why linguistic is called the science of language
《英语语言学》复习重点(1)
《英语语言学》复习重点Chapter I Invitation to linguistics1. What is language and linguistics?●Language is a system of arbitrary vocal symbols used for human communication. To give the barestdefinition, language is a means of verbal communication. It is instrumental, social and conventional.●Linguistics is usually defined as the science of language or, alternatively, as the scientific study of language.It concerns with the systematic study of language or, a discipline that describes all aspects of language and formulates theories as to how language works.2. What are the design features of language? The definition of these design features: arbitrariness, duality, creativity, and displacement●Design features refers to the defining properties of human language that distinguish it from any animalsystem of communication. They are arbitrariness, duality, creativity, displacement, etc..●Arbitrariness refers to forms of linguistic signs bear no natural relationship to their meaningLanguage is arbitrary. There is no logical connection between meanings and sounds, even with onomatopoeic words●Duality refers to the property of having two levels of structure. The units of the primary level are composedof elements of the secondary level and each of the two levels has its own principles of organization.●Creativity refers to Words can be used in new ways to mean new things, and can be instantly understood bypeople who have never come across that usage before.●Displacement refers to the fact that language can be used to refer to things which are present ornot present, real or imagined matters in the past, present, or future, or in far-away places. It 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. Jakobson’s classification of functions of language.1).Referential function 所指功能2).Poetic function诗学功能3).Emotive function感情功能4).Conative function意动功能5).Phatic function交感功能6).Metalingual元语言功能Hu Zhuanglin’ classification of functions of language and use some examples to illustrate them.1).Informative function 信息功能2).Interpersonal function 人际功能3).Performative function 施为功能4).Emotive function 感情功能5).Phatic communion 交感性谈话6).Recreational function 娱乐性功能7).Metalingual function 元语言功能4. The definitions of important distinctions in lingustics: Who distinguished them?descriptive VS. presriptive;Descriptive(描写式):a kind of linguistic study in which things are just described.eg: American don’t say “I’ll give you some color see see.”Prescriptive(规定式): a kind of linguistic study in which things are prescribed how ought to be, i.e. laying down rules for language use.eg: Don’t say “I’ll give you some color see see.”synchronic VS. diachronic;Synchronic study(共时性) --- description of a language at some point of timeDiachronic study(历时性) --- description of a language through the course of its history (historical development of language over a period of time)langue & parole;Langue: (说话者的语言能力.)the linguistic competence of the speaker.Parole: (语言的实际现象或语料.) the actual phenomena or data of linguistics (utterances).competence and performance.Competence:(一个语言使用者关于语言系统规则的基本理解.)a language user’s underlyin g knowledge about the system of rules.Performance:(指在具体场景中语言的真实使用.)the actual use of language in concrete situations.The distinction is discussed by the American linguist N. Chomsky in the late 1950’s.Competence enables a speaker to produce and understand an indefinite number of sentences and to recognize grammatical mistakes and ambiguities.A speaker’s competence 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.5.What is the major differences between Saussure’s distinction between langue and parole and Chomsky’s distinction between competence and performance?①Saussure's language is social product, a set of conversations for a speech community.②Chomsky regards competence as property of the mind of each individual.③Saussure studies language more from a sociological point of view while Chomsky studies it more from a psychological point of view.Chapter 2 Speech soundsPhonetics4. Basic information about the IPAInternational Phonetic Alphabet (Otto Jesperson France)IPA:the abbreviation of International Phonetic Alphabet.It is a standardized and internationally accepted system of phonetic transcription.It is a standardized and internationally accepted system of phonetic transcription.The first version of IPA was published in August 1888.The latest version was devised in 1993 and corrected in 1996 and 2005.5. Three parameters to identify a consonant:①place of articulation: place in the mouth where obstruction occurs②manners of articulation: ways in which articulation can be accomplished③state of vocal cords: voiced VS. voiceless6.the categories of consonants according to the manner of articulation and the place of aritucatio7. English vowels can be divided into two large categories:Monophthongs or pure/single vowels 单元音Diphthongs or gliding vowels 双元音8. Four criteria (parameters) of vowel description1. the height of tongue raising (high, mid, low);2. the position of the highest part of the tongue (front, central, back);3. the length or tenseness of the vowel (tense vs. lax or long vs. short), and4. lip-rounding (rounded vs. unrounded).Phonology9. definition:1) Co-articulation: Simultaneous/overlapping articulation because of the influence of the neighbor sound(s)2) broad /narrow transcription: When we use a simple set of symbols in our transcription, it is called a broad transcription; The use of more specific symbols to show more phonetic detail is referred to as a narrow transcription.3)Phone: the smallest perceptible discrete segment of sound in a stream of speech. (in the mouth)4) Phoneme: a sound which is capable of distinguishing one word or one shape of a word from another in a given language is a phoneme. (in the mind)5)allophone phonic: variants of a phoneme are called allophone of the same phoneme.6)Minimal pairs:Three requirements for identifying minimal pairs: 1) different in meaning; 2) only one phoneme different;3) the different phonemes occur in the same phonetic environment.E.g. a minimal pair: pat-fat; lit-lip; phone-toneMinimal set: pat, mat, bat, fat, cat, hat, etc7)Suprasegmental features: features that involve more than single sound segment, such as stress（重音），length （音程）, rhythm（节奏），tone（音调），intonation（语调）juncture（音渡）．8) syllable:10.Exemplify the relationship between phone, phoneme and allophone..Phone（音素): the smallest perceptible discrete segment of sound in a stream of speech. (in the mouth)i) phonetic unit ii) not necessarily distinctive of meaningiii) physical as heard or produced iv) marked with [ ].Phoneme （音位）：A sound which is capable of distinguishing one word or one shape of a word from another in a given language is a phoneme. (in the mind)i) phonological unit ii) distinctive of meaningiii) abstract, not physical iv) marked with / /..allophone (音位变体) : phonic variants of a phoneme are called allophone of the same phoneme.e.g.:p ot, s p ot, cu p: [ph] vs. [p] vs. [ p¬ ] (unreleased)11. What are the differences between Phonetics and Phonology?Phonetics studies how speech sounds are produced, transmitted and received. It is concerned with the actual physical articulation, transmission and perception of speech sounds.Phonology is essentially the description of the systems and patterns of speech sounds. It is concerned with the abstract and mental aspect of the sounds in languageChapter 3 Morphology12. Three senses of “word”(1) A physically definable unit: a cluster of sound segments or letters between two pause or blank.(2) Word both as a general term and as a specific term.(3) A grammatical unit.13.The classification of word. Using some examples to explain these classifications.Words can be classified in terms of:★(1) Variable vs. invariable words (可变词/不可变词)★(2) Grammatical words vs. lexical words (语法词/词汇词)★(3) Closed-class words vs. open-class words(封闭词/开放词)★(4) word class(词类)(1) Variable vs. invariable words (可变词/不可变词)the former refers to words having inflective changes（屈折变化）while the latter refers to words having no such endings.Variable words: follow; follows; following; followedInvariable words: since; when; seldom; through; hello(2) Grammatical words vs. lexical words (function words and content words.语法词/词汇词).The former refers to those words expressing grammatical meanings, such as conjunctions(连词), prepositions（介词）, articles(冠词), and pronouns（代词）;.the latter refers to words having lexical meanings, those which refer to substance, action etc. such as n., v., adj., and adv.(3) Closed-class words vs. open-class words (封闭词/开放词).the former refers to words whose membership is fixed or limited; e.g. pron., prep., conj., article..the latter of which the membership is infinite or unlimited. e.g.: n., v., adj., adv.(4) word class (词类)14. definition:1) Morphology:Morphology is a branch of linguistics, which studies the internal structure of words and the rulesby which words are formed.2) Morpheme: the smallest unit of meaning, which can not be divided into further smaller units without destroying or drastically altering the meaning, whether it is lexical or grammatical.Free morphemes: morphemes which may constitute words by themselves．Bound morphemes:morphemes which can not be used by themselves, but must be combined with other morphemes to form wordsInflectional morpheme: a kind of bound morphemes which manifest various grammatical relations or grammatical categories such as number, tense, degree and case.Derivational morpheme: a kind of bound morphemes, added to existing forms to create new words. There are three kinds according to position: prefix, suffix and infix.3) Affix: is the term for the type of form that can be used to add to another morpheme (root or stem) to form word. It can’t be used freely in sentence.prefix: change meaning eg: dis-; un-; mis-suffix: change part of speech eg: -ly; -ness; -tioninfix: some languages also have infixes, affix morphemes that are inserted into root or stem morphemes to divide them into two parts.4) Inflection: the manifestation of grammatical relationships through the addition of inflectional affixes, such as tense, number, person, finiteness, aspect and case, which do not change the grammatical class of the stems to which they are attached.5) word-formation①Compound: referring to those words that consist of more than one lexical morpheme, or the way to join two separate words to produce a new word. ②Derivation: the way to form words with a combination of roots and affixes.15. examples of Lexical change proper★(1) Invention 新造词Nylon★(2) Blending 混合词smoke + fog→ smog★(3) Abbreviation 缩合词TV → television★(4) Acronym 首字母缩略词NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization)★(5) back-formation 逆构词editor edit★(6) analogical creation 类比造词p76★(7) Borrowing 借词、外来词Kong FuChapter 4 Syntax16. Definition:Syntax: is the study of the rules governing the ways different constituents are combined to form sentences in a language, or the study of the interrelationships between elements in sentence structures.paradigmatic Relations:Syntagmatic Relations:Endocentric Constructions:is one whose distribution is functionally equivalent to that of one or more of its constituents, i.e., a word or a group of words, which serves as a definable centre or head.Exocentric Constructions:refers to a group of syntactically related words where none of the words is functionally equivalent to the group as a whole, that is, ther e is no definable “Centre” or “Head” inside the group Category: refers to the defining properties of these general units:Categories of the noun: number, gender, case and countabilityCategories of the verb: tense, aspect, voice17.three kinds of syntactic relations:relations of position位置关系Positional relation, or WORD ORDER, refers to the sequential arrangement of words in a language.relations of substitutability 可替代性关系The Relation of Substitutability refers to classes or sets of words substitutable for each other grammatically in sentences with the same structure.relations of co-occurrence 同现关系It means that words of different sets of clauses may permit, or require, the occurrence of a word of another set or class to form a sentence or a particular part of a sentence.18. Immediate Constituent Analysis (IC Analysis)Immediate constituent analysis is a form of linguistic review that breaks down longer phrases or sentences into their constituent parts, usually into single words. This kind of analysis is sometimes abbreviated as IC analysis, and gets used extensively by a wide range of language experts.19. Endocentric constructions fall into two main types, depending on the relation between constituents: Coordination and subordination•Coordination is a common syntactic pattern in English and other languages formed by grouping together two or 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.20. Characteristics of subjectsA) Word order: Subject ordinarily precedes the verb in the statementB) Pro-forms(代词形式) : The first and third person pronouns in English appear in a special form when the pronoun is a subjectC) Agreement with the verb: In the simple present tense, an -s is added to the verb when a third person subject is singular, but the number and person of the object or any other element in the sentence have no effect at all on the form of the verbD) Content questions (实意问句): If the subject is replaced by a question word (who or what), the rest of the sentence remains unchangedE) Tag question (反意问句): A tag question is used to seek confirmation of a statement. It always contains a pronoun which refers back to the subject, and never to any other element in the sentence.Chapter 5 Semantics21. Geoffrey Leech (1974, 1981). Semantics: The Study of Meaning. Seven types of meaning:Conceptual meaning: Also called ‘denotative’ or ‘cognitive’ meaning.Refers to logical, cognitive or denotative content.Concerned with the relationship between a word and the thing it denotes, or refers to. English word“river” →“江”and“河”Connotative meaning: The communicative value an expression has by virtue of what it refers to, over and above its purely conceptual content. It is the intensional meaning which a word suggests or implies. home: family, friends, warmth, cozy, comfortable, safety, love, free, convenience Social meaning:What a piece of language conveys about the social circumstances of its use. Affective meaning: --Reflecting the personal feelings of the speaker, including his attitude to the listener, or his attitude to something he is talking about.Reflected and meaning:--Arises in cases of multiple conceptual meaning, when one sense of a word forms part of our response to another sense.Collocative meaning: --The associations a word acquires on account of the meanings of words which tend to occur in its environment.Thematic meaning:--What is communicated by the way in which a speaker or writer organizes themessage, in terms of ordering, focus, and emphasis.22. Explain the semantic triangle by using some examples.23. Use some examples to explain three sense relations:Synonymy; Antonymy; HyponymySynonymy 同义buy/purchase thrifty/economical/stingy autumn/fall flat/apartment tube/undergroundAntonymy 反义Gradable antonymy 渐次对立关系good ------------- bad long --------------- short big ---------------- smallComplementary antonymy 互补反义关系alive : dead male : female present : absent innocent : guilty odd : even pass : failboy : girlhit : missConverse antonymy 逆向反义关系buy : sell lend : borrow give : receive parent : child husband : wife teacher : student above : belowbefore : afterhost : guestemployer : employeeHyponymy 上下义Superordinate （上义词）: the more general termHyponym （下义词）: the more specific termCo-hyponyms （同义词）: members of the same class24. Componential relations （成分分析）“Componential analysis”---- defines the meaning of a lexical element in terms of semantic components.Componential analysis refers to an approach adopted by structural semanticists in describing the meaning of words or phrases. This approach is based on the belief that the total meaning of a word can be analyzed in terms of a number of distinct elements or meaning components25. Sense relations between sentences1 A entails B ( A is an entailment of B ) 蕴含2 A Presupposes B (A presupposes B) 预设3 A is inconsistent with B 不一致4 A is synonymous with B 同义5 A is a contradiction 自相矛盾6 A is semantically anomalous 反常26. Explain the difference between sense and reference from the following four aspects:1) A word having reference must have sense;2) A word having sense might not have reference;3) A certain sense can be realized by more than one reference; 4) A certain reference can be expressed by morethan one senseThe distinction between “sense” and “reference” is comparable to that between “connotation” and “denotation”. The former refers to some abstract properties, while the latter refers to some concrete entities.Firstly, to some extent, we can say that every word has a sense, i.e., some conceptual content; otherwise we would not be able to use it or understand it. Secondly, but not every word has a reference. There are linguistic expressions which can never be used to refer to anything, for example, the words so, very, maybe, if, not, and all. These words do of course contribute meaning to the sentences in which they occur and thus help sentences denote, but they themselves do not identify entities in the world. They are intrinsically non-referring terms. And words like ghost and dragon refer to imaginary things, which do not exist in reality. Thirdly, some expressions will have the same reference across a range of utterances, e.g., the Eiffel Tower or the Pacific Ocean. Such expressions are sometimes described as having constant reference. Others have their references totally dependent on context. Expressions like I, you, she, etc. are said to have variable references. Lastly, sometimes a reference may be expressed by more than one sense. For instance, both ‘evening star’ and ‘morning star’(晚星，启明星), though they differ in sense, refer to Venus. Chapter 6 Psychology and cognitive lingusitics27. What are the differences between metaphor & metonymy? Give some examples.Metaphor is a conceptual mapping（概念映射）, not a linguistic one, from one domain to another（从一个语域到另一个语域）, not from a word to another.Metonymy is a cognitive process in which one conceptual entity, the vehicle（源域）, provides mental access to another conceptual entity, the target（目标域）, within the same domain. The reference point activates the target.1.Metaphor is used for substitution, while metonymy is used for association.2.Metaphor can mean condensation and metonymy can mean displacement.3.A metonymy acts by combining ideas while metaphor acts by suppressing ideas.4.In a metaphor, the comparison is based on the similarities, while in metonymy the comparison is based on contiguity.--For example, the sentence ‘he is a tiger in class’ is a metaphor. Here the word tiger is used in substitution for displaying an attribute of charact er of the person. The sentence ‘the tiger called his students to the meeting room’ is a metonymy. Here there is no substitution; instead the person is associated with a tiger for his nature..Metaphors are actually cognitive tools that help us structure our thoughts and experiences in the world around us..Metaphor is a conceptual mapping（概念映射）, not a linguistic one, from one domain to another （从一个语域到另一个语域）, not from a word to another.Metonymy（换喻，转喻）.It is a cognitive process in which one conceptual entity, the vehicle（源域）, provides mental access to another conceptual entity, the target（目标域）, within the same domain.Chapter 7 Language, culture and society28. the relationship between language and thought?29. What’s Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis? Give your comment on it.Edward Sapir (1884 - 1939) and Benjamin Lee Whorf (1897-1941)Our language helps mould our way of thinking and, consequently, different languages mayprobably express speakers’unique ways of understanding the world.Linguistic determinism: L may determine our thinking patterns.Linguistic relativity: a. Similarity between language is relative; b. the greater their structuraldifferentiation is, the diverse their conceptualization of the world will be.30. What is the importance of culture in classroom teaching?Standard language.Chapter 8 Pragmatics31. Speech act theory32.What’s your understanding of conversational implicature? Using one or two examples to discuss the voilationof its maxims.People do not usually say things directly but tend to imply them.CP is meant to describe what actually happens in conversation.People tend to be cooperative and obey CP in communication.Since CP is regulative, CP can be violated.Violation of CP and its maxims leads to conversational implicature.1. Make your contribution as informative as is required.A: 昨天上街买了些什么?B: 就买了些东西。
语言学教程考试
第一题名词解释1.Linguistics：Linguistics is generally defined as the scientific study of language。
2.Phonetics：The study of sounds which are used in linguistic communication is called phonetics。
3.Phonology：The study of how sounds are put together and used in communication is called phonology。
4.Morpheme：Morpheme is the smallest meaningful unit of language.5.Reference：Reference means what a linguistic form refers to in the real,physical world;it deals with the relationship between the linguistic element and the non—linguistic world of experience.6.Semantics: The study of meaning in language is called semantics.7.Pragmatics ：The study of meaning in context of use is called pragmatics.8.Free morpheme：Free morpheme are the morphemes which are independent units of meaning and can be used freely all by themselves or in combination with other morphemes.ponential analysis：Componential analysis is a way to analyze word meaning.It was proposed by structural semanticists.10.Cooperative principle：It is a general principle which all participants are expected to observe。
《语言学》前三章部分答案
Chapter I IntroductionIII. There are four choices following each statement. Mark the choice that can best complete the statement.3l.C 32.D 33.C 34.D 35.B 36.A 37.C 38.B 39.A 40.DIV. Define the following terms:41. Linguistics: Linguistics is generally defined as the scientific study of language.42. Phonology: The study of how sounds are put together and used in communication is called phonology.43. Syntax: The study of how morphemes and words are combined to form sentences is called syntax. .44. Pragmatics: The study of meaning in context of use is called pragmatics.45. Psycholinguistics: The study of language with reference to the workings of mind is called psycholinguistics.46. Language: Language is a system of arbitrary vocal symbols used for human communication.47. Phonetics: The study of sounds which are used in linguistic communication is called phonetics.48. Morphology: The study of the way in which morphemes are arranged to form words is called morphology.49. Semantics: The study of meaning in language is called semantics.50. Sociolinguistics: The study of language with reference to society is called sociolinguistics.51. Applied linguistics: In a narrow sense, applied linguistics refers to the application of linguistic principles and theories to language teaching and learning, especially the teaching of foreign and second languages. In a broad sense, it refers to the application of linguistic findings to the solution of practical problems such as the recovery of speech ability.52. Arbitrariness: It is one of the design features of language. It means that there is no logical connection between meanings and sounds53. Productivity: Language is productive or creative in that it makes possible the con-struction and interpretation of new signals by its users.54. Displacement: Displacement means that language can be used to refer to things which are present or not present, real or imagined matters in the past, present, or future, or in far-away places. In other words, language can be used to refer to contexts removed from the immediate situations of the speaker55. Duality: The duality nature of language means that language is a system, which consists of two sets of structure, or two levels, one of sounds and the other of meanings.56. Design features: Design features refer to the defining properties of human language that distinguish it from any animal system of communication57. Competence: Chomsky defines competence as the ideal user's knowledge of the rules of his language,58. Performance: performance is the actual realization of the knowl-edge of the rules in linguistic communication.59. langue : Langue refers to the abstract linguistic system shared by all the members of a speech community; Langue is the set of conventions and rules which language users all have to follow; Langue is relatively stable, it does not change frequently 60. Parole: Parole refers to the realization of langue in actual use; parole is the concrete use of the conventions and the application of the rules; parole varies from person to person, and from situation to situation.V. Answer the following questions as comprehensively as possible. Give examples for illustration if necessary:61. Language is generally defined as a system of arbitrary vocal symbols used for human communication. Explain it in detail.First of all, language is a system, because elements of language are combined according to rules. Secondly, language is arbitrary because there is no intrinsic connection between form and meaning, or between the sign and what it stands for. Different languages have different words for the same object in the world. This fact is a good illustration of the arbitrary nature of language. This also explains the symbolic nature of language: words are just symbols; they are associated with objects, actions, ideas, etc. by convention . Thirdly, language is vocal because the primary medium is sound for all languages, no matter how well - developed their writing systems are.The term "human" in the definition indicates that language is possessed by human beings only and is very different from the communication systems of other living creatures. The term "communication" means that language makes it possible for its users to talk to each other and fulfill their communicative needs.62. What are the design features of human language? Illustrate them with examples.1) ArbitrarinessAs mentioned earlier, the arbitrary property of language means that there is no logical connection between meanings and sounds. For instance, there is no necessary relationship between the word elephant and the animal it symbolizes. In addition, different sounds are used to refer to the same object in different languages, and even within the same language, the same sound does not refer to the same thing. However, language is not entirely arbitrary. There are words which are created in the imitation of sounds by sounds, such as crash, bang in English. Besides, some compound words are also not entirely arbitrary. But the non-arbitrary words are quite limited in number. The arbitrary nature of language makes it possible for language to have an unlimited source of expressions.2) ProductivityLanguage is productive or creative in that it makes possible the construction and interpretation of new signals by its users. This is why they can produce and understand an infinitely large number of sentences, including sentences that they have never said or heard before. They can send messages which no one else has ever sent before.Productivity is unique to human language. Most animal communication systems appear to be highly restricted with respect to the number of different signals that their users can send and receive.3) DualityThe duality nature of language means that language is a system, which consists of two sets of structure, or two levels, one of sounds and the other of meanings. 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.4) DisplacementDisplacement means that language can be used to refer to things which are present or not present, real or imagined matters in the past, present, or future, or in far-away places. In other words, language can be used to refer to contexts removed from the immediate situations of the speaker. Animal calls are mainly uttered in response to immediate changes of situation.5) Cultural transmissionHuman beings were born with the ability to acquire language, but the details of any language are not genetically transmitted or passed down by instinct. They have to be taught and learned, but animal call systems are genetically transmitted.63. How is modern linguistics different from traditional grammar?Traditional gram-mar is prescriptive; it is based on "high "(religious, literary) written language. It sets grammatical rules and imposes the rules on language users. But Modern linguistics is descriptive; It collects authentic, and mainly spoken language data and then it studies and describes the data in an objective and scientific way.64. How do you understand the distinction between a synchronic study and a diachronic study?The description of a language at some point in time is a Synchronic study; the description of a language as it changes through time is a diachronic study. A synchronic study of language describes a language as it is at some particular point in time, while a diachronic study of language is the study of the historical development of language over a period of time.65. Why does modern linguistics regard the spoken form of language as primary, not the written?First, the spoken form is prior to the writ-ten form and most writing systems are derived from the spoken form of language.Second, the spoken form plays a greater role than writing in terms of the amount of information conveyed and it serves a wider range of purposesFinally, the spoken form is the medium through which we acquire our mother tongue.66. What are the major distinctions between langue and parole?The distinction between langue, and parole was made by the famous linguist Ferdinand de Saussure early this century. Langue refers to the abstract linguistic system shared by all the members of a speech community, and parole refers to the realization of langue in actual use. Langue is the set of conventions and rules which language users all have to follow while parole is the concrete use of the conventionsand the application of the rules. Langue is abstract; it is not the language people actually use, but parole is concrete; it refers to the naturally occurring language events. Langue is relatively stable; it does not change frequently; while parole varies from person to person, and from situation to situation.67. How do you understand competence and performance?American linguist N. Chomsky in the late 1950’s proposed the distinction between competence and performance. Chomsky defines competence as the ideal user’s knowledge of the rules of his language. This internalized set of rules enables the language user to produce and understand an infinitely large number of sentences and recognize sentences that are ungrammatical and ambiguous. According to Chomsky, performance is the actual realization of this knowledge in linguistic communication. Although the speaker’s knowledge of his mother tongue is perfect, his performances may have mistakes because of social and psychological factors such as stress, embarrassment, etc.. Chomsky believes that what linguists should study is the competence, which is systematic, not the performance, which is too haphazard. 68. Saussure’s distinction between langue and parole seems similar to Chomsky’s distinction between competence and performance. What do you think are their major differences?Although Saussure’s distinction and Chomsky’s are very similar, they differ at least in that Saussure took a sociological view of language and his notion of langue is a mater of social conventions, and Chomsky looks at language from a psychological point of vies and to him, competence is a property of the mind of each individual. 69. Do you think human language is entirely arbitrary? Why?Language is arbitrary in nature, it is not entirely arbitrary, because there are a limited number of words whose connections between forms and meanings can be logically explained to a certain extent, for example, the onomatopoeia, words which are coined on the basis of imitation of sounds by sounds such as bang, crash,etc.. Take compounds for another example. The two elements “photo” and “copy” in “photocopy” are non-motivated, but the compound is not arbitrary.Chapter 2：PhonologyIV. Define the terms below:45. phonology: Phonology studies the system of sounds of a particular language; it aims to discover how speech sounds in a language form patterns and how these sounds are used to convey meaning in linguistic communication.46. phoneme: The basic unit in phonology is called phoneme; it is a unit of distinctive value. But it is an abstract unit. To be exact, a phoneme is not a sound; it is a collection of distinctive phonetic features.47. allophone: The different phones which can represent a phoneme in different phonetic environments are called the allophones of that phoneme.48. international phonetic alphabet: It is a standardized and internationally accepted system of phonetic transcription.49. intonation: When pitch, stress and sound length are tied to the sentence rather than the word in isolation, they are collectively known as intonation.50. phonetics: Phonetics is defined as the study of the phonic medium of language; itis concerned with all the sounds that occur in the world' s languages51. auditory phonetics: It studies the speech sounds from the hearer's point of view. It studies how the sounds are perceived by the hear-er.52. acoustic phonetics: It studies the speech sounds by looking at the sound waves. It studies the physical means by which speech sounds are transmitted through the air from one person to another.53. phone : Phones can be simply defined as the speech sounds we use when speakinga language. A phone is a phonetic unit or segment. It does not necessarily distinguish meaning.54. phonemic contrast: Phonemic contrast refers to the relation between two phonemes. If two phonemes can occur in the same environment and distinguish meaning, they are in phonemic contrast.55. tone: Tones are pitch variations, which are caused by the differing rates of vibration of the vocal cords.56. minimal pair: When two different forms are identical in every way except for one sound segment which occurs in the same place in the strings, the two words are said to form a minimal pair.V. Answer the following questions as comprehensively as possible. Give ex-amples for illustration if necessary:57. Of the two media of language, why do you think speech is more basic than writing?1) In linguistic evolution, speech is prior to writing.2) In everyday communication, speech plays a greater role than writing in terms of the amount of information conveyed.3) Speech is always the way in which every native speaker acquires his mother tongue, and writing is learned and taught later at school.58. What are the criteria that a linguist uses in classifying vowels?1) Vowels may be distinguished as front, central and back in terms of the position of the tongue in the mouth.2) According to how wide our mouth is opened, we classify the vowels into four groups: close vowels, semi-close vowels, semi-open vowels, and open vowels.3) According to the shape of the lips, vowels are divided into rounded vowels and unrounded vowels.4) The English vowels can also be classified into long vowels and short vowels according to the length of the sound.59. What are the major differences between phonology and phonetics?They differ in their approach and focus. Phonetics is of a general nature; it is interested in all the speech sounds used in all human languages: how they are produced, how they differ from each other, what phonetic features they possess, how they can be classified. Phonology, on the other hand, is interested in the system of sounds of a particular language; it aims to discover how speech sounds in a language form patterns and how these sounds are used to convey meaning in linguistic communication.60. Illustrate with examples how suprasegmental features can affect meaning.1) The location of stress in English distinguishes meaning, such as `import and import. The similar alternation of stress also occurs between a compound noun and a phrase consisting of the same elements. A phonological feature of the English compounds is that the stress of the word always falls on the first element and the second element receives secondary stress, for example: `blackbird is a particular kind of bird, which is not necessarily black, but a black `bird is a bird that is black.2) The more important words such as nouns, verbs adjectives , adverbs,etc are pronounced with greater force and made more prominent. But to give special emphasis to a certain notion, a word in sentence that is usually unstressed can be stressed to achieve different effect. Take the sentence “He is driving my car.” for example. To emphasize the fact that the car he is driving is not his, or yours, but mine, the speaker can stress the possessive pronoun my, which under normal circumstances is not stressed.3) English has four basic types of intonation, known as the four tones: When spoken in different tones, the same sequence of words may have different meanings. Generally speaking, the falling tone indicates that what is said is a straight-forward, matter-of-fact statement, the rising tone often makes a question of what is said, and the fall-rise tone often indicates that there is an implied message in what is said.61. In what way can we determine whether a phone is a phoneme or not?A basic way to determine the phonemes of a language is to see if substituting one sound for other results in a change of meaning. If it does, the two sounds then represent different phonemes.Chapter 3：MorphologyIV. Define the following terms:31. Morphology: Morphology is a branch of grammar which studies the internal structure of words and the rules by which words are formed.32. inflectional morphology: The inflectional morphology studies the inflections33. derivational morphology: Derivational morphology is the study of word- formation.34. Morpheme: It is the smallest meaningful unit of language.35. free morpheme: Free morphemes are the morphemes which are independent units of meaning and can be used freely all by themselves or in combination with oth-er morphemes.36. bound morpheme: Bound morphemes are the morphemes which cannot be used indepen-dently but have to be combined with other morphemes, either free or bound, to form a word.37. Root: A root is often seen as part of a word; it can never stand by itself al-though it bears clear, definite meaning; it must be combined with another root or an affix to form a word.38. Affix: Affixes are of two types: inflectional and derivational. Inflectional affixes manifest various grammatical relations or grammatical categories, while derivationalaffixes are added to an existing form to create a word.39. Prefix: Prefixes occur at the beginning of a word . Prefixes modify the meaning of the stem, but they usually do not change the part of speech of the original word.40. Suffix: Suffixes are added to the end of the stems; they modify the meaning of the original word and in many cases change its part of speech.41. Derivation: Derivation is a process of word formation by which derivative affixes are added to an existing form to create a word.42. Compounding: Compounding can be viewed as the combination of two or sometimes more than two words to create new words.V. Anwser the following questions:43. What are the main features of the English compounds?Orthographically a compound can be written as one word, two separate words with or without a hyphen in between. Syntactically, the part of speech of a compound is determined by the last element. Semantically, the meaning of a compound is idiomatic, not calcu-lable from the meanings of all its components. Phonetically, the word stress of a compound usually falls on the first element.44. Discuss the types of morphemes with examples.Free morphemes: They are the independent units of meaning and can be used freely all by the mselves, for example, “book-” in the word “bookish”.Bound morphemes: They are those that cannot be used independently but have to be combined with other morphemes, either free or bound, to form a word such as “-ish” in “bookish”. Bound morphemes can be subdivided into roots and affixes. A root is seen as part of a word; it can never stand by itself although it has a clear and definite meaning, such as “gene-” in the word “generate”. Affixes are of two types: inflectional and derivational. Inflectional morphemes manifest various grammatical relations or grammatical categories such as “-s” in the word “books” to indicate plurality of nouns. Derivational affixes are added to an existing form to create a word such as “mis-” in the word “misinform”. Derivational affixes can also be divided into prefixes and suffixes. Prefixes occur at the beginning of a word such as “dis- ” in the word “dislike”, while suffixes occur at the end of a word such as “-less” in the word “friendless”.。
新编简明英语语言学教程戴炜栋第1_3章课后练习题答案
.. . . ... 学习参考学习参考 . 《新编简明英语语言学教程》第二版第1-3章练习题 参考答案 Chapter 1 Introduction P131. How do you interpret the following definition of linguistics: Linguistics is the scientific study of language ？答： Linguistics is based on the systematic investigation of linguistic data, conducted with reference to some general theory of language structure. In order to discover the nature and rules of the underlying language system, the linguists has to collect and observe language facts first, which are found to display some similarities, and generalizations are made about them; then he formulates some hypotheses about the language structure. The hypotheses thus formed have to be checked repeatedly against the observed facts to fully prove their validity. In linguistics, as in any other discipline, data and theory stand in a dialectical complementation, that is, a theory without the support of data can hardly claim validity, and data without being explained by some theory remain a muddled mass of things.2. What are the major branches of linguistics? What does each of them study?答： The major branches of linguistics are:(1) phonetics: it studies the sounds used in linguistic communication;(2) phonology: it studies how sounds are put together and used to convey meaning in communication; (3) morphology: it studies the way in which linguistic symbols representing sounds are arranged and combinedto form words;(4) syntax: it studies the rules which govern how words are combined to form grammatically permissiblesentences in languages;(5) semantics: it studies meaning conveyed by language;(6) pragmatics: it studies the meaning in the context of language use.3. In what basic ways does modern linguistics differ from traditional grammar? 答： The general approach thus traditionally formed to the study of language over the years is roughly referred to as “t as “traditional gramma raditional gramma raditional grammar.” Modern linguistics differs from traditional g r.” Modern linguistics differs from traditional g rammar in several basic ways.Firstly, linguistics is descriptive while traditional grammar is prescriptive.Second, modem linguistics regards the spoken language as primary, not the written. Traditional grammarians, on the other hand, tended to emphasize, maybe over-emphasize, the importance of the written word, partly because of its permanence.Then, modem linguistics differs from traditional grammar also in that it does not force languages into a Latin-based framework.4. Is modern linguistics mainly synchronic or diachronic? Why?答： In modem linguistics, a synchronic approach seems to enjoy priority over a diachronic one. Because people believed that unless the various states of a language in different historical periods are successfully studied, it would be difficult to describe the changes that have taken place in its historical development.5. For what reasons does modern linguistics give priority to speech rather than to writing?答： Speech and writing are the two major media of linguistic communication. Modem linguistics regards the spoken language as the natural or the primary medium of human language for some obvious reasons. From the point of view of linguistic evolution, speech is prior to writing. The writing system of any language is always “invented” by its users to reco “invented” by its users to record speech when the need arises. Even in today's world there are still many languages rd speech when the need arises. Even in today's world there are still many languages that can only be spoken but not written. Then in everyday communication, speech plays a greater role than writing in terms of the amount of information conveyed. And also, speech is always the way in which every native speaker acquires his mother tongue, and writing is learned and taught later when he goes to school. For modern linguists,spoken language reveals many true features of human speech while written language is o nly the “revised” record of speech. Thus their data for investigation and analysis are mostly drawn from everyday speech, which they regard as authentic.6. How is Saussure's distinction between langue and parole similar to Chomsky's distinction between competence and performance?答： Saussure's distinction and Chomsky's are very similar, they differ at least in that Saussure took a sociological view of language and his notion of langue is a matter of social conventions, and Chomsky looks at language from a psychological point of view and to him competence is a property of the mind of each individual.7. What characteristics of language do you think should be included in a good, comprehensive definition of language?答： First of all, language is a system, i.e., elements of language are combined according to rules.Second, language is arbitrary in the sense that there is no intrinsic connection between a linguistic symbol and what the symbol stands for.Third, language is vocal because the primary medium for all languages is sound.Fourth, language is human-specific, i. e., it is very different from the communication systems other forms of life possess.8. What are the main features of human language that have been specified by C. Hockett to show that it is essentially different from animal communication system? （2．2语言的识别性特征） 美国语言学家 C. Hockett提出了人类语言的 12种识别性特征，其中最重要的识别性特种有5种： 即语言的任意性、创造性、二重性、移位性和文化传递性。
英语语言学第一章复习资料.doc
1.The definition of linguisticsLinguistics is defined as the scientific study of languagejt studies not any particular language, but languages in general.Q：How do you interpret the definition of linguistics?(why linguistics is scientific?)★1」inguistics studies not any particular language, but languages in general.★2」inguistics is based on the systematic investigation of linguistic dcrkt conducted/with reference to some general theory of language siructure.(基于对语料库的系统调查,以关于语言结构的一般理论为指导)★3.what the linguist has to do first is to Observe and collect language facts, which are found to display some similar 计ies, and generaliza汁ions are made about them.Then, he formulates some hypotheses about the language structure. But the hypotheses thus formed have to be checked repeatedly against theobserved facts to fully prove their valid计y.2.The scope of linguistics1.D efinition： general linguisticsThe study of language as a whole is often called general linguistics.Q：what are major branches of linguistics? What does each study?Phonetics—十he study of sounds used in linguistic commuicationPhonology—how sounds are put together and used to convey meaning in communication. Morphology—the sounds used in linguistic communication are represented by symbols. The way in which these symbols are arranged and combined to form wordsSyntax ---- the combination of words to form grammatically permissible serrtences in languages is governed by rules, the study of these rules is syntax.Semantics—the study of meaning is known as semantics.Praqmatics-the study of meaning in context ofwordsIt is the study of how speakers of a language use sentences to effect successful communication. Interdisciplinary branches of linguistic study1.sociolinguistics2.psycholinguistics3.applied linguistics4.neurolinguistics5.historicallinguistics6.corpuslinguisitcs /.computational linguistics3.distinctions in linguistics1. prescriptive and descriptive★If a linguistic study aims to describe and analyze the language people actually use, it is said to be descriptive.★If the linguistic study aims to lay down rules for ''correct and standard0 behaviour in using language ★Modern linguistics is mostly descriptive.2.Synchronic and Diachronic★The description of a language at some point of time in history is a synchronic study★The description of a langugage as it changes through time is a diachronic study.★The modern linguistics is mostly synchronic3.speech and writing★Speech and writing are two major media of communicator)・Q：why spoken language is regarded as the primary medium of human language?★From the point of view of linguis十ic evolutiort speech is prior to writing.★In every communication, speech plays a greater role than writing in terms of the amount of information conveyed.★Speech is always the way in which every native speaker acquires his mother toungue, and writing is learned and taught later when he goes to school.★Spoken language reveals more true features of human speech while written language is only the "revised" record of speech.ngue and Parole★F. de Saussure made the distinciton between langue and parole in 1916(in the early 20th century), the Swiss linguist・必考！Defin 汁ion：★Langue refers to 十he abstract linguistic system shared by all members of a speech community.★Parole refers to the realizcrtion of langue in actual use具体表现：★Langue is the set of conventions and rules which all language users all have to abide by.Paroel is the concrete use of 十he converrtion and application of the rules・★Langue is abstract, it is not the language people actually use.Parole is concrete, it refers to the naturally occuring language events.★Langue is relatively stable, it doesn't changefrequentlyParole varies from person to person, and from situation to situation.petence and performance★N. Chomsky propose the distinction of competence and performance in the late 1950s, the American linguist.befin 计ion：★Competence is the ideal users knowledge of the rules of his language★Performance is the actual realization of this knowledge in linguistic communication.★Saussure took a sociological view of language Chomsky took a psychological view of language6.Traditional grammar and modern linguistics.★The beginnin of modern linguistics was marked by the publication of F・ be Saussures book"Course inGeneral Linguistics" in the early20th century・Distinction：★Trad计ional grammar is prescriptiveModern linguistics is descriptive★Trad汁ional grammarians regard written word as primaryModern linguistics regard spoken language as primary.★Modern linguistics does not force languages into a Latin-based framework. They are opposed to the notion that any one language can provide an adequate framwork for all others.The definition of LanguageLanguage is a system of arbitrary vocal symbols used for human communication。
《英语语言学概论》配套习题(五)(问答题)答案.docx
《英语语言学概论》配套习题（五）（问答题）答案Chapter 1 Introduction to Linguistics1.What are design features of language?Design features refer to the defining properties of human language that tell the difference between human language and any system of anima communication.2.What are the characteristics of human language?The characteristics of human language include arbitrariness, duality, productivity, displacement, discreteness, transferability and linearity.3・Explain the characteristic of arbitrariness・What are the relationship between arbitrariness and convention?Arbitrariness refers to the fact that the forms of linguistic signs bear no natural relationship to their meaning. Arbitrariness of language makes it potentially creative, and conventionality of language makes a language be passed from generation to generation.4.What does productivity mean for language?It means language is resourceful because of its duality and its recursiveness. It refers to the property that language enables language users to produce or understand an indefinite number of sentences including novel sentences by use of finite set of rules.5・ What functions does language have?Language has at least seven funcitons: informative, interpersonal, performative, emotive, phatic, recreational and metalingual.6・ Explain the metalingual function of language・The metalingual function of language refers to the fact that language can be used to talk about itself.7・ What is the difference between synchronic linguistics and diachronic linguistics?Synchronic linguistics takes a fixed instant (usually, but not necessarily, the present) as its point of observation. In contrast, diachronic linguistics is the study of a language through the course of its history; therefore, it is also called historical linguistics.8・ What distinguishes prescriptive studies of language from descriptive studies of language?The distinction lies in prescribing how things ought to be and describing how things are. To say that linguistics is a descriptive science is to say that the linguist tries to discover and record the rules to which the members of a language-community actually conform and does not seek to impose upon them other rules, norms, of correctness, which are in the scope of prescriptive linguistics.Chapter 2 Phonology1・ What does phonetics concern?Phonetis is the scientific study of speech sounds of human beings. Phonetics can be suv-classified into articulatory phonetics, acoustic phonetics and auditory phonetics. 2・ How do the three branches of phonetics contribute to the study of speech sounds?Articualtory phonetics is the study of the production of speech sounds. Acoustic phonetics is the study of the physical properties of the sounds produced in speeech. Auditory phonetics is concerned with the perception of speech sounds.3・ How is the description of consonants different from that of vowels?Consonants are produced by constricting or obstructing the vocal tract at some place to divert, impede, or completely shut off the flow of air in the oral cavity. By contrast, a vowel is produced without such obstruction so no turbulance or a total stopping of the air can be perceived.4.In which two ways may consonants be classified?The categories of consonants are established on two important factors, which are termed as manners of articulation and places of articulation.5.How do phoneticians classify vowels?The di scription of vowels includes four aspects: the height of tongue raising(high, mid, low); the position of the highest part of the tongue(front, central, back); the length or tenseness of the vowel (tense vs. lax or long vs. short) and lip-rounding (rounded vs. unrounded).6.T0 what extent does phonology differ from phonetics?Phonology is concerned with the linguistic patterning of sounds in human languages, with its primary aim being to discover the principles that govern the way wounds are organized in languages, and to explain the variations that occur. Phonetics is the study of all possible speech sounds while phonology studies the way in which speakers of a language systematically use a selection of these sounds in order to express meaning. 7.What do minimal pair refer? Give an example to illustrate・Certain sounds cause changes in the meaning of a word, whereas other sounds do not. For instance, the word big can be described in a phonetic transcription [big]. If [g] is replaced by [t], there is another word: bit.[g] and [t] are called minimal pairs. Therefore, when sound substitutions cause differences of meaning, these sounds are minimal pairs.8.What kind of phenomenon is complementary distribution?When two sounds never occur in the same environment, they are in complementary distribution. For example, the aspirated English stops never occur after [s], and the unaspirated ones never occur initially. Sounds in complementary distribution may be assigned to the same phoneme. The allophones of [1], for instance, are also in complementary distribution. The clear[l] occur only before a vowel, the dark [1] occur after a consonant or at the end of a word.Chapter 3 Morphology1・ What is a free morpheme? What is a bound morpheme?Morpheme may be classified into free and bound. A free morpheme is one that can be uttered alone with meaning, it can exist on its own without a bound morpheme.A free morpheme is a word, in the traditional sense. Man, book, take and red are free morphemes.A bound morpheme cannot stand by itself as a complete utterance. It must appear with at least one other morphem, free or bound, like un- in unhappy, past tensemorpheme in worked.2・ What is the difference between inflectional affixes and derivational affixes?An inflectional affix serves to express such meanings as plurality, tense, and the comparative or superlative degree. It does not form a new word with new lexical meaning when it is added to another word. Nor does it change the word-class of the word to which it is added. The inflecitonal affixes today are the plural marker, the genetive case, the verbal endings, the comparative degrees and superlative degrees. Inflectional affixes have only their particualr grammatical meanings, so they are also called grammatical meanings, so they are also called grammatical affixes.A derivational affix serves to derive a new word when it is added to another morpheme. Derivational affix has lexical meaning, but less important than the meaning of the root in the same word, like -able in the word workable. Derivaitonal affixes are commonly subdivided into prefixes and suffixes.3・ What is compounding?Compounding or composition is a word-formation process by joining two or more bases to form a new unit, a compound word. Compounds can be divided into three categories according to parts of the speech: (1) noun compounds (like hearbeat);(2)adjective compounds (like dutyfree); (3) verb compounds (like housekeep).4.What are the criteria of a compound word?(1)Orthographically, compounds are written in three ways: solid (like airmail).hyphenated (like air-conditioning) and open (like air raid).(2)Phonologically, many compounds have a so-called compound accent, that is, asingle stress on the first element, as in "space rocket; or a main stress on the first element and a secondary stress on the second element.(3)Semantically, compounds can be said to have a meaning which may be relatedto, but cannot always be inferred from the meaning of its component parts.5.What is acronymy?Acronymy is a type of shortening by using the first letters of words to form a proper name, a technical term, or a phrase・ If the shortened word is pronounced letter by letter, it is an initialism like BBC; if the shortened word is pronounced as word rather than as a sequence of letters, it is an acronym like SAM(for surface-to-air missile).6.What is blending?Blending is a preocess of word・forniation in which a new word is formed by combining the meanings and sounds of two words, one of which is not in its full form or both of which are not in their full forms, like newscast (news+ broadcast), brunch (breakfast +lunch).7.Decide which way of word formation is used to form the following words.Comsat (from communications + satellite, by blending)Motel (from motor + hotel, by blending)Lase (from laser, by back-formation)Memo (from memorandom, by back clipping)Nightmare (from daymare, by analogy)ASEAN(from the Association for South-East Asian Nations, by acronymy)ROM(from read-only memory, by initialism)Bit(from binary + digit, by blending))Babysit(from babysitter, by back・fonnatioii)cock-a・doodle・do(from the sound produced by cock, by onomatopoeia))grunt (from the sound produced by pig, by onomatopoeia)8・ What are closed-class words and open-class words?A word that belongs to the closed-class is one whose membership is fixed or limited. New members are not regularly added. Therefore, pronouns, prepositions, conjunctions, articles, etc., are all closed items.The open-class is one whose membership is in principle infinite or unlimited.With the emergence of new ideas, inventions, etc., new expressions are continually and constantly being added to the lexicon. Nouns, verbs, adjectives and many adverbs are all open-class items.Chapter4 Syntax1.What is syntax?Syntax is a sub-field of linguistics that studies the sentence structure of language. Specifically, It is the study of the rules governing the ways in which words, word groups and phrases are joined to form sentences in a language, or the study of the interrelationships between sentential elements.2.What is a simple, compound, or complex sentence?A simple sentence is made up of one independent clause with dependent clause attached. It consists of at least one subject and one predicate. Either the subject or the complement may be compound (consisting of more than one element joined with a coordinating conjunction), and modifiers and phrases may be added as well.A compound sentence is composed of at least two independent clauses, but no dependent clauses. The clauses are joined by a comma and a coordinating conjunction, a comma and a correlative conjunction, or a semicolon with no conjunction.A complex sentence uses one independent clause and one or more dependent clauses.For example, the following five sentences are simple, compound, complex, compound, and complex sentence respectively.(1)He and I understood.(2)Lucy watches football on television, but she never goes to a game.(3)You can borrow my pen if you need one.(4)Paul likes football and David likes chess.(5)We had to go inside when it started raining.3.What is the hierarchical structure?The hierarchical structure is the sentence structure that groups words into structural constituents and shows the syntactic category of each structural constituent, such as NP, VP and PP.4.Howto distinguish immediate constituents from ultimate constituents?An immediate constituent is any one of the largest grammatical units that constituent a construction. Immediate constituents are often further reducible.An ultimate constituent is one of the grammatically irreducible units that constitutea construction.For example, the immediate constituents of the sentence You eat bananas are you and eat bananas; the ultimate constituents of the sentence are you. eat. banana, and —s.5.What are subordinate and coordinate constructions?Subordinate and coordinate constructions are two subtypes of endocentric constructions. Those in which there is only one head, with the head being dominant and the other constituent dependent, are subordinate constructions. For example, the short expression Lovely Lucy is a subordinate construction with Lucy as its head. While coordinate constructions have more than one head. For example, boys and girls, coffee or tea, the city Rome, are coordinate constructions, in which, both the two content constituents, boys and girls, coffee and tea, the city and Rome, are capable of serving as the head. They are of equal syntactic status, and no one is dependent on the other.6・ What are deep and surface structures?Deep structure is a central theoretical term in generative grammar, opposed to surface structure. It is the abstract syntactic representation of a sentence一an underlying level of structural organization which specifies all the factors governing the way the sentence should be interpreted.Surface structure is a central theoretical term in generative grammar, opposed to deep structure. It is the final stage in the syntactic representation of a sentence, which provides the input to the phonological component of the grammar, and which thus most closely corresponds to the structure we articulate and hear.7. Can you describe the syntactic structure of the sentence “The old tree swayed in the wind” by using a tree diagram?8・ How to reveal the differences in sentential meaning in the sentence “The mother of the boy and the girl will arrive soon” by drawing tree diagrams?The sentence is an ambiguous sentence, which can be interpreted in two different ways, so it could assigned two tree diagram, as would be shown below: Tree Diagram (1):the wind The old tree swayed in NPDetTree Diagram (2):Chapter 5 Semantics1. What is a semantic field? Can you illustrate it?It is an organizational principle that the lexicon and groups of words in the lexicon can be semantically related, rather than a listing of words as in a published dictionary. On a very general and intuitive level, we can say that the words in a semantic field, though not synonymous, are all used to talk about the same general phenomenon, and there is a meaning inclusion relation between the items in the field and the field category itself. Classical examples of semantic fields include color terms (red, green, blue, yellow), kinship terms (mother, father, sister, brother), and cooking terms (boil, fry, broil, steam) as semantic fields.2・ What are the major types of synonyms in English?They are dialectal synonyms, stylistic synonyms, emotive synonyms, collocational synonyms, and semantic synonyms. Examples are as follows:fond of, keen on (collocational)autumn, fall (dialectal)dad, father (stylistic)thrifty, miserly, economical (emotive) escape, flee (semantic)3・ In what way do the following pairs offer contrast?earth l.our planet. 2. the soil on the surface of our planet.bank l.a financial institution. 2. side of a river, bear 1. a wild animal, bare:naked.bow a. an inclination of the head or body, as in greeting, consent, courtesy, acknowledgement, submission, or veneration.(e) lead a. go in front of a group of people. 2. a soft heavy easily melted grayish-blue metal(f) found: 1. of find. 2. establish or set upThe five entities show different semantic relations of words.(a) is an example of polysemy, and it is different from the next which fall into the category of homography. (b) is an example of perfect homonymy, while “beaf and “bare" in (c) are homophones, those in (d) are homographs, and the words in (e) are homophones. \JZ \)z \)z abed z(\ /(\ /k z(\Swill arrive soonAux VPPolysemy and homonymy both deal with multiple senses of the same phonological word, but polysemy is invoked if the senses are judged to be related. Homonymous senses, however, are unrelated. Homonymy can be classified into partial homonymy and perfect homonymy. Words falling under the category of partial homonymy can be homophones or homographs. Perfect homonymy is exemplified by the words which are identical in sound and spelling or both in sound-form and part of speech.4. Categorize the following pairs: child・kid，alive-dead, big-small, husband-wife・Child-kid can be categorized under synonymy, alive-dead complementary antonymy, old-young gradable antonymy, and husband-wife converse antonymy.5・What is hyponymy composed of? Illustrate whether there is always a superordinate to hyponyms, or hyponyms to a superordinate・Hyponymy is composed of a superordinate and hyponyms; the hyponyms under the same superordinate are co-hyponyms. there is not always a superordinate to hyponyms, or hyponyms to a superordinate. Sometimes a superordinate may be a superordiante to itself. For example, the word "animal" may only include beasts like “tigef, “lion", "elephant”，"cow”，“horse" and is a co-hyponym of “hum arT. But it is also the superordinate to both “human" and "animal" in contrast to “bircT,"行sh", and “insect”，when it is used in the sense of "mammal". It can further be the superordinate to “bird'',"行sh", "insect”，and "mammal" in contrast to “pbnt". From the hyponym's point of view, “animal" is a hyponym of itself, and may be called autohyponym.6・ How is meronymy different from hyponymy?Meronymy is a term used to describe a part-whole relationship between lexical items. We can identify this relationship by using sentence frames like "X is part of or 66Y has as in "A page is part of a book", or book has pages". While hyponymy has to do with inclusiveness, we cannot do the same with hyponymy. For example, bird is the superordinate to crow, hawk, duck, and se cannot say that bird has crows, or hawks'：and so on.Meronymy also differs from hyponymy in transitivity. Hyponymy is always transitive, for example bird is the superordinate to hawk, hawk is the superordinate to sparrowhawk, and thus bird is the superordinate to sparrowhawk. But meronymy may or may not be so. A transitive example is: nail is a meronym of finger, md finger of hand. We can see that nail is a meronym of finger, and finger of hand. We can see that nail is a meronym of hand. A non-transitive example is: pane is a meronym of window, and window of room; but pane is not a meronym of room.7. Why may a sentence be ambiguous?The ambiguity of a sentence may arise from lexical ambiguity or structural ambiguity. Lexical ambiguity arises from polysemy or homonymy which can not be determined by the context. For example,(a)The table is fascinating.(b)She couldn't bear children.Table in (a) is an example of polysemy. It can be a piece of furniture, or the stated kind or quality of food served at a meal here. The ambiguity of (b) lies in the two meanings of the homonym bear一endure or produce children.The following sentence is an example of structural ambiguity.(c)The mother of the boy and the girl will arrive soon.8・ What predication analysis? What is a no-place, one-place，two-place, or three-place predicate? Give examples・Predication analysis is a new approach for sentential meaning analysis which is to break down the sentence into their smaller constituents: argument and predicate. The predicate is the major or pivotal element governing the argument. The argument is the logical participant.A no-place predicate is a predicate which governs no argument; a one-place predicate, one argument; a two-place predicate, two arguments; and a three-place predicate, three arguments. Respective examples are:(a)It is snowing. (SNOW)(b)Baby is sleeping. SLEEP(JOHN, MARY)(c)John loves Mary. LOVE(JOHN, MARY)(d)John gave Mary a book. GIVE(JOHN, MARY, BOOK)Chapter 6 Pragmatics1・ What does pragmatics study? How does it differ from traditional semantics?Pragmatics studies how meaning is conveyed in the process of communication. It is a comparatively new branch of study in the area of linguistics; its development and establishment in the 1960s an dl970s resulted mainly from the expansion of the study of linguistics, especially that of semantics. Generally it deals with how speakers of a language use sentences to effect successful communication. The scope of pragmatic study includes “speech act theory'', “context", '"conversational implicature,\ presupposition, etc.The basic difference between pragmatics and traditional semantics is that pragmatics considers meaning in context and traditionally semantics studies meaning in isolation from the context of use. It may be said that pragmatics studies the meaning that is not accounted by semantics. It can also be expressed in the formula: pragmatics=meaning-semantics. G. Leech, in his principles of pragmatics holds that: Semantics answers the question: What does X mean? Pragmatics answer the question: What did you mean by X?2・ How are sentence meaning and utterance meaning related, and how do they differ?Utterance meaning is based on sentence meaning; the former is concrete and context-dependent and the latter is abstract and decontextualized.3・ What is contextual meaning?It is the meaning a linguistic item has in context, for example the meaning a word has within a particular sentence, or a sentence has in a particular paragraph. The question Do you know the meaning of wo厂？For example, may have two different contextual meanings:i.it may mean Do you know the meaning of the word war? , when said by alanguage teacher to a class of students.ii.It may mean war produces death, injury, and suffering, when said by an injured soldier to a politician who favors war.4.Explain the meanings of locutionary act, illocutionary act, and perlocutionaryact through examples.A distinction is made by Austin in the theory of Speech Acts between three different types of act involved in or caused by the utterance of a sentence.A locutional act is the saying of something which is meaningful and can be understood. For example, saying the sentence Shoot the snake is a locutionary act is hearers understand the words shoot, the. snake and can identify the particular snake referred to.5.What is cooperative principle(CP)?The "'cooperative principle", proposed and formulated by P Grice, a pragmatic hypothesis, is about that the participants must first of all be willing to cooperate; otherwise, it would not be possible to carry on the talk. The principle has the four following maxims:Quantityi.Make your contribution as informative as is required (for the currentpurposes of the exchange).ii.Do not make your contribution more informative than is required. QualityTry to make your contribution one that is true.(1)Do not say what you believe to false.(2)Do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence.RelationBe relevant.MannerBe perspicuous.(1)Avoid obscurity of expression.(2)Avoid ambiguity.(3)Be brief.(4)Be orderly.6・ What is conversational implicature?It is an additional unstated meaning that has to be assumed in order to maintain the cooperative principle, e.g. if someone says "The President is a mouse", something that is literally false, the hearer must assume the speaker means to convey more than is being said.7. How does the violation of the maxims of CP give rise to conversationalimplicature?There are circumstances where speakers may not follow the maxims of the cooperative principle. For example, in conversation, a speaker may violate the maxim expectations by using an expression like "No comment^^ in response to a question. Although it is typically not "as informative as is required?, in the context, it is naturally interpreted as communicating more than is said (i.e. the speaker knows the answer). This typical reaction (i.e. there must be something “special" here) of listeners to any apparent violation of the maxims is actually the key to the notion of conversational implicature.When we violate any of these maxims, our language becomes indirect. In this way, we can convey more than is literally said.8.What is adjacency pair?It refers to a sequence of two utterances by different speakers in conversation. The second is a response to the first, e.g. question-answer.Chapter 8 Language and Society1. What is sociolinguistics?Sociolinguistics is the field that studies the relation between language and society, between the uses of language and the social structures in which the users of language live.2・ What is speech community?It is a group of people who form a community, e.g. a village, a region, a nation, and who have at least one speech variety in common as well as similar linguistic norms.In bilingual and multilingual communities, people would usually have more than one speech variety in commons.3.What is dialect?It is a variety of a language, spoken in one part of a country, or by people belonging to a particular social class, which is different in some words, grammar, an/or pronunciation from other forms of the same language.4.What is Sapir-Whorf hypothesis?It is a belief that our language helps mould our way of thinking and, consequently, different languages may probably express our unique ways of understanding the world. On the one hand, language may determine our thinking patterns; on the one hand, language may determine out thinking patterns; one the other hand, similarity between languages is relative, the greater their structural differentiation is, the more diverse their conceptualization of the world will be. As this hypothesis was strongly put forward by the American anthropological linguists Sapir and Whorf, it has often been called the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis.5.What is speech variety?It is a term sometimes used instead of language, dialect, sociolect, pidgin, creole, etc. because it is considered more neutral than such terms. It may also be used for different varieties of one language, e.g. American English, Australian English, Indian English.6.What is standard language?It is also called standard variety. It is the variety of a language which has the highest status in a community or nation and which is usually based on the speech and writing of educated native speakers of the language.7.What is pidgin?It is a language which develops as a contact language when groups of people who speak different languages try to communicate with one another on a regular basis. For example, this might occur where foreign traders have to communicate with the local population or groups of workers from different language backgrounds on plantations or in factories. A pidgin usually has a limited vocabulary and a reduced grammaticalstructure which may expand when a pidgin is used over a long period and for many purposes.8.What is bilingualism?It is the use of at least two languages either by an individual or by a group of speakers.A bilingual is a person who knows and uses two languages.9.What is multilingualism?It refers to the use of three or more languages by an individual or by a group of speakers such as the inhabitants of a particular region or a nation. Multilingualism is common in, for example, some countries of west Africa, Malaysia, Singapore, and Israel.Chapter 10-11 Language Acquisition1.What is psycholinguistics?It is the study of language in relation to the mind, with focus on the processes of language comprehension, production and acquisition. It takes upon itself the job of exploring the biological basis of human language, critical periods for child language acquisition, and the relationship between the language and thought.2.What is bottom-up processing and what is top-down processing?We may define bottom-up processing as that which proceeds from the lowest level to the highest level of processing in such a way that all of levels. That is, the identification operate without influence from the higher levels. That is, the identification of phonemes is not affected by the lexical, syntactic, or discourse levels; the retrieval of words is not affected by syntactic or discourse levels; and so on.A top-down processing model, in contrast, states that information at the higher levels may influence processing at the lower levels. For instance, a sentence context may affect the identification of words within that sentence.3.What are the six major types of speech error? Give examples of each・Six major types of speech error are:i.Exchange errors: hissed all my mystery lectures (missed all my historylectures)ii.Anticipation errors: a leading list (reading list)iii.Perseveration errors: a phonological fool (phonological rule)iv.Blends: moinly(mostly, mainly), impostinatiorfimposteE impersonator)v.Shifts: Mermaid_moves (mermaids move) their legs togethervi.Substitutions: sympathy for symphony (form), finger for toe (meaning) 4.What is the critical period for language acquisition?Language development takes place during a very specific maturational stage of human development. Sometime during the second year of life (at roughly anywhere from 12 to 18 months), children begin uttering their first words. During the following 4 to 5 years, linguistic development occurs quite rapidly. By the time children enter school, they have mastered the major structural features of their language. Refinements of the major features continue to appear, and the ability to learn language (one's native language or foreign languages) continues to be strong until the onset of puberty. At this point, for reasons that are not fully understood, the '"knack for languages95 begins to decline, to a。
胡壮麟第四版语言学教程第一章大题总结-推荐下载
Chapter1 Invitation to Linguistics1.Why study language?2.What is language? Explain it in details.3.What makes language unique to human beings?4.What are the design features of language? List out at least three of them.5.In what sense we say linguistic is a science?6.Explain the different levels of the arbitrariness.7.What is the function of language?8.Do you understand the distinction between the langue and paroleintroduced by Saussure?9.Descriptive vs. Prescriptive10.Synchronic vs. Diachronicpetence vs. Performance1.Why study language?First, language is such an integral part of our life and humanity that too much about it has been taken for granted. For some people, language may not even be considered a worthy job for academic study. They take it as a tool for access to other fields of knowledge rather than as a subject in and of itself. However, it is indeed necessary to reconsider how much we really the nature of language and its role in our life. And you may be surprised to realize that some of our most damaging racial, ethnic, and socio-economic prejudices are based on our linguistic ignorance and wrong ideas about language.Second, for a student learning language, some knowledge of language is of both interest and important. To know the general properties of language can help the student have an overview of its. No necessary question to ask for human language, they can understand the details of its different features thereof.Third, let us mention the broader educational concerns. We can note that language plans a central role in our lives as individuals and social beings. If we are not fully aware of the nature and mechanism of our language, we will be ignorant of what constitutes our essential humanity. The understanding of language should not be confined to linguistics, as language is a vital human resource that of us share.2.What is language? Explain it in details.Language is a means of verbal communication. It is a system of arbitrary vocal symbols used for human communication. Language is a system of arbitrary vocal symbols used for human communication. This definition has captured the main features of language, i.e. systematic, arbitrary, vocal, symbolic, human-specific.It is system, since linguistic elements are arranged systematically, rather than randomly. Arbitrary, in the sense(从某种意义上说) that there is usually no intrinsic connection between a word and the object it refers to. This explains and explained by the fact that different language have different “books” : “book” in English, 书in Chinese, “check” in Korean.It is symbolic, because words are associated with objects, actions, ideas etc. 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 language, developed or “new”. The term” human” in the definition is meant to specify that language is human specific.6.Explain the different levels of the arbitrarinessArbitrariness is the core feature of language. Saussure holds the idea that the forms of linguistics signs bear no natural relationship to their meaning. There seems to be different levels of arbitrariness:1)Arbitrary relationship between the sound of a morpheme and its means. You mayobjectto this when you think of words with different degrees of onomatopoeia, namely, words thatsound like the sounds they describe. e. g. in Chinese 叮咚,轰隆,叽里咕噜. These linguistic forms seem to have a natural basis. But in English, totally different words are used to be describe the sound. For example, the dog barks bowwow in English but汪汪in Chinese. But there are some misunderstandings about the onomatopoeia effect. As a matter of fact, arbitrariness and onomatopoeia effect may work at the same time.2)Arbitrariness at the syntactic levelBy syntax we refer to the ways that sentences areconstructed according to the grammar of arrangement. As we know, the order of elements in a sentence follows certain rules, and there is a certain degree of correspondence between the sequence clauses and the rule happenings. In other words, syntax is less arbitrary than words, especially in so far as in this kind of order is concerned. Compared:a)He came in and set down.b)He set down and came in.c)He set down after he came in.Sentence (a) means the man came in first and then set down, but (b) means the opposite perhaps he got into his wheelchair and propelled(推进去) himself into the room. In (c), with the word “after” help, we can reverse the order of the clauses.3)Arbitrariness and conventionIn fact, the link between a linguistic sign and its meaning is a matter of convention. Here we have to look at the other side of arbitrariness, namely, conventionality. Arbitrariness of language makes it potentially creative, and conventionality of language makes learning a language laborious. For learners of foreign language, it is conventionality of language that is more worth noticing than its arbitrariness. That may be why when we are burying ourselves memorizing idioms, we feel nothing of the arbitrariness of the language but are somewhat tortured (折磨) by its conventionality.8-12 important distinctions in linguistics8.Descriptive vs. prescriptiveTo say that linguistics is a descriptive science is to say that the linguist tries to discover and record the rules to which the members of a language-community actually conform and does not seek to impose upon them other rules, or norms, of correctness.Prescriptive linguistics aims to lay down rules for the correct use of language and settle the disputes over usage once and for all.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. In the 18th century, all the main European languages were studied prescriptively. However, modern linguistics is mostly descriptive because the nature of linguistics as a science determines its preoccupation with description instead of prescription.9.Synchronic vs. diachronicA 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. In modern linguistics, synchronic study seems to enjoy priority over diachronic study. The reason is that unless the various state of a language is successfully studied it would be difficult to describe the changes that have taken place in its historical development.ngue & paroleSaussure distinguished the linguistic competence of the speaker and the actual phenomena or data of linguistics as langue and parole. Langue is relative stable and systematic, parole is subject to personal and situational constraints; langue is not spoken by an individual, parole is always a naturally occurring event. What a linguist should do, according to Saussure, is to draw rules from a mass of confused facts, i.e. to discover the regularities governing all instances of parole and make them the subject of linguistics. petence and performanceAccording 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. Competence enables a speaker to produce and understand and indefinite number of sentences and to recognize grammatical mistakes and ambiguities.A speaker’s competence is stable while his performance is often influenced by psychological and social factors. So a speaker’s performance does not always match his supposed competence. Chomsky believes that linguists ought to study competence, rather than performance. Chomsky’s competence-performance distinction is not exactly the same as, though similar to, Saussure’s langue-parole distinction. Langue is a social product and a set of conventions of a community, while competence is deemed as a property of mind of each individual. Saussure looks at language more from a sociological or sociolinguistic point of view than Chomsky since the latter deals with his issues psychologically or psycholinguistically.12.Etic vs. emicBeing etic means researchers making far too many, as well as behaviorally and inconsequential, differentiations, just as often the case with phonetics vs. phonemics analysis in linguistics proper.An emic set of speech acts and events must be one that is validated as meaningful via final resource to the native members of a speech community rather than via appeal to the investigator’s ingenuity or intuition alone.Following the suffix formations of (phon)etics vs (phon)emics, these terms were introduced into the social sciences by Kenneth Pike (1967) to denote the distinction between the material and functional study of language: phonetics studies the acoustically measurable and articulatorily definable immediate sound utterances, whereas phonemicsanalyzes the specific selection each language makes from that universal catalogue from a functional aspect.13.Traditional grammar vs. modern linguistics14.What are the differences between traditional grammar and modernlinguistics? Illustrate with your own understanding.As we all know, linguistic is concerned with observing facts about language, setting up hypotheses, testing their validity and accepting or rejecting them accordingly. To avoid biases of the kinds mentioned above, modern linguists differ from traditional grammarians in adopting empirical rather than speculative or intuitive approaches in their study. Here are some differences I can find according the text books and my understanding.The first difference: modern linguistics is descriptive rather than prescriptive. That is linguists try to make statements which are testable, and take language as it is rather than say how it should be.The second difference: modern linguistics regards spoken rather than written language as primary. Traditional grammar tends to emphasize the importance of written language and the writings.The third difference: modern linguistics does not force languages into a Latin-based framework. In the past, Latin was considered the language that provided a universal grammar for all languages.Here is a form I found from the internet and it can show the differences between traditional grammar and modern linguistics simply.Traditional grammar Modern linguisticsPrescriptive DescriptiveOver-emphasize written words Spoken language is primaryForce languages into a Latin-based frameworkDo not judge one language by standards of anotherAt last, we should know when criticizing traditional grammar for being unscientific, modern linguistics do not deny altogether the contributions of traditional grammar to the development of modern linguistics. A balance view on traditional grammar is needed in order to track down the continuity of Western linguistic theories from the earliest times to the present day.15.Illustrate the difference between langue and parole with examples you can find.F. De Saussure refers “langue” to the abstract linguistic system shared by all the members of a speech community and refers “parole” to the actual or actualized language, orthe realization of langue.Langue is abstract while parole is concrete. In fact, langue is not spoken by any individual; parole is always a really happening event. Langue is systematic; on the contrary, parole is a pile of complicated speech. Langue exists in our brain, not the words we say. Parole is the words we human beings use to communicate with each other. In a word, langue is the totality of a language or the abstract language system shared by all the members of a speech of a speech community, while parole is the realization of langue in actual use, that is, the concrete act of speaking at a particular time and in a specific situation.Example1: when we Chinese says “do you have dinner?” to an American. The sentence uttered by the Chinese is parole, and how the American understands the sentence is langue.Example2: when Jack said I love you to Rose in the street, the sentences itself is the parole. And how Rose understands this sentence is all about the langue.To sum up, langue is our potential ability to speak while parole is the actual use of language in concrete situation. Langue is social, but parole is individual.End of Chapter 1。
语言学linguisitcs
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约翰容易讨好别人。
约翰 + 容易讨好别人。
约翰 + 是容易讨好别人的。
约翰容易睡着。
约翰 + 容易睡着。 约翰 + 是容易睡着的。
纸容易烂。
纸 + 容易烂。 纸 + 是容易烂的。
➢ 讨好约翰容易(róngyì)。
讨好约翰 + 容易。
讨好约翰 + 是容易的。
➢ 约翰讨好别人容易。 约翰讨好别人 + 容易。 约翰讨好别人 + 是容易的。
Penny Stewart & Richard F. Fawcett (1994) collected a great deal of data. Some of them are shown below.
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Names
Example
Time
Politicians
George Bush a increasingly
➢ What’s the correct usage of “an” & “a” in English? an – before vowel sounds a – before consonants
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3.1 Prescriptive vs. Descriptive
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why linguistic is called the science of language? what principles
linguistics should follow?
Linguistics is usually defined as the scientific study of the language or the science concerned with language. why is it called the science of language? To answer the question, firstly we need to know what is science. The word science means knowledge. According to New Collegiate Dictionary , the definition of science is “knowledge covering general truths of operation of general laws obtained and tested through scientific method concerned wit physical world”. As far as I know the aim of the linguistics is to study the common qualities of all languages. I think the aims just conform to the definition of science. And also I think science is about using a rational way to explain emotional things. language is something very close to people, which is often emotional. Linguistic try to use some scientific ways investigate the nature of language, which is very national. so it can be called the science of language.
Apart from it, I believe science regarded as the general truths I just mentioned is supposed to exerted positive influence on people’s way of thought and action. Briefly speaking, it should be helpful and useful. Linguistics,as the science of language, can be universally applied in different fields related to language, which include sociolinguistics, anthropological linguistics, clinical linguistics,educational linguistics and so on. As we can see linguistics is comprehensive and broad, covering a vast range.
Then comes the question in my mind : what is the difference between linguistic and other sciences. Linguistic must possess something unique. I looked up some opinions of Saussure :”Linguistics has very connections with other sciences. But it
is different from other science.Other sciences are provided with objects of study given in advance, which are then examined from different points of view. Nothing like that is the case in linguistics. The object is not given in advance of the viewpoint: far from it. Rather, one might say that it is the viewpoint adopted which creates the object.”I do not completely understand his view. But it reminds me that language, the object of
linguistic as a system of expressing one’s idea, is something quit abstract which exists in our mind and is hard to touch or seems invisible. As for most of other sciences, their object can be touched and is visible. That may one of the difference.
Then what principles linguistics should follow?
As linguistics is regarded as a science, it should follow certain principles which are adopted by scientific activities in general such as thoroughness, consistency and economy. And to be empirical and objective are very important for linguistic. Linguistics research should be based on large amount of data obtained by conducting many experiments and comprehensive observation to insure the findings are reliable and testable. Being objective is actually closely related to empirical. Doing the research in an empirical way is one aspect in achieving the objec tivity. What’s more, it is very necessary to learn to hold objective attitude towards different languages. I think we are supposed to be an excellent appreciator towards different cultures and understand that all the languages which are the fruits of human civilianizations are equal and no language is primitive. Besides, I think language is both about something in the present and in the past, which must bring about so many difficulties to the study. But I think it is necessary to take it seriously.
--The End--。