Tuesday, August 12, 2008

14. Pygmalion effect

The Pygmalion effect, Rosenthal effect, or more commonly known as the "teacher-expectancy effect" refers to situations in which students perform better than other students simply because they are expected to do so. The Pygmalion effect requires a student to internalise the expectations of their superiors. It is a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy, and in this respect, students with poor expectations internalise their negative label, and those with positive labels succeed accordingly. Within sociology, the effect is often cited with regards to education and social class.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pygmalion_effect

Monday, August 11, 2008

13. Philology

The study of literature or language used in literature. (Merriam Websters)
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/philology

Philology, (derived from the Greek, from the terms meaning "loved, beloved, dear, friend" and logos "word, articulation, reason") is a branch of the human sciences dealing with language and literature, specifically a literary canon, combining aspects of grammar, rhetoric, historical linguistics (etymology and language change), interpretation of authors, textual criticism and the critical traditions associated with a given language.

Philology considers both form and meaning in linguistic expression, combining linguistics and literary studies.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philology

Wednesday, March 12, 2008

12. Ontogenesis

From the word: on·tog·e·ny

~ the development or course of development of an individual organism
Merriam Webster

Tuesday, March 11, 2008

11. Grammont's Principle (1902)

Implies that the home environment should introduce a strict 'one-language-one person' correspondence.

Hamers and Blanc (2000), Bilinguality and Bilingualism, Cambridge.

10. Semantic Differential

Osgood's semantic differential was designed to measure the connotative meaning of concepts.

Monday, March 10, 2008

9. Compound and Coordinate Language Systems

Compound Language Systems
two sets of linguistic sigbs come to be associated with the same set of meanings.

Coordinate Language Systems
Translation equivalents in the two languages correspond to different sets of representations.

Hamers and Blanc (2000), Bilinguality and Bilingualism, Cambridge.

8. Endogeous and Exogenous language

An Endogeous language is one that is used as a mother tongue in a community and may not be used for institutional purposes.

An Exogenous language is one that is used as an official, institutionalised language but has no speech community in the political entity using it officially. (English or French in African countries)

Hamers and Blanc (2000), Bilinguality and Bilingualism, Cambridge.

Wednesday, March 5, 2008

7. Incipient Bilingualism

Diebold (1964) gives a minimal definition when he uses the term “incipient bilingualism” to mean “the initial stages of contact between two languages”

Tuesday, March 4, 2008

6. Semiotics

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (click here)

Semiotics, semiotic studies, or semiology is the study of sign processes (semiosis), or signification and communication, signs and symbols, both individually and grouped into sign systems. It includes the study of how meaning is constructed and understood.

The field was most notably formalized by the Vienna Circle and presented in their International Encyclopedia of Unified Science, in which the authors agreed on breaking out the field, which they called "semiotic", into three branches:

* Semantics: Relation between signs and the things they refer to, their denotata.
* Syntactics: Relation of signs to each other in formal structures.
* Pragmatics: Relation of signs to their impacts on those who use them. (Also known as General Semantics)

5. Valorisation

Hamers and Blanc (2000) pdf

A pschological process by which a child or an adult attributes certain values to a physical or social object (in this case, language). Hamers and Blanc (2000, p. 376). Bilinguality and Bilingualism 2nd Ed.

4. Language Attrition

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (click here)

Language attrition is the loss of a first or second language or a portion of that language by either a community or an individual. Language attrition is related to multilingualism and language acquisition.

Many factors are at play in learning (acquisition) and unlearning (loss) the first and second languages. This can be a simple reversal of learning. In other cases, the type and speed of attrition depends on the individual, also on his or her age and skill level. For the same second language, attrition has been affected differently depending on what is the dominant first language environment.

In many cases, attrition could well be case-by-case. Those language learners motivated to keep their first and second languages may very well maintain it, although to do so will likely involve continuous study, or regular use of both.

3. Mutatis mutandis (Latin)

According to Wikipedia (cilck here):
A direct translation from Latin of mutatīs mutandīs would read, 'with those things having been changed which need to be changed'. More colloquially, it can be interpreted as 'the necessary changes having been made,' where "the necessary changes" are usually implied by a prior statement assumed to be understood by the reader. It carries the connotation that the reader should pay attention to the corresponding differences between the current statement and a previous one, although they are analogous.

2. Concomitant (adjective)

According to Dictionary.com

1. existing or occurring with something else, often in a lesser way; accompanying; concurrent: an event and its concomitant circumstances.

http://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif

1. Diglossia

According to Wikipedia (click here):
In linguistics, diglossia is a situation where, in a given society, there are two (often closely-related) languages, one of high prestige, which is generally used by the government and in formal texts, and one of low prestige, which is usually the spoken vernacular tongue. The high-prestige language tends to be the more formalised, and its forms and vocabulary often 'filter down' into the vernacular, though often in a changed form.