英语语言学笔记2.doc

Chapter LexiconChapter Lexicon3.1 Definition of word3.1.1 Word is the smallest of the linguistic units which can occur on its own in speech or writing. It can be intuitively recognized by Native Speakers. Questions for discussion: 1. Is the above definition tenable? Why?1.1 LexicologyThe term lexicology contains two Greek morphemes: lexicon and logie. The former means word and the latter means learning or the study of. The literal meaning of the term is the science of wordsLexicology is the branch of linguistics concerned with the study of the vocabulary of a given language. It deals with words, their origin, development, history, structure, meaning and application. In short, it is the study of the signification and application of words.3.1.2 Three senses of word A physically definable unit: spaces in writing and pauses in speechThere is a problem when liaison and contracted form occur, as in: Its wonderful. /its wndfl/ A lexeme: the smallest unit in the meaning system of a language that can be distinguished from other similar units. e.g. WRITE: write, writes, wrote, writing, written A grammatical unit: a rank between morpheme and word group in a grammatical hierarchy. (Overlap with morpheme)3.2 Classification of words Inflective endings: variable and invariableWords like follow, mat are variable, seldom, hello are invariable. Meaning: grammatical (function) and lexical (content) Function words are conj. prep. art.; content words are n. v. a. adv. etc. Membership limit: open class and closed class (prep quite open) Function (word class, parts of speech): n. pron. v. a. adv. prep. conj. etc. New categories: Particles (to, not), auxiliaries (can, be, will, have, do), pro-form (pro-adj, pro-verb, pro-adv, pro-locative), determiners (pre-, central, post-)3.3 Word formation 3.3.1 Morpheme Definition: the smallest meaningful unit in a language. Types of morphemesCapacity of occurring alone: free and bound For example, in speaker, speak is a free morpheme while -er is bound. Part in a word: root, affix and stem A root is the basic part of a word, which may occur on its own. It can be a bound morpheme (-ceive, -mit, -tain, -cur). A root may also have bound variants (slept, children)A stem is any morpheme or combination of morphemes to which an inflectional affix can be added. A stem is the part of a word that is common to all its inflected variants.Affixes are used to add to another morpheme, root or stem to form new words. They are generally classified into three: prefix, suffix and infix (position) or inflectional and derivational affix (new lexemes) For example, nation is the root, inter- and al are affixes and national is the stem.3.3.2 Morphology Definition: the study of morphemes and their different forms (allomorphs), and the way they combine in word formation. There are two fields morphology concerns: inflection and word formation. Infection: with number, person, finiteness, aspect and case.e.g. number: table/tablesperson, finiteness, aspect: talk/talks/talking/talked, case: boy/boys Word formation: compound and derivationCompound (free morpheme + free morpheme)e.g. daybreak, heartfelt, into, breakthroughDerivation (free morpheme + affixes)e.g. nation-al, fool-ish, work-er, dis-card3.4 Morphonology or morphonemics3.4.1.Definition: Morphophonology or morphophonemics is the study of the interrelationships between phonology and morphology.one morphemenumber of phonemesexamplesmono-phonemedogs, tellerbi-phonemewatches, wantedmonosyllablelove-lysyllable + phonemeteller, watchespolysyllable fa-mi-lyTable 3 The counterpoint of morpheme and phoneme3.4.2 Allomorph: a variant of a morpheme in certain instances, e.g. the change in forms of the plurality morpheme s: boys, boxes, and children.3.4.3 Morphological processLike a phonological process, a morphological process involves the change of the shape of a morpheme conditioned by phonological or morphological factors. Phonologically conditionede.g. injustice/infirm vs. imperfect/impossible morphologically conditioned e.g. boxes vs. oxen (cf. boys vs. books, books vs. boxes)3.5 Lexical change3.5.1 Lexical change proper (vocabulary) Invention: Kodak, Coke, nylon Blending: two words are blended by joining the initial part of the first word and the final or initial part of the second.e.g. smog (smoke + fog), modem (modulator + demodulator) Abbreviation: ad (advertisement), plane (aeroplane) Acronym: made up from the first letters of the name of an organization or scientific terms.e.g. WTO, UNESCO, Aids, radar Back-formation: where a shorter word is derived by deleting an imagined affix from a longer form already in the language. e.g. edit (edit), lase (laser) Analogy: this can account for the co-existence of two forms, regular and irregular, in the conjugation of some English verbs.e.g. worked (wrought),slayed (slew) Borrowing: atom (Greek), cancer (Latin), entail (French), hamburger (German), kung-fu (China)3.5.2 Phonological change (pronunciation) Loss of sound: night (niht), laboratory Addition: rapscallion Metathesis (alteration in sequence): ask (ax), bird (brid) Assimilation: impolite, illegal, irrevocable (variants of in-)3.5.3 Morphological change (inflection) Third person singular forms of verbs: does (doeth), goes (goeth), has (hath) Plural forms of nouns: seeds (seedes), ways (wayes) Possessive case: the universitys campus (the campus of the university) 3.5.4 Syntactical change (syntax) Singular comparative: gladder (more gladder) Negation: He did not see you. (He saw you not) Postponed prepositions: That person is impossible to work with. Objective case of relative noun: The girl who(m) he saw is a doctor. Phrasal structure: equally as good (equally good + just as good) Sentential structure: There is no use getting there before nine.(Theres no use in getting+ Its no use getting)3.5.5 Semantic change (meaning) Broadening (specific to general): e.g. bird (young bird, any kind of bird), task (tax imposed, a piece of work) Narrowing (general to specific): e.g. hound (dog, a special kind of dog), deer (beast, a particular kind of animal), knight (youth, a medieval gentlman-soldier) Meaning shift: as a result of its metaphorical usagee.g. bead (prayer, prayer bead, and small ball-shaped piece of glass, metal or wood) Class shift: zero-derivation or conversioneg. to plan (n.), to engineer (n.), to hog (n.) Folk etymology: resulting from an incorrect notion of the origin or meaning of the term or from the influence of more familiar terms.e.g. cockroach (cucaracha), sparrowgrass (asparagus)3.5.6 Orthographic change (spelling) Since writing is a recording of the sound system, phonological changes will no doubt set off graphitic changes.e.g. sun (sunne), Jesus (Iesus), sat (sate)Questions for discussion:1. How does Chinese lexicon change? Give examples.2. What reasons are responsible for disappearance of words?(The end of Chapter )Chapter SyntaxThe word syntax, derived originally from Greek, is made up of two morphemes: syn and tax. The former means “together”, and the latter “to arrange”, hence the literal meaning “a setting out together” or “arrangement”. In 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.4.1 The traditional approach4.1.1 Central idea: A sentence is seen as a sequence of words. Therefore, the traditional approach involves a great deal of study of the word, such as, parts of speech, and word functions.4.1.2 Category: the defining properties of units like noun and verb. Noun (pronoun) category number: I (singular)/we (plural), a book/some books, He speaks English./They speak English.gender: his (masculine)/her (feminine), actor/actresscase: nominative (I), accusative (me), vocative (Oh, my god.), genitive (my),dative (I gave a book to him.), ablative (He opened the door with a key.) Verb category tense: present, past, futureaspect: simple, progressive, perfectvoice: active, passiveQuestions for discussion: 1. Are there any other numbers, genders or cases? 2. What are possible disadvantages of the traditional approach?4.1.3 Concord and government Concord (also agreement): the requirement that the forms of two or more words in a syntactic relationship should agree with each other in terms of some categories, e.g. this man/these men. Government (case control): a type of control over the form of some words by other words in certain syntactic constructions. For example, in She gave him a book., gave demands an accusative him. 4.2 The structural approach4.2.1 Central idea: Linguistic units are interrelated with each other in a structure (or system), not as isolated bits.4.2.2 Syntagmatic and paradigmatic relations Syntagmatic relations: a relation between one item and others in a sequence, or between all 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. Paradigmatic relations: a relation holding between elements replaceable with each other at a particular place in a structure, or between one element present and the others absent. For example, in the context The is smiling, possible elements occurring here are boy, girl, man, etc. these words are said to be in a paradigmatic relation.Questions for discussion: 1. What are the conditions the words in a syntagmatic and paradigmatic relations?4.2.3 Immediate constituent analysis (IC Analysis) Basic conceptsconstruction: a syntactic structure, e.g. a phrase, a clause, a sentenceconstituent: an element of a constructionimmediate constituent: a constituent directly below the level of a constructionultimate constituent: the last level of constituents For instance, poor John and ran away are the immediate constituents of the construction Poor John ran away. Poor and John are the immediate constituents of poor John, and ran and away the ICs of ran away. The four words are all the ultimate constituents of the sentence. IC Analysis: the analysis of a sentence in terms of it ICs-word groups, which are in turn analyzed into the immediate constituents of their own and the process goes on until the ultimate constituents are reached.The analysis may be carried out with brackets as: ( (Poor) (John) ) ( (ran) (away) )It may also be more easily shown with a tree diagram:Poor John ran away Figure 6 A tree diagram for IC Analysis Advantages: structure demonstrated clearly as to reveal potential ambiguitiesThe phrase more expensive clothes may imply (a) clothes are more expensive, and (b) expensive clothes are more. This ambiguity will be shown by a labeled tree diagram as in Figure 7 on the next page. ProblemsBinary divisions are not always possible, as there will be a three-way division, as in men and women and leave the book on the shelf. Discontinuous constituents will pose technical problems for tree diagrams, say make it up and the love of God.more expensive clothes more expensive clothesAdj Adj N Adv Adj N NP AP NP NPFigure 7 A labeled tree diagramQuestions for discussion:1. Compare and contrast the traditional and structural approaches.2. Is it possible to solve the problems of IC Analysis? How or why?4.3 The generative approachBy the generative approach we mean the particular type of linguistic theory originated with the American linguist Noam Chomsky. His theory has undergone a number of changes ever since its first appearance in 1957.4.3.1 Deep and surface structuresMorphophonemic componentTransformational componentPhrase structure component deep surface structure structure Figure 8 Syntactic Structures 1957 Deep structure may be defined as abstract representation of the syntactic properties of a construction, while surface structure is the final stage in the syntactic derivation of a construction. The phrase structure component has phrase structure rules as followsS NP+VP, VP V+NP, NP Det+N, etc. The transformational component has transformational rules to change the deep structures generated by the phrase structure component into surface structure. The morpho-phonemic component is responsible for the correct spelling and pronunciation of the word in the surface structure.4.3.2 The standard theoryTransformational componentBase componentCategories lexicon deep surface structure structrurePhonological componentSemantic componentFigure 9 The standard theory 1965 A semantic component is added, which is a natural development in that the ideal speaker-hearers knowledge of his language inevitably includes his knowledge about meaning. The base component and the transformational component together make up the syntactic component.4.3.3 The extended standard theoryThe standard theory gets extended as evidence arises that: The principle that transformations do not change meaning cannot be held with the passive transformation. Surface structure also has some bearing on semantic interpretations.Transformational componentBase componentCategories lexicon deep surface structure structrurePhonological componentSemantic componentFigure 10 The extended standard theory 19724.4 The functional approach4.4.1 Functional sentence perspective One main idea of the Prague school:A sentence may be analyzed from the functional side as well as the grammatical side. Theme (starting point) and rheme (core)Theme refers to “that which is known or at least obvious in the given situation and from which the speaker proceeds”.Rheme refers to “what the speaker states about, or in regard to, the starting point of the utterance”. For example, in the following two sentences, in the shop and my father are themes and the rest elements are rhemes.In the ship sit young apprentices. (Subjective order)My father wrote a letter to me. (Objective order) Communication dynamism (CD)By CD Firbas means “the extent to which the sentence element contributes to the development of the communication”. CD analysis assigns various degrees of thematicity, or rhematicity, to different sentence elements.4.4.2 Systemic-functional grammar The linguistic theory has been developed by the British born Australian linguist M.A.K. Halliday. It has two characteristics: systemic and functionalApproachesTraditional (rules)Structural (tree)Generative (machine)Functional (program)Developmentfirst Greek, later Latin, and then to other languages Saussure 1916Language 1933Propos