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Chapter 6
Question | Answer |
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Language | A set of sounds and symbols that are used for communication |
Mutual intelligibility | The 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 normal language |
Dialect | Variants of a standard along regional or ethic lines |
Dialect chain | A group of continuous dialects where the dialects nearest to each other geographically are most similar to each other then dialects further away |
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 definite and the origin is more recent |
Cognate | A word in one language that shares an origin with a word in another language |
Language divergence | Process where new languages are formed from one language |
Backward reconstruction | Tracking sound shifts and hardening consonants backward to uncover an original language |
Language convergence | Process where two languages collapse into one |
Extinct language | A language without any notice speakers |
Conquest theory | Idea that early speakers of Pronto-Indo-European left the hearth area and moved westward, beginning diffusion of different Indo-European languages |
Agriculture theory | The theory that the Pronto-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 culture 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 the people |
Toponym | The name of a place |