Transcript General Linguistics

General Linguistics
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I. The Nature of Language
1. Definition and characteristics
(1)Definition: Language is a system of arbitrary vocal symbols by
means of which the members of a speech community communicate,
interact, and transmit their culture
(2)Characteristics
arbitrariness
duality: sound/ meaning
productivity: (never heard before
displacement: refer to things not present
cultural transmission
interchangeability: any human being can be both producer and receiver
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(3)Functions
Phatic: establishing an atmosphere or maintaining social contact-greetings, comments on weather.
Directive:: get hearer to do something—imperative sentences
Informative: tell what the speaker believes, give information about
facts, reason things out— Declarative sentences
Interrogative: get information from others—questions
Expressive: reveal something about the feelings and attitudes of the
speaker—evaluate, appraise and assert the speaker’s attitude
Performative: do things, perform actions—“I declare the meeting
open”, “I declare war…”
(4)Origin of language: the divine-origin theory; the invention theory;
the evolutionary theory
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2. Some basic distinctions in linguistics
 (1)Speech and writing—primacy of speech over writing in linguistic analysis
 (2)Synchronic and diachronic—priority of synchronic
 (3)Langue and parole(by Swiss linguist F. de Saussure1857-1913)
 Langue refers to the abstract linguistic system shared by all the members of a
speech community— a set of conventions, generalized rules, abstract, not
actually spoken by anyone, relatively stable and systematic.
 Parole refers to the actualized language, or realization of langue—concrete use
of conventions or application of rules, specific, naturally occurring event,
subject to personal and situational constraints.
 (4)Competence and performance(Noam Chomsky 1950s)
 Competence: ideal language user’s knowledge of the rule of his language
 Performance: actual realization of this knowledge in utterances
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(5)Linguistic potential and actual linguistic behavior(English linguist
M. A. K. Halliday, 1960s)— functional point of view, more concerned
with what speakers do with language—many things, many topics—
what is actually said is what is selected from among the many
possibilities
Linguistic potential: similar to langue and competence// langue –social
property/ linguistic potential—something available for the speaker to
select from// competence—a form of “knowing” /linguistic potential—
a set of possibilities for “doing”// The competence and performance
distinction is one between what a person “knows” and what he “does”/
the linguistic potential and actual linguistic behavior distinction is one
between what a person “can do” and what a person “does”.
Actual linguistic behavior, similar to parole and performance
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3. Process of speaking
 (1)Semantic encoding. (2)Grammatical
encoding. (3)Phonological encoding. (48)Sending, transmission, receiving. (911)Phonological, Grammatical, Semantic
decoding
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4. Major branches of linguistics
(1)Semantics: the study of the semantic code—meaning
(2)Lexicology:
the
study
of
the
total
stock
of
morphemes.(lexicography: the art of making dictionaries of various
sort)—words
(3)Syntax: the study of the grammatical code—grammar
(4)Phonology (AmE phonemics): the study of the phonological code—
phoneme
(5)Articulatory phonetics: the study of the movements of the vocal
organs in producing the sounds of speech.// Acoustic phonetics: the
study of the vibrations of air molecules.// Auditory phonetics: the study
of the way the sounds are perceived by the human ear.
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5. Use of linguistics—applied linguistics
(1)Linguistic geography: study of the way in which a language varies
through geographical space.
(2)Socioliguistics: study of the variations in linguistic usage of
different social classes.
(3)Synchronic linguistics: study of a given language at a given period
of time.
(4)Diachronic linguistics: study of language change through time.-Two branches: Historical linguistics: study of the historical
development of a language.//Comparative linguistics: study of the
historical relationships among languages and attempts to group them
into families, subfamilies.
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(5)Psycholinguistics: study of how language if acquired, understood
and produced.
(6)Anthropological linguistics: study of how language fits into the
larger context of sociocultural behavior and how grammar is a part of
culture.
(7)Neurolinguistics: study of a number of issues related to the
neurological basis of language: the brain's anatomy, the species
specificity of language and the relationship between language and
consciousness.
(8)Stylistic linguistics—linguistics and literature
(9)Other branches: language teaching, machine translation, computer
linguistics(computational linguistics, mathematical linguistics,
statistical linguistics, mechanolinguistics)
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II. Phonetics
1. Vocal organs
2. Consonants: places of articulation; manners of articulation
(obstruction)—classification
3. Vowels: height of tongue raising (high, mid, low); position of the
highest part of tongue (front, central, back); degree of lip rounding
(rounded, unrounded)—classification
Additional factors: oral or nasal; long or short; pure or gliding
4. Phonetic transcription: method of writing down speech sounds in a
systematic and consistent way: International Phonetic Alphabet
5. Phoneme: sound capable of distinguishing one word from another:
get/net, have/ gave
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III. Phonology
1. Phonology: study of sound systems—distinctive sounds
and their patterns—phoneme
2. Non-distinctive sounds: members of the same
phonemes—allophones—“let, play, tell”
3. Phonology—language specific// phonetics—universal
4. Minimal pair: word forms which differ from each other
only by one sound, pen/pin//pin//ping
5. Free variation: that boy/that—the same phoneme
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6. Complementary distribution: two sounds never occur in
the same environment, /h/--/g/
 7. Distinctive features: phonological features of a phoneme
which distinguish one phoneme from another
 8. Intonation: stress, length, pitch音高—four grammatical
functions: indicate different sentence type; different pitch
indicates connotative meaning(I can’t eat anything—
fall/fall-rise); different structure (John didn’t come because
of Mary—John came, but it had nothing to do with Mary/
John didn’t come, because Mary); give prominence to one
part of a sentence(John likes fish.)
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IV. Morphology
1. Morphology: the internal structure of words and rules by which
words are formed—two branches: inflections// word-formation
2. Inflection: addition of affixes such as number, person, finiteness,
aspect and case, which do not change the grammatical class of the
stems
3. Word-formation: compound//derivation
4. Compound: relationships between lexical words—noun compounds
(daybreak); verb compounds(brainwash); adjective compounds
(carefree); preposition compounds (into/ throughout)
5. Derivation: relationships between stems and affixes (word class
changed// word class unchanged)
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6. Morpheme: minimal unit of meaning—phoneme/gouz/ for thirdperson singular
7. Free morpheme: form a word by itself—bed, tree
8. Bound morpheme: with at least one other morpheme, ‘-al’ in
‘national’
9. Root: polymorphemic words other than compounds may divide into
roots and affixes
10. Free root morpheme (most, stand by themselves as words)—bound
root morpheme (relatively few, such as ‘-ceive’ in ‘receive’, ‘perceive’,
‘conceive’)
11. Stem词干: morpheme or combination of morpheme—friends/
friendships
12. Affix: prefix (mini-), suffix (-tion), infix (foot/ feet)—inflectional
(walked) & derivational (sleepy)
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V. Lexicon
1. Lexicon: similar to vocabulary, deal with the analysis and creation
of words, idioms, collocation
2. Word: grammatical unit(sentence, clause, word group, word,
morpheme); most stable of all linguistic units; smallest unit which can
constitute a complete sentence
3. Variable words (changeable)// invariable words(unchangeable)
4. Grammatical word—function word—form word(to be, preposition,
articles, possessives, demonstratives, qualifiers, conjunctions,
intensifiers, auxiliary verbs, pronouns)// Lexical word—carry semantic
content
5. Closed-class word (articles, pron, prep, conj)// open class(n, v, adj,
adv)
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6. Idiom—semantically and often syntactically
restricted(meaning unpredictable, special syntactical
restrictions)
7. Collocation: habitual co-occurrences of individual
lexical items—Features(1) Mutual expectancy, (2)Fixed
syntactical-lexical relations (3)Inexplicability
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VI. Syntax
 1. Syntax: study of rules governing the ways to form sentences, or the
interrelationships between elements in sentence structures
 2. Syntactical relations(1)Positional relation(word order)—Syntagmatic
Relations (2)Relation of substitutability—Associative relations (de Saussure)//
Paradigmatic Relations (Hjemslev) (3)Relation of co-occurrence
 3. Immediate constituent: small units of constructing a sentence, such as single
words, groups of words—The boy ate the apple. (S=NP+VP)
 4. Coordinate and subordinate constructions
 5. Syntactic function: subject, predicate, object…
 6. Category: number, gender, case, concord, government
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Extension
of
sentence:
conjoining//embedding//
recursive//
Hypotactic/Paratactic
 8. Cohesion: reference, substitution, ellipsis, logical connection, lexical
collocation
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VII. Semantics
1. Semantics: study of meaning
2. Meaning: conceptualism(symbol, referent, thought), mechanism,
contextualism (linguistic context/ situational context), behaviorism
(stimulus—response), functionalism(meaning explained in use)
3. Kinds of meaning
traditional approach—lexical meaning/ grammatical meaning
functional approach—conceptual meaning (denotative), associative
meaning (connotative), social meaning, affective meaning, reflected
meaning, collocative meaning, thematic meaning—woman (female,
human, adult)(fragile, emotional)(register)(personal emotion)(The
Comforter--comfort)(pretty —handsome)(Mr. Smith donated the
money—The money was donated by Mr. Smith)
pragmatic approach (sentence meaning/utterance meaning—
implicature)
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4 . Sense relationships of words: synonymy (sameness or close
similarity of meaning); antonymy (oppositeness of meaning);
complementarity (single/married); gradability (hot/warm/cool/cold);
relational opposites (buy/sell); hyponymy (meaning inclusion—
flower/rose);
polysemy(more
than
one
meaning);
homonymy(pupil/student—pupil/ of the eye// flour—flower)
5. Sense relations between sentences: entailment( 蕴 涵 ) ;
presupposition(The girl he married //He married a girl); implicature;
sysnonymous; inconsistent; anomalous反常
6. Semantic analysis: componential analysis; predication analysis述谓
分析; relational analysis (father); logical elements
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VIII. Language change
A. Lexical change
1. Invention: Kodak
2. Compounding: moonwalk, earthrise地球从月球的地平线上升起, black
hole
3. Blending: smog=smoke+fog, transistor=transfer+resister
4. Abbreviation: math=mathematics, prof=professor, telly=television
5. Acronym: WB(World Bank), PLO(Palestine Liberation Organization)
6. Metanalysis: a nadder—an adder, a napron—an apron
7. Backformation: editor—edit, peddler—peddle, enthusiasm—enthuse热心
8. Analogical creation: work—wrought(old)—worked
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9. Borrowing: atom(Greek), tsunami(Japanese), wok(Chinese锅)
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B. Grammatical change
 1. Morphological change: didst—did, hath—has, cometh—comes
 2. Syntactical change: (15th c)more gladder, more lower// (Shakespeare)He
saw you not./ I love thee not
 C. Semantic change
 1. Broadening: offend—strike against—create anger// bird—young bird—any
kind of bird
 2. Narrowing: camp—open field—place// cattle—personal property—
animals// girl—young person of either sex—young woman
 3. Meaning shift: lust—pleasure—sexual craving// silly—happy(O.E)—
naïve(M.E)
 4. Class shift: engineer—a person trained in a branch of engineering(n)—to act
as an engineer
 5. Folk etymology: change due to incorrect popular notion: sparrowgrass芦
笋—asparagus(Greek)芦笋wiz奇才—wizard奇才
 D. Orthographic拼写change
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IX. Pragmatics
1. Pragmatics: study of language in use and linguistic communication;
meaning that is not accounted for by semantics
2. Context and meaning: John is like a fish.(swim well// drink a lot of wine// as
cold as fish)
3. Speech act theory(J. Austin in 1962, J. Searle in 1969): language used not
only to inform and describe things, often used to “do things”—“I hereby name
this ship Red Flag”, “I promise to be here at nine o’clock, “I apologize”—
performative sentences—Three kinds of acts are performed at the same time
(1)Locutionary act言中行为: the utterance of a sentence with determinate
sense and reference; (2)Illocutionary act言外行为: the making of a statement,
offer, promise, etc, in uttering a sentence; (3)Perlocutionary act言后行为: the
bringing about of effects on the audience by means of uttering the sentence,
such effects being special to the circumstances of utterance.—“It’s cold
here”—saying(1)—request(2)—shutting the window(3)
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4. Types of illocutionary acts: (1)Assertives: truth
of something—I think the film is moving.
(2)Directives: get the hearer to do something—I
order you to leave right now. (3)Commisives:
some future action—If you do that again, I’ll beat
you to death. (4)Declarations: bringing about
immediate change in the existing state of things
 5. Indirect speech act: perform one illocutionary
act indirectly by performing another—Let’s go to
the movies tonight/ I have to study for an exam.
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6. Conversational analysis(1) Adjacency pair: one type of utterance is
typically followed by a special type of utterance—May I have a bottle
of whisky?/Are you twenty-one?/ No/ No. (2)Preferred second parts:
responses to question which are not answers but which count as second
parts, some preferred and some dispreferred. (3)Presequence—What
are you doing tonight?/ Nothing important. Why?/Come to my place
for dinner, then.
7. The Cooperative principle(P. Grice): (1)Maxim of quality (2)Maxim
of quantity (3)Maxim of relevance (4)Maxim of Manner (avoid
obscurity and ambiguity, be brief and orderly)
8. Conversational implicature: a kind of extra meaning not contained in
the utterance. If speaker follows or violates the maxims, he produces
implicature—“I have 3 children.//I have only 3 children, not more”
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X. Linguistics and literature
1. Stylistics: study of literature from a linguistic orientation. (H. D.
Widdowson, 1975)
2. Linguistic analysis: (1)Phonological features—sound patterns//
prosody 韵 律 学 — onomatopoeic effect// chiming//expectation and
surprise; (2)Lexical features—total lexical choices; patterns of lexical
choices; evaluation of lexical choices; (3)Grammatical features
(4)Semantic features: redundancy, absurdity(a living death), figurative
meaning, honest deception(Belinda smiled, and all the world was
gay)(5) Graphological features笔迹
3. Theory of foregrounding: unusual, attractive, unconventional—
(1)deviation(he sang his didn’t he danced his did) (2)parallelism(overregularity—To err is human, to forgive divine// If you prick us, do we
not bleed?/ if you tickle us, do we not laugh?/ if you poison us, do we
not die?/ and if you wrong us, shall we no revenge?) (3) patterning