable of being accomplished or possible.


35. Formal alternation: in a construction of a form the formal alternation may happen with another form.


36. Formal change: it is the analogic change of formatives.


37. Formative: it is the bound form which is part of a word.


38. Form-class: they are all the forms that have the same functions.


39. Forms: they are the vocal features commonly same or partly same utterances.


40. Free: adjective which describes an independent morpheme.


41. Functional meaning: it is the meaning of a word according and related with its position in a sentence.


42. Functions: these are the positions in which a form occurs.


43.    Fundamental assumption of linguistics: is in certain communities (speech-communities) some speech-utterances are alike as to form and meaning.


44. Glosseme: it refers whatever has a meaning.


45. Government: it is a kind of selection which can control the syntactic position of a form.


46. Grammatical alternation: it is a formal alternation determined in the grammatical structure of a sentence.


47. Gross acoustic features: it is a set of phonemes that are distinctive for a particular language.


48. Homonyms: they are words that are produced because there are no-minimum forms alike as to the order of the constituent forms.


49. Hypostasis: it is something that stands under and supports; foundation.


50. Impose: it refers making an impression on the mind; impose one's or its influence.


51. Included position: it is the order of a form which is with another one.


52. Induced: it means to lead or move by persuasion or influence, as to some action or state of mind.


53.    Intralinguistically: adverb related within a particular language.


54. Labialized: it is the process occurred during the production of a consonant in which the lips are rounded.


55. Labiovelarized: it is the process that takes place in the production of a consonant in which the velarization and the labialized processes are together.


56. Language articulation: it is the process by which person form words.


57. Language of a speech community: the totality of utterances that can be made in a speech-community.


58. Language’s lexicon: it is the total stock of morphemes.


59. Language’s morphology: it is the set of rules related with grammatical categories or linguistic units: including inflection, derivation, etc.


60. Language’s syntax: it is the study of the rules whereby words or the other elements of sentence structure are combined to forms grammatical sentences.


61. Legitimate date: it is the data based on logical reasoning and it is in accordance with established standards.


62. Lexicon: The morphemes of a language considered as a group


63. Linguistic borrowing: it is the process in which a person who speaks a foreign language or dialect adopts features of it into his own speech.


64. Literary standard: it is an accessible through general or personal education effort, transcends geographic and social barriers, and is used on occasions described as formal.


65. Loan-words: there are words that are borrowed from another language.


66. Local dialect: it is an interaction group with which others have so little contact that dialect speakers are incomprehensible without considerable attention.


67. Marginal meanings: it is the meaning which can be transferred or metaphoric.


68. Materialism: it differs from mentalism by distinguishing real potentials from their actualization. It is monistic, it means, that only admits a single kind of data.


69. Meaning of forms: this is the corresponding stimulus-reaction feature.


70. Meaning: the nonlinguistic cultural correlate, reference, or denotation of a linguistic form; expression.


71. Mentalism: it assumes that there are factors in mental operations exempt from physical laws in the empirical realm.


72. Mere: syncategoremic expression that lacks of sense and reference. It is not quantifiable and does not function as subject or predicate in falsiable assertions.


73. Method: an orderly arrangement of parts or steps to accomplish something.


74. Modulation: the use of a particular distribution of stress or pitch in a construction.


75. Mora stress: it is the intensity or loudness which consists in greater amplitude of sound waves and is produced by means of more energetic movements.


76. Morpheme: it is the minimum meaningful unit of a word.


77. Neogrammarian’s credo: it is a set of statements of the new grammarians which consist of the dual principle of the exceptionless nature of the sound laws and the recognition of the operation of analogy.


78. Noeme: it is the meaning of a glosseme.


79. Objectivity: opinion based on observable phenomena, uninfluenced by emotions or personal prejudices.


80. Onomatopocia: it consists in derivations from the ordinary tie-up of phonetic form with dictionary meaning, which still shows considerable complexity.


81. Order: the disposition of things following one after another, as in space or time; succession or sequence.


82. Palatalization: it is the process occurred during the production of a consonant; the tongue and lips take up, as far as compatible with the main features of the phoneme and the position of a front vowel.


83. Parts of speech: these are the maximum word-classes of a language (adjective, nouns, verbs, adverbs, etc.)


84. Phoneme: it is the minimum meaningful vocal feature or sound.


85. Phonetic alternation: in a construction of a phoneme, they may alternate with another phoneme according to the accompanying phoneme.


86. Phonetic modification: it is the change in primary phonemes as in run-ran.


87. Phonetic pattern: it is the classification of the phonemes implied in the sound-patterns, phonetic alternations and automatic formal alternations of the language.


88. Phonetics: it is the branch of linguistics that describes empirically the productions of sounds.


89. Phrase: it is a combination of words that communicates a meaningful message.


90. Phrase-formative: it is when a phrase may contain a bound form which is not part of a word.


91. Pitch: it is the frequency of vibration in the musical sound of the voice.


92. Popular semantics: it is the study of the ‘popular’ meaning to words of a specific ethnic group.


93. Postulation method: it uses axioms to define terms and to decide what things may exist independently and what are interdependent.


94. Predication: it is the assumption (something) of the subject of a proposition.


95. Proportional analogy: it is the adaptation which replaces one alternant with another.


96. Provincial standard: it is observed among those remote geographically from the formative environment of cultural centers.


97. Quasi-biblical: A term denoting a belief or system of beliefs having at least partial reference to, or derivation from the Bible.


98. Reference: it is a static relation, dynamic process or action linking grammatical meanings to failures mediated by autonomous meanings.


99. Referent: A person or thing to which a linguistic expression refers.


100.  Regular: it is the form which determine one grammatical variant predominate as to number (the other ones different from regular, are called irregulars).


101.  Related languages: it is the language spoken in a group of person that results from the change of language in which communication is impossible.


102.  Same: adjective that describe that something is alike.


103.  Sandhi: it is the label for features of modulation and phonetic modification important to many syntactic structures.


104.  Scientistic: means confusion of technical jargon and empirical trappings with whatever ‘real’ science is.


105.  Semantic change: it is the analogic change of words.


106.  Sememe: it is the meaning expressed by a morpheme.


107.  Sense: it is a state, process, or action within failures by which autonomous meanings are related to grammatical meanings.


108.  Sentence: it is a maximum construction in any utterance.


109.  Situation: it includes every object and happening in the universe.


110.  Sound patterns: they are the orders which the phonemes in the morphemes and words are set.


111.  Sound substitution: it is the linguistic substitution of phonemes.


112.  Sound-change: it is the change in which phonemes or classes of phonemes became different in the relationship with the environment or certain other phonemes.


113.  Speech community: utterances that are used in a specific community.


114.  Standards: it is a relatively uniform auxiliary dialect used by such groups.


115.  Sub-categories: they are the meanings of a few forms, if a form contains it.


116.  Subjective: opinion based on personal thinking and judgment.


117.  Subjunctive event: this kind of events includes experience of individuality, choice, responsibility, value, insight.


118.  Sub-linguistic communication: it is a kind of communication that uses linguistics forms in which the ordinary meaning of the forms plays no part.


119.  Sub-standard: it is the speech behavior found among those who must interact daily as peers, with each other, but only occasionally.


120.  Substitute response: it is the replaced reaction to a specific stimulus (immediate stimulus).


121.  Substitute stimulus: it is a replaced action or condition that accelerates a physiological and/or psychological response.


122.  Substitution: it is the process in which a person who speaks a foreign language or dialect replaces the resemblant features of his native speech.


123.  Suppletive: it is a form that has all the component forms irregular.


124.  Syntactic construction: it is any meaningful recurrent set of taxemes.


125.  Syntactic construction: it is the construction of free forms in a phrase.


126.  Tagmeme: it is a meaningful unit of grammatical form. It can consist of several taxemes.


127.  Taxeme: it is a simple feature of grammatical arrangement.


128.  Taxonomic Grammarians: grammarians that classify the language in a finite collection or corpus of concrete utterances. They use an empirical method.


129.  Taxonomy: it is a classification into ordered categories


130.  Transition: it is the manner in which the vocal organs pass from inactivity to the formation of a phoneme, or form the formation of one phoneme to that of the next. Or the formation of a phoneme to inactivity.


131.  Utterance: an act of speech.


132.  Velarization: it is the process that takes place in the production of a consonant in which the tongue is retracted as for a back vowel.


133.  Word: it is a combination of sounds that symbolizes a meaning. A minimum meaningful free form is a word.


134.  Word-class: it is a form-class of words.


135.  Zero element: it is the absence of sound may be a phonetic or formal alternant.


 Bibliography:
Dictionary.com. 2012. Retrieved from April 23, 2012 <<http://dictionary.reference.com>>

Anthropolinguistic Investigation

La connotación de las palabras altisonantes y ofensivas en comunidades de amistad entre grupos jóvenes femeninos de la Facultad de Filosofía y Letras de la Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo León

         
En la siguiente micro-investigación antropolinguística podremos apreciar un fenómeno que actualmente esta extendiéndose, no sólo en la Facultad de Filosofía y Letras, si no también en otras facultades de Monterrey y su área metropolitana (incluyendo el Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey, la Universidad del Norte, la Universidad del Valle de México, la Universidad Regiomontana, etc ).
Las jóvenes regias han comenzado a usar palabras altisonantes para referirse a sus amigas, motivo por el cual, se ha deseado investigar sobre las causas y consecuencias de este fenómeno lingüístico en el habla informal entre la sociedad joven regiomontana.
La hipótesis que se plantea aquí es saber por qué las adolescentes emplean palabras insultantes para demostrar afecto a sus amistades.
Con la información que se presenta en los siguientes párrafos se pretende dar a conocer la manera en que las adolescentes subliman el verdadero significado de las palabras denigrantes y altisonantes. Además se desea explicar las razones por las cuales las jóvenes han comenzado a utilizar de esta manera el vocabulario que conocemos como vulgar y ofensivo.
El fenómeno es el siguiente: las adolescentes en sentirse en confianza con alguna persona de su mismo sexo comienzan a expresar sus sentimientos con palabras denigrantes y groseras. Emplean palabras como “perra”, “perrito”, “zorra”, “prosti”, “güey”, “güe”, “bitch”, “whore”, “obesa”, “esperpento”, “engendro”, “popo”, “caca”, entre muchas otras incluyendo palabras altisonantes , pero las usan con un tono suave, tranquilo y la mayoría de las veces acompañadas con risas burlonas; de manera que no “ofendan” a la persona que se dirigen.
          Es muy curioso pensar que las mujeres que utilizan este vocabulario indignante solamente lo hagan con sus amigas, pues no lo emplean con personas a las que no les tienen la suficiente confianza. Esta manera enfática de utilizar las palabras denigrantes es un símbolo de intimidad, confianza y complicidad.
El marco contextual donde se realizó la investigación de esta revolución del lenguaje fue en una comunidad universitaria donde las edades de las jóvenes oscilan entre los 17 a 24 años, en donde el nivel socioeconómico es medio alto y medio bajo, su nivel de escolaridad terminado es un bachillerato de dos años y actualmente se encuentran estudiando una licenciatura.
La mayoría de las amistades de estas jóvenes pertenecen al mismo nivel socioeconómico y escolar. Las familias de las adolescentes son nucleares, las cuales se componen de los padres y dos o tres hermanos (as), con los cuales también acostumbran hablar de esta manera.
Se  investigó también la manera en cómo esas adolescentes se expresan con diferentes personas ajenas a su circulo de amistad (incluyendo personas del sexo masculino), llegando a la conclusión que las jóvenes que utilizaban connotativamente este lenguaje humillante se dirigían a sus padres, tíos y abuelos de manera informal (de “tu”). Además, utilizaban el mismo lenguaje altisonante con los hombres sin importar cuando tiempo llevaran conociéndose (cabe mencionar que hablaban de manera denigrante frente a los hombres, pero no se dirigían a ellos de esa manera)
Para lograr determinar por qué se utilizan palabras ofensivas para referirse a alguien apreciado se debe definir primero la palabra connotación, que según con el diccionario de la Real Academia Española esta palabra significa “sentido o valor secundario que una palabra, frase o discurso adopta por asociación con un significado estricto”[1]. Ya aclarado este concepto, podemos llegar a la conclusión que de manera inconsciente las adolescentes utilizan vocabulario que denotativamente es denigrante con tonos suaves para minimizar el efecto ofensivo que estos provocan, logrando así que la persona a la que se dirige como “zorra”  no se sienta insultada, sino querida y aceptada en el circulo de amigas. Así que entre más se ofenda a una amiga con conceptos vulgares y deshonrosos más se demuestra que la aprecias y que existe una relación fuerte de confianza, siempre y cuando el tono con que se digan estas palabras no sea agresivo o este acompañado de risas.
También se ha deducido que esta revolución en el lenguaje femenino ha sido causada por las ideas erróneas sobre la equidad de género, pues se ha querido equilibrar las oportunidades que las mujeres poseen en todas las áreas posibles, y el lenguaje no ha sido la excepción. Sin embargo se ha tergiversado la idea de igualdad en el lenguaje, pues las mujeres en contra de la discriminación de género y siguiendo equivocadamente estas ideas han realizado los mismos errores lingüísticos cometidos por los hombres.
Finalmente se ha llegado a la conclusión que las mujeres hoy en día están más a la par con los hombres y por ello han adoptado muchas palabras ofensivas que años atrás eran consideradas de uso exclusivo para los varones. Además de adoptar este peculiar vocabulario, han cambiado su sentido de insultar a las personas pues ahora se utiliza para demostrar simpatía y amistad.
En lo personal este tipo de expresiones me parece vulgar, denigrante e hiriente, y siento que su uso depende mucho de los valores y principios que tenga cada mujer. Pero como un día mencionó Chomsky  “El lenguaje de hoy no es peor que el de ayer sólo es más práctico, como el mundo en que vivimos.”
Lo que si es un hecho es que cada individuo tiene en sus manos la manera en como desea que lo traten los demás, es decisión y gusto de cada persona. Por último me gustaría finalizar mi investigación con una cita para reflexionar del escritor inglés Samuel Johnson; “El lenguaje es el vestido de los pensamientos”.


Bibliografía:

Real Academia Española. (2010) Diccionario. Recuperado el 26 de marzo del 2012, de http://buscon.rae.es/draeI/SrvltConsulta?TIPO_BUS=3&LEMA=connotación



[1] Real Academia Española. (2010) Diccionario. Recuperado el 26 de marzo del 2012, de http://buscon.rae.es/draeI/SrvltConsulta?TIPO_BUS=3&LEMA=connotación
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Anthropological Linguistics

                                                         
It is the study of the relations between language and culture and the relations between human biology, cognition and language. It is a branch of anthropology that originated from the endeavor to document endangered languages, and has grown over the past 100 years to encompass almost any aspect of language structure and use
 Linguistic anthropology explores how language shapes communication, forms social identity and group membership, organizes large-scale cultural beliefs and ideologies, and develops a common cultural representation of natural and social worlds.
            Finding a systematic way of putting down previously unwritten languages in a way that would reflect all linguistic peculiarities and phonetic phenomena, and explaining how people that share a culture might speak different languages and people who have different cultures sometimes share a language; are the task of anthropologic linguists.
As anthropologic linguistics works on the assumption that communities’ cultures are reflected by language change it investigates synchronic and diachronic language change – that is it analyses various dialects and if it is possible the historical development. Moreover, the emergence and evolution of pidgins and creoles is also within the scope of interest of anthropologic linguistics. What is more, language acquisition in children is also studied by anthropolinguists, however, not the stages of language development are examined, but how the acquisition of linguistic abilities is perceived by the community.
The primary concern of anthropologic linguistics was with the unwritten languages in America and their recording in order to preserve them in case the number of speakers started to decrease drastically.

The principle of linguistic relativity holds that the structure of a language affects the ways in which its speakers are able to conceptualize their world, i.e. their world view. Popularly known as the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis, or Whorfianism, the principle is often defined as having two versions:

1.      The strong version that language determines thought and that linguistic categories limit and determine cognitive categories

2.      The weak version that linguistic categories and usage influence thought and certain kinds of non-linguistic behavior.

The idea was first clearly expressed by 19th century thinkers, such as Wilhelm von Humboldt, who saw language as the expression of the spirit of a nation. The early 20th century school of American Anthropology headed by Franz Boas and Edward Sapir also embraced the idea. Sapir's student Benjamin Lee Whorf came to be seen as the primary proponent as a result of his published observations of how he perceived linguistic differences to have consequences in human cognition and behavior

During the past forty years there have been many attempts to recast the fundamental insights of Sapir and Whorf, originally expressed in a number of evocative and sometimes metaphorical passages similar to those just cited, in terms sufficiently prosaic that the doctrine may be subjected to empirical test. We do not attempt to review that literature but rather endorse Roger Brown’s conviction that Eric Lenneberg in 1953 really said all that was necessary (Brown 1976:128). In Brown’s summary, “Whorf appeared to put forward two hypotheses: I Structural differences between language systems will, in general, be paralleled by nonlinguistic cognitive differences, of an unspecified sort, in the native speakers of the two languages. The structure of anyone’s native language strongly influences or fully determines the world-view he will acquire as he learns the language.”

           From the late 1980s a new school of linguistic relativity scholars have examined the effects of differences in linguistic categorization on cognition, finding broad support for weak versions of the hypothesis in experimental contexts. Some effects of linguistic relativity have been shown in several semantic domains, although they are generally weak. Currently, a balanced view of linguistic relativity is espoused by most linguists holding that language influences certain kinds of cognitive processes in non-trivial ways, but that other processes are better seen as subject to universal factors. Research is focused on exploring the ways and extent to which language influences thought. The principle of linguistic relativity and the relation between language and thought has also received attention in varying academic fields from philosophy to psychology and anthropology, and it has also inspired and colored works of fiction and the invention of constructed languages.


Benjamin Lee Whorf
         More than any other linguist, Benjamin Lee Whorf has become associated with what he himself called "the principle of linguistic relativity". Instead of merely assuming that language influences the thought and behavior of its speakers (after Humboldt and Sapir) he looked at Native American languages and attempted to account for the ways in which differences in grammatical systems and language use affected the way their speakers perceived the world. Whorf has been criticized by various scholars in linguistics and psychology, who often point to his 'amateur' status, thereby insinuating that he was unqualified and could thereby be dismissed. However, his not having a degree in linguistics cannot be taken to mean that he was linguistically incompetent.





Bibliography:

Brown K.Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics – 2nd Edition. Oxford: Elsevier. 2005.

"anthropological linguistics." Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 2012. Web. 21 Mar. 2012. <http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/27502/anthropological-linguistics>.

 The Sapir–Whorf hypothesis", in Hoijer 1954:92–105

 Whorf, B. L. "The relation of habitual thought and behavior to language" in Carrol (ed.) 1956