(完整版)语言学基本定义

1、语言 language Language is a system of arbitrary vocal symbols used by social group for communication. Arbitrariness : the forms of linguistic signs bear no natural relationship to their meaning. Productivity: language is resourceful because of its duality and its reclusiveness. We can use it to create

2、 new meanings. Duality: the property of having two levels of structures, such that units of the primary level are composed of element of the secondary level and each of the two levels has its own principles of organization. Displacement :human languages enable their users to symbolize objects, event

3、s and concepts which are not present(in time and spare) at the movement of communication. Cultural transmission: language is not genetically inherited. Passed from generation to generation, it requires some learning. It is true human are born with language capacity, but a particular language a perso

4、n learns to speak is a cultural one, rather than a genetic one like the dogs barking system. Interchangeability: any human being can be both a producer and receiver of messages. Language function: informative : language is the instrument of thought, record the facts. The use of language to record th

5、e facts is a prerequisite of social development. Interpersonal : by far the most important sociological use of language, and by which people establish and maintain their status in a society. Performative : the performative function of language is primarily to change the social status of persons Emot

6、ive: to change the emotional status of an audience for or against someone or something. Phatic communion: we all use such small, seemingly meaningless expressions to maintain a comfortable relationship between people without involving any factual contents. Recreational : the recreational function of

7、 a language is often overlooked because it seems so restrictive in purpose and supposedly so limited in usefulness. Metalingual: our language can be used to talk about itself. Sociolinguistics the study of language with reference to society. Psycholinguistics -the study of language with reference to

8、 the working of the mind. Applied linguistics -the application of linguistic principles and theories to language teaching and learning. Important distinctions in linguistics: 规定性 Prescriptive .描述性 Descriptive /8.共 时语言学 Synchronical linguistics 7.历时语言学 Diachronic linguistics /5.语言能力 Competence 6语. 言运

9、用 performance /9.语言 langue 10.言语 parole /speech, writing/ traditional grammar and modern linguistics 第二章音系学 1 Phonology is the study of the sound patterns and sound systems of languages. It aims to discover the principles that govern the way sounds are organized in languages, and to explain the vari

10、ations that occur. 2 international phonetic alphabet A set of standard phonetic symbols in the form of a chart, designed by the international phonetic association since 1888. It has been revised from time to time to include new discoveries and changes in phonetic theory and practice. 3 consonants an

11、d vowels Consonant are produced by a closure in the vocal tract, or by a narrowing, which is so marked that air can not escape without producing audible friction. Vowel is produced without such stricture so that air escapes in a relatively unimpeded way through the mouth or nose. 4 cardinal vowel Ar

12、e a set of vowel qualities arbitrarily defined, fixed and unchanging, intended to provide a frame of reference for the description of the actual vowels of existing language. 5 anticipatory and perseverative co-articulation when such simultaneous or overlapping articulation are involved, we call the

13、process co-articulation. If the sound becomes more like the following sound, it is known as anticipatory co-articulation. If the sound shows the influence of the proceeding sound,it is perseverative co-articulation. 6Phoneme The smallest of sound which can distinguish two words 7Allophones Different

14、 phones which can represent a phoneme in different environments are called the allophones of that phoneme. 8Minimal pair Are two words in a language which differ from each other by only one distinctive sound and which also differ in meaning. 9free variation if two sounds occurring in the same enviro

15、nment do not contrast, that is the substitution of one for the other does not produce a different word form, but merely a different pronunciation of the same word, then the two words are in free variation. Chapter three 词汇学 The total number of words stored in the brain is called thelexicon . Words a

16、re the smallest free units of language that unite sounds with meaning. Word : A unit of expression that has universal intuitive recognition by native speakers, whether it is expressed in spoken or written form. Lexeme: the abstract unit underlying the smallest unit in the lexical system of a languag

17、e, which appears in different grammatical contexts. Grammatical/Functional words : express grammatical meanings, such as conjunctions, prepositions, articles, pronouns. Lexical/content words : have lexical meanings, those which refer to substance, action and quality, such as nouns, verbs, adjectives

18、, and adverbs. Open-class words: a word group whose membership is in principle in finite or unlimited. New members can be added. Closed-class words: a word group whose membership is fixed or limited, new members are not regularly added. Morphology ; the study of word formation, the internal structur

19、e of words, and the rules by which words are formed. Morphemes : the smallest unit language in terms of relationship between expression and content, a unit that cannot be further divided into smaller units without destroying or drastically altering the meaning, whether it is lexical or grammatical.

20、Free morphemes: those that may constitute words by themselves. Bound morphemes ；those that can not occur alone Root: the base form of a word that cannot be further analyzed without total loss of identity. It is that part of a word-form that remains when all the inflectional affixes and derivational

21、affixes have been removed. Affix: the types of formative/morpheme that can be used only when added to another morpheme. Base: any form to which affixes of any kind can be added; a form to which a rule of word formation is applied. Stem: the part of the word form which remains when all inflectional a

22、ffixes have been removed. Inflection : indicates grammatical relations by adding inflectional affixes. Derivation : combination of an existing word and an affix to form a new word. Compounding /composition is word-formation process consisting of joining two or more bases to form a new unit, a compou

23、nd word-An Introduction to Modern Linguistics. Endocentric : one element serves as the head, of same syntactic class as the whole the relationship of a kind of . Exocentric : there is no head, no elements is of the same syntactic class as the whole, so not a relationship of a kind of something. Deri

24、vation : is also called affixation . It is the morphological process whereby grammatical of lexical information is added to the base. Conversion : is a word-formation process by which a word is altered from one part of speech to anther without the addition or deletion of any morpheme. Allomorph : so

25、me morphemes have a single form in all contexts. But a morpheme may have considerable variations, alternate shapes or phonetic forms called the allomorph. Blending : a process of word-information in which a new word is formed by combining the meanings and sounds of two words, one of which is not in

26、its full form or both of which are not in their full forms. Back-formation : a shorter word is derived by deleting an imagined affix from a longer form already in the language. Acronym : words formed from the initial letters of the name of an organization or scientific term, etc. it differs from ini

27、tialisms in that they are pronounced as words rather than as sequence of letter. Initialism : a type of shortening, using the first letter of words to form a proper name, a technical term, or phrase; an initialism is pronounced letter by letter. Analogical creation : It can account for the coexisten

28、ce of two forms, regular and irregular, I the conjugation of some English verbs. Loanwords : both form and meaning are borrowed with only a slight adaptation. Loanblend : part of the form is native and part is borrowed, but the meaning is fully borrowed. Chapter 4 syntax Syntax : the study of the ru

29、les governing the way words are combined to form sentences in a language, or simply the study of the formation of sentences. Category : the term category in some approaches refers to classes and functions in its narrow sense. More specifically, it refers to the defining properties of these general u

30、nits. Phrase: is a single element of structure containing more than one word, and lacking the subject-predicate structure typical of clause. Word group is an extension of word of a particular class by way of modification with its main features of the class unchanged. Clause: a constituent with its o

31、wn subjects and predicate when it is included in a lager sentence. Syntagmatic is a relation between one item and others in a sequence or between elements which are all present. Paradigmatic relation refers to classes or sets of words substitutable for each other grammatically in sentences with the

32、same structure. grammatical construction ; any syntactic construct which is assigned one or more conventional functions in a language, together with whatever is linguistically conventionalized about its contribution to the meaning or use the construct contains. constituent is a term used in structur

33、al sentence analysis for every linguistic unit, which is a part of a larger linguistic unit. Several constituents together form a construction. An endocentric construction is one whose distribution is functionally equivalent to one of its constituents, which serves as the center or head of the whole

34、. Exocentric construction refers to a group of syntactically related words where none of the words is functionally equivalent to the group as a whole, that is, there is no definable “ Centre ” or “ Head” inside the group, usually including the basic sentence, the prepositional phrase, the predicate

35、construction, and the connective construction. Subordinate construction those in which there is only one head, with the head being dominant and the other constituents dependent, Coordinate construction: there are more than one head, the head can stand for the original construction functionally. Deep

36、 structure: the abstract representation of the syntactic properties of a construction Surface structure: the final stage in syntactic derivation of a construction. Chapter five Semantics Denotation involves the relationship between a linguistic unit and the non-linguistic entities to which it refers

37、. Thus it is equivalent to referential meaning. Connotation -opposite to denotation, means the properties of the entity a word denotes. Sensebe defined as the semantics relations between one word and another, or more generally between the one linguistic unit and another. Reference: is concerned with the relation between a word and the thing it refers to , or more generally between a linguistic unit and non-ling