语言学复习大纲 缩印.doc

Unit 1 language & linguisticLanguage is a system of arbitrary vocal symbols used for human communication.Properties of language:Arbitrariness: Generally there is no logical connection between meanings and sounds. Duality: Or double-structured. Language consists of two sets of structures, or two levels. Lower level: sounds which are meaningless. Higher level: units of meaning by grouping or regrouping sounds. Units of meaning can be arranged into infinite number of sentences.Creativity (productivity): Peculiar to human languages, users of language can understand and produce sentences they have never heard before e.g. we can understand sentence like “ A pink elephant is dancing on the hotel bed”, though it does not describe a common happening in the world.Cultural transmission: Language is culturally transmitted. A language is taught and learned within a particular cultural background. Branches in linguisticsPhonetics 语音学 Phonology音韵学 Morphology形态学Syntax语法学 Semantics语意 Pragmatic语用Some distinctions in linguistics Prescriptive and descriptivePrescriptive: lay down rules for correct and standard behavior in using languageDescriptive: aims to describe and analyze the language people actually useSynchronic and diachronic (共时与历时)Synchronic: description of a language at some point of time in historyDiachronic: the description of a language as it changes through time. Competence and performance (by American linguist N. Chomsky)Competence: the ideal users knowledge of the rules of his language, a speaker has internalized a set of rules about his language which enables him to use the languagePerformance: the actual realization of the knowledge in linguistic communication, a speakers performance in using his language can be imperfectLangue and parole（语言与言语）(By F. Saussure)Langue refers to the abstract linguistic system shared by all the members of a speech community.（语言社区）Parole refers to the realization of langue in actual use. （actual use of language）Unit 2 Phonetics & Phonology Speech soundsThese sounds are limited in number. This limited range of sounds which are meaningful in human communication constitute the phonic medium of language, and the individual sounds within this range are the speech sounds（言语语音）.These three branches of phonetics articulatory phonetics （发音语音学） it studies the sounds from the speakers point of view, i.e. How a speaker uses his speech organs to articulate the sounds.auditory phonetics（听觉语音学） It looks at the sounds from the hearers point of view, i.e. How the sounds are perceived by the hearer. acoustic phonetics（声学语音学） It studies the way sounds travel by looking at the sound waves, the physical means by which sounds are transmitted through the air from one person to another. Classification of English speech soundsEnglish speech sounds are generally classified into two large categories: Vowels ConsonantsNote: The essential difference between these two classes is that in the production of the former the airstream meets with no obstruction of any kind in the throat, the nose or the mouth, while in that of the latter it is somehow obstructed.Vowels may be distinguished as front, central, and back according to which part of the tongue is held highest. i.e. A front vowel is one in the production of which the front part of the tongue maintains the highest position English consonants can be classified in two ways: one is in terms of manner of articulation and the other is in terms of place of articulation. 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, etc. Phonology, on the other hand, aims to discover how speech sounds in a language form patterns and how these sounds are used to convey meaning in linguistic communication.Minimal pairs (最小对立体）Phonological analysis relies on the principle that certain sounds cause changes in the meaning of a word. A simple methodology would take a word, replace one sound by another, and see whether a different meaning resulted.Words in the relationship such as tin to din and fine to dine are called minimal pairs.They are made up of similar sound sequence except for the difference of one sound in the corresponding position fain starts with a f sound and dain starts a d sound.phoneme(音位) & allophone (音位变体)A phoneme is a phonological unit; it is a unit that is of distinctive value. It is an abstract unit. It is not any particular sound, but rather it is represented or realized by a certain phone in a certain phonetic context Allophone: different phones which can represent a phoneme in different phonetic environments are called the allophones of the phoneme Phone(音素）: phonetic unit or segment It is important to note that the place in which the different pronunciations occur are unique, and do not overlap. They are no longer in contrastive distribution, but in complementary distribution. Sounds in complementary distribution do not appear in the same context.Allophones of the same phoneme are in complementary distribution. They do not distinguish meaning. They occur in different phonetic contexts.Intonation （语调）When pitch, stress and length variations are tied to the sentence rather than to the word, they are collectively known as intonation.Four basic types of intonation: falling tone, rising tone, fall-rise tone, and rise-fall tone. Intonation can distinguish meaning. Unit 3 LexiconGrammatical wordsExpress grammatical meanings, such as, conjunctions, prepositions, articles, and pronouns.Lexical wordExpress lexical meanings, which refer to substance, action and quality, such as nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs.opened-class wordsverbs, adjectives and adverbs to which new words can be added. For example: beatnik (a person who rejects or avoids conventional behavior)Closed-class wordsconjunctions, prepositions, articles and pronouns to which new word are not usually addedVariable wordsWords can be classified according to their variability. We can find ordered and regular series of grammatically different word forms. On the other hand, part of the word remains relatively constant. Thus, each ordered series constitutes a paradigm.Invariable wordsRefer to those words such as conjunctions, prepositions, interjections, etc., which do not have inflective endings. (since, when, seldom, through, Hello)Morpheme & its typesMorpheme is the immediate concern of a branch of linguistics called Morphology, which studies the internal structure of words, and the rules by which words are formed.In linguistics, the minimal unit of meaning is called Morpheme. It is the smallest unit in terms of relationship between expression and content.Free Morphemes(自由语素） & bound Morphemes（黏着语素）Those which may occur alone, that is, those which may constitute words by themselves, are Free Morphemes. (dog, close, nation)In contrast, -s in dogs, -al in national can not occur alone. They must appear with at least another morpheme, and are called bound MorphemesRoot, affix, stemA root (词根）is the base form of a word that cannot further be analyzed without total loss of identity. It is that part of the word left when all the affixes are removed.A affix（词缀） is the collective term for the type of formative that can be used only when added to another morpheme.A stem（词干） is part of a word-form which remains when all inflectional affixes have been removed, e.g. “undesirable” in undesirables.Inflectional affix Inflectional affixes often add a minute or delicate grammatical meaning to the stem. They serve to produce different forms of a single word. They do not change the word class they attach to, such as toys, walks, johns, etc. derivational affixDerivational affixes often change the lexical meaning and they may or may not change the word class of the word they attach to. Such as the relation between small and smallness, brother and brotherhood.Word-formation Other means of creating new wordsInflection 曲折 Onomatopoeia (拟声) Borrowing (借用)Derivation 派生 Invention (杜撰） Blending (混成） Conversion 转化 Abbreviation (缩略) Compounding 复合 Acronym (首字母缩略)Other means 其他 Back-formation (逆构)Unit 4 Grammar: ClauseSyntaxIn linguistics, it refers to the study of the rules governing the way words are combined to form sentences in a language, or simply, the study of the formation of sentences.Since sentence is usually regarded as the largest grammatical unit of a language, syntax has long been the centre of grammatical study.The structural approachThe structural approach was started by the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure. In Saussures view, language is a system of signs, each of which consist of two parts: signifier sound image (能指) and signified concept (所指). And the relationship between these two parts is arbitrary.He tries to find the value of a sign from its relations to others, or rather, its position in the system.The two principal types of relations which Saussure identified are syntagmatic(组合关系) and paradigmatic(聚合关系) relations.Syntagmatic is a relation between one item and others in a sequence, or between elements which are all present, such as the relation between weather and the others in the following sentence.If the weather is nice, well go out.The syntagmatic relation is nowadays also referred to as the horizontal (水平) relation, or chain relation; and the paradigmatic relation is also known as the vertical (垂直) relation or choice relation.Immediate constituent analysis 直接成分分析法Another thing structural linguists realize is that a sentence does not only have a linear structure, consisting of individual words one after one another in a line; they also have a hierarchical (层级的) structure, made up of layers of word groups.The technique of breaking up sentences into smaller units by making successive binary(一分为二的) cutting is called IC analysis. It reveals the hierarchical relations, as well as sequential(按次序的) relations, among words or groups of words in a sentence. In an IC analysis, each cutting produces two smaller groups of words the immediate constituents of the original group of words, and the cutting may continue until the level of morphemes is reached.Grammatical categories In general use, the term refers to certain properties of word classes often represented by inflectional endings.E.g. in English, the word book has two word forms the singular book and the plural books. Together they constitute the category of “number” indicated by the inflectional ending s.Unit 5 Grammar and Text What is text?A text is sentences of any length put together, with texture.Texture is what binds a text together, intrinsically and contextually.Vilem Mathesius, life-long chairman of the circle, held that apart from the analysis of a sentence in term of subject and predicate from the formal point of view, there may also be a functional analysis in term of theme and rheme. Thematic progression1) the continuous or constant theme pattern2) the linear theme pattern.3) the split rheme pattern.Foot is the rhythmic unit, a phonological constituent, while tone group is an intonation unit, a unit of informationUnit 6 MeaningSemantics-the study of language meaning.C. K. Ogden & I. A. Richards. 1923. The Meaning of Meaning. Seven types of meaning G. Leech. 1974. Semantics 1) conceptual meaning: 概念意义2) connotative meaning: 内涵意义Connotative refers to some additional, especially emotive meaning.3) social meaning: 社会意义4) affective meaning: 感情意义5) reflected meaning: 反射意义6) collocative meaning: 搭配意义7) thematic meaning: 主位意义Connotation （内涵）and denotation （指示）Emotive or evaluative meanings resulted from personal experience are called CONNOTATIONS. Straightforward and literal meaning is called DENOTATION. magpie & sparrow Semantic triangle The symbol or form refers to the linguistic elements (words and phrases);The referent refers to the object in the world of experience;Thought or reference refers to concept.The symbol or a word signifies things by virtue of the concept associated with the form of the word in the minds of the speaker; and the concept looked at from this point of view is the meaning of the word. How are word meanings related? Homonymy(同音同形异义）- the phenomenon that words having different meanings have the same form, e.g. different words are identical in sound or spelling, or in both.Polysemy（一词多义）-the same one word may have more than one meaning.Homophone（同音异义） -when two words are identical in sound, e.g. rain-reign, night/knight, Homogragh（同形异义）-when two words are identical in spelling, e.g. tear(n.)-tear(v.), lead(n.)-lead(v.), Sense（意义） vs. Reference（指称）S：the abstract properties of an entity.R：the concrete entities.Unit 7 Context & Conversational implicatureContext- a basic concept in the study of pragmatics.It is generally considered as constituted knowledge shared by the speaker and the hearer, such as cultural background, situation(time, place, manner, etc.), the relationship between the speaker and the hearer, etc. Sentence-meaning区别Sentences are grammatical units of a language and are not tied to any time and place, i.e. context-independent.Sentence-meaning is what is literally conveyed by the sentence. It is an inherent, context-independent property of the language. Pragmatics Pragmatics can be defined as the study of how speakers use the sentences of a language to effect successful communication.Pragmatics is different from traditional semantics in that it studies meaning not in isolation but in context.Pragmatics and semanticsSemantics deals with meaning without reference to the language users and the communicative functions of sentences.Pragmatics is the study of the use of language in communication, dealing with the context-dependent meaning conveyed by sentences uttered in contexts. Speech act theoryJohn Langshaw AustinAccording to this theory, we are performing various kinds of acts when we are speaking; thus linguistic communication is composed of a succession of acts.Constatives & PerformativesAustins first shot at the theory is the claim that there are two types of sentences:constatives （叙述句） and performatives （施为句）.A constative is a sentence which describes or states so