《语言学导论》重点整理

1 .An Introduction to Linguistics and language

1. What is Linguistics?

Linguistics is the scientific study of language. It endeavors to answer the question--what is language and how is represented in the mind? Linguists focus on describing and explaining language and are not concerned with the prescriptive rules of the language.

2. Basic criteria for doing Linguistics

?1. Objectivity ?2. Explicitness ?3. Rigorousness ?4. Adequacy

3. The Scope of Linguistics(1)

? General Linguistics: the study of language as a whole

? Phonetics: the study of sounds in linguistic communication

? Phonology: the study of the sound patterns of language. It is concerned with how sounds are put together and used to convey meaning in communication.

? Morphology : the study of the way in which the symbols are arranged and combined to form words.

4. The Scope of Linguistics (2)

? : Syntax the study of sentence structure. It attempts to describe what is grammatical in a particular language in term of rules

? Semantics: the study of meaning.

? Pragmatics: the study of meaning in context

? Sociolinguistics: the study of social aspects of language and its relation with society.

? Psycholingustics:the study of language with relation to psychology

? Applied linguistics: the study of applications of linguistics.

5. Some distinctions in linguistics

? Prescriptive vs.descriptive

? Synchronic vs. diachronic

? Speech and writing

? Langue and parole

? Competence and performance

? Traditional grammar and modern linguistics(linguistics is descriptive while traditional grammar is prescriptive; modern linguistics regards spoken language as primary, not the written; modern linguistics differs from traditional grammar in that it does not force language into a Latin-based framework.)

6. What is language?

? Language is not an abstract construction of the learned, or of dictionary-makers, but is something arising out of the work, needs, ties, joys, affections, tastes, of long generations of humanity, and has its bases broad and low, close to the ground. ? Walt Whitman

7. The definition of language

?Language is a system of arbitrary vocal symbols used for human communication

8. Design features (Properties)

? Arbitrariness: vast majority of linguistic expressions are arbitrary

? Productivity: creativity or open-endedness

? Duality: double articulation(sounds and meanings)

? Displacement: eg. Santa Claus, Superman, dragon

? Cultural transmission: meme, memics

? (Discreteness:the sounds used in language are meaningfully distinct. Eg. pack, back)

9. Assignments

? Comment on the definition of language.

?Summarize the design features of language.

?What is your understanding of synchronic study of language

2.Chapter 2 Phonetics and phonology

1. Phonetics: the sounds of language

Three branches of phonetics

Articulatory Phonetics发音语音学: the production of speech sounds.

Auditory Phonetics听觉语音学: the study of the perception of speech sounds

Acoustic Phonetics声学语音学: the study of the physical production and transmission of speech sounds.

2. Organs of speech: 1.The pharyngeal cavity喉腔2.The oral cavity口腔

3.The nasal cavity鼻腔

3. Two kinds of transcription

Broad transcription宽式标音: transcription with letter-symbols

Narrow transcription窄式标音: transcription with letter-symbols and the diacritics

4. Classification of English consonants

5. Classification of English vowels

6. Phonology : the sound patterns of language

Difference Phone, phoneme, allophone

Phonemic contrast, complementary distribution, minimal pair

7. Phones, phonemes, and allophones

Phonology is the study of sound patterns of language( i.e. how sounds are arranged to form meaningful units) and the function of each sound. It reveals what are the possible combinations of sounds in a language and explains why certain words take the form they do.

8. Phone 音素

phone: the smallest perceptible discrete segment of sound in a stream of speech

i) phonetic unit ii) not distinctive of meaning iii) physical as heard or produced iv) marked with [ ]

9. Phoneme 音位

the minimal unit in the sound system of a language. With phonemes, we establish the patterns of organization within the infinitely large number of sounds. Each language can be shown to operate with a relatively small number of phonemes (15-80). No two languages have the same phonemic system.

10. Phoneme 音位

i) phonological unit ii) distinctive of meaning iii) abstract, not physical iv) marked with / /.

11.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.

Minimal set: pat, mat, bat, fat, cat, hat, etc.

11. Allophone 音位变体: phonic variants/realizations of a phoneme

12. Phonological rules:

Phonological patterning is rule-governed. [blik] and [kilb], though not found in English, can be possible combinations, while [kbil] or [lkib] cannot. Sequential rules are those that account for the combination of sounds in a particular language. They are language-specific, as in the

following cases:

* [tlait] [iltrit]

13.Sequential rule

If three consonants should cluster together at the beginning of a word, the combination should follow the order/sequence below:

a. The first phoneme must be /s/

b. The second phoneme must be /p/, /t/ or /k/

c. The third phoneme must be /l/, /r/, or /w/. spring, string, squirrel, split, screen

14. Assimilation rule

A sound may change by assimilating/copying a feature of a sequential/neighboring sound, e.g. impossible, irresistible, illegal [in-]

Question: What other examples?

sink /since pan cake sun glasses five past seven has to

15. Deletion rule

A sound may be deleted even though it may be orthographically represented.

16.Stress, tone, and intonation

Suprasegmental （超切分）phonology Suprasegmental phonemes:

stress, tone and intonation

17.Stress重音

Word stress/sentence stress Primary stress/secondary stress

Stress of compounds: ‵blackbird / black ‵bird; ‵greenhouse / green ‵ house

Sentence stress: Depending on the relative importance of the words; contrastive stress

18. Tone (声调）

Different rates of vibration produce different frequencies, which are termed as different pitches. Pitch variations are distinctive of meaning.

In some languages like Chinese, pitch variations are called tones. Languages using tones are tone languages.

19. Intonation（语调）

When pitch, stress and length variations are tied to the sentence, they combine to become known as intonation.

Three major types of English intonation: a. falling tone/tune b. rising tone/tune c. fall-rise tone/tune

20. Assignments:

Difference between phonetics and phonology

Phone, phoneme, allophone

Phonemic contrast, complementary distribution, minimal pair

3. Morphology（词法）

1. Morphology is the study of word formation and structure. It studies how words are put together from their smaller parts and the rules governing this process.

2. Two kinds of words

1. Open class words: content words .e.g. nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs

2. Closed class words: grammatical words or functional words. E.g. conjunctions, prepositions, articles and pronouns

Words can be related to other words, e.g. "happy" — "unhappy".

The rules that relate such sets of words are called Word Formation Rules. Thus, the morphology contains

? fundamental elements – morphemes ? rules of combination -- Word Formation Rules

4. Morphemes

The elements that are combining to form words are called morphemes. A morpheme is the smallest unit of meaning you can have in a language.

we know three things about every morpheme:

1. its meaning

2. its form (the sounds that make it up)

3. a rule of combination (put it before/after/inside the stem)

5. A case: Unhappy Happier unhappier

6. Bound and Free Morphemes

" In the word doors" there are two morphemes: "door" and "-s".

The morpheme "door" can be used by itself, so it is called a FREE morpheme.

But the morpheme "s" cannot be used by itself: ? "How many doors did you shut?" "More than one." OK "s" Not OK

Therefore, "-s" is called a BOUND morpheme.

7. Affixes

Morphemes added to free forms to make other free forms are called affixes. There are four principle kinds of affixes:

1. prefixes (at beginning) — "un-" in "unable"

2. suffixes (at end) — "-ed" in "walked"

3. circumfixes (at both ends) — "en--en" in "enlighten" (These always seem to consist of

otherwise attested independent prefixes and suffixes.)

4. infixes (in the middle) -- "-bloody-" in "inbloody- credible"

8.Derivational morphemes

Derivational morphemes may or may not change the category, or grammatical class of words.

E.g. Noun--- Adjective affection + ate alcohol+ ic

9. Inflectional Morphology

Morphology that interacts with syntax (sentence structure) is called INFLECTIONAL MORPHOLOGY Some examples are: ? person? number? gender ? noun class ? case ? tense

Inflectional morphemes never change the category. Inflectional morphemes do not change the "core" meaning of the word. Inflectional morphemes usually occur "outside" derivational ones. 10. A Rule for Forming some English Words 11. Compounds

12. Other ways of Forming Words

13. Word-formation:

the creation of new words on the basis of existing structural devices in the language derivation compounding

derivational affixation clipping, abbreviation, acronyms conversion

* affixation * coinage: Ford, Kodak

* compounding/composition: hot-line, keep-fit

* conversion /functional shift : knee, cool, trigger, brake

* derivation: alcoholic, affectionate

* back-formation:edit, babysit, massproduce, laze

* blending: smog, motel, globesity

* shortening (clipped words, acronym) * borrowing: tea, algebra

15. Compare the following derived words: in how far do they differ? Lab OED

16. Compare the following derived words: in how far do they differ?

lab babysit (from: babysitter)

17. Compare the following derived words: in how far do they differ? institution-al skin-deep

18. Compare the following derived words: in how far do they differ?

to strength-en to house (e.g. this building houses 500 families)

19. Assignments

Distinguish the following terms: Open class words and closed class words

Bound morpheme and free morpheme

Inflectional morpheme and derivational morpheme List some rules of word formation 4. syntax

1. Syntax is a branch of linguistics that studies how words are combined to form sentences and the rules that govern the formation of sentences.

2. Syntactic rules

How do we COMBINE WORDS to make SENTENCES? Syntax uses trees (just as in morphology) but the trees are built on WORDS instead of morphemes. Words are the fundamental units of sentences. The laws of combination for words are the syntactic rules.

3. Sentence Structure

We know that there is structure in sentences separate from the meaning of the sentence because of the difference between "well formed nonsense" (1) and "total gibberish" (2) :

(1) Colorless green ideas sleep furiously. (2) Green sleep furiously ideas colorless.

Which sounds better ?

4. Word-level categories

Major lexical categories

N( Noun) book, boy V(Verb) run, buy A(Adjective) happy, heavy

P (Preposition) about, in Minor lexical categories Det (determiner) the, a this

Deg (Degree word) quite, very Qual (Qualifier) often, always Aux(Auxiliary) must, should Con (Conjunction) and, but

5. Three criteria for judging the word’s categories

1.meaning Noun—entity

2.inflection -ed, -s

3.distribution the girl Det+ N

6. Phrase categories

Phrases are constructed out of a "head" plus other material into:

? Noun Phrase (NP) ? Verb Phrase (VP) ? Adjective Phrase (AP) ? Prepositional Phrase (PP)

7. Head, specifier, complement

Head: the word around which a phrase is formed

Specifier: the words on the left side of the heads

complement: the words on the right side of the heads

E.g. a touching story about a sentimental girl

8. Phrase Structure Rules

? NP → (Det)N (PP) ? VP → (Qual) V ( NP) ? AP → (Deg)A (PP) ? PP → (Deg) P (NP)

9. XP rule X= N, V, A or P XP →(specifier) X (complement)

10. X – theory XP →(specifier) X X - → X(complement)

11. Co-ordination rules X → X Con X

12. XP rule (revised): XP →(specifier) X (complement ) Matrix clause

Complement phrase (CP) Complement clause Complementizers (Cs)

13. Modifier

AP PP AdvP The expanded XP rules XP →(spec)(Mod) X (complement*)(Mod)

14. The S rule

S NP VP

Det N V P Det N

| | | | | |

The cat is on the mat

15. Transformational Rules

Once we have built a basic tree, we then might want to change it, for example to turn it into a question.

1. John is going to school.

2. Is John going to school?

What happened between (1) and (2)? "Is" moved to the front. How did we make the yes/no question? What change did we make?

16.Deep structure and surface structure:

Deep structure is a level of syntactic representation that results from insertion of lexical items into the tree structure generated by the phrase structure rules.

Surface structure is a level of syntactic representation that results from the application of whatever transformations are needed to yield the final syntactic form of the sentence.

17. The organization of the syntactic component

The XP rule

Deep structure

transformations

Surface structure

18. Wh Movement

Move the wh phrase to the beginning of the sentence

Move a wh phrase to the specifier position under CP

19. Word Order

Recall that languages can choose the order of the constituents in a phrase structure rule. ? English: PP → P NP ? Japanese: PP → NP P

20. SVO

We can say that the overall word-order in a simple sentence is Subject-Verb-Object or SVO.

There are two choices for each rule:

1. Sentence: S → NP VP S → VP NP

2. Verb Phrase: VP → V NP VP → NP V

21. Assignments

Draw two possible trees for the sentence “The boy saw the man with the telescope. ”

5. Semantics

1. Semantics is the study of meaning.

2. The Meanings of Meaning

Everyday use and ambiguity of the word mean(ing)

(1) Daddy, what does 'unique' mean? (2) When Mary talks about "her ex" she means me.

(3) 'Purchase' means the same as 'buy'. (4) Gwailou means "foreign devil".

(5) When he drinks it means he's depressed. (6) I didn't mean to hurt you.

3. Ogden and Richards' The Meaning of Meaning (1923)

sixteen different meanings of the words "mean/meaning" were distinguished. Here are some of them:

John means to write. 'intends’

A green light means go. 'indicates' Health means everything. 'has importance'

His look was full of meaning. 'special import'

What is the meaning of life? 'point, purpose'

What does 'capitalist' mean to you? 'convey'

What does ‘cornea‘(角膜)mean? 'refer to in the world'

4. What does meaning mean in linguistics?

It is the last kind of use that comes closest to the focus of linguistic semantics. In modern linguistics, the meaning is studied by making detailed analyses of the way words and sentences are used in specific contexts ("meaning" is not some kind of "entity" separate from language - any more than measures such as "height" or "length" have some kind of independent existence). This is an approach shared by a number of philosophers and psychologists. Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889- 1951), in particular, stressed its importance in his dictum: "The meaning of a word is its use in the language."

5. 4 views concerning the study of meaning

The naming theory The conceptual theory Contextualism behaviorism

6. The naming theory

Plato Words are names or labels for things.

Limitations of the theory: it can be applicable to nouns only, but verbs, adjectives, and adverbs are not names or labels; imaginary things like “dragon”;abstract nouns like “joy”

7. The conceptual theory

Ogden & Richards' Triangle

THOUGHT (concepts, images, schemas)

/ \

(Sense) / \

/ \

(language) WORDS - - - - - - - - WORLD

(things, situations)

(Reference)

Note: (i) Reference as an indirect relation

(ii) Sense as a psychological notion

What is the link between the language and concept?

8. Contextualism

Ludwig Wittgenstein Malinowski J.R.Firth

2 kinds of contexts: the situational context and the linguistic context

9. Behaviorism

Bloomfield 1926, 1935 Behaviorism vs. mentalism

Human and animal behavior

Stimulus and response

S -> r ... s -> R Jack and Jill

10. Lexical meaning

Sense and reference

Sense refers to the meaning of a Noun Phrase which determines its referent;

Reference refers to that part of meaning of a Noun Phrase which is its referent.

Sense is abstract and de-contextualized;

Reference is concrete and contextualized.

11. sense relations between words

1.synonymy

2.polysemy

3.homonymy

4.hyponymy

5.antonymy

11.1. synonymy

two words, same meaning never complete; tendency toward divergence,

e.g small - little, but c

f. small change and little sister

a) dialectal synonyms

b) stylistic synonyms

c) synonyms that differ in their emotive or evaluative meaning

d) collocational synonyms

e) semantically different synonyms

11.2. polysemy

one word, many meanings

eye 'organ of sight', 'center of hurricane' , 'hole in needle'

11.3.homonymy

different words, same sound

bear 'carry' bear 'furry creature' bare 'naked'

cf. Homonymy, Homography: different words, same spelling bow 'knotted ribbon' bow 'front of ship'

11.4.hyponymy

superordinate (hyponym) to subordinate Also: co-hyponyms

Problematic superordinates:

aunt - uncle > none sweet - sour - bitter > Tastes , but no Adj chair - sofa - couch > ? sitting furniture (Sitzm?bel)

11.5. antonymy

(1) Gradable (scalar) antonyms: cold. . hot

(2) Complementary antonyms: dead - alive

(3) Relational opposites: teach - learn husband - wife

12. six sense relations between sentences

a) X is synonymous with Y

b) X is inconsistent with Y

c) X entails Y (Y is an entailment of X)

d) X presupposes Y (Y is a prerequisite of X)

e) X is a contradiction?

f) X is semantically anomalous?

13. Analysis of meaning

Componential analysis

Predication analysis

grammatical meaning

semantic meaning

13.1 Componential analysis

Features in Semantic Theory

man = [+human] [+adult] [+male]

woman = [+human] [+adult] [+female]

girl = [+human] [-adult] [+female]

boy = [+human] [-adult] [+male]

stool = [+sitting] [+legs] [-back] [-arms] [+single person]

chair = [+sitting] [+legs] [+back] [+/- arms] [+single person]

sofa = [+sitting] [+/-legs] [+back] [+arms] [-single person] etc

cow = [+bovine] [+adult] [+female]

ewe = [+ovine] [+adult] [+female] bull = [+bovine] [+adult] [+male]

ram = [+ovine] [+adult] [+male] calf = [+bovine] [- adult]

lamb = [+ovine] [-adult]

But should calf = [+/-female] [+/-male] or simply unspecified?

And what about: steer? = [+bovine] [+adult] [-male] [-female]

13.2Predication analysis

It is proposed by G. Leech. In his framework of analysis, the basic unit is called predication, which is the abstraction of the meaning of a sentence. A predication consists of arguments and predicate. An argument is a logical participant in a predication. A predicate is something said about an argument or it states the logical relation linking the arguments in a sentence.

14.Interdisciplinary nature of semantics (1)

philosophy: definitions, truth, logic

linguistics: lexical, grammatical meaning; structural ambiguity

psychology: concepts, categorization, learning

law: interpretation, entailment translation: translatability, paraphrase

computer science: processing and representation of information

15. Interdisciplinary nature of semantics(2)

musicology: musical meaning (Joseph Swain: Musical Languages, 1997)

anthropology: cultural meaning, relativity

literary criticism: interpretation, ambiguity, metaphor

religion (Anna Wierzbicka, What did Jesus mean?, 2001)

16. Assignments:

Summarize the four approaches to the studies on meaning.

Specify the five major sense relations

1.synonymy

2.polysemy

3.homonymy

4.hyponymy

5.antonymy

Define the following terms: componential analysis Predication analysis

6 Pragmatics

1. Pragmatics is the study of meaning in context

2. Contextualist view

Ludwig Wittgenstein

Malinowski

J.R.Firth

2 kinds of contexts: the situational context and the linguistic context

3. Some issues in Pragmatics

Deixis指示 Speech acts言语行为 Indirect language间接语言

Conversation会话 Politeness礼貌 Cross-cultural communication跨文化交际

Presupposition预设

4. Pragmatics and Semantics

a There is continuum between Semantics (things that are true by the

DEFINITIONS and RULES) and Pragrmatics (things that are true by virtue of the REAL WORLD

Complementarism: semantics studies meaning in the abstract; pragmatics studies meaning in the context/use.

5. Consider the following sentences:

? The rock ate my lunch. Semantically false, because "eat" requires an

ANIMATE subject.

? The giraffe ate the hyena. Grey area, does SEMANTICS include the concept VEGETARIAN??

? The giraffe ate one hundred pounds of grass today.

Pragmatics, how much DOES a giraffe eat in a day?

6. Context

According to Firth, context includes the relevant features of participants: persons, personalities, the verbal and non-verbal action of the participants, the relevant objects and the effect of the verbal action. Hymes’ notion of context includes addressor, addressee, topic, setting, channel, code, message form, event, key and purpose.

Shared knowledge

7. Sentence meaning vs. utterance meaning

Sentence is often studied as the abstract, intrinsic property of the sentence itself in terms of predication. Utterance is the issuance in an actual context.

The meaning of a sentence is abstract and decontextualized,while the meaning of an utterance is concrete and contextdependent.

8. Speech Act Theory

Austin noticed that some sentences are special in that they DO things. One class is PERFORMATIVES. When spoken such sentences do the work:

? I (hereby) declare the fair open. ("hereby" is a good diagnostic of performatives)

Performatives行事: Performatives were sentences that did not state a fact or describe a state, and were not verifiable.

Constatives言事: constatives were statements that either state or describe, and were thus

verifiable

9. Three kinds of acts

Locutionary act言内行为: locutionary act is the act of uttering words, phrases, clauses. It is the act of conveying literal meaning by means of syntax, lexicon and phonology.

Illocutionary act言外行为: an illocutionary act is the act of expressing the speaker’s intention. It is an act performed in saying something.

Perlocutionary act言后行为: perlocutionary act is the act performed by saying something. 10. Searle’s classification of speech acts

Representatives: stating or describing, saying what the speaker believes to be true;

Directives: trying to get the hearer to do something;

Commissives: committing the speaker himself to future course of action;

Expressives: expressing feelings or attitude towards an existing state;

Declarations: bringing about immediate changes by saying something

11. Principle of Conversation

Grice discovered a number of conversational maxims (rules) that people generally obey.

Two of them are: ? Be cooperative ? Be relevant

The following discourse represents a failure of cooperation:

? A: Do you know what time it is?

? B: Yes.

Or, if you know for sure that you're leaving on Tuesday it's misleading to say: "I'm leaving on Monday or Tuesday."

12. Four maxims

The maxim of quantity The maxim of quality

The maxim of relation The maxim of manner

13. Conversational Implicature

conversational implicature: Conversational implicature occurs only when the maximsof Cooperative Principle are “flouted”.

A: Do you know where Mr. X lives?

B: Somewhere in the southern suburbs of the city.

(said when it is known to both A and B that B has Mr. X’s address.)

A: Would you like to come to our party tonight?

B: I’m afraid I’m not feeling so well today.

A: The hostess is an awful bore. Don’t you think?

B: The roses in the garden are beautiful, aren’t they?

(said when it is known to both A and B that it is entirely possible for B to make a comment on the hostess)

A: Shall we get something for the kids?

B: yes. But I veto I-C-E-C-R-E-A-M.

(said when it is known to both A and B that B has no difficulty in pronouncing the word

“ice-cream”).

14. Leech’s Politeness Principle

Tact maxim Generosity maxim Approbation maxim

Modesty maxim Agreement maxim Sympathy maxim

15. The 6 maxims of Leech’s PP

tact generosity

approbation modesty

agreement

sympathy

16. Tact Maxim:1. Minimize cost to other 2.Maximize benefit to other Generosity Maxim:1. Minimize benefit to self 2. Maximize cost to self Approbation Maxim: 1. Minimize dispraise of other 2. Maximize praise of other Modesty Maxim:1. Minimize praise of self 2. Maximize dispraise of self

17. Agreement Maxim: 1.Minimize disagreement between self and other

2.Maximize agreement between self and other

Sympathy Maxim: 1. Minimize antipathy between self and other

2. Maximize sympathy between self and other

18. Politeness scale: Directness

direct

Could you possibly answer the phone?

Would you mind answering the phone?

Can you answer the phone?

Will you answer the phone?

I want you to answer the phone.

Answer the phone.

indirect

19. Politeness scale: Cost – benefit

benefit

Have another sandwich.

Enjoy your holiday.

Look at that.

Sit down.

Hand me the newspaper.

Peel these potatoes.

Cost

20. Presuppositions

Statements or questions that presuppose a related sentence. "Leading" questions or statements. "When did you stop beating your donkey?" presupposes:

? You stopped beating your donkey.

? You did beat your donkey.

? You beat something.

? You have a donkey.

? ...

"I'll have some more coffee." presupposes that you have already had some.

21. assignments

Speech act theory

coperative principle

conversational implicature

7. Language Change

1. Review

Prescriptive vs.descriptive (Chapter 1)

The definition of language: Language is a system of arbitrary vocal symbols used for human communication (Chapter 1)

Word formation: affixation, composition, conversion, back formation, blend, shortening , coinage (Chapter 3) Contextualism (Chapter 5) Context (Chapter 6)

2. All languages change through time

Languages change in the phonology, morphology, syntax, lexicon and semantic components of the grammar.

3. The changes of language at different levels (1)

Sound change

Morphological and syntactic change

a) change in “agreement” rule

b) change in negation rule

c) process of simplification

d) loss of inflections

4. The changes of language at different levels (2)

Vocabulary change

a) addition of new words(coinage, clipped words, blending, acronyms, backformation, functional shift, borrowing)

b) loss of words

c) changes in the meaning of words (widening of meaning, narrowing of meaning,meaning shift)

5. Some recent trends

Moving towards greater informality

The influence of American English

The influence of science and technology

a) space travel b) computer and internet language c) ecology

6. Causes of language change

a) The rapid development of science and technology has led to the creation of many new words: fax, laser, telecom

b) As more and more women have taken up activities formerly reserved for men, more neutral job titles have been created: chairman-chairperson, fireman-fire fighter.

c) The way children acquire the language provides a basic cause of change.

d) “economy of memory ” and “theory of least effort”. foe/foes, cow/cows (kine)

cheap-cheaply

e) other factors, e.g. elaboration of grammar

7. Summary

The linguistic change is complex.

The linguistic change is gradual.

The exact reasons for language change are still elusive and need to be further investigated. 8. Assignments

1. Illustrate the vocabulary change with examples.

2. What are the possible causes of language change?

8. Language and Society

1. The relatedness between language and society

Language is used to establish and maintain social relationship.

The kind of language the users choose is in part determined by his/her social background.

Language is closely related to the structure of the society in which it is used, and the evaluation of a linguistic form is entirely social.

2. Speech community

For general linguists, a speech community is defined as a group of people who form a community and share the same language or a particular variety of a language.

For sociolinguists, a speech community is defined as a group of people who do in fact have the opportunity to interact with each other and who share not just a single language with its related varieties but also attitudes toward linguistic norms.

3. speech variety

Speech variety, or language variety, refers to any distinguishable form of speech or a group of speakers. E.g. regional dialects, sociolects and register.

4.Two approaches to sociolinguistic studies

There are two approaches to sociolinguistic studies: a bird’s-eye view of language (macrosociolinguistics) and a worm’s-eye view of language (micro- sociolinguistics).

a bird’s-eye view of language: we can look at society as a whole and consider how language functions in it and how it reflects the social differentiations .

a worm’s-eye view of language is to look at language from the point of view of an individual member within it.

5. Varieties of language

Dialectal varieties (regional dialect, sociolect, language and gender, language and age, idiolect, ethnic dialect)

Register（语域）

Degree of formality

5.1 Dialectal varieties

regional dialect (geographical barrier)

Sociolect (social class, Received Pronunciation)

language and gender (pronunciation, lexical items, politeness)

language and age (conservative)

Idiolect (personal)

ethnic dialect (less privileged population, racial discrimination or segregation)

5.2 register

linguistic repertoire（个人语言变体的总和）: the totality of linguistic varieties possessed by an individual constitutes his linguistic repertoire.

Halliday’s register theory: field of discourse (why and about), tenor of discourse (to whom), and mode of discourse (how)

5.3 Degree of formality

Language used on different occasions differs in the degree of formality, which is determined by the social variables, e,g, who we are talking with and what we talking about. An American linguist Martin Joos, distinguishes five stages of formality, namely, intimate, casual, consultative, formal and frozen.

6. Standard dialect

The standard variety is a superimposed, socially prestigious dialect of a language. It is the language employed by the government and judiciary system, used by the mass media, and taught in educational institutions.

Features:

1) it is based on a selected variety of the language;

2) it is not a dialect a child acquires naturally like his regional dialect;

3) it has some special functions.

7. Pidgin and Creole

A pidgin is a special language variety that mix or blends languages and it is used by people who speak different languages for restricted purposes such as trading.

When a pidgin has become the primary language of speech community, and is acquired by the children of that speech community as their native language, it is said to have become a Creole. 8. Bilingualism and diglossia

In some speech community, two languages are used side by side with each having a different role to play, and language switching occurs when the situation changes. This constitutes the situation of bilingualism.

Diglossia refers to a sociolinguistic situation similar to bilingualism. In a diglossic situation two varieties of a language exist side by side throughout the community, with each having a definite role to play.

9. Assignments

How is language related to society?

Illustrate Halliday’s register theory with examples

Specify some kinds of varieties of language.

9. Language and Culture

1.The definition of culture:

In a broad sense, culture means the total way of life of a people, including the patterns of belief, customs, objects, institutions, techniques, and language that characterizes the life of human community.

In a narrow sense, culture may refer to local or specific practice, beliefs or customs, which can be mostly found in folk culture, enterprise culture or food culture etc.

Two types of culture: material culture and spiritual culture

2. The relationship between language and culture

Language and culture are inextricably intertwined. On the one hand, language as an integral part of human being, permeates his thinking and way of viewing the world, language both expresses and embodies cultural reality; On the other hand, language, as a product of culture, help perpetuate the culture, and the changes in language use reflect the cultural changes in return. 3. Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis

The interdependence of language and thought is known as Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis.

linguistic determinism（语言决定论）and linguistic relativity（语言相对论）: Whorf sets forth a double principle: the principle of linguistic determinism, namely, that the way one thinks is determined by the language one speaks, and the principle of linguistic relativity, that differences among languages must therefore be reflected in the differences in the worldviews of their speakers.

4. Linguistic evidence of cultural differences

1. Greetings and terms of address

2. Thanks and compliments

3. Color words

4. Privacy and taboos

5. Rounding off numbers

6. Words and cultural-specific connotations

7. Cultural-related idioms, proverbs and metaphors

5.The significance of cultural teaching and learning:

Acculturation(文化适应): we need to lea rn enough about the language’s culture so that we can communicate in the target language properly to achieve not only the linguistic competence but also the pragmatic or communicative competence as well.

6. Cultural overlap and diffusion

1.Cultural overlap （文化重叠）

2.Cultural diffusion（文化扩散）: through communication, some elements of culture A enter culture B and become part of culture B, thus bring about cultural diffusion, which has been shaped gradually and unceasingly. linguistic imperialism and cultural imperialism （文化帝国主义）: with the increasing cultural diffusion had been recognized a tendency of cultural imperialism owing to linguistic imperialism. Linguistic imperialism is a kind of linguicism which can be defined as the promulgation of global ideologies through the worldwide expansion of one language.

7. Intercultural communication or crosscultural communication

It refers to communication between people from different cultures, which implies a comparison between cultures.

8. Assignments

Explain the relation between language and culture. What do you think of Sapir-Whorf hypothesis? Give examples or proof to support your point of view.

10. Language acquisition

1. Three theories of child language acquisition

? a) a behaviourist view （行为主义观）: language learning is simply a matter of imitation and habit formation

? b) an innatist view（天生主义观）: human beings are biologically programmed for language, or equipped with Language Acquisition Device or Universal Grammar

? c) an interactionist view （互动主义观）:language develops as a result of the complex interplay between the human characteristics of the child and the environment in which the child develops.

2. Cognitive factors in child language development

?1. language development is dependent on both the concepts children form about the world and what they feel stimulated to communicate at early and later stages of their language development.

?2. The cognitive factors determine how the child makes sense of the linguistic system himself instead of what meanings the child perceives and expresses.

3. Language environment and the Critical Period Hypothesis

? Critical Period Hypothesis : Language Acquisition Device works successfully only when it is

stimulated at right times- a specific and limited time period for language acquisition.

? The strong version of CPH: children acquire their first language by puberty or they will never learn from subsequent exposure.

? The weak version of CPH: language learning will be more difficult and incomplete after puberty.

4. Stages in child language development

?Phonological development

?Vocabulary development

? under-extension

? over-extension

?Grammatical development

?Pragmatic development

5. Atypical development

?Hearing impairment听力损伤

?Mental retardation智力迟钝

?Autism孤独症

?Stuttering口吃

?Aphasia 失语症

?Dyslexia诵读困难

?dysgraphia书写困难

6. assignment

?Illustrate and compare the three theories of child language acquisition.

11 Second Language Acquisition

1. Different terms TL FL SL FLA SLA (SLL) IL

2. Comparison

NL:TL comparison (Contrastive Analysis)

IL:TL comparison(Error Analysis)

NL:IL comparison (Transfer Analysis)

3. Contrastive Analysis

NL:TL comparison (Contrastive Analysis)

Positive transfer (facilitate)

Negative transfer (interfere)

The predictions turned to be either uninformative or inaccurate.

4. Error Analysis

IL:TL comparison(Error Analysis)

Interlingual errors

Intralingual errors

Performance Analysis:the division between mistakes (failure in performance ) and errors (failure in competence) (p164)

5. Interlanguage（中介语）

Interlanguage refers to learners’ independent system of second language which is neither the native language nor the second language, but a continuum or approximation from his native language to the target language.

Systematicity, permeability, fossilization

6. Krashen’s Input Hypothesis

There are two independent means of second language learning: acquisition and learning “comprehensible input”: “i+l”, i represents learners’ current state of knowledge, the next stage is a “i+l”. By providing comprehensible input which is bit higher than the learners’ current level, the learners’ LAD will be activated and contribute to acquisition.

7. the individual differences in second language acquisition

a) language aptitude

b) motivation (instrumental, integrative, resultative, intrinsic)

c) learning strategies (cognitive, metacognitive, affect/social)

d) age of acquisition

e) personality

8. Assignments

What is performance analysis?

What is your understanding of Krashen's Input Hypothesis?

What are the main individual difference in second language acquisition?

12. Language and Brain

1. Neurolinguistics

? The relationship between brain and language

? Aphasia 失语症

? Dyslexia诵读困难

2. Psycholinguistics

? Psycholinguistics is the study of language processing.

? Lexical decision词汇确定法

? The priming experiment启动实验

? Timed-reading experiment限时阅读实验

? Eye movement experiment眼动实验

? Event-related potential experiment事件相关电位实验

3. Psycholinguistic modeling

? Four stages of production:

? Conceptualizing概念化

? Formulating形式化

? Articulating发音

? Self-monitoring自我监控

4.Assignments

? neurolinguistics

? psycholinguistics