Language is a means of verbal communication. It is a system of arbitrary vocal symbols used for human communication.1.Design features of language The features that define our human languages can be called design featureswhich can distinguish human language from any animal system of communication.Arbitrariness refers to the fact that the forms of linguistic signs bear no natural relationship to their meanings.eg.the dog barks wowwow in english but 汪汪汪in chinese.Duality refers to the property of having two levels of structures, such that units of the primary level are composed of elements of the secondary level and each of the two levels has its own principles of organization.eg.dog-woof(but not w-oo-f)Creativity means that language is resourceful because of its duality and its recursiveness. Eg. An experiment of bee communication.Displacement means that human languages enable their users to symbolize objects, events and concepts which are not present (in time and space) at the moment of communication.3. Origin of language The bow-wow theory In primitive times people imitated the sounds of the animal calls in the wild environment they lived and speech developed from that.The pooh-pooh theory In the hard life of our primitive ancestors, they utter instinctive sounds of pains, anger and joy which gradually developed into language. The “yo-he-ho” theory As primitive people worked together, they produced some rhythmic grunts which gradually developed into chants and then into language.4.Linguistics is the scientific study of language. It studies not just one language of any one community, but the language of all human beings.5. Main branches of linguistics✧Phonetics is the study of speech sounds, it includes three main areas: articulatory phonetics, acousticphonetics, and auditory phonetics.✧Phonology studies the rules governing the structure, distribution, and sequencing of speech sounds and theshape of syllables.✧Morphology studies the minimal units of meaning – morphemes and word-formation processes.✧Syntax refers to the rules governing the way words are combined to form sentences in a language, or simply,the study of the formation of sentences.✧Semantics examines how meaning is encoded in a language. It is concerned with both meanings of wordsas lexical items and levels of language below the word and above it.✧Pragmatics is the study of meaning in context. It concerned with the way language is used to communicaterather than with the way language is structured.6.Important distinctions in linguistics1)Descriptive vs. prescriptive For example, “Don’t say X.” is a prescriptive command; “People don’t say X.” is a descriptive statement. The distinction lies in prescribing how things ought to be and describing how things are.Lyons2)Synchronic vs. diachronic A synchronic study takes a fixed instant (usually at present) as its point of observation. Saussure’s diachronic description is the study of a language through the course of its history. E.g. a study of the features of the English used in Shakespeare’s time would be synchronic, and a study of the changes English has undergone since then would be a diachronic study.3)Langue & parole langue: the linguistic competence of the speaker. parole: the actual phenomena or data of linguistics(utterances). Saussure4)Competence and performance According to Chomsky,a language user’s underlying knowledge about the system of rules is called the linguistic competence, and the actual use of language in concrete situations is called performance. Competence7.consonant is produced by constricting or obstructing the vocal tract at some places to divert, impede, orcompletely shut off the flow of air in the oral cavity. Vowel:are sound segments produced without such obstruction, so no turbulence of a total stopping of the air can be perceived. The distinction between vowels and consonants lies in the obstruction of airstream. [p] voiceless bilabial stop[b] voiced bilabial stop[s] voiceless alveolar fricative [z] voiced alveolar fricative[m] bilabial nasal[n] alveolar nasal[l] alveolar lateral[j] palatal approximant[h] glottal fricative[r] alveolar approximant[f v]labiodental fricative[ ]dental fricative[t d]alveolar stop[k g]velar stop[w]velar approximant8. Coarticulation: The simultaneous or overlapping articulation of two successive phonological units. Anticipatory coarticulation: If the sound becomes more like the following sound, as in the case of lamp, it is known as anticipatory coarticulation.Perseverative coarticulation: If the sound displays the influence of the preceding sound, as in the case of map, it is perseverative coarticulation.9.Phoneme: the abstract element of sound, identified as being distinctive in a particular language.allophone: The different phones which can represent a phoneme in different phonetic environment are called the allophones of that phoneme.10. Assimilation: A process by which one sound takes on some or all the characteristics of a neighboring sound.11. Classification of wordsa)Variable and invariable words E.g. follow – follows – following – followed. Invariable words refer tothose words such as since, when, seldom, through, hello, etc.b)grammatical word: word expressing grammatical meanings, such conjunction, prepositions, articles andpronouns. lexical word: word having lexical meanings, that is ,those which refer to substance, action and quality, such as nouns, verbs, adjectives, and verbs.c)Closed-class words and open-class words pronouns, prepositions, conjunctions, articles, etc. are allclosed items. Nouns, verbs, adjectives and many adverbs are all open-class items.d)4.Word class particles助词auxiliaries助动词pro-form代词形式determiners限定词13.morpheme:the smallest unit of language in terms of relationship between expression and content, a unit that cannot be divided into further small units without destroying or drastically altering the meaning, whether it is lexical or grammatical.Morphology studies the internal structure of words, and the rules by which words are formed.Morpheme is a branch of morphology.Types of morphemesa)Free morpheme and bound morpheme Those which may occur alone, that is, those which may constitutewords by themselves, are free morphemes.eg.dog,nation,free.Those which must appear with at least another morpheme are called bound morphemes. Eg.dogs,national,disclose.b)Root, affix and stem A root is the base form of a word that cannot further beanalyzed.eg.internationalism,the root is nation. An affix is the collective term for the type of formative that can be used only when added to another morpheme. A stem is any morpheme or combination of morphemes to which an inflectional affix can be added.friend in friendsc)Inflectional affix and derivational affix The distinction between inflectional affixes and derivationalaffixes is sometimes known as a distinction between inflectional morphemes and derivational morphemes. pounds refer to those words that consist of more than one lexical morpheme, or the way to join two separate words to produce a single form, such as ice-cream, sunrise, paper bag, railway, rest-room, simple-minded, wedding-ring, etc. Derivation shows the relation between roots and suffixes.un＋conscious→unconscious15. Lexical change propera)Invention Since economic activities are the most important and dynamic in human life, many new lexicalitems come directly from the consumer items, their producers or their brand names.eg.coke,kodak,nylonb)Blending is a relatively complex form of compounding, in which two words are blended by joining theinitial part of the first word and the final part of the second word, or by joining the initial parts of the two words.eg.smoke+fog→smog,breakfast+lunch→bru nchc)Abbreviation / clipping A new word is created by cutting the final part, cutting the initial part or cuttingboth the initial parts of the original words.eg.bicyle→bike,aeroplane→plane,influenza→flud)Acronym Acronym is made up from the first letters of the name of an organization, which has a heavilymodified headword.WTO world trade organizatione)Back-formation Back-formation refers to an abnormal type of word-formation where a shorter word isderived by deleting an imaged affix from a longer form already in the language. editor→edit gangling→ganglef)Analogical creation The principle of analogical creation can account for the co-existence of two forms,regular and irregular, in the conjugation of some English verbs.work→wrought→workedg)Borrowing English in its development has managed to widen her vocabulary by borrowing words fromother languages. Greek, Latin, French, Spanish, Arabic and other languages have all played an active role in this process.feast was borrowed directly from the middle french festa16.constituent is a term used in structural sentence analysis for every linguistic unit,which is a part of a larger linguistic unit. Immediate constituents are constituents immediately, directly, below the level of a construction, which may be a sentence or a word group or a word.Immediate constituent analysis, IC analysis for short, refers to the analysis of a sentence in terms of its immediate constituents –word groups (phrases), which are in turn analyzed into the immediate constituents of their own, and the process goes on until the ultimate sake of convenience.17.endocentric construction: one construction whose distribution is functionally equivalent, or approaching equivalence, to one of its constituents, which serves as the centre, or head, of the whole. Hence an endocentric construction is also known as a headed construction. e.g. boys and girls, in which the two content constituents, boys and girls, are of equal syntactic status, and no one is dependent on the other.exocentric construction: a construction whose distribution is not functionally equivalent to any to any of its constituents. Eg.the boy smiled.(neither constituent can substitute for the sentence structure as a whole)18.Meanings of “meaning”Meaning: Meaning refers to what a language expresses about the world we live in or any possible or imaginary world.Connotation: The additional meaning that a word or phrase has beyond its central meaning.Denotation: That part of the meanings of a word or phrase that relates it to phenomena in the real world or in a fictional or possible word.Different types of meaning (Recognized by Leech, 1974)(1)Conceptual meaning: Logical, cognitive, or denotative content.(2)Associative meaning a.Connotative meaning: What is communicated by virtue of what language refers to. b.Social meaning: What is communicated of the social circumstances of language use. c.Affective meaning: What is communicated of the feelings and attitudes of the speaker / writer.d.Reflected meaning: What is communicated through association with another sense of the same expression.e.Collocative meaning: What is communicated through association with words which tend to occur in the environment of another word.(3) Thematic meaning: What is communicated by the way in which the message is organized in terms of order and emphasis.19.The difference between meaning, concept, connotation, and denotationMeaning refers to the association of language symbols with the real world. There are many types of meaning according to different approaches.Concept is the impressio n of objects in people’s mind.Connotation is the implied meaning, similar to implication.Denotation, like sense, is not directly related with objects, but makes the abstract assumption of the real world.20..The referential theoryThe referential theory: The theory of meaning which relates the meaning of a word to the thing it refers to, or stands for, is known as the referential theory.The semantic triangle theory Ogden and Richards presented the classic “Semantic Triangle” as manifested in the followin g diagram, in which the “symbol” refers to the linguist elements (word, sentence, etc.), the “referent” refers to the object in the world of experience, and the “thought” or “reference” refers to concept or notion. Thus the symbol of a word signifies “things” by virtue of the “concept,” associated with the form of the word in the mind of the speaker of the language. The concept thus considered is the meaning of the word. The connection (represented with a dotted line) between symbol and referent is made pos sible only through “concept.”21. Sense relations sense: the semantic relations between one world and another, or more generally between one linguistic unit and another.(1)Synonymy:is the technical name for the sameness relation.eg.buy and purchase Antonymy:is the name for oppositeness relation. There are three subtypes: gradable, complementary and converse antonymy.Gradable antonymy e.g. good / bad, long / short, big / small, plementary antonymy , e.g. alive / dead, hit / miss, male / female, boy / girl, etc.Converse antonymy e.g. buy / sell, parent / child, above / below, etc.Hyponymy.It is a matter of class membership. e.g. under flower, there are peony, jasmine, tulip, violet, rose, etc., flower is the superordinate of peony, jasmine, etc., peony is the hyponym of flower, and peony, jasmine, tulip, violet, rose, etc. are co-hyponyms.ponential analysis Componential analysis defines the meaning of a lexical element in terms of semantic components. That is, the meaning of a word is not an unanalyzable whole. It may be seen as a complex of different semantic features. There are semantic units smaller than the meaning of a word. E.g Boy: [+human][-adult][+male] Girl: [+human][-adult][-male]Son: child (x, y) & male (x) Daughter: child (x, y) & -male (x)Take: cause (x, (have (x, y))) Give: cause (x, (-have (x, y)))Sense relations between sentences(1) X is synonymous with Y (2) X is inconsistent with Y(3) X entails Y (4)X presupposes Y (5) X is a contradiction (6)X is semantically anomalous23. What is pragmatics? What’s the difference between pragmatics and semantics?Pragmatics is the study of the use of language in communication, particularly the relationships between sentences and the contexts and situations in which they are used. Pragmatics includes the study of (1) How the interpretation and use of utterances depends on knowledge of the real world;(2) How speakers use and understand speech acts;(3) How the structure of sentences is influenced by the relationship between the speaker and the hearer.Pragmatics is sometimes contrasted with semantics, which deals with meaning without reference to the users and communicative functions of sentence24.The theory of conversational implicature austin’sa)The cooperative principle (CP)refers to the “co-operation” between speakers in using the maxims duringthe conversation. There are four conversational maxims:b)Conversational implicature: The use of conversational maxims to imply meaning during conversation iscalled conversational implicature.1. How do you understand the design features of human language?1) Arbitrariness,According to Saussure, it refers to the fact that the forms of linguistic signs bear no naturalrelationship to their meaning. For instance,we cannot explain why a book is called a /buk/ and a pen a /pen/. 2) Duality.It refers to the property of having two levels of structures: units of the primary level being composed of elements of the secondary level and each level having its own principles of organization. At the lower or the basic level, there is the structure of sounds, which are meaningless, discrete, individual sounds. But the sounds of language can be combined according to rules into units of meaning such as morphemes and words, which, at the higher level, can be arranged into sentences. This duality of structure or double articulation of language enables its users to talk about anything within their knowledge. No animal communication system has duality or even comes near to possessing it. 3）Creativity.by creativity we mean language is resouceful owing to its duality and its recursiveness. Peculiar to human languages，users of language can understand and produce sentences they have never heard before.For example,“ A red-eyed elephant is dancing on the hotel bed” 4) nguage can be used to refer to things, which are not present: real or imagined matters in the past, present or future, or in far-away places. Displacement enables people to handle generalizations and abstractions.For example,a dog cannot tell people that its master will be home in a few days.Our language enables us to communicate about things that do not exist or do not yet exist.2. What are the three branches of phonetics? How do they contribute to the Articulatory phonetics —describes the way our speech organs work to produce the speech sounds and how they differ.Auditory phonetics -–studies the physical properties of speech sounds, reaches the important conclusion that phonetic identity is only a theoretical ideal.Acoustic phonetics -–studies the physical properties of speech sounds ,the way sound travel from the speaker to the hearer.3. Cite examples from English and Chinese to discuss the concept of the syllable.English: a unit of speech sounds consisting of a vowel or a vowel with one or more than one consonant. Chinese: word or part of word which contains a vowel sound or consonant acting as a vowel.In English we can divide a syllable into two parts: the phyme and the onset. As the vowel within the thyme is the nucleus, the consonant after it will be termed the coda, for example clasp .All syllables must have a nucleus but not all syllables contain an onset and a coda. A syllable that has no coda is called an open syllable, for example: bar, tie. While a syllable with coda is known as closed syllable, forexample: hard, tied, dead.English syllable can be represented as (((C)C)C)V((((C)C)C)C) , However ,the Chinese syllable allows at most one consonant in the onset position and only nasals in the coda for the Putonghua .Thus the Chinese syllable is represented as (C)V(C)e.g. “split”, “sixths” and “prompts”. “您好，请问河南工业大学在哪里？”4. Morpheme is defined as the smallest unit in terms of relationship betweenSince morpheme is defined as the smallest unit in terms of relationship between expression and content,it at the same time covers the grammatical and semantic aspect of linguistic unit.A morpheme may overlap with a phoneme,such as I,but usually not,as in pig,in which the morpheme is the whole word,i.e. an independent,free morpheme,but the phonemes are/p/,/i/,and/g/.5. Use examples to illustrate the concept of “recursiveness”.Recursiveness is an umbrella term, under which may be brought together several important linguistic phenomena such as coordination and subordination, conjoining and embedding, hypotactic and paratactic. All these are means to extend sentences. Theoretically, there is no limit to the number of embedded clauses in a sentence, so long as it does not become an obstacle to successful communication. This is what we call recursiveness, for example, (1) I met a man who had a son whose wife sold cookies that she had baked in her kitchen that was fully equipped withelectrical appliances that were new. Recursiveness, together with openness, is generally regarded as the core of creativity of language. Coordination and conjoining are different names for the same linguistic phenomenon, that is, to use and, but or or to join together syntactic constituents with the same function. For instance, the sentence A man got into the car could be extended into a sentence like this “[NP A man, a woman, a boy, a car and a dog] got into the car”. Subordination and embedding can be understood as the extension of any syntactic constituent by inserting one or more syntactic elements with different functions into another. I saw the man who had visited you last year is an extended sentence by changing the independent clause The man had visited you last year into a dependent element (here a relative clause). Other examples of this type include:(2) I saw the man who had visited you last year. (relative clause)(3) I don’t know whether Professor Li needs this book. (complement clause)(4) If you listened to me, you wouldn't make mistakes. (adverbial clause) Hypotaxis and parataxis are two traditional terms for the description of syntacticrelations between sentences. In the examples below, the former is hypotactic, whilethe latter is paratactic:(5) We live near the sea. So we enjoy a healthy climate.(6) He dictated the letter. She wrote it.6.The sentence "John saw the police with binoculars" has two semantic interpretations. You are required to explain why the sentence is two way ambiguous. Syntactic tree diagrams are necessary for your explanation.SS N VPN VP V NPVP DET NPV NP PP N PPDET N P N P NJohn saw the police with binoculars John saw the police with binoculars 7. Why do we say tree diagrams are more advantageous and informative thanIn addition to revealing a linear order,a constituent structure tree has a hierarchical structure that groups words into structural constituents and shows the syntactic category of each structural constituent,and consequently is believed to most truth fully illustrate the constituent relationship among linguistic elements.For example,the phrase“the old men and women”may have two interpretations,i.e.the adjective“old”may modify the noun“men”,or the following two nouns“men and women”.Linear order analysis cannot tell this difference,so it is ambiguous.Whereas,the constituent or tree diagrams analysis can make this difference clear.So,we say tree diagrams are more advantageous and informative than linear structure analysis.NP NPNP NP NP NPThe old men and the women the old men and the old women8 why is it important to know the relations a sign has with others, such as syntagmatic and paradigmatic relations? As the relation between a signifier and its signified is arbitrary, the value of a sign cannot be determined by itself. To know the identity of a sign, the linguist will have to know thesigns it is used together with and those it issubstitutable for. The former relation is known as syntagmatic and the latter paradigmatic.9.“任何语言里的任何一句话，它的意义绝不等于一个个字的总和，而是还多些semantics and pragmatics. Semantics is the study of the literal meaning of a sentence(without taking context into consideration).pragmatics is the study of the intended meaning of a speaker(taking context into consideration).For example,“Today is Sunday”,semantically,it means that today is the first day of the week;pragmatically, you can mean a lot by saying this,all depending on the context and the intention of the speaker,say,making a suggestion or giving an invitation.10. What are the four maxims of the Cooperative Principle? Please give examples(1)quantity----Make your contribution as informative as required for the current purpose of the exchange. eg.War is war.> War is cruel----Do not make your contribution more informative than is required. eg. A: Where is Tom?B: He has gone to the library. He said so when he left.> I am not sure and I do not believe what he said.(2)quality----Do not say what you believe to be false. eg.He is made of iron ----Do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence. eg. A:would you like to come to our party tonight?B:I’m afraid I’m not feeling so well tonight.(3)relation----Be relevant. eg. A: Prof. Wang is an old bag.B: Nice weather for the time of year. > I don’t want to talk about Prof. Wang. (4)manner----Avoid obscurity of expression.Eg.A:Let’s get the kids something.B:Ok, but I veto C-H-O-C-O-L-A-T-E.> Don’t give them chocolate ----Avoid ambiguity. eg. A: Name and title, please?B: John Smith, Associate Editor and professor.----Be brief. eg.A:Did you get my assignment?B: I received two pages clipped together and covered with rows of black squiggles.> not satisfied.----Be orderly.11. In recent years, people, e.g. 上网，海选.If we compare newspaper articles published recently with those published five years ago, we will catch a big difference in their lexical choice—there are so many new words and expressions in these new articles. Based on the results of this comparison, we may predict that today's readers will find it a little bit difficult to understand what future newspapers will carry.Over the past decades, Chinese people have enjoyed a much more colorful life,materially and spiritually. The rapid development in science, technology, economics,culture, and education has brought in our daily communication thousands andthousands of new words. Words such as 短信、鼠标、上网、博客、动漫、网游、按揭、干细胞、海选(in an election or contest)、海面(in a job interview), which used to sound so professional, have now become part of our active vocabulary and are used frequently in our speech. Facing a situation like this, you may ask this question: Where do these new words and expressions come from? It is not an easy job to tell a complete story of these words. If you look at the question from a sociolinguistic point of view,you may claim that language changes with society. Words are the most active, sensible, and changeable component of language. Following this line of reasoning, we may conclude that, as society changes, the vocabulary of our language will become richer, more colorful and expressive in the days to come.。
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