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Chapter 6
AP Human Geo
Term | Definition |
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Language | a set of sounds and symbols that are used for communication |
Mutual intelligibility | ability of two people to understand each other when speaking |
Standard language | the variant of a language that a country's political and intellectual elite seek to promote as the norm for use in schools, government, the media, and other aspects of public life |
Dialect | variants of a standard language along regional or ethic lines |
Dialect chain | a group of contiguous dialects where the dialects nearest to each other geographically are the most similar and the dialects further apart are least similar |
Isogloss | a geographic boundary where linguistic features occur |
Language family | group of languages with a shared but distant origin |
Language subfamilies | divisions within a language family where commonalities are more definite are the origin is more recent |
Cognate | a word in one language that shares its origin with a word in another language; cognates have similar meanings and spellings and show shared origins and connections among languages |
Language divergence | process where discrete, new languages are eventually formed from one language; happens when people speaking two dialects of a language are relatively isolated from each other and have little spatial interaction; the opposite of language convergence |
Backward reconstruction | tracking sound shifts and hardening consonants backward to uncover an original language |
Language convergence | process where two languages collapse into one language; happens when people speaking two languages have frequent and consistent spatial interaction with each other; the opposite of language divergence |
Extinct language | language without any native speakers |
Conquest Theory | idea that early speakers of Proto-Indo-European left the hearth area and moved westward on horseback, overpowering earlier inhabitants and beginning the diffusion and differentiation of Indo-Europeans tongues |
Agriculture Theory | the theory that Proto-Indo-European language spread with the diffusion of agriculture |
Vernacular | a language used in everyday interaction among a group of people in a local area |
Lingua franca | language used for trade or cultural interaction among people who speak different languages |
Pidgin language | combination of two or more languages in a simplified structure and vocabulary |
Creole language | a language that begins as a pidgin language and was later adopted as the mother tongue of a people |
Toponym | place name |