Lecture 11. Why do linguists tend to be so critical to traditional grammar?Traditional Grammar---broadly refers to the study of language covering the period from ancient times to the end of the 18th century .Linguistics is descriptive, not prescriptive. Linguistics regarded the spoken language as primary, not the written. It lacked autonomy. It was modeled on ancient Greek, Latin grammar. It was based on logical concepts from meaning to form, not from form to meaning. Emphasis was laid on written language. The attitude was prescriptive not descriptive.2. What is the difference between the descriptive and the prescriptive approach to the investigation of language? Which is to be preferred and why?Descriptive grammar refers to the structure of a language as it is actually used by speakers and writers. Prescriptive grammar refers to the structure of a language as certain people think it should be used. Both kinds of grammar are concerned with rules--but in different ways. Specialists in descriptive grammar study the rules or patterns that underlie our use of words, phrases, clauses, and sentences. On the other hand, prescriptive grammarians lay out rules about what they believe to be the “correct” or “incorrect” use of language. Descriptive grammarians generally advise us not to be overly concerned with matters of correctness: language, they say, isn't good or bad; it simply is. As the history of the glamorous word grammar demonstrates, the English language is a living system of communication, a continually evolving affair. Within a generation or two, words and phrases come into fashion and fall out again. Over centuries, word endings and entire sentence structures can change or disappear.3. What are features of modern linguistics?Linguistics is descriptive not prescriptive. Priority of spoken language. Priority of synchronic description. The linguist is interested in all languages.Lecture 21. What branches does general linguistics include? What these branches study?Phonetics: it studies speech sounds, including the production of speech, that is how speech sounds are actually made, transmitted and received, the sound of speech, the description and classification of speech sounds, words and connected speech.Phonology: it studies the rules governing the structure, distribution, and sequencing of speech sounds and the shape of syllables.Morphology: it is concerned with the internal organization of words it studies the minimal units of meaning—morphemes and word-formation processed. Syntax: it is about principles of forming and understanding correct English sentences.Semitics: it examines how meaning is encoded in a language.Pragmatic s: it is the study of meaning in context. it deals with particular utterance in particular situation and is especially concerned with the various ways in which the many social contexts of language performance can influence interpretation.3. (1)Langue vs. parole Langue was considered to be the totality of a language. It was a “storehouse”, the sum of word-images stored in the minds of individuals. We may put it loosely in a formula like:In Saussure's theory, parole refers to the individual side of speech, i.e. speaking is psychophysical, it being the actual, concrete act of speaking on the part of an individual. Parole is thus not a collective instrument; its manifestations are individual and momentary. Langue is code, parole is messag e Langue and parole are closely connected, each dependent on the other: the langue of a community can be arrived at only by a consideration of a large number of paroles, whereas parole can only be intelligible with langue in the minds of all the community members. To a linguist, langue is of primary importance as he wants to make statements which apply, not just to the speech of individuals but to the language as a whole.(2)Synchronic vs. Diachronic linguistics.Synchronic study of language---- refers to the study of language as a whole and the description of a particular state of a language at a given point of time in the development of language without considering its evolution and change in history.Diachronic study of language ---- refers to the study of the process of evolution of language at various histories (historical). A diachronic description of a language traces the historical development of the language and records the changes that have taken place in it between successive points in time.(3)Microlinguistics vs. MacrolinguisticsMicrolinguistics ---- refers to the study of the structure and systems of language, including the various subjects of study of the internal structures of language, such fields as phonology, morphology, syntax.Macrolinguistics ---- refers to the study of language from a broad angle in variou s interdisciplinary subjects, sociolinguistics, psycholinguistics, neurolinguistics, anthropological linguistics, mathematical linguistics, and computational linguisticsLecture 31. Define language. How can you understand it?To give the definition, language is a means of verbal communication .it is instrumental in that communicating by speaking or writing is a purposeful act. It is social and conventional in that language is a social semiotic and communication can only take effectively if all the users share a broad understanding of human interaction including such associated factors as nonverbal cues, motivation, and socio-cultural roles. Language learning and use are determined by the intervention of biological, cognitive, psychosocial and environmental factors .in short ,language distinguishes us from animals because it is far more sophisticated than any animal communication system.2. Illustrate the differences between human language and animal communication system in terms of displacement and cultural transmission.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. With language, we can recall the past or anticipate the future. For example, we can refer to the first has been dead for over 2500 years .Most animals respond communicatively as soon as they are stimulated by some occurrence of communal interest. For instance, a warning cry of a bird instantly announces danger. Such animals are under “immediate stimulus control”. Human language is, unlike animal communication systems, stimulus free. What we talk about need not be triggered by any external stimulus in the world or any internal state.Cultural transmission ---- refers to the fact that the details of the linguistic system must be learned anew by each speaker. They are not biologically transmitted from generation to generation. Though the capacity for language in human being has a genetic basis, the particular language a human being learns is a cultural fact, not a genetic one. Simply, while you may inherit brown eyes and dark hair from your parents, you do not inherit their language. You acquire a language in a culture with other speakers and not from parental genes. e.g. An infant born to Korean parents, who is adopted and brought up from birth by English speakers in the U.S, may have physical characteristics inherited from its natural parents, but it will inevitably speak English. And if the child is isolated from the society, he can’t acquire the language successfully. So language is acquired in a socio-cultural context.3. Why is language human specific?Firstly, human language has “design features” which animal communication system do not have, at least not in the true sense of them. Secondly, linguistshave done a lot trying to teach animals such as chimpanzees to speak a human language but have achieved nothing inspiring. Washoe, a female chimpanzee, was brought up like a human child by Beatnice and Alan Gardner. She was taught “American sign Language”, and learned a little that made the teachers happy but did mot make the linguistics circle happy, for few believed in teaching chimpanzees. Thirdly, a human child reared among animals cannot speak a human language, not even when he is taken back and taught to do so4. List basic functions of language and define each of them by their aimsReferential Function whenever we ask people for information or tell others about our circumstances and things alike, we are using language in an attempt to share what we know and exchange what we have in our minds. This is often called "referential", or "ideational".Interpersonal Function is concerned with interaction between the addresser and addressee in a discourse situation and the addresser's attitude toward what he speaks or writes about.Textual Function relates our abilities to construct texts out of our utterances and writings.The performative function is primarily to change the social status of persons; the performative function can extend to the control of reality as on some magical or religious occasions.Emotive function is a means of getting rid of our nervous energy when we are under stress.For example, swear words, obscenities are probably the commonest signals to be used in this way, especially when we are in an angry or frustrated state.Phatic Communion language can serve the function of creating or maintaining social relationship between speakers.Identifying function Our use of language can tell our listener or reader a great deal about ourselves, in particular, about our regional origins, social background, and level of education, occupation, age, sex, and personality.The recreational function of a language is often overlooked because it seems restrictive in purpose and supposedly limited in usefulness. However, no one will deny the use of language for the sheer joy of using it.5. Arbitrariness, Duality of structure, Displacement,Discreteness, Cultural transmission.Arbitrariness refers to the fact that the forms of linguistic signs bear no natural relationship to their meaning. Take the case of the English word “man”. In Chinese “rén”Duality 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.For instance, tens of thousands of words out of a small set of sounds, around 48 in the case of the English language.Creativity----the speaker is able to combine the basic linguistic units to form an infinite set of sentences, most of which are never produced or heard before. Creativity is a universal property of human language. For example, we can write a sentence like the following and go on endlessly:This is the dog that chased the cat that killed the rat that ate the malt that lay in the house that Tom built.Lecture 41. How do phonetics and phonology differ from each other? And how are they related to each other?Phonetics-- general, descriptive, and classificatory. It studies speech sounds as they are.Phonology-- concerned with the sound system of language, studies the functioning of the speech sounds. Phonetics provides the means for describing speech sounds; phonology studies the ways in which speech sounds form system and patterns. Phonetics is of general nature; it is the branch of linguistics ,studying the characteristics of speech sounds and provides methods for their description ,classification , and transcription without reference to the function of speech sounds in a particular language ,while phonology is language specific . It deals with speech sounds within the context of a particular language; it is concerned with the working and functioning of speech sounds in a language. Phonologist studies what he believes are meaningful sounds related with their semantic features, morphological features, and the way they are conceived and printed in the depth of the mind. Phonological knowledge permits a speaker to produce sounds which form meaningful utterances, to recognize a foreign “accent”, to make up new words, to add the appropriate phonetic segments to form plurals and past tenses, to know what is and what is not a sound in one’s language.2 Illustrate phone, phoneme and allophone by examples. How is a phone different from a phoneme?A phone is a phonetic unit or segment. The speech sounds we hear and produce during linguistic communication are all phones. But phones do not necessarily distinguish meaning.When we hear the following words produced: pit, spit, tip, feel, leaf, the phones we have heard are [ph] (as in pit), [p] (as in spit), [p¬] (as in tip), [s], [t], [f], [i:], [i], [l].A phoneme is a phonological unit; it is a unit that is of distinctive value. So a phoneme is the smallest unit of sound in a language which can distinguish two words. It is an abstract unit. It is not any particular sound but rather it is represented or realized by a certain phone in a certain phonetic context. We use slant lines “/ /” pan and ban differ only in their initial sounds /p/ and /b/.Allophone: the different phones that represent or are derived from one phoneme are called the allophones of that phoneme. For example: /p/ is a phoneme, but it may be pronounced as phones [ph], [p], [p¬] .So [ph], [p], [p¬] are the allophones of the same phoneme /p/.3. Explain the sequential rules, assimilation rules and deletion rule by examples.Assimilation rule It assimilates one segment to another by “copying” a feature of a sequential phoneme, thus making the two phones more similar. When a phoneme is realized differently in actual connected speech from what it usually is, as a result of being near some other phonemes belonging to a neighboring word, assimilation takes place “in” may be pronounced differently as [in], or [i?] or [im], when occurring in different phonetic contexts: indiscrete alveolar [in], inconceivable velar [i?] ,input bilabial [im]The deletion rule It tells us when a sound is to be deleted although it is orthographically represented. e.g. “g” is mute in “sign”, “design”. It is pronounced in their corresponding derivat ives “signature”, “designation”. The rule is: delete a [g] when it occurs before a final nasal consonant.4 Minimal pairsWhen two different forms are identical in every way except for one sound segment which occurs in the same place in the string, the two words are said to have formed a minimal pair.Lecture 51 What does morphology study?It studies morphemes and their different forms and the way they combine in word formation (the study of the internal structure of words, and the rules by which words are formed).2 What are the main features of morpheme?(1) Morphemes cannot be broken down any further into recognizable or meaningful parts. In other words, a morpheme can’t be divided without altering or destroying its meaning.(2) A word may consist of one morpheme or more than one morpheme, while a morpheme may not necessarily represent a word.(3) Morpheme is also a two-fact language unit, which possesses both sound and meaning.(4) Morpheme is not identical with a syllable for syllable has nothing to do with meaning.3 Free morpheme, Bound morphemeFree morpheme, if a morpheme can constitute a word (free form) by itself, it is called a free morpheme.Bound morpheme, If a morpheme has meaning only when connected with at least another morpheme, it is bound. Traditionally, these prefix and suffix morphemes have been called bound morphemes.Lecture 61 Do you think that morphology and syntax should be treated as separate areas of study? Give your views and support them with reasons.Morphology & Syntax(1) A principle distinction between morphology and syntax, is that the former is concerned with the internal composition of a word, whereas the latter is concerned with combinations of words(2) From a nineteen-century linguistic perspective,morphology is the science of the forms of language and more abstractly, of the formatives(构形成分) that give form to words.Syntax, by contrast, is concerned not with formation or forms or formatives but with comparatively insubstantial notions of order or arrangement, in keeping with the etymology of the term. Syntax is thus outside the scope of linguistic morphology, because of the abstract nature of the elements whose arrangement it deals with.(3) Morphology is considered to be part of syntax, both may be grouped together as grammar.(4) Since sentence is usually regarded as the largest grammatical unit of a language, syntax has long been the center of grammatical study.(5) Different linguistics theories differ in their treatment of sentence structure. Conclusion: There are arguments in favor of morpheme-based grammar and there are arguments against it. The same is true of the more traditionalword-based grammar.2. Explain and exemplify IC analysis.IC analysis is one of the structuralist grammars. It is a major feature of Bloomfieldian descriptivism.This approach works through the different levels of structure within a sentence in a series of steps.At each level, a construction is divided into its major constituents, which are termed immediate constituents, and the process continues until no further divisions can be made. The constituents in the last step are called ultimate constituents. In general, the division is binary. IC analysis can be represented in different ways.3. Syntagmatic and paradigmatic relationsSyntagmatic: a linear relationship between the signs present in the sentence. (the relation between one item and others in a sequence) .Paradigmatic is a particular one in that it denotes a relationship between a sign in a sentence and a sign not in a sentence. (A word may be said to have paradigmatic relations with words that could be substituted for it in the sentence.)4. Rheme vs. ThemeRheme refers to information that is new. The nucleus, or the core of the utterance ---- what the speaker states about, or in regard to the starting point of the utteranceTheme the known (or given) information --- information that is not new to the reader or listener.5. TG-grammar in1957 in Syntactic Structures, which has transformed linguistics from a relatively obscure discipline of interest mainly to language teachers and future missionaries into a major social science of direct relevance to psychologists, sociologists, philosophers and others.Lecture 71. What are the major views concerning the study of meaning? (1). Referential theory of meaning (the naming theory) .The meaning of an expression is what it refers to, or stands for. Expressions or words are "names" or "labels" for things. E.g. man, furniture, fish, China --- whose main function is precisely that of naming or labeling. They are meaningful in that they each refer to an individual or a collection of living beings or objects existing in the reality. There is a one-to-one correspondence between name and object.(2). Mentalist theory of meaning, There has been a tendency to adopt a mentalist approach in their treatment of meaning by a group of modern linguists headed by Chomsky since 1960's. They view the primary function of language as the communication of ideas and have adopted the assumption, as a working basis for linguistic inquiry, that the data needed about language can be supplied by direct resort to intuition. It states that the meaning of an expression is the idea, or concept associated with it in the mind of anyone who knows it. It attempts to explain the meaning of words in terms of the image in the speaker's / hearer's mind. Two of the best-known theories of it are the “sign " theory of Saussure and the semiotic triangle of Ogden and Richards. According to Saussure's sign theory, a linguistic sign consists of a signifier and a signified. They can be more strictly regarded as a sound image (signifier) and a concept (signified) , which are linked by a psychological associative bond, that is, both the noise we make and the objects of world we talk about are mirrored in some way by conceptual entities. Two of the best-known theories of it are the “sign " theory of de Saussure and the semiotic triangle of Ogden and Richards.When we hear a sound, e. g. dog, the image or concept of the dog will be mirrored in our mind, and the image will be the meaning of the expression(3)Behaviorist theory of meaning. This theory was very popular during the 1920's to 1960's. It has great influence in the fields of psychology, philosophy and linguistics. Its representat ive is L. Bloomfield of America. This theory states that the meaning of an expression is either the stimulus that evokes it or the response that it evokes, or a combination of both, on particular occasions of utterance. He illustrated his views with a famous account of Jack and Jill, trying to define meaning in terms of the behaviorist point of view ---stimulus-and-response point of view. E.g. Jill is hungry. She sees an apple and gets Jack to fetch it for her by speaking to him. He interpreted this in terms of stimulus and response with the diagram.Jill JackS------------r~~~~~s----------RHere S means practical events (physical) which precede the act of speech, i.e. Jill's hunger. It is termed as a stimulus. And r refers to a linguistic response of Jill to this stimulus. Jill expresses this response by speaking to Jack. The sound waves reaching Jack result in creating a linguistic stimulus in him, which is indicated by a small letter s. R refers to the eventual physical response Jack makes in getting the apple for Jill. Thus, Bloomfield argued that meaning consists in the relation between speech (which is shown by r----- s) and the practical events S and R that precede and follow it. In this way, he wanted to contrast his theory with the mentalistic theories which involve thoughts, concepts, images, etc.But to interpret meaning in terms of the relation between speech and physical entities and events needs to know other 'predisposing factors' concerning thespeaker and hearer. This is a task Bloomfield found too difficult to accomplish and thus he did not pursue.(4)Contextual theory of meaning. The Operational theory or Meaning-is-use Theory of meaning. Representatives--- L. Wittgenstein, S. Chase and J. R. Firth. Explains that the meaning of an expression is determined by, if not identical with, its use in language. The famous English linguists Chase and Firth advocated that the true meaning of a word is to be found by observing what a man does with it, not what he says about it. The German philosopher Wittgenstein goes a step further. He boldly asserted that the meaning of a word is its use.2. How do you understand ambiguity?Ambiguity refers to the linguistic phenomenon in which one linguistic expression allows more than one understandings or interpretations. E.g. the office of the president is vacant.Basically, ambiguity can be classified into two types: A. Lexical ambiguity:1) words with more than one sense. She can’t bear children. 2) Some words are ambiguous. He put it in the boot.3) A single word, with several different meanings which are not closed related. Mug-- He had a mug./ He had an ugly mug. 4) A word with several very closely related senses is ambiguous.B. Syntactic ambiguity. Structural ambiguity is concerned with the syntactic representation of sentences. It occurs when more than one syntactic structure can be associated with a sequence of words. E.g. 1) American history teacher 3. How would you describe the oddness of the following sentences, using semantic feature?A. The television drank my water.B. His dog writes poetry.4. synonymy, antonymy, polysemy, homonymy, hyponymy Polysemy: The same word may have two or more different meanings. This is known as polysemy; such a word is polysemic.Homonymy: Lexical items which have the phonological or spelling norm, but differ in meaning are called homonyms. Such a linguistic phenomenon, i.e. identity of form and diversity of meaning is referred to as homonymy.Hyponymy: It refers to the sense relation between a more general, more inclusive word and a specific word. The word is more general in meaning is called the superordinate and the more specific words are called its hyponyms. Hyponyms of the same superordinate are co-hyponyms to each other. E.g flower-----rose, tulip, carnation, lily. Animal----dog, cat, tiger, lionAntonymy: The term antonymy is used for oppositeness of meaning. Words that are opposite in meaning are antonyms. Oppositeness can be found on different dimensions. Root contrast derivative contrast semantic contrast (1) gradable (2) complementary (3) converses~Synonymy---sameness of meaningStyle: the same cognitive meaning but different stylistic meaning.(1) cast (literary, biblical) .throw (general). Chuck (slang)Dialect---geographical variationRegister—varieties of a language according to their topic and context of use.E.g. you can’t cancel your room reservation. No cancellations can be accepted.Lecture 81. What does pragmatics study?P20How does pragmatics differ from semantics, and utterance meaning from sentence meaning? How are semantics and pragmatics different from each other? Traditional semantics studied meaning, but the meaning of language was considered as something intrinsic, and inherent, i.e. a property attached to language itself. Therefore, meanings of words, meanings of sentences were all studied in an isolated manner, detached from the context in which they were used. Pragmatics studies meaning not in isolation, but in context. The essential distinction between semantics and pragmatics is whether the context of use is considered in the study of meaning . If it is not considered, the study is restricted to the area of traditional semantics; if it is considered, the study is being carried out in the area of pragmatics.How does a sentence meaning differ from an utterance meaning? A sentence meaning is often considered as the intrinsic property of the sentence itself in terms of a predication. It is abstract and independent of context. The meaning of an utterance is concrete, and context-dependent. The utterance meaning is based on sentence meaning; it is realization of the abstract meaning of a sentence in a real situation of communication, or simply in a context. For example, “There is a dog at the door”. The speaker could utter it as a matter- of- fact statement, telling the hearer that the dog is at the door. The speaker could use it as a warning, asking the hearer not to approach the door. There are other possibilities, too. So, t he understanding of the utterance meaning of “There is adog at the door” de pends on the context in which it is uttered and the purpose for which the speaker utters it.2. What are the five illocutionary speech acts Searle specifies? (1) Representatives(阐述类)---- stating or describing ,saying what the speaker believes to be true.The earth is flat.（2）directives (指令类)----trying to get the hearer to do somethingDon’t touch that.(3) commissives (承诺类) -----committing the speaker himself to some future course of actionE.g: I promise to come.(4) expressives ( 表达类) ----expressing feelings or attitude towards an existing state.e.g : I’m sorry for the mess I have made.(5) declaration ( 宣布类)---- bringing about immediate changes by saying somethingPriest: I now pronounce you husband and wife.Referee: you are out!Lecture 91. what contributions has sociolinguistics provided to the field of language teaching?。
