当代语言学导论复习要点(详细!含课后单词).doc

Introduction to Contemporary LinguisticsChapter1l Human superiority lies in his unique endowment-the ability to talk, or rather, to communicate by means of language.l Talmud: god created the world by a word, instantaneously, without toil or pains.l Widdowson: the primacy of language in the way human beings conceive of the world.l Language is a vehicle of power, for control, for creation, and for change.l The study of human language is called linguistics.Linguistics deals with human language as a whole or as particular languages.1. As a whole: the system of human communication which consists of the structured arrangement of sounds (or their written representation) into larger units, e.g. morphemes, words, sentences, utterances.2. As particular language: like French language, they are particular systems of human communication used by people living in different parts of the world.l There is a continuum from one language to another.l Varieties of language: Any particular language is in essence a set of varieties. 1. local varieties区域变体dialects and accents(the former differ from each other in pronunciation, vocabulary, and even grammar; the latter only in pronunciation )2. social varietiessociolects社会方言(=social dialects , used by people of different classes, ages, or sexes ),3. historical varietiestemporal variety.(e.g. the 17th century English)4. stylistic or occupational varieties-registers语域(e.g. formal English, scientific English)5. individual varietiesidiolects个人语言. 6. Usually a language has an officially declared or generally considered standard dialect(e.g. Putonghua in China, General American in the US)From Prescriptivism to Descriptivisml Prescriptivism is the view that one variety of language has an inherently higher value than others.(try to impose rules from some high prestige language to some lower prestige language, like Latin and English)l Descriptivism is the policy of describing languages as they are bound to exist. Usages of different varieties should be observed and recorded instead of being judged with some imposed norms.Endowed or conventional?l Platos problem: How can every human being develop a rich system of linguistic knowledge on the basis of limited and fragmentary empirical evidence? l Side of endowment: nativists(天生论) or mentalists（心智说）Plato:1. Mans knowledge came from universal truths.2. There was a universally correct and acceptable logic of language for man to follow in expressing his ideas.3. Knowledge of language was not learned but recalled.Chomsky:There is a biological, physiological entity inside our brain which decides what we speak.Chomsky has given a name to this entity-UG, or universal grammar. His epistemology of the knowledge of language foes as follows:1. Every human being has the language competence能力, because he has the inborn UG which other species lack.2. UG is the initial state of the human language faculty语言器官/机制 which alone cannot enable a human baby to speak. A baby needs to be exposed to the linguistic environment of a certain language and accumulate experience.3. Due to the effect of later experience, the babys mind develops from the initial state into the steady state, which corresponds to the competence of speaking a specific human language.l Side of convention: behaviorist or empiricistsAristotle: knowledge of language was arrived at by convention and agreement of the speakers of a given language.Xun zi: a name was accepted through public agreement, and the appropriateness of naming a thing lay in convention.The power of language exists in its countless varieties, not relying on any universal standard.l Connectionism l Diachronic(历经时间的): focus on the comparison between languages and the exploration of the historical change and variation of some ancient languages./ of, relating to, or dealing with phenomena (as of language or culture) as they occur or change over a period of timel Synchronic（共时的）: research of the facts of language agreed upon or shared by his members of language community at a given point in time./ concerned with events existing in a limited time period and ignoring historical antecedentsGlossary l Endowments: (天赋) the natural quality that a person is made rich of from the birth.l Register: (语域) the words, style, and grammar used by speakers and writers in particular conditions, namely a socially defined variety of language. l Idiolect: (个人语言) the linguistic system of an individual speaker.l Sociolect: (社会方言) also social dialect. Variety of a language defined by social factors such as age, religion, ethnicity, or socioeconomic status. Sociolects may be classed as high or low (in status).l Prescriptivism :(规定主义) the imposition of arbitrary norms upon a language, often in defiance of normal usage.l Descriptivism ：（描写主义）the policy of describing languages as they are bound to exist.l Nativism: (天生论) philosophical and psychological position which holds that cognitive development of humans arises from “innate ideas”. The nativist position has been used to explain how children are able to learn language and contrasts with the belief that all human knowledge comes from experience (empiricism).l Mentalism: （心智说）psychological and philosophical concept picked up and developed by Chomsky(1965), which attempts to describe the internal (innate) language mechanism that provides the basis for the creative aspect of language development and use.l Dualism: （二元论）a philosophical system that recognizes two ultimate and independent principles in the scheme of things, such as mind and matter.l Monism: (一元论) a general name for those philosophical theories which deny the duality of matter and mind. l Universal Grammar (UG): （普通语法）the genetically endowed information consisting of principles and parameters that enable the child to deduce a grammar from the primary linguistic data.l Language competence: (语言能力) knowledge of language; the linguistic capacity of a fluent speaker of a language.l Parameter: (参数) a dimension of grammatical variation between different languages or different varieties of the same language.l Empiricism: (经验论) philosophical and psychological position which holds that the psychological development of humans arise primarily from experience and learning.l Connectionism: (连通主义) a theory of cognition which draws inspiration from the way the billions of neurons in the brain are interconnected in complex ways to produce a network of associations. It holds that the complexity of language emerges from associative learning processes being exposed to a massive and complex environment.Chapter2l Speculations: origin of languagePlato-legislatorHerder-godUniversal harmony is embraced as the foundation of modern linguistics as a science.Galilean thesis-nature is perfectl Observationl ResearchEvery persons lexical knowledge of his first language is tacit and natural, with a tendency to influence, often unknowingly, his second language learning. This influence is called transfer.l Three adequacies: 1. Observational adequacy2. Descriptive adequacy3. Explanatory adequacy (providing a descriptively adequate grammar for every natural language, and does so in terms of maximally constrained set of universal principles which represent psychologically plausible natural principles of mental computation.)l Testing A theory in science must not be pure speculation but testable at observational, descriptive, and explanatory levels.l Science tells us that nature is a physical continuum连续体, which does not break itself into physics, chemistry, psychology, linguistics; these disciplines学科are not facts but our decisions.Glossaryl L1: (第一语言) a persons first languagel L2: (第二语言) a persons second language. To be more specific, one could refer to a persons L3, L4, and so on. However, the general term L2 is frequently used to refer to any language learning or used after the first language has been learned.l Fossilization: (僵化) incomplete L2 acquisition featured by the fact that progress in a certain aspect of the target language stops and the learners language becomes fixed at an intermediate state. It can take a number of forms, such as fossilized accent or syntax. Fossilization can be a permanent feature of the learners language.Chapter3 phoneticsl Phonetics: the science of speech sounds. It aims to provide the set of features or properties that can be used to describe and distinguish all the sounds used in human language.In accordance with the three phases just mentioned, phonetics is divided into three sub-fields. 1. Articulatory phonetics发音语音学 studies speech production by the speech organs;2. Acoustic phonetics声学语音学 studies physical properties of speech sounds, the way sounds travel from the speaker to the hearer; 3. Auditory phonetics听觉语音学 studies the perception of speech sounds in the human auditory and cognitive system.l IPA: International Phonetic AlphabetThe design principles of IPA were that there should be a separate letter for each distinctive sound, and that the same symbol should be used for that sound in any language in which it appears.l A “sound” people say they produce is actually a combination of sounds called a syllable, which is often related to a chest pulse.(syllable=sound)The properties of these separate sounds, or segments in phoneticians jargon, can be described in several dimensions, the place of articulation and the manner of articulation.1. The place of articulation refers to the point in the vocal tract at which the main closure or narrowing is made so as to modify the flow of air from the chest to the mouth in producing a sound.2. The manner of articulation refers to the type of constriction收缩 or movement that occurs at any place of articulation.l Articulation The production of different speech sounds through the use of these organs is known as articulation.Speech organs: the vocal cords(声带) the lungs the windpipe(trachea) the pharynx(咽) the nose the mouthA main source of vibration is provided by the vocal cords. The vibration of the vocal cords also gives us pitch.l Consonants Consonants are sounds made by a closure in the vocal tract, or by a narrowing from which air cannot escape without producing audible friction.摩擦Two reference points are involved in defining consonantal places of articulation. One is the active articulator which moves; the other is the passive articulator with which the active one makes contact.Classified according to the places of articulation: eleven possible places of articulation for consonants1. Bilabial双唇音, formed by bringing the lips together , e. g. p , m . Here the function of lips is somewhat complicated: they both can be regarded as the active and passive articulators simultaneously.2. Labio-dental唇齿音 , formed by the lower lip against the upper teeth, e . g. f .3. Dental齿音, formed by placing the tip of the tongue against the upper teeth, e . g. .4. Alveolar齿龈音, formed by placing the tip or blade of the tongue against the alveolar ridge, e. g. t .5. Palatal腭音, formed by the front of the tongue against the hard palate, namely, the roof of the mouth, e . g. j .6. Palato- alveolar腭龈音, formed midway between the places of articulation for palatals and alveolars: the blade ( and sometimes the tip) of the tongue articulates with the alveolar ridge, with a simultaneous raising of the front of the tongue towards the hard palate , e. g. .7. Velar软腭音, formed by the back of the tongue against the soft palate, e. g. k .8. Glottal声门音, formed by the vocal cords coming together to cause a closure or friction, e .g. h .9. Retrofle卷舌音, formed when the apex of the tongue is curled back in the direction of the hard palate, as heard in many Indian English accents.10. Uvular小舌音, formed by the back of the tongue against the uvula, as heard in some accents of French.11. Pharyngeal咽音, formed in the pharynx, the part of the throat above the larynx. Specifically, the front wall of t he pharynx articulates with the back wall, as heard in Arabic .Classified according to the manner of articulation1. The first factor is the degree of the constriction of airflow（气流的阻塞）. At least six main classes can be distinguished in English.1) Plosive爆破音, formed by completely closing the air passage and suddenly removing the obstacle , so that the air escapes making an explosive sound, e. g. p , d . It belongs to a broader category called“stop”which includes closures produced by air streams not from the lungs, as encountered in some southern African languages.2) Nasal鼻音, formed with the soft palate lowered, thus allowing air to resonate in the nose, e . g. m .3) Affricate塞擦音, a consonant which starts as a plosive, but instead of ending with plosion, ends with a fricative made in the same place, e. g. t .4) Liquid流音, formed by some obstruction of the air stream in the mouth, which seems not enough to cause any real constrict ion or friction, e. g. l , r . l is called a lateral liquid, because in making it, an obstacle is placed in the middle of the mouth, leaving the air free to escape at one or both sides.5) Fricative擦音 , formed by a narrowing of the air passage at some point so that the air in escaping makes audible frication. e. g. f , z . Some fricatives are also called sibilants齿擦音, which are made with a groove- like structure in the front part of the tongue, producing a kind of hissing sound, e. g. s , .6) Glide滑音, sometimes called semi -vowel because it is typically produced with the tongue moving, or“gliding, to or from the position of a nearby vowel, e.g. h , w .2. The second factor is voicing（浊音）. Voice is caused by the vibration of the vocal cords.3. The third factor is aspiration(送气音). This is the sound of air rushing through the vocal tract, usually found after the release of plosive consonants in some situation.l Vowels Vowels are sounds in which there is no obstruction to the flow of air as it passes from the larynx to the lips.Different vowels result from changing the shape of the mouth; all of them are voiced continuous sounds.The qualities of vowels depend upon the positions of the tongue and lips.i: close vowels , a: open vowels, e semi-closed vowels, : semi-open vowelsVowel quality is also largely dependent on the shape of the lips.Four rounded vowels: u: u:, they are all back vowels.a:is the only English back vowel that occurs without lip rounding.There is another interesting rule: all the long vowels( e.g. i: u:)are tense vowels紧元音, and all the short vowels (i u) are lax vowels松元音.Every vowel constitutes a single syllable. The vowel can be a monophthong, a diphthong, or even a triphthong that contains three distinctive qualities, e.g.ai . However, not every syllable contains a vowel. The second syllable of the word littlelitl has no vowel after the plosive t but a liquid l.l PhonemesPhonemes have no meaning of themselves, but they are the smallest linguistic unit, whose change will lead to the change of meaning. A phoneme is defined as the smallest unit of sound in a language which can distinguish two words. (/)l Allophone Allophone is the phonetic variant of a phoneme, which can be substituted of another without bring about a change of meaning. ()Complementary distribution and free variationA phonetic property特性，特质 that distinguishes phonemes from one another is called a distinctive feature.l Phonology and phoneticsPhonetics is more specifically the study of how speech sounds are produced, what their physical properties are, and how they are interpreted. (how)Phonology is a description of the sounds of a particular language and the rules governing the distribution of those sounds. Furthermore, phonology is also concerned with the universal properties of natural language sound systems and aims at revealing the general principles of the sound patterns of all languages. (what)l Stress and pitchPitch is the auditory sensation of the height of a sound.There are two ways in which languages make use of pitch variations in speech.1. In languages such as English, French, and German, regular sequences of different pitches characterize stretches of speech between pauses and are known collectively as intonation. The differences of intonation may correlate with different types of utterances. 2. In languages such as Chinese , Vietnamese, Thai, and Zulu, pitch differences help to distinguish one word from another and may be the only differentiating feature between two or more words whose composition is the same in terms of consonants and vowels. Pitch differences used in these ways are called tones and these languages are called tone languages.Stress, pitch, tone and intonation are also called suprasegmentals超切分音位 because they relate to aspects of pronunciation that go beyond the production of individual segments.Glossaryl Phonetics: (语音学) the study of speech sounds; how they are produced in the vocal tract (articulatory phonetics发音语音学)，their physical properties (acoustic phonetics声学语音学)，and how they are perceived (auditory phonetics听觉语音学).l Phonology: (音系学) the study of the sound system of a language; how the particular sounds contrast in each language to form an integrated system for encoding information and how such systems differ from one language to another.l Vocal folds: (声带) also vocal cords/lips/bands. Two muscular folds in the larynx(喉) that vibrate as a source of sounds.l Vocal tract: (声道) the connected passages inside the head which form the system used to produce speech. It starts at the larynx and includes the pharynx, the mouth and the nasal cavity.l Glottis: (声门) the aperture between the vocal folds.l Larynx: (喉头) the par