What is a Test? A test can be defined as any one of the following: procedure for critical evaluation; a means of determining the presence, quality, or truth of something; series of questions, problems, or physical responses designed to determine knowledge, intelligence, or ability. basis for evaluation or judgment: So we could conclude that testing is a form of assessment used for evaluation...
Linguistics is the scientific study of language The main questions addressed in linguistics are: What is language? How is it represented in the mind? Linguists focus on describing and explaining language and are not concerned with the prescriptive rules of the language, neither are they required to know many languages nor are they interpreters The underlying goal of the linguist is to try to...
We will define seven MAJOR word classes: Some may include different word classes from these; they may also define the boundaries between the classes in different ways. E.g. some may treat pronouns as a separate word class, but we will consider them a subclass of nouns, which we will look at in a bit more detail next class. Differences like these highlight an important principle in grammar —...
Morphemes are the smallest meaningful units in words There are two main types of morphemes — Free morphemes & bound morphemes Bound morphemes are of two types — Derivational morphemes & Inflectional morphemes Derivational morphemes are morphemes that have the effect of changing the lexical category or the central meaning of the word to which they are attached to Inflectional...
In order to talk about language at this level we need to make many distinctions that we did not overtly think about when studying grammar at school First, we must note that languages are organized on two levels: – level of expression’ in which the message is encoded – level of content this level encompasses both the organization of words into sentences and the meanings that are...
A phonemic analysis tries to answer the question: What is a permissible (phonological) word in a particular language? A ‘classical’ phonemic analysis consists of: i. an inventory of phonemes ii. a list of allophonic rules (including allophones of course) iii. a statement of phonotactics (environments) — which phonemes go where These three steps provide an answer to the first...
Phonology (Greek phone = voice/sound and logos = word/speech), is a subfield of linguistics closely associated with phonetics. Whereas phonetics is about the physical production and perception of sounds of speech, phonology describes the way sounds function – within a given language or across languages. Phonology is the study of how sounds are organized and used in natural languages. The...
Given information is information that is assumed by the addresser to be known to/assumed by/inferable by the addresser at the time of the utterance because it is: i. common/shared knowledge ii. part of the extralinguistic context iii. previously established in the discourse Given information is usually: i. placed early in a sentence ii. spoken with little stress iii. often reduced, abbreviated or...
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In linguistics, prosody refers to intonation, rhythm and vocal stress in speech. These suprasegmental (Prosodic) features are phonetic features that are not properties of a single segment, but a syllable or higher unit, such as stress, length, tone and intonation. Tone A contrastive pitch of syllables which conveys different meanings of a word. In languages such as Mandarin, the pronunciation of...