I think linguistics is really cool. There is an entire story behind how I got interested in linguistics, which I would like to write up at some point.

  • OzCLO
  • QTE Wycliffe
  • Talking to a ling prof from Griffith
  • Naomi’s parents
  • Graeme’s wife’s parents

For now, this is ʕgoing to be a sort of quick guide based on my linguistics intro subject at uni, but I will only be trying to revise the topics below so these may not be super comprehensive.

What is language?1

  • 5 features of a language
    • Displacement (can communicate ideas in a different place and time)
    • Tradition (taught)
    • Arbitrariness (words and forms are generally unrelated to their meaning)
    • Meta (idk what the word is, but you can use a language to talk about the language itself)
    • Syntax (order matters)
  • Communication is not necessarily language
    • Can have some features of language but not all
  • Animal communication is cool

Word classes1

  • Open classes do change
    • Nouns
    • Lexical verbs
    • Adjectives
    • Adverbs
  • Closed classes don’t rly change
    • Pronouns
    • Determiners
    • Prepositions
    • Auxiliary verbs
  • Tests exist to determine a word’s class
    • Create an adverb

Morphemes1

  • Bound morphemes
  • Unbound morphemes
  • Root, stem, flower
  • Affixes
    • Suffixes
    • Prefixes
    • Infixes??
  • Inflectional affixes
    • There aren’t many in English
  • Derivational affixes
    • Often change word class of a word

Constituents1

  • Tests exist to determine whether something is a phrase
    • Substitution
    • It clause?

Trees1

  • Just draw the tress lol. There’s a whole pdf guide in my course, not sure what else to say here

Trees and functions1

Pragmatics1

  • Structure neq intended meaning
  • Cooperative principle
  • Gricean maxims
    • Qual I
    • Qual II
    • Quan I
    • Quan II
    • Relevance
    • Manner
  • Infringements
    • Flouting
    • Violation
    • Incompetence
    • Opting out

Semantics1

  • Metaphor
    • Extended
    • Abstract -> concrete
  • Image metaphor
    • Sensory relships
    • Granular?
  • Metonymy
    • Something that represents another
    • Less obvious than other forms
  • Change
    • Broadening
    • Narrowing
    • Amelioration
    • Pejoration
    • Weakening
    • Strengthening
  • Correction
    • Hyper
    • Hypo
    • neutral

Language change1

  • Internal
  • External

Language families and varieties1

L1 acquisition1

L2 learning1

Resources

Crash Course Linguistics Playlist on YouTube (Note: Hosted by Taylor Behnke. I bought a bat painting from her during the P4A 2022, as a symbolic representation of the start of my linguistics career, as P4A 2022 coincided with my introductory linguistics subject beginning. It was also my first P4A perk. Currently shipping to me)

The Linguistics Roadshow, a fun and interactive showcase about the science of language, presenting the big questions and the little-known facts about language for high-school students. (Note: Australian-based. Not super active but they have a lot of cool stuff, such as a popular study about regional slang in Australia.)

Lingthusiasm, a podcast that’s enthusiastic about linguistics by Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne. (Note: Haven’t listened to many episodes, but I watched one episode and it was cool.)

Mutual Intelligibility, “a year-long project to curate online linguistics resources” by Liz McCullough.

  • Blogs of the hosts of Lingthusiasm:

  1. My first university linguistics course. ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎