Metalanguage

The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA): A standard system of phonetic notation (based on the Latin alphabet) to represent the sounds of spoken language.

Speech sound production:

• Voicing:The result of vocal cord vibration

• Place of articulation: The articulatory point in the vocal tract where sounds are produced.

• Manner of articulation: The process of articulation used in the production of sounds.

Sounds in connected speech and connected speech processes:

• Assimilation:The process where sounds become similar or even identical to neighbouring sounds. Eg: Handbag to hambag.

• Vowel reduction: The removal of a vowel sound from a word. Eg: Straya instead of Australia.

• Elision: The slurring or omission of some sounds.

• Insertion:The addition of sounds where they previously didn't exist. eg: UmbArella

Prosodic features: The features of speech apart from the actual words.

• Pitch: How high or low the voice is, reflecting the speed of vibration of the vocal chords.

• Stress:The degree of force with which a syllable or word is articulated.

• Volume: The degree of loudness or intensity of sounds.

• Tempo: The speed at which we talk.

• Intonation: The patterns of changes in pitch in speech.

Phonological patterning: the creation of a pattern through repeated sounds or spoken language

• Alliteration: the repetition of a sound at the beginning of sequential or close words

• Assonance: repetition of a vowel sound within words

• Consonance: repeptition of consonant sounds within words

• Onomatopoeia: words formed by the imitation of a sound as well as describing the formation of such words.

• Rhythm: the pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables in speech

• Rhyme: repetition of word endings that have the same or similar vowel and consonant sounds

Vocal Effects: coughs, laughter, breath- the way in which these effects can be used in speech to communicate or display understanding and reaction in discourse

Word classes:

• Noun:Words that typically name things.

• Verbs: Words that typically describe an action or something we do, have or are.

• Auxiliary verbs: Auxiliary (or Helping) verbs are used together with a main verb to show the verb’s tense or to form a negative or question. The most common auxiliary verbs are have, be, and do.

• Modal verbs: 'Helping' or auxiliary verbs that express the attitude of the speaker/writer and express probability, possibility, doubt etc. eg: May, will, must, should.

• Adjectives: Words that typically describe nouns.

• Adverbs: Words that modify or give more information about verbs, adjectives or adverbs, usually about time, manner or place.

• Prepositions: Words that express spatial relations.

• Pronouns: Words that replace nouns.

• Conjunctions: "Joining" words that link clauses or parts of clauses together eg: "but" and "and".

• Determiners (can be called articles): Words that express notions such as definiteness, quantity, number and possession - they 'determine' what kind of a noun follows'. Definite article: the, indefinite article: an/a.

• Interjections: any member of a class of words expressing emotion, distinguished in most languages by their use in grammatical isolation, as Hey! Oh!Ouch! Ugh!

Function words: Function words are words that have little lexical meaning or have ambiguous meaning, but instead serve to express grammatical relationships with other words within a sentence, or specify the attitude or mood of the speaker.

Content words: Words that have independent, real world meaning that might occur in a dictionary.

Affixation: A morphological process that involves the addition of bound morphemes (or affixes) to a word stem.

• Prefix: An affix that precedes the root word.

• Suffix: An affix that follows the root word.

• Infix: An affix that occurs inside the root word.

Suffixation in Australian English-  the habit of Australian English speakers to shorten words and add diminutive suffixes such as "-ie" or "o". E.g. trades person= tradie, service station= servo

Morpheme: The smallest meaningful units in the grammar of a language.

• Derivational morphemes: Morphemes that change the meaning of an existing word and sometimes the word class.

• Inflectional morphemes: Morphemes that give us grammatical information eg. Walk + ed = we know it happened in the past

• Root morphemes: Morphemes that stand on their own as a unit of meaning, and comprise the main meaning of the word.

• Bound morphemes: Morphemes that need to be affixed to other morphemes to make meaning.

• Free morphemes: Morphemes that stand on their own as a word.

word loss; word-formation processes: the process by which words are created or slip out of use

• blends: combining parts of words together (usually the first and last morphemes). E.g Brother + romance= bromance, Cybernetic+Organism= cyborg

• acronyms: using the initial letters of a saying/phrase to form a word that is pronounced as a single word. EFTPOS, scuba

• initialisms: using the initial letters of a saying/phrase to form a word where each is letter pronounced. ATM

• shortenings: the removal of morphemes, usually the first of last. E.g. refrigerator= fridge. Photograph= photo

• compounding: combining two or more existing words into a single lexical item. E.g. 

• contractions: the removal of letters to form a single lexical item, with punctuation to indicate the missing letters. Do not= don't

• collocations: words used so frequently together they become a single lexical item. E.g fish and chips

• conversion: use of an existing word in a new word class. E.g. Email (noun) to email (verb)

• neologisms: new words, often deliberately created. E.g. cheugy

• borrowing: the use of a word or lexeme from another language. E.g. schadenfreude, tsunami

• commonisation: the use of a proper noun as a common noun. E.g. Google= google 

• archaism: the use of words that are no longer used in everyday language. E.g. coney for rabbit, thee/thou/thine

morphological patterning- the repetition of the same or similar morpheme. E.g. greeny-bluish (adding morphemes to show approximation) or mish-mash

lexical choice and patterning- the repetition of a word in its various forms

• simple lexical patterning: repeating the same word in various forms with simple inflectional changes  (E.g. horse, horses or sing, sings)

• complex lexical patterning: repeating the same word in various forms with derivational changes (E.g. category, categorise, categorical)

Phrases: Clusters of words that form a grammatical unit but are smaller than clauses.

Clauses: A structural unit that is larger than a phrase and may constitute a simple sentence or a part of a complex sentence. Independent clauses stand on their own as a simple sentence, dependent clauses don't stand on their own.

Sentence: A set of related words that stands on its own and consists of at least a subject and a predicate.

Sentence structures:

• Simple sentence: Contains a single independent clause. eg: I like butter

• Compound sentence: Contains two or more coordinated (independent clauses), often using a coordinating conjunction. eg: I like butter and he likes margarine.

• Complex sentence: Contains an independent clause and one or more dependent or subordinate clauses. eg: I like butter spread on my toast.

• Compound-complex sentences: Contains two or more coordinated clauses and a subordinate clause. eg: I like butter because it tastes good spread on my toast.

Ellipsis: The omission of elements in a sentence because they either appear elsewhere or can be understood from the context.

Coordination: The combination of two or more elements - words, phrases or clauses - that are equal in status and function. Usually linked by coordinating conjunctions or punctuation. 

Subordination: The combination of clauses or elements that are syntactically non-equivalent.

Sentence types:

• Declarative: A sentence that makes a statement.

• Imperative: A sentence that commands, orders or issues a directive.

• Interrogative: A sentence that poses a question.

• Exclamative: Makes an exclamation or expresses emotion.

Subject: Who or what is doing, being or having the verb in the sentence.

Predicate: The verb and object in the sentence.

Object: What is being acted upon (the verb) by the subject of the sentence.

Complement: Completes what is said about another element such as the subject - gives extra information about the subject, verb or object.

Prepositional Phrases: Prepositional phrases simply add information or modify the sentence (subject or predicate). They are called prepositional as they usually begin with a preposition (in, to, at, etc.) They can be adjectival (adding to the noun) or adverbial (adding to the verb).

ellipses; nominalisation; 

• active and passive voice, including agentless passives 

syntactic patterning in texts:  the repetition of syntactic features such as clauses or phrases

• parallelism: the repetition of a pattern in a clause or phrase. Eg. repeated imperative sentences,

• antithesis: 

• listing: 

Code-switching: (the practice of alternating between two or more languages or dialects in conversation)

Paralinguistic features: Features used in spoken texts that are marginal to speech, for example facial expressions, body gestures, body language, eye gaze.

Phatic speech: speech used for social interaction rather than to convey information.

Features of Spoken Discourse:

• Openings/Closing: formulaic utterances used to begin or end spoken discourses. We usually open with salutations (Good morning, hi, etc) or vocatives (Mate, Jim, Ladies and Gentlemen) or questions ('How are you?). Similarly, we might end with politeness markers or apologies (thanks for the chat, so sorry to go), phatic speech (its been great, I best be off) or salutations (bye). All signal the close of the discourse and are (usually) mutually understood by interlocutors.

• Adjacency pairs: utterances that occur next to one another and relate, often formulaic. Geetings (Morning, Good morning!), openings, phatic talk, apologies, compliments, thank you, etc. Any time adjacency pairs occur, they assist is structuring topics and turn taking. When asked a question, you response with the relevant answer, when greeted, you return the greeting.

• Overlap: overlap is a natural part of spoken interactions. It occurs for a range of reasons: excitement, agreement or echoing someone; looking to take our turn; disagreeing or arguing.

• Interrogative tags: 'Tags' or phrases added to the end of statements to turn them into questions. They often signal a passing of the floor or checking understanding. E.g. "isn't it?", "will you?".

• Discourse particles: words inserted into discourse that serve a particular purpose, or function. They package information, orient topics, structure turn-taking ad express attitudes. E.g. "I mean...", "You know..."

Turn-taking: the way in which participants in a conversation or discourse contribute to or build it. Specifically, this is how they take the floor (getting a turn), hold the floor (maintain their turn) or pass the floor (give someone else a turn). In this case, the floor simply refers to whose turn it is or who is speaking.

• strategies in spoken discourse minimal responses/back-channelling

NON-FLUENCY FEATURES

Liaison: feature of speech that occurs when two words are spoken at speed and the running together or liaison of these two words produces a new sound. For example 'There is someone over there' might sound like 'There ris someone', where the 'r' is sounded at the start of the verb 'is', resulting in a word that sounds like 'ris'

Pauses: indicate a gap in something said, and are marked by a parenthesis with a number inside, to indicate the number of seconds of time that elapsed between speech: (2) would indicate a pause of two seconds. Mircopauses (.) are sometimes seen as the punctuation of speech as they can indicate the boundaries of clauses and unitary pieces of information; at other times they can exist to allow the speaker the opportunity to consider his or her next utterance.

Voiced Pause: Simply pauses of sounds that allow the speaker time to consider their next utterance by indicating that the speaker's turn is not yet over and so prevent interruptions. Examples of voiced pauses are 'erm', 'um', 'ah' and 'er'.

Fillers: An often meaningless word is inserted into speech from habit or thinking time, e.g. 'right', 'well', 'you know'.

Repetition: Often found in conversation. Repetition can indicate a speaker is searching for the right word and is unsure as to whether he or she has found it. It may be only a letter that is repeated and can indicate an element of uncertainty about the topic under discussion.

False Start: Common in spontaneous speech where the speaker begins an utterance then self corrects and rephrases.

Overlap: Two speakers speaking at once will often break down the fluency of a conversation. They occur for various reasons: an end of turn may have been misjudged, someone may be keen to add to a point and wish to steal a turn, or there may be many participants who all hold equal status within the conversational group.

Backtracking: Interrupting the current topic of conversation to introduce further information relevant to a topic discussed previously.

Non-standard english: Any variety of language that does not conform to the standard, prestige form of english accepted as the norm by society.

Elision: occurs when we put certain words together to make well-used phrases. A good example would be 'fish 'n chips'

Ellipsis: refers to missing words, which are generally understood from the context of the speech.

• factors that contribute to a text’s coherence: 

cohesion, inference, logical ordering, formatting, consistency and conventions 

• factors that contribute to a text’s cohesion: 

lexical choice including synonymy, antonymy, hyponymy and collocation; information flow including clefting, front focus and end focus; anaphoric and cataphoric reference; deictics; repetition; ellipses; substitution; conjunctions and adverbials

Semantic fields/domain: An area of meaning that is identified by a set of related lexical items.

Semantic over-generalisation: Where children extend word meaning or grammatical rules beyond their normal use.

Inference: The additional information assumed by hearer/readers in order to make a connection between between what has been said/written and what is meant. Speakers and writers imply and hearers/readers infer.

Etymology: The study of the history of words and word origins.

Denotation: The agreed upon, codified dictionary definition of a word.

Connotation: The meanings associated with a word

Semantic change:

• Broadening: A type of semantic change whereby the contexts in which a word can appear are extended. eg: 'grog' used to mean a mixture of rum and water and now means all alcohol.

• Narrowing: A type of semantic change whereby the contexts in which a word can appear are reduced. eg:  'liquor' used to mean all liquid and now means alcoholic beverages.

• Elevation: A semantic shift whereby words change their emotive overtones to acquire favourable associations.

• Deterioration: A semantic shift whereby words change their emotive overtones to acquire negative associations.

• Shift: When a word changes in meaning over time.

• lexical choice and semantic patterning in texts: figurative language, irony, metaphor, oxymoron, simile, personification, animation, puns, lexical ambiguity • lexical meaning, especially sense relations: synonymy, antonymy, hyponymy, idiom, denotation and connotation • euphemism and dysphemism.

register: The register of a text is how the various elements and features work together. The stylistic and discourse features collectively determine whether the text is formal or informal in parts and how it varies along a continuum in this formality.

Social purpose: the specific range of reasons a text or discourse has been created or the aims participants are hoping to achieve (whether consciously or not). These CANNOT be understood outside of the context of the discourse. That is, they are specific to the time, place and preconditions for it existing.

Function: the simplistic role of the text or discourse, usually defined as a "to..." verb. Generally one of:

• to entertain

• to inform

• to persuade

• to build/maintain rapport or solidarity

• to seek information

• to play

• to conduct ceremony

critical period of language development: the theorised period (ranging from birth to puberty) in which children readily learn a language and after which, developing language is much more difficult and unlikely.

theories of child language acquisition including:

• • behaviourism: the theory that language is a behaviour learned through repeated exposure and reinforcement. That is, children imitate the language they hear around them.

  • innatism: the theory that language is 'hard wired' into the human brain. That is, children have an inbuilt capacity to learn language through their Language Acquisition Device (LAD)

  • interactionism: the theory that language develops through interaction with our environment. That is, children only acquire language in line with the social and linguistic environments to which they are exposed in conjunction with their maturation and stages of development

  • first-language acquisition: the stages and processes children go through when acquiring language

  • additional-language acquisition: the different processes and stages humans go through when learning an additional language

  • bilingualism: the ability to speak and understand two languages

  • multi-lingualism: the ability to speak and understand more than two languages

• overt norms

• covert norms 

• Standard English 

• non-Standard English 

• political correctness 

• jargon 

• slang 

• colloquial language/colloquialisms 

• double-speak 

• taboo language 

• public language 

• rhetoric 

• positive face needs

• negative face needs 

• situational context 

• cultural context

• ethnolect

• sociolect

• idiolect-