语言学教程最经典笔记(胡壮麟版).docx

Week 1.The Nature of Human LangFerdinand de Saussure (1857,11 1913,2 ), a Swiss linguist whose ideas laid a foundation for many significant developments in linguistics in the 20th century and widely considered to be one of the fathers of 20th-century linguistics, said in 1916: “Language is a system of signs that express ideas, and is therefore comparable to a system of writing”Edward Sapir (1884, 1-1939, 2), a German-born American anthropologist- linguist, said in 1921: “Language is a purely human and non-instinctive method of communicating ideas, emotion and desires by means of voluntarily produced symbols.”Bernard Bloch (19071965) and George Trager(19061992), American linguists, said in 1942: A language is a system of arbitrary vocal symbols by means of which a social group cooperates.Noam Chomsky (1928- ) an American linguist, said in 1957: “A set (finite or infinite) of sentences, each finite in length and constructed out of a finite set of elements.”R.A. Hall (19111997), an American linguist and specialist in the Romance languages, said in 1968: “The institution whereby humans communicate and interact with each other by means of habitually used oral- auditory arbitrary symbols.”A language is the system of symbols with the most general meanings of any used by humans. The perceptible portions of linguistic symbols are articulatory gestures, transmitted one after another usually as sounds. They are used to communicate or store information, or even to design and think. The definition that most linguists agree: Language is a system of arbitrary vocal symbols used for human communication.In the sense of our linguistic study, it is generally held that:Language is a systemIt is made up of units, functions, and relations.Language is a set of symbolsIt involves signs, which are sequences of sounds, those can be transferred into vocal signs.Language is vocalIn linguistics, language is first of all speech, meaningful vocal sounds.Language is humanIn the study of this course, language is restricted to human natural language.Language is communicationThe chief purpose of language.Of all the aptitudes and behaviors which characterize human beings, language is the most uniquely human, and quite possibly the most important. Language is a capacity that distinguishes human beings from other creatures.Major Design Features of Human LanguageArbitrariness Words and their meaning have no a priori connection. We cannot tell from the sound structure which meaning is behind it.Duality of patterning Language has two levels of structure: at the level of sound and at the level of meanings, and these two levels of structure are independent of one another. Productivity Language has the capacity to generate an infinite variety of messages, including messages that have never been said before. Displacement Language is able to refer to things that are removed from the speaker in both time and space. Traditional (Cultural) transmission Language is learned through cultural transmission, typically from parents and older siblings, children build their grammar of language by inference from a limited sample of sentences.Interchangability Individuals can both receive and transmit messages. Functions of LanguageLanguage as a means of communication: Communication of information, ideas, feelings and emotion The cognitive and social functions of language behavior: the former refers to the transmission of propositional, or factual, information and discursive reasoning or “cogitation”; the second to the establishment and maintenance of social rapport. Some descriptionsThe well-known model of the functions of language introduced by the Russian-American linguist, Roman Jakobson in Linguistics and Poetics“, Jakobsons model of the functions of language distinguishes six elements, or factors of communication, that are necessary for communication to occur:Briefly, these six functions can be described as follows: (1) the referential function is oriented toward the context (the dominant function in a message like Water boils at 100 degrees); (2) the emotive function is oriented toward the addresser (as in the interjections Bah! and Oh!); (3) the conative function is oriented toward the addressee (imperatives and apostrophes); (4) the phatic function serves to establish, prolong or discontinue communication or confirm whether the contact is still there (as in Hello?); (5) the metalingual function is used to establish mutual agreement on the code (for example, a definition); (6) the poetic function (e.g., Smurf), puts the focus on the message for its own sake Jakobson, 1960, p. 356 Three Basic Functions of Language1. Informative language function: essentially, the communication of information. a. The informative function affirms or denies propositions, as in science. b. This function is used to describe the world or reason about it (e.g., whether a state of affairs is true or false). c. These sentences have a truth value; hence, they are important for logic.2. Expressive language function: reports feelings or attitudes of the writer (or speaker), or of the subject, or evokes feelings in the reader (or listener). a. Poetry is one of the best examples, but much of, perhaps most of, ordinary language discourse is the expression of emotions, feelings or attitudes. b. Two main aspects are generally noted: (1) to evoke certain feelings and (2) to express feelings. c. Expressive discourse, qua expressive discourse, is best regarded as neither true or false. e.g., Shakespeares King Lears lament, Ripeness is all! Even so, the nature of fictional statements is an interesting area of inquiry.3. Directive language function: language used for the purpose of causing or preventing overt actions.a. The directive function is most commonly found in commands and requests.b. Directive language is not normally considered true or false (although a logic of commands have been developed). c. Example: Close the windows. The Origin of languageThe origin of language is still mystery. Scholars over the centuries have been interested in it because man and language are so closely related that they believed that if we know how and when language originated we would probably know how and when man arose as well. There are beliefs throughout the world that language is a gift from God to mankind. One of such beliefs is found in the Holy Bible.The Book of Genesis 2:19-20 has God give Adam the task of assigning names to all the animals and plants he had in Eden. God said, They are a single people, all having one language, and this is the first thing they do! Now nothing they plan to do will be unattainable for them! Come, let us descend and confuse their speech, so that one person will not understand anothers speech. (Book of Genesis 11:1-9) God punished human presumption in building the Tower of Babel by confusing the tongues of the builders. The observed variety of humanlanguages is a consequence of that divine judgment.Some Hypotheses that try to explain the origins of human languageThe ding-dong hypothesis This hypothesis places the origin of human language in onomatopoeia: the various imitative sounds that humans make to mimic the sounds of the world around them. So boom becomes a word for thunder, and oink for a pig. The bow-wow hypothesis Similar to the ding-dong hypothesis, this one has humans forming their first words by imitating animal sounds. The pooh-pooh hypothesis According to this hypothesis, the first words developed from sighs of pleasure, moans of pain, and other semi-involuntary cries or exclamations. These vocalisms then became the names of the phenomena that made people say them. The “ta-ta” hypothesis Charles Darwin lent his authority to this hypothesis. According to this, human language represents the use of oral gestures that began in imitation of hand gestures that were already in use for communicationThe Indian-born British neurologist Vilayanur S. Ramachandrans (拉马钱兰 )research into synesthesia(心理联感) and sound symbolism（语音象征）would seem to support this hypothesis.语音象征指语言在长期使用的过程中，依据语言符号象 似性的原 理，某些语音常用于表示某种意思，给人某种语义联想，这些语音似乎具有了自己固定的象征含义。The uh-oh hypothesis Human language begins with the use of arbitrary symbols that represent warnings to other members of the human band. It is agreed that one sort of vocal cry means that lions have been spotted in the area, and another one indicates a snake. You holler one thing at your neighbour to warn them, Dont eat that! Itll make you sick! and something distinguishable to warn them Dont eat that! Its mine! The yo-he-ho hypothesis According to this hypothesis, language arose in rhythmic chants and vocalisms uttered by people engaged in communal labour. Written and spoken Writing is not language, but merely a way of recording language by visible marks.”Leonard Bloomfield, Language Evolution and the origin of language Steven Pinker, following Noam Chomsky and ultimately Immanuel Kant, believes that humans are born with a language instinct: a neural processing network that contains a universal grammar that has developed specifically for encoding and decoding human languages. Biologists do not yet agree on when or how language use first emerged among humans or their ancestors. Some authorities believe that language arose suddenly, about 40,000 years ago. This is the time period from which we first see cultural artifacts, such as cave paintings and carved figurines.In 1886 the Linguistic Society of Paris banned discussion of the origin of language, deeming it to be an unanswerable problem. One important principle in language study All languages are equal. No one language is superior to any other. “Every language so far studied, no matter how primitive or civilized the society might appear to us in other respects, has proved upon investigation to be a complex and highly developed system of communication.” -John Lyons, 1981 in Language and Linguistics. Languages in the World The most extensive catalog of the worlds languages, generally taken to be as authoritative as any, is that of the Ethnologue organization whose detailed classified list currently includes 6,809 distinct languages. Out of Ethnologues 6,809, for instance, only 230 are spoken in Europe, while 2,197 are spoken in Asia. Language families and languagesMost languages are known to belong to language families.A family is a group of languages that can be shown to be genetically related to one another.An accurately identified family is a phylogenetic unit, i.e., all its members derive from a common ancestor.The ancestor is very seldom known to us directly, since most languages have a very short recorded history.The best known languages are those of the Indo-European family, to which English belongs.The common ancestor of a family (or branch) is known as its protolanguage. the reconstructible protolanguage of the well-known Indo-European family is called Proto-Indo-European. This single language family has about 150 languages and about 3 billion speakers. The Sino-Tibetan Family , Another important language family, includes some 250 languages. Mandarin Chinese (Putonghua) alone is spoken by 1 billion people! Questions/Exercises: 1. In what sense is language a system of arbitrary vocal symbols used for human communication?2. Illustrate the design features of human language with your own examples.Week 2.Introduciton to the study of languageWhat is linguistics? Literally, the study of languageDefinition: the scientific study of the nature and structure of language the study of the structure and development of a particular language and its relationship to other languages Linguistics as a scientific study systematic investigation of data empirical not speculative/intuitive, publicly verifiable data obtained by means of observation/experimentobservable objective examinationformal methodological theory-based With reference of some general theory of language structureunbiased All languages are equal. No one language is superior to another language. There are no primitive languages. The truth is that every language so far studied, no matter how primitive or uncivilized the society using it might appear to us in other aspects, has proved upon investigation to be a complex and highly developed system of communication. Language in the sense of linguistics, Human, natural language not animal communication not artificial language not any particular language, but language in general What does a linguist do? A linguist is a scientist who studies the nature of language, not a multilingual. A linguist observes languages as they are, and does not try to change them; so a linguist will note that some people say he dont, and others say he doesnt, but a linguist will not pass judgment on which is better. Linguists do not necessarily teach or know many foreign languages, although it helps, but they ask questions about how LANGUAGE works. What does LANGUAGE usage indicate about speakers? How is LANGUAGE related to our mind? How did LANGUAGE originate? Why does LANGUAGE change and what triggers the change? How do speakers use LANGUAGE to advance their position in society? Why do LANGUAGES enter into political conflicts and peace negotiations? Aspects of language Study of the different language aspects: Phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, pragmaticsThe subfields of language studySome subfields in linguistics are: phonology and phonetics (articulatory gestures and sounds of language), semantics (meaning), syntax (grammar), historical linguistics (history and family trees of languages), psycholinguistics (psychology of language), sociolinguistics (sociology of language). Development of linguistics Efforts to describe and explain the human language faculty have been undertaken throughout recorded history. Contemporary linguistics is the outcome of a continuous European intellectual tradition originating in Ancient Greece. At various stages in history, linguistics as a discipline has been in close contact with such disciplines as philosophy, anthropology and philology. In some cultures linguistic analysis has been applied in the service of religion, particularly for the determination of the religiously preferred spoken and written forms of sacred texts in Hebrew, Sanskrit and Arabic. Contemporary Western linguistics is close to philosophy and cognitive science. Modern Western linguistics In Europe through the 19th century, linguistics is centered on the comparative history of the Indo-European languages, with a concern for finding their common roots and tracing their development.About 1880, scholars in the United States began to record the hundreds of native languages once found in North America. As this work was developing in the early twentieth century, mainly in America, linguists were confronted with languages whose structures differed greatly from those of known European languages. Scholars decided they needed a theory of linguistic structure and methods of analysis. In Europe there was a parallel development of structural linguistics, influenced most strongly by Ferdinand de Saussure, a Swiss scholar of Indo-European and general linguistics whose lectures on general linguistics, published posthumously by his students, set the direction of European linguistic analysis from the 1920s on; his approach has been widely adopted in other fields under the broad term Structuralism.His approach has been widely adopted in other fields under the broad term “Structuralism.” He is thus called “Father of Modern Linguistics”Saussure is probably still the greatest linguist and few linguists even today can dispute his theories.He showed us how to separate historical (diachronic) linguistics from non-historical (synchronic) linguistics. Leonard Bloomfields influential textbook Language, published in 1933, presented a comprehensive description of American structural linguistics. During the Second World War, he and several of his students and colleagues developed teaching materials for a variety of languages whose knowledge was needed for the war effort. This work led to an increasing prominence of the field of linguistics, which became a recognized discipline in most American universities only after the war. From roughly 1980 onwards, pragmatic, functional, and cognitive approaches have steadily gained ground, both in the U.S. and in Europe. Branches of linguisticsHistorical linguistics (Comparative historical linguistics): the study of languages which are recognizably related through similarities such as vocabulary, word formation, and syntax. General linguistics vs. Descriptive linguisticsGeneral linguistics supplies the concepts and categories in terms of which particular languages are to be analyzed.Descriptive linguistics provides the data which confirm or refute the propositions and theories put forward in general linguistics.Synchronic description of language vs. Diachronic description of languageA diachronic description of a language traces the historical development of the language and records the changes that have taken place in it between successive points in time.A synchronic description of a language is non-historical. It presents an account of the language as it is at some particular point in time. Theoretical lin