Key Words Chapter 1 Kinds of Linguistic Knowledge

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Phonetic knowledge o You know how to translate abstract linguistic categories into articulatory gestures. o You know how to classify particular acoustic patterns as belonging to particular linguistic categories. o You know how to use the patterns of loudness and pitch in your language to help you find boundaries between units. o Units: phonetic features Phonological knowledge o You know what sounds can legally follow what other sounds in your language. o You know how the same abstract sound gets realized in different ways in different environments. o You know how units at one level (for example, phonemes) combine to form units at a higher level (for example, syllables). o Units: phonemes, moras, syllables, metrical feet, phonological phrases Morphological knowledge o You know what order to put, or expect, the morphemes in in a polymorphemic word. o You know how the sounds in a morpheme change when it combines with another. o You know how to interpret or produce a word consisting of a novel combination of familiar morphemes. o Units: morphemes Syntactic (and semantic) knowledge o You know what order to put the constituents of a sentence in to signal a particular meaning. o You know what roles the constituents of a sentence play in the state or event referred to by the sentence. o You know where to expect gaps in particular patterns. o Units: phrases, clauses, sentences

Semantic knowledge o You know how words and sentences relate to objects and relations in the world. o You know how to interpret the scope of negation. o You know how to "find" the thing that is referred to by a definite noun phrase (such as the guy who always parks in front of my driveway). o Units: semantic features, objects, relations, variables, worlds, mental spaces Pragmatic knowledge o You know how get somebody to do something for you using language. o You know how the meanings of words such as go and come change with the context. o You know how to begin and end a phone conversation without offending the hearer. o Units: utterances, discourses, turns Knowledge of varieties of language o You know what forms sound more formal than others and how to select the forms that are appropriate to the situation. o You know when somehow has said something that is politically incorrect.

[L645 Syllabus]
Last modified: Tue Sep 2 12:01:45 EST Comments: gasser@cs.indiana.edu

Sub-skills The language skills of speaking, listening, writing and reading are often divided into sub-skills, which are specific behaviours that language users do in order to be effective in each of the skills. Example Learners developing the skill of listening need to have the sub-skill of being able to recognise contracted forms in connected speech. In the classroom Learners spend time developing a wide range of sub-skills as they build each of the four skills. Amongst the sub-skills focussed on are scanning and skimming in reading, organisational and editing skills in writing, recognition of connected speech and understanding gist in listening, and pronunciation and intonation in speaking.