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2. What is this course about?Chapter 1 Invitations to LinguisticsChapter 2 Speech SoundsChapter 3 LexiconChapter 4 SyntaxChapter 5 MeaningChapter 6 Language and cognitionChapter 7 Language, Culture, and SocietyChapter 8 Language in useChapter 9 language and literatureChapter 10 language and computerChapter 11 linguistics and foreign language teachingChapter 12 Theories and schools of modern linguistics1. languageDefinitionFeaturesFunctions1) Definition:Sapir, 1921: Language is a purely human and non-instinctive method of communicating ideas, emotions and desires by means of voluntarily produced symbols.(语言是纯粹人为的、非本能的、用任意制造出来的符号系统来传达观念、情绪和欲望的方法。
）Hall, 1968: Language is "the institution whereby humans communicate and interact with each other by means of habitually used oral-auditory arbitrary symbols." （语言是人们通过惯用的任意性的口头-听觉符号进行交际和互动的惯例。
英语语言学教程（胡壮麟版）Chapter one. Invitation to Linguistic.1.What is language“Language is system of arbitrary vocal symbols used for human communication. It is a system, since linguistic elements are arranged systematically, rather than randomly. Arbitrary, in the sense that there is usually no intrinsic connection between a work (like “book”) and the object it refers to. This explains and is explained by the fact that different languages have different “books”: “book” in English, “livre” in French, “shu” in Chinese. It is symbolic, because words are associated with objects, actions, ideas etc. by nothing but convention. Namely, people use the sounds or vocal forms to symbolize what they wish to refer to. It is vocal, because sound or speech is the primary medium for all human languages. Writing systems came much later than the spoken forms. The fact that small children learn and can only learn to speak (and listen) before they write (and read) also indicates that language is primarily vocal, rather than written. The term “human” in the definition is meant to specify that language is human specific.2.Design Features of Language.“Design features” here refer to the defining properties of human language that tell the difference between human language and any system of animal communication. They are arbitrariness, duality, productivity, displacement, cultural transmission and interchangeability(1)Arbitrariness: By “arbitrariness”, we mean there is no logical connectionbetween meanings and sounds.(2)Duality: The property of having two levels of structures (phonological andgrammatical), units of the primary level being composed of elements of the secondary level and each level having its own principles of organization.(3)Productivity: Productivity refers to the ability to the ability to construct andunderstand an indefinitely large number of sentences in one’s native language, including those that has never heard before, but that are appropriate to the speaking situation. The property that enables native speakers to construct and understand an indefinitely large number of utterances, including utterances that they have never previously encountered.(4)Displacement: “Displacement”, as one of the design features of the human language,refers to the fact that one can talk about things that are not present, as easily as he does things present. In other words, one can refer to real and unreal things, things of the past, of the present, of the future. Language itself can be talked about too.(5)Cultural transmission: This means that language is not biologically transmittedfrom generation to generation, but that the details of the linguistic system must be learned anew by each speaker.(6)Interchangeability: Interchangeability means that any human being can be both aproducer and a receiver of messages.3.Functions of Language.Language has at least seven functions: phatic, directive, Informative, interrogative, expressive, evocative and performative.(1)Phatic function: The “phatic function” refers to language being used for settingup a certain atmosphere or maintaining social contacts (rather than for exchanging information or ideas). Greetings, farewells, and comments on the weather in English and on clothing in Chinese all serve this function.(2)Directive function: The “directive function” means t hat language may be usedto get the hearer to do something. Most imperative sentences perform this function,e. g., “Tell me the result when you finish.”(3)Informative function: Language serves an “informational function” when used totell something, characterized by the use of declarative sentences. Informativestatements are often labeled as true (truth) or false (falsehood).(4)Interrogative function: When language is used to obtain information, it servesan “interrogative function”. This includes all questio ns that expect replies, statements, imperatives etc.(5)Expressive function: The “expressive function” is the use of language to revealsomething about the feelings or attitudes of the speaker.(6)Evocative function: The “evocative function” is the use of langua ge to createcertain feelings in the hearer. Its aim is, for example, to amuse, startle, antagonize, soothe, worry or please.(7)Per formative function: This means people speak to “do things” or performactions.4. What is linguistic“Linguistics” is the scie ntific study of language. It studies not just one language of any one society, but the language of all human beings. In short, linguistics studies the general principles whereupon all human languages are constructed and operate as systems of communication in their societies or communities.5. Main branches of linguistics.The study of language as a whole is often called general linguistics. But a linguist sometimes is able to deal with only one aspect of language at a time, thus the arise of various branches: phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, pragmatics, sociolinguistics, applied linguistics, psycholinguistics etc.6. Important distinctions in linguistic.(1) synchronic study vs. diachronic studyThe description of a language at some point of time (as if it stopped developing) is a synchrony study (synchrony). The description of a language as it changes through time isa diachronic study (diachronic).(2) Speech vs. writingSpeech is primary, because it existed long before writing systems came into being. Genetically children learn to speak before learning to write. Secondly, written forms just represent in this way or that the speech sounds: individual sounds, as in English and French as in Japanese. In contrast to speech, spoken form of language, writing as written codes, gives language new scope and use that speech does not have. Most modern linguistic analysis is focused on speech, different from grammarians of the last century and theretofore.(3) Descriptive vs. prescriptiveA linguisti c study is “descriptive” if it only describes and analyses the facts of language, and “prescriptive” if it tries to lay down rules for “correct” language behavior. Linguistic studies before this century were largely prescriptive because many early grammars were largely prescriptive because many early grammars were based on “high” (literary or religious) written records. Modern linguistics is mostly descriptive.(4). langue vs. paroleF. de Saussure refers “langue” to the abstract linguistic system shared b y all the members of a speech community and refers “parole” to the actual or actualized language, or the realization of langue. Langue is abstract, parole specific to the speaking situation; langue not actually spoken by an individual, parole always a naturally occurring event; langue relatively stable and systematic, parole is a mass of confused facts, thus not suitable for systematic investigation. What a linguist ought to do, according to Saussure, is to abstract langue from instances of parole, . to discover the regularities governing all instances of parole and make than the subject of linguistics. The langue-parole distinction is of great importance, which casts great influence on later linguists. (5). competence vs. performanceAccording to N. Chomsky, “competence” is the ideal language user’s knowledge of the rules of his language, and “performance” is the actual realization of this knowledge in utterances. The former enables a speaker to produce and understand an indefinite number of sentences and to recognize grammatical mistakes and ambiguities. A speaker’scompetence is stable while his performance is often influenced by psychological and social factors. So a speaker’s performance does not always match or equal his supposed competence. Chomsky believes that linguists ought to study competence, rather than performance. (6). linguistic potential vs. linguistic behaviorThese two terms, or the potential-behavior distinction, were made by M. A. K. Halliday in the 1960s, from a functional point of view. There is a wide range of things a speaker can do in his culture, and similarly there are many things he can say, for example, to many people, on many topics. What he actually says . his “actual linguistic behavior”) on a certain occasion to a certain person is what he has chosen from many possible injustice items, each of which he could have said (linguistic potential).Chapter 2 Phoneticsis phonetics？“Phonetics” is the science which studies the characteristics of human sound-making, especially those sounds used in speech, and provides methods for their description, classification and transcription, speech sounds may be studied in different ways, thus by three different branches of phonetics.(1) Articulatory phonetics; the branch of phonetics that examines the way in which a speech sound is produced to discover which vocal organs are involved and how they coordinate in the process.(2) Auditory phonetics, the branch of phonetic research from the hearer’s point of view, looking into the impression which a speech sound makes on the hearer as mediated by the ear, the auditory nerve and the brain.(3) Acoustic phonetics: the study of the physical properties of speech sounds, as transmitted between mouth and ear. Most phoneticians, however, are interested in articulatory phonetics.2. The IPAThe IPA, abbreviation of “International Phonetic Alphabet”, is a compromise system making use of symbols of all sources, including diacritics indicating length, stress and intonation, indicating phonetic variation. Ever since it was developed in 1888, IPA has undergone a number of revisions.3. Place of articulationIt refers to the place in the mouth where, for example, the obstruction occurs, resulting in the utterance of a consonant.4. Manner of articulationThe “manner of articulation” literally means the way a sound is articulated.5. Phonology“Phonology” is the study of sound systems- the invention of distinctive speech sounds that occur in a language and the patterns wherein they fall. Minimal pair, phonemes, allophones, free variation, complementary distribution, etc., are all to be investigated by a phonologist.6. Narrow transcription and broad transcription.The former was meant to symbolize all the possible speech sounds, including even the most minute shades of pronunciation while Broad transcription was intended to indicate only those sounds capable of distinguishing one word from another in a given language.7. Phone Phoneme AllophoneA “phone” is a phonetic unit or segment. The speech sounds we he ar and produce during linguistic communication are all phones. When we hear the following words pronounced: [pit], [tip], [spit], etc., the similar phones we have heard are [p] for one thing, and three different [p]s, readily making possible the “narrow transcription or diacritics”. Phones may and may not distinguish meaning.A “phoneme” is a phonological unit; it is a unit that is of distinctive value. As an abstract unit, a phoneme is not any particular sound, but rather it is represented or realized by a certain phone in a certain phonetic context. For example, the phoneme[p]is represented differently in [pit], [tip] and [spit].The phones representing a phoneme are called its “allophones”, ., the different ., phones) but do not make one word so phonetically different as to create a new word or a new meaning thereof. So the different [p] s in the above words is the allophones of the same phoneme [p]. How a phoneme is represented by a phone, or which allophone is to be used, is determined by the phonetic context in which it occurs. But the choice of an allophone is not random. In most cases it is rule-governed; these rules are to be found out by a phonologist. 8.Minimal pairsWhen two different phonetic forms are identical in every way except for one sound segment which occurs in the same place in the string, the two forms (i. e., word) are supposed to form a “minimal pair”, ., “pill” and “bill”, “pill” and “till”, “till” and “dill”, “till” and “kill”, etc. All these words together constitute a minimal set. They are identical in form except for the initial consonants. There are many minimal pairs in English, which makes it relatively easy to know what English phonemes are. It is of great importance to find the minimal pairs when a phonologist is dealing with the sound system of an unknown language.9. Free variationIf two sounds occurring in the same environment do not contrast; namely, if the substitution of one for the other does not generate a new word form but merely a different pronunciation of the same word, the two sounds then are said to be in “free variation”.10. Complementary distributionWhen two sounds never occur in the same environment, they are in “complementary distribution”. For example, the aspirated English plosives never occur after [s], and the unsaturated ones never occur initially. Sounds in complementary distribution may be assigned to the same phoneme.11. Assimilation rule.The “assimilation rule” assimilates one segment to another by “copying” a feature ofa sequential phoneme, thus making the two phones more similar.12. Deletion ruleThe “deletion rule” tell us when a sound is to be deleted although is orthographically represented.13. Suprasegmental phonology and suprasegmental features“Suprasegmental phonology” refers to the st udy of phonological properties of linguistic units larger than the segment called phoneme, such as syllable, length and pitch, stress, intonation.Chapter 3. Morphology1.Morpheme and MorphologyThe “morpheme” is the smallest unit in terms of relationship b etween expression and content, a unit which cannot be divided without destroying or drastically altering the meaning, whether it is lexical or grammatical.“Morphology” is the branch of grammar that studies the internal structure of words, and the rules by which words are formed. It is generally divided into two fields: inflectional morphology and lexical/derivational morphology.2.Types of Morphemes.(1)free morpheme and bound morphemeA “free morpheme” is a morpheme that constitutes a word by itself, such as ‘bed”, “tree”, etc. A “bound morpheme” is one that appears with at least another morpheme, such as “-s” in “beds”, “-al” in “national” and so on.All monomorphemic words are free morphemes. Those polymorphemic words are either compounds (combination of two or more free morphemes) or derivatives (word derived from free morphemes).(2). root; affix; stemA “root” is the base form of a word that cannot be further analyzed without total lossof identity. It is the part of the word that is left when all the affixes are removed.“Affixes”is a collective term for the type of morpheme that can be used only when added to another morpheme (the root or stem), so affix is naturally bound. (prefix, suffix, infix)A “stem” is any morpheme or combination of morphemes to w hich an affix can be added.(3). Inflectional affix and derivational affix.Inflectional affixes: do not change the word class, but only added a minute or delicate grammatical meaning to the stem.Derivational affixes: often change the lexical meaning and word class.Inflectional affixes are mostly suffixes, and derivational affixes can be prefixes (sub-, de-) or suffixes (-er, -able).3. Inflection“Inflection” is the manifestation of grammatical relationships through the addition of inflectional affixes, such as number, person, finiteness, aspect, and case, which does not change the grammatical class of the items to which they are attached.4. Word formationIn its restricted sense, refers to the process of word variations signaling lexical relationships. It can be future sub classified into the compositional type (compound) and the derivational type.5. Lexical change(1) lexical change proper(特有词汇变化)A. InventionB. Blending: blending is relative complex from of compounding, in which two words are blended by joining the initial part of the first word and the final part of the second word, or by joining the initial parts of the two words.C. Abbreviation: a new word is created by cutting the final part, the initial part, or both the initial and final parts accordingly.D. Acronym: acronym is made up from the first letters of the name of an organization, whichhave a heavily modified headword.E. Back-formation: it refers to an abnormal type of word-formation where a shorter word is derived by deleting an imagined affix from a longer form already in the language.F. Analogical creation: it can account for the co-existence of the forms, regular and irregular, in the conjugation of some English verbs.G. Borrowing:a. loanwords: the borrowing of loanwords is a process in which both form and meaning are borrowed with only a slight adaptation, in some causes, to the phonological system of the new language that they enter.b. loanblend: it is a process in which part of the form is native and the rest has been borrowed, but the meaning is fully borrowed.c. loanshift: it is a process in which the meaning is borrowed, and the form is native.d. loan translation: a special type of borrowing, in which each morpheme or word is translated in the equivalent morpheme or word in another language.(2). Morpho-syntactical change （形态句法变化）A. morphological change: the words have changed their formsB. syntactical change(3). Semantic change （语义变化）A. broading: a process to extend or elevate the meaning from its originally specific sense to a relative general one.B. narrowing: it refers to a process in which the original meaning of a word can be narrowed or restricted to a specific sense.C. meaning shift: the change of meaning has nothing to do with generalization or restriction.D. fork etymology: it refers to a change in form of a word or phrase, resulting from an incorrect popular notion of the origin or meaning of the term on from the influence of more familiar terms mistakenly taken to be analogous.(4). Phological change （音位变化)Refers to changes in sound leading to change in form.a. loss（语音的脱落）b. addition （语音的增加）c. metathesis（换位）d. assimilation （同化）(5). Orthographic change （书写法变化）Chapter Four. Syntax1. Syntax.“Syntax” is the study of the rules governing the ways in which words, word groups and phrases are combined to form sentences in a language, or the study of the interrelationships between sentential elements.2. Sentence.L. Bloomfield defines “sentence” as an independent linguistic form not included by some grammatical marks in any other linguistic from, i. e., it is not subordinated to a larger linguistic form, and it is a structurally independent linguistic form. It is also calleda maximum free form.3. Syntactic relations.“Syntactic relations” r efer to the ways in which words, word groups or phrases form sentences; hence three kinds of syntactic relations: positional relations, relations of substitutability and relations of co-occurrence.a.“Positional relation”, or “word order”, refers to the sequ ential arrangementto words in a language. It is a manifestation of a certain aspect of what F. de Saussure called “syntagmatic relations”, or of what other linguists call “horizontal relations” or “chain relations”.b.“Relations of substitutability” refer t o classes or sets of words substitutablefor each other grammatically in same sentence structures. Saussure called them “associative relations”. Other people call them “paradigmatic/vertical/choicerelations”.c.“Relations of co-occurrence”, one means that w ords of different sets of clausesmay permit or require the occurrence of a word of another set or class to form a sentence or a particular part of a sentence. Thus relations of co-occurrence partly belong to syntagmatic relations and partly to paradigmatic relations.3.Grammatical constructionGrammatical construction: it can be used to mean any syntactic construct which is assigned one or more conventional function in a language, together with whatever is linguistically conventionalized about its contribution to the meaning or use the construct contains.4.IC analysis and immediate constituents.“IC analysis” is a new approach of sentence study that cuts a sentence into two (or more) segments. This kind of pure segmentation is simply dividing a sentence into its constituent elements without even knowing what they really are. What remain of the first cut is called “immediate constituents”, and what are left at the final cut is called “ultimate constituents”.5.Endocentric and exocentric constructions“Endocentric construction” is one whose distribution is functionally equivalent to that of one or more of its constituents, ., a word or a group of words, which serves as a definable “centre” or “head”. Usually noun phrases, verb phrases and adjective phrases belong to endocentric types because the constituent items are subordinate to the head.“Exocentric construction”, opposite of endocentric construction, refers to a group of syntactically related words where none of the words is functionally equivalent to the group as whole; that is to say, there is no definable centre or head inside the group. Exocentric construction usually includes basic sentence, prepositional phrase, predicate (verb + object) construction, and connective (be + complement) construction.6.Coordination and subordination.They are two main types of endocentric construction.Coordination is a common syntactic pattern in English and other languages formed by grouping together two of more categories of the same type with the help of a conjunction such as “and” ,“but” and “or”.Subordination refers to the process or result of linking linguistic units so that they have different syntactic status, one being dependent upon the other, and usually a constituent of the other. (three basic types of subordination clause: complement clause, adjunct clause, relation clause.)7. Syntactic function(1) Subject: “subject” refers to one of the nouns in the nominative case. In English, the subject of a sentence is often said to be the doer of the action, while the object is the person or thing acted upon by the doer.a. Grammatical subject: it refers to a noun which can establish correspondence with the verb and which can be checked by a tag-question test, ., “He is a good cook, (isn’t he).”b. Logical subject: the original object noun phrase occupies the grammatical space before a verb, the space that a subject normally occupies, the core subject, now the object ofa preposition, is called the logical subject.(2). Predicate: A “predicate” refers to a major constituent of sentence structure ina binary analysis in which all obligatory constituents other than the subject are considered together. ., in the sentence “The monkey is jumping”, “is jumping” is the predicate.(3) Object: “object” refers to the receiver or goal of a n action and it is further classified into two kinds: direct object and indirect object. In some inflecting languages, an object is marked by case labels: the “accusative case” for direct object, and the “dative case”for direct object, and the “dative case” for indirect to word order (after the verb and preposition) and by inflections (of pronouns). ., in the sentence “John kissed me”, “me” is the object. Modern linguists suggest that an object refers to such an item that it can become a subject in passive transformation.8. CategoryThe term “category” in some approaches refers to classes and functions in its narrow sense, ., noun, verb, subject, predicate, noun phrase, verb phrase, etc. More specifically it refers to the defining properties of these general units: the categories of the noun, for example, include number, gender, case and countability; and of the verb, for example, tense, aspect, voice, etc.(1)Number: “Number” is a grammatical category used for the analysis of word classesdisplaying such contrasts as singular, dual, plural, etc. In English, number is mainly observed in nouns, and there are only two forms: singular and plural. Number is also reflected in the inflections of pronouns and verbs.(2)Gender: “Gender” displays such contrasts as “masculine”, “feminine”, “neuter”,or “animate” and “inanimate”, etc., for the analysis of word classes. When word items refer to the sex of the real-world entities, we natural gender (the opposite is grammatical gender).(3)Case: “Case” identifies the syntactic rel ationship between words in a sentence. InLatin grammar, cases are based on variations in the morphological forms of the word, and are given the terms “accusative”, “nominative”, “dative”, etc. In English, the case category is realized in three ways: by following a preposition and by word order.(4)Agreement (or Concord): “Concord” may be defined as requirement that the forms oftwo or more words of specific word classes that stand in specific syntactic relationship with one another shall be characterized by the same paradigmatically marked category or categories, ., “man runs”, “men run”.9. Syntagmatic relation and paradigmatic relationSyntagmatic relation: it is a relation between one item and other in a sequence, or between elements which are all present, such as the relation between “weather” and the others in the following sentence “If the weather is nice, we’ll go out.”Paradigmatic relation:it is also called Associative, a relation between elements replaceable with each other at a particular place in a structure, or between one element present and the others absent. It is also known as the vertical relation or choice relation.10. Phrase; clause and sentence.A “phrase” is a single element of structure containing more than one word, and lacking the subject-predicate structure typical of “clauses”. Traditionally, it is seen as part of a structural hierarchy, falling between a clause and word, ., “the three tallest girls” (nominal phrase). There is now a tendency to make a distinction between word groups and phrases. A “word group” is an extension of a word of a particular class by way of modification with its main features of the class unchanged. Thus we have nominal group, verbal group, adverbial group, conjunction group and preposition group.A “clause” is group of words with its own subject and predicate included in a larger subject-verb construction, namely, in a sentence. Clauses can also be classified into two kinds: finite and non-finite clauses, the latter referring to what are traditionally called infinitive phrase, participle phrase and gerundial phrase.Sentence is the minimum part of language that expresses a complete thought. Bloomfield (1935) defined the sentence as “one not included by virtue of any grammatical construction in any larger linguistic form.”11. RecursivenessIt mainly means that a phrasal constituent can be embedded within another constituent having the same category. By “recursiveness” we mean that there is theoretically no limit to the number of the embedded clauses in a complex sentence. This is true also with nominal and adverbial clauses, ., “I saw the man who killed a cat who…a rat which…that…”(1)Conjoining: “Conjoining” refers to a construction where one clause is co-ordinatedor conjoined with another, e. g., “John bought a cat and his wife killed her.”(2)Embedding: “Embedding” refers to the process of construction where one clause isincluded in the sentence (or main clause) in syntactic subordination, ., “I saw theman who had killed a chimpanzee.”12. Beyond the sentence(1) Sentential connection: the notion of hypotactic and paratactic relations can also be applied to the study of syntactic relations between sentences.a. “Hypotactic relation” refers to a construction where constituents are linked by means of conjunction, . “He bought eggs and milk.”b. “Paratactic relation” refers to constructions which are connected by juxtaposition, punctuation or intonation, e. g., “He bought tea, coffee, eggs and milk” (pay attention to the first three nouns connected without “and”).(2). Cohesion:Cohesion is a concept to do with discourse of text rather than with syntax, it refers to relations of meaning that exist within the text, and defines it as a text.Textual cohesiveness can be realized by employing various cohesive devices: conjunction, ellipsis, lexical collection, lexical repetition, reference, substitution etc.Chapter Five. Meaning1.Semantics:“Semantics” refers to the study of the communication of meaning through language. Or simply, it is the study of meaning.2.What is meaningThough it is difficult to define, “meaning” has the following meaning: (1) an intrinsic property; (2) the connotation of a word; (3) the words put after a dictionary entry; (4) the position an object occupies in a system; (5) what the symbol user actually refers to;(6) what the symbol user should refer to; (7) what the symbol user believes he is referring to; (8) what the symbol interpreter refers to; (9) what the symbol interpreter believes it refers to; (10) what the symbol interpreter believes the user refers to…linguists argued about “meaning of meaning” fiercely in the result of “realism”,。
