Transcript 第五章 运动员合理膳食

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English Linguistics
Course Objective
 Mastery of some linguistic concepts and theories in order
to understand how language is constructed, how language
operates,how language is used to do things, how language
is acquired or learnt, how language varies according to the
user or the situation;etc.
 Improvement of English proficiency in general and
enhancement of the awareness of patterns and regularities
in the English language;
 Preparation for further study and research about language.
Textbook and Reference books
 戴炜栋 何兆熊 《新编简明英语语言学教程》（第2
版）上海外语教育出版社，2010
 陈新仁 《英语语言学实用教程》苏州大学出版社，
2007
 胡壮麟 《语言学教程》北京大学出版社，2001
 Yule,G The Study of Language, 外语教学与研究出
版社，2000
Course Outline
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Chapter 1: Introduction
Chapter 2: Phonology
Chapter 3: Morphology
Chapter 4: Syntax
Chapter 5: Semantics
Chapter 6: Pragmatics
Chapter 7: Language Change
Chapter 8: Language and Society
Chapter 9: Language and Culture
Chapter 10: Language Acquisition
Chapter 11: Second Language Acquisition
Chapter 12: Language and the Brain
Course Components
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Lectures
Discussions
Presentation
Assignments
Research
“Study and Research” groups(4-5persons for one
group),each group draws a topic out of the
following(topics for Term 1)
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For chapter 1:
The 13 design features proposed by Charles Hockett
The functions of language
Phatic communion in English and Chinese
The theories about the origin of language
For Chapter 2:
The relation between the sound and the sense
the function of suprasegmental features in daily
communication in Chinese
 The effect of phonetic knowledge on language learning
 The effective strategies in learning English speech sounds
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For Chapter 3:
On Word formation in English
On the Word formation in Chinese
On The role of morphonological knowledge on English
vocabulary learning
On the word-formation in on-line coined words in Chinese
For Chapter 4:
on the syntactic theories presented by different linguistic
schools
on the main points of Chomsky’s Transformational
Generative Grammar
For Chapter 5:
The relation between sense and reference
the majar types of synonyms and antonyms in English
The implications of lexical sense relations on English
teaching and learning
Forms of Course Assessment
 Class attendance
 Participation(Oral presentation and regular
participation in Classroom discussion)
 Fulfillment of the assignment
 Term paper(A-4,宋体，4号，3000字，5-10条
参考书目，first-hand data+analysis)
 Examination
Chapter 1. Introduction
 What is linguistics?
 What is language?
1. What is linguistics? (P1)
----Linguistics is the scientific study of language. (subject,
method, principle, procedure)
Subject: all languages of human societies
Method: scientific
Principle: Exhaustiveness,Consistency ,Economy,Objectivity
Procedure: collect language facts-analyze and find
similiarities-make generalization and form hypothesischecked by more language facts
----A person who studies linguistics is known as a linguist.
The scope of linguistics
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major branches
Phonetics
Phonology
Morphology
Syntax
Semantics / pragmatics
Use of linguistics or
interdisciplinary branches
1. Applied linguistics
2. Sociolinguistics
3. Psycholinguistics
……
Theoretical linguistics
 Phonetics----speech sound (description, classification,
transcription): articulatory phonetics, acoustic phonetics,
auditory phonetics.
 Phonology----sound patterns of languages
 Morphology----the form of words
 Syntax----the rules governing the combination of words into
sentence.
 Semantics----the meaning of language (when the meaning of
language is conducted in the context of language use---Pragmatics)
Some important distinctions in linguistics
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6.
Descriptive vs. prescriptive
Synchronic vs. diachronic
Speech and writing
Langue and parole
Competence and performance
Traditional grammar and modern linguistics
Descriptive vs. prescriptive
 Descriptive ---- describe/analyze linguistic facts
observed or language people actually use (modern
linguistics)
 Prescriptive ----lay down rules for “correct” linguistic
behavior in using language (traditional grammar)
Synchronic vs. diachronic
 Synchronic study---description of a language
at some point of time
(modern linguistics)
 Diachronic study---description of a language
through time (historical
development of language
over a period of time)
Speech and writing
 Speech ---- primary medium of language
 Writing ---- later developed
 Question: Why is speech regarded as the primary medium
of language?
Langue and parole (F. de Saussure)
 Langue ---- the abstract linguistic system shared by all
members of the speech community.
 Parole ---- the realization of langue in actual use.
 Saussure takes a sociological view of language and his notion
of langue is a matter of social conventions.
Competence and performance (Chomsky)
 Competence ---- the ideal user’s knowledge of the
rules of his language
 Performance ---- the actual realization of this
knowledge in linguistic communication
 Chomsky looks at language from a psychological point
of view and to him competence is a property of the
mind of each individual.
Traditional grammar vs modern linguistics
 Traditional grammar ---- prescriptive, written,
Latin-based framework
 Modern linguistics ----- descriptive, spoken, not
necessarily Latin-based framework
2. What is language? (P7)
 The question “What is language”is comparable
with-and, some would say, hardly less profound
than— “What is life?”
------John Lyons
Question: How do you define language?
What does “language”mean in each of the
contexts?
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“language” used in various contexts:
Chinese is a language.
Linguistics is the systematic study of language.
Both Jane and John like Shakespeare’s language.
The language of bees
Language can mean
 what a person says (e.g. bad language, expressions)
 the way of speaking or writing (e.g. Shakespeare’s language,
Luxun’s language)
 a particular variety or level of speech or writing (e.g. language
for special purpose, colloquial language)
 the abstract system underlying the totality of the speech/writing
behavior of a community (e.g. Chinese language, first language)
 the common features of all human languages (e.g. He studies
language)
 a tool for human communication. (social function)
 a set of rules. (rule-governed)
Question: Is there any other context in which the use of the word
means something else?
Sapir’s definition (1921)
 “Language is a purely human and non-instinctive
method of communicating ideas, emotions and
desires by means of voluntarily produced symbols.”
Hall’s definition (1968)
 Language is “the institution whereby humans
communicate and interact with each other by
means of habitually used oral-auditory arbitrary
symbols.”
Chomsky’s definition (1957)
 “From now on I will consider language to be a set of
(finite or infinite) sentences, each finite in length
and constructed out of a finite set of elements.”
Language can be generally defined as
a system of arbitrary vocal symbols used for
human communication.
Language is a system
 Systematic---- rule-governed, elements in it are
arranged according to certain rules; can’t be combined
at will. e.g. *bkli, *I apple eat.
Language is arbitrary
 Arbitrary---- no intrinsic connection between the word
and the thing it denotes, e.g. “pen” by any other
name is the thing we use to write with.
Language is symbolic in nature
 Symbolic---- words are associated with objects,
actions ideas by convention. “A rose by any other
name would smell as sweet”----Shakespeare
Language is primarily vocal
 Vocal---- the primary medium is sound for all
languages; writing system came much later than
spoken form.
Language is human-specific
 Human-specific---- different from the
communication systems other forms of life
possess, e.g. bird songs, bee dance, animal
cries.
The design/defining features of human
language (Charles Hockett)
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Arbitrariness
Productivity/Creativity
Duality
Displacement
Cultural transmission
Arbitrariness
----No logical (motivated or intrinsic) connection between sounds and
meanings.
Questions:
1. by this property do we mean that a person can use the language as freely
as we like?
2. How about onomatopoeic words which imitate natural sounds such as
( English: rumble, crackle, bang, …. Chinese: putong, shasha,
dingdang… )
3. How about some compound words liketype-writer, shoe-maker, airconditioner, photocopy…?
4. How about words like “flow, float, flood, fluent”etc,?
other examples:
J--: joy, jovial, jubilate, joyous, joyful, jubilant
Gl--: glow, glisten, gleam, glare, glimmer, glitter
Productivity/creativity
----Peculiar to human languages，users of language can understand and
produce sentences they have never heard before, e.g. we can understand
sentence like “ A red-eyed elephant is dancing on the hotel bed”, though it
does not describe a common happening in the world.
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A gibbon call system is not productive for gibbon draw all their calls from a
fixed repertoire which is rapidly exhausted, making any novelty impossible.
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The bee dance does have a limited productivity, as it is used to
communicate about food sources in any direction. But food sources are
the only kind of messages that can be sent through the bee dance; bees
do not “talk” about themselves, the hives, or wind, let alone about people,
animals, hopes or desires
Duality (double articulation)
 Lower level----sounds (meaningless)
 Higher level----meaning (larger units of meaning)
 . A small number of sounds can be grouped and regrouped into
a large number of units of meaning (words), and the units of
meaning can be arranged and rearranged into an infinite
number of sentences.
 Questions:
 Why is this property generally assumed as central to language?
Does animal language have this property?
 How is this related to communicative power?
Displacement
---Language 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.
Questions:
What advantages does this property of language yield?
How about the other communication systems?
 A gibbon never utters a call about something he ate last year
 There is something special about the bee dance though. Bees communicate
with other bees about the food sources they have found when they are no
longer in the presence of the food. In this sense, the bee dance has a
component of displacement. But this component is very insignificant. For the
bees must communicate about the food immediately on returning to the hive.
They do not dance about the food they discovered last month nor do they
speculate about future discoveries.
Cultural transmission
----Language is culturally transmitted (through teaching and learning; rather
than by instinct).
 Animal call systems are genetically transmitted. All cats, gibbons and bees
have systems which are almost identical to those of all other cats, gibbons
and bees.
 A Chinese speaker and an English speaker are not mutually intelligible. This
shows that language is culturally transmitted. That is, it is pass on from one
generation to the next by teaching and learning, rather than by instinct.
 Question: Can we deny that human language has a genetic basis? What is
the implication of the story about “wolf child”? What about those patients with
aphasia(patial or total loss of language due to brain damage)?
Functions of language
 Language contributes to the success of our everyday life
and the survival of human beings.
 Discussion: What functions does language serve for our
life and survival?
 Humans are said to be language animals. But what if we
humans lived without language?
 There are some 6,800 known languages spoken in the 200
countries of the world. In 2003, the total number of
languages in teh world was estimated to be 6,809, of which
2,261 have writing systems (the other are only spoken),
what if there were only one language over the world?
The story of Babel
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据犹太人的《圣经》记载：大洪水劫后，天上出现了第一道彩虹，上帝走过来说：“我把
彩虹放在云彩中，这就可作我与大地立约的记号，我使云彩遮盖大地的时候，必有虹现在
云彩中，我便纪念我与你们和各样有血肉的活物所立的约；水就不再泛滥，不再毁坏一切
有血肉的活物了”，上帝以彩虹与地上的人们定下约定，不再用大洪水毁灭大地。此后，
天下人都讲一样的语言，都有一样的口音。诺亚的子孙越来越多，遍布地面，于是向东迁
移。在示拿地（古巴比伦附近），他们遇见一片平原，定居下来。有一天，有人提出一个
问题：我们怎么知道不会再有诺亚时代的洪水将我们淹死，就像淹死我们祖先那样？“这
有彩虹为证啊”有人回答道“当我们看到彩虹，就会想起上帝的诺言，说他永远不会再用
洪水毁灭世界。”“但是没有理由要把我们的将来以及我们的子孙的前途寄托在彩虹上呀”
另一个人争辩说“我们应该做点什么，以免洪水再发生”于是，他们彼此商量说：“来吧，
我们要做砖，把砖烧透了。”于是他们拿砖当石头，又拿石漆当灰泥。他们又说：“来吧，
我们要建造一座城，和一座塔，塔顶通天，为要传扬我们的名，免得我们分散在全地上。”
由于大家语言相通，同心协力，建成的巴比伦城繁华而美丽，高塔直插云霄，似乎要与天
公一比高低。没想到此举惊动了上帝！上帝发觉自己的誓言受到了怀疑，上帝不允许人类
怀疑自己的誓言，就像我们不喜欢别人怀疑自己那样，上帝决定惩罚这些忘记约定的人们，
就像惩罚偷吃了禁果的亚当和夏娃一样。他看到人们这样齐心协力，统一强大，心想：如
果人类真的修成宏伟的通天塔，那以后还有什么事干不成呢？一定得想办法阻止他们。于
是他悄悄地离开天国来到人间，改变并区别开了人类的语言，使他们因为语言不通而分散
在各处，那座塔于是半途而废了。那共同的语言被称为亚当语，历史上曾有学者提出某种
语言是原始语言，例如希伯来语、巴斯克语等（参阅犹太文献）。高塔中途停工的画面在
宗教艺术中有象征意义，表示人类狂妄自大最终只会落得混乱的结局。
What can we learn from this Bible Story?
Babel(通天塔）
Functions of language
Three main functions( distinct but overlapping to some degree)
1. Descriptive function----to convey factual information
2. Expressive function----to supply information about user’s
feelings, preferences, prejudices, and values.
3. Social function----to establish and maintain social relations
between people.
Roman Jakobson (six functions)
Emotive / Conative / Referential
Poetic / Phatic communion/ Metalinguistic
M.A.K. Halliday( three macrofunction)
Ideational / interpersonal / textual
The origin of language
 The divine-origin theory---- Language is a gift of God to
mankind.
 The invention theory---- imitative, cries of nature, the
grunts of men working together.
 The evolutionary theory---- the result of physical and
psychological development.
Assignments
 Review the majar points of this chapter.
 For the various functions of language discussed in
class, use one example of your own to illustrate
each.
For further reading:
 Jakobson, R. Closing Statement: Linguistics and
Poetics, in Sebeok, T.a.(ed. ) Style in Language,
Mass. MIT, 1960
 Lyons, J. Chapters 3 & 4, The Design Features of
Language, in Semantics I. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1977
 Widdowson, H. Chapters 1 & 2, in Linguistics. Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1966
The End
Thank you!