《语言学分支介绍》PPT课件.ppt

1、Invitations to Linguistics,Language,Linguistics,Design features Functions of Language,Branches of Linguistics Important distinctions in Linguistics,Invitations to Linguistics,Design features: the distinctive features of human language that essentially make human language distinguishable from languag

2、es of animals. Function: the role language plays in communication or in particular social situations.,Design Features,Arbitrariness: the absence of any physical correspondence between linguistic signals and the entities to which they refer. Duality: the structural organization of language into two a

3、bstract levels: meaningful units and meaningless segments. Displacement: the ability of language to refer to contexts removed from the speakers immediate situation.,Functions of Language,Phatic communion: said of talk used to establish atmosphere or maintain social contact. Metalanguage: a language

4、used for talking about language.,Distinctions in Linguistics,Synchronic linguistics: the study of a given language at a given time. Diachronic linguistics: the study of language change through time. A diachronic study of language is a historical study, which studies the historical development of lan

5、guage over a period of time.,Distinctions in Linguistics,Prescriptive: to make authoritarian statement about the correctness of a particular use of language. Descriptive: to make an objective and systematic account of the patterns and use of a language or variety.,Distinctions in Linguistics,Langue:

6、 the abstract linguistic system shared by all members of a speech community. Parole: the concrete utterances of a speaker.,Distinctions in Linguistics,Language competence: the ideal users knowledge of rules of his language, that is , of its sound structure, its words and its grammatical rules. A tra

7、nsformational generative grammar is a model of language competence. Language performance: the language actually used by people in speaking or writing.,Speech Sounds,Phonetics,Phonology,Description and classification of consonants and vowels,Basic concepts: phone, phoneme, allophone Phonological proc

8、esses: assimilation Suprasegmentals: syllable, stress, intonation, tone,Phonetics,Phonetics: the study of how speech sounds are produced, transmitted, and perceived. It can be divided into three main areas of study articulatory phonetics, acoustic phonetics and perceptual/auditory phonetics. Articul

9、atory phonetics: the study of the production of speech sounds, or the study of how speech sounds are produced.,Phonetics,Vowel: the sounds in the production of which no articulators come very close together and the air stream passes through the vocal tract without obstruction are called vowels. Cons

10、onants: the sounds in the production of which there is an obstruction of the air stream at some point of the vocal tract are called consonants.,Phonetics,Manner of articulation: ways in which articulation of consonants can be accomplished- (a) the articulartors may close off the oral tract for an in

11、stant or a relatively long period; (b) they may narrow the space considerably; or (c) they may simply modify the shape of the tract by approaching each other. Place of articulation: the point where an obstruction to the flow of air is made in producing a consonant.,Phonetics,Voicing: the vibration o

12、f the vocal folds. When the vocal folds are close together, the airstream causes them to vibrate against each other and the resultant sound is said to be “voiced”. When the vocal folds are apart and the air can pass through easily, the sound produced is said to be “voiceless”.,Phonetics,Cardinal vow

13、els: 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 languages.,Phonetics,IPA: a standardized and internationally accepted system of phonic transcription, its basic principle is using a

14、different letter for each distinguishable speech sound. Narrow transcription: the transcription of speech sounds with letter symbols and the diacritics.,Phonetics,Coarticulation: simultaneous or overlapping articulations, as when the nasal quality of a nasal sound affects the preceding or following

15、sound so that the latter becomes nasalized. If the affected sound becomes more like the following sound, it is known as anticipatory coarticulation, if the sound show the influence of the preceding sound, it is perseverative coarticution.,Phonology,Phonology: the study of sound system- the inventory

16、 of distinctive sounds that occur in a language and the patterns into which they fall.,Phonology,Phoneme: It is a collection of distinctive phonetic features. It is a unit of explicit sound contrast. Allophone: Different phones which can represent a phoneme in different environments are called the a

17、llophones of that phoneme. Phone: a phonetic unit or segment. It does not necessarily distinguish meaning. It is a speech sound we use when speaking a language.,Phonology,Minimal pair: When two different forms are identical in every way except for one sound segment which occurs in the same place in

18、the strings, the two words are said to form a minimal pair.,Phonology,Assimilation: a process by which one sound takes on some or all the characteristics of a neighboring sound, a term often used synonymously with “coarticulation”. If a following sound is influencing a preceding sound, it is called

19、regressive “assimilation”; the converse process, in which a preceding sound is influencing a following sound, is known progressive “assimilation.”,Phonology,Suprasegmental features: The phonemic features that occur above the level of the segments are called suprasegmental features. The main supraseg

20、mental feature include stress, intonation and tone.,Phonology,Syllable: an important unit in the study of suprasegmentals. A syllable must have a nucleus or peak, which is often the task of a vowel or possibly that of a syllabic consonant, and often involves an optional set of consonants before and

21、/or after the nucleus.,Phonology,Maximal onset principle: a principle for dividing the syllables when there is a cluster of consonants between two vowels, which states that when there is a choice as to where to place a consonant, it is put into the onset rather than the coda.,Phonology,Stress: the d

22、egree of force used in producing a syllable. When a syllable is produced with more force and is there fore more “prominent”, it is a “stressed” syllable in contrast to a less prominent, “unstressed” syllable.,Phonology,Intonation: the occurrence of recurring fall-rise patterns, each of which is used

23、 with a set of relatively consistent meanings, either on single words or on groups of words of varying length. Tone: a set of fall-rise patterns affecting he meanings of individual words.,Morphology,Types of Morphemes,Inflection and Word Formation,Free morphemes vs. Bound morphemes Affixes, Inflecti

24、onal Affixes and Derivational Affixes Root, Stem,Morphology,Morphology: a branch of grammar which studies the internal structure of words and the rules by which words are formed. Morpheme: the basic unit in the study of morphology and the smallest meaningful components of words.,Morphology,Free morp

25、heme: Free morphemes are independent units of meaning and can be used freely by themselves. Bound morpheme: are those morphemes that cannot be used by themselves, but must be combined with other morphemes to form words that can be used independently.,Morphology,Root: A root is the base form of a wor

26、d which cannot be further analysed without total loss of identity. Stem: A stem is the existing form to which an inflectional affix can be added. A stem can be a bound root, a free morpheme, or a derived form itself. Affix: The morphemes that can be used only when added to another morpheme. Naturall

27、y, affixes belong to the type of “bound ” morphemes.,Morphology,Inflection: The manifestation of grammatical relationships through the addition of inflectional affixes, such as number, tense, person, finiteness, aspect and cases to which they are attached. Derivation: the manifestation of relation b

28、etween stems and affixes through the addition of derivational affixes.,Syntax,Syntactic relations Grammatical construction and its constituents Syntactic function Category Syntactic units Extension of sentences,Syntax,Syntax: the study of the rules governing the ways different constituents are combi

29、ned to form sentences in a language, or the study of the interrelationships between elements in sentence structures. Sentence: a structurally independent unit that usually comprises a number of words to form a complete statement, question or command.,Syntax,Construction: It refers to any syntactic c

30、onstruct 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 construct contains. It can further divided into the external and internal properties. E.g. The boy kicked the ball. The

31、external syntax is an independent clause, while NP (“the boy”), VP (“”kicked) and NP (“the ball”) will be assigned respectively to the different elements in the clause.,Syntax,Constituent: It is a term used in structural sentence analysis for every linguistic unit, which is a part of a larger lingui

32、stic unit. E.g. The boy ate the apple, S(A), the boy (B), ate the apple (C), each part is a constituent. Constituents can be joined together with other constituents to form larger units. If two constituents, in the case of the example above, B (the boy) and C (ate the apple,) are joined to form a hi

33、erarchically higher constituent A, then B and C are said to be immediate constituents of A.,Syntax,Endocentric: Endocentric construction is one whose distribution is functionally equivalent to that of one or more of its constituents, i.e., a word or a group of words, which serves as a definable Cent

34、re or Head. In the phrase two pretty girls, girls is the centre or Head of this phrase or word group.,Syntax,Exocentric: 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

35、 “Center” or “Head” inside the group. Exocentric construction usually includes basic sentence, prepositional phrase, predicate (verb + object ) construction, and connective (be + complement) construction. In the sentence The boy smiled, neither constituent can substitute for the sentence as a whole.

36、,Syntax,Coordination: A common syntactic pattern in English and other languages is formed by grouping together two or more categories of the same type with the help of a conjunction such as and, but or or. This phenomenon is known as coordination. In the construction the lady or the tiger, both NPs

37、the lady and the tiger have equivalent syntactic status, each of the separate constituents can stand for the original construction functionally.,Syntax,Subordination: It refers to the process or result of linking linguistic units so that they have different syntactic status, one being dependent upon

38、 the other, and usually a constituent of the other. Thus the subordinate constituents are words which modify the Head. Consequently, they can be called modifiers. In the phrase swimming in the lake, swimming is the head and in the lake are the words modifying the head.,Syntax,Embedding: Embedding re

39、fers to the means by which one clause is included in another clause in syntactic subordination. E.g. I saw the man who had visited you last year.,Syntax,Recursiveness: It mainly means that a constituent can be embedded within another constituent having the same category, but it can be used to any me

40、ans to extend any constituent. Together with openness, recursiveness is the core of creativity of language. E.g. “I met a man who had a son whose wife sold cookies that she had baked in her kitchen that was fully equipped with electrical appliances that were new”.,Syntax,Category: The term category

41、in some approaches refers to classes and functions in its narrow sense, e.g., noun, verb, subject, predicate, noun phrase, verb phrase, etc. More specifically, it refers to the defining properties of these general units: the categories of the noun, for example, include number, gender, case and count

42、ability; and of the verb, for example, tense, aspect, voice, and so on.,Semantics,Sense relations,Synonymy Antonymy Hyponymy Polysemy Homonymy,Semantics,Semantics: Semantics can be simply defined as the study of meaning. Conceptual meaning: This is the first type of meaning recognized by Leech, whic

43、h he defined as the logical, cognitive, or denotative content. In other words, it overlaps to a large extent with the notion of reference. But Leech also uses “sense” as a briefer term for this conceptual meaning. As a result, Leechs conceptual meaning has two sides: sense and reference.,Semantics,D

44、enotation: In the philosophers usage, denotation involves the relationship between a linguistic unit and the non-linguistic entities to which it refers. Thus it is equivalent to referential meaning. For example, the denotation of human is any person such as John and Mary. Connotation: In the philoso

45、phers usage, connotation, opposite to denotation, means the properties of the entity a word denotes. For example, the connotation of human is “biped”, “featherless”, “rational”, etc.,Semantics,Sense: It is concerned with the inherent meaning of the linguistic form. It is the collection of all the fe

46、atures of the linguistic form; it is abstract and de-contextualized. Reference: It means what a linguistic form refers to in the real, physical world; it deals with the relationship between the linguistic element and the non-linguistic world of experience.,Semantics,Synonymy: It refers to the samene

47、ss or close similarity of meaning or we can say that words that are close in meaning are called synonyms. Polysemy: It refers to different words may have the same or similar meaning; the same one word may have more than one meaning.,Semantics,Homonymy: It refers to the phenomenon that words having d

48、ifferent meanings have the same form, I.e, different words are identical in sound or spelling, or in both. Homophones: refer to two words are identical in sound. e.g. rain /reign. Homographs: refer to two words are identical in spelling. E.g. tear v./ tear n.,Semantics,Hyponymy: It refers to the sen

49、se relation between a more general, more inclusive word and a more specific word. The word which is more general in meaning is called superordinate, and the more specific words are called its hyponyms.,Semantics,Antonymy: It is the term used for oppositeness of meaning on different dimensions. Grada

50、ble antonymy: It is the sense relation between two antonyms which differ in terms of degree. There is an intermediate ground between the two. The denial of one is not necessarily the assertion of the other. Something which is not “good” is not necessarily “bad”. It may simply be “so-so” or “average”

51、.,Semantics,Complementary antonomy: It is the sense relation between two antonyms which are complementary to each other. Not only the assertion of one means the denial of the other, the denial of one also means the assertion of the other. Not only He is alive means “He is not dead”, He is not alive

52、also means “He is dead”.,Semantics,Converse antonymy: It is a special type of antonymy in that the members of a pair do not constitute a positive-negative opposition. They show the reversal of a relationship between two entities. X buys something from Y means the same as Y sells something to X. X is

53、 the parent of Y means the same as Y is the child of X. It is the same relationship seen from two different angles.,Semantics,Relational opposites: This is another name for converse antonyms. As converse antonymy is typically seen in reciprocal social roles, kinship relations, temporal and spatial r

54、elations, these antonyms are also known as relational opposites.,Semantics,Componential analysis: It is a way proposed by the structural semanticists to analyze word meaning. This approach is based upon the belief that meaning of a word can be dissected into meaning components, called semantic featu

55、res.,Semantics,Predication analysis: It is a new approach for sentential meaning analysis. Predication is usually considered and important common category shared by propositions, questions, commands etc. Predication is to break down the sentence into their smaller constituents: argument and predicat

56、e.,Pragmatics,Speech Act Theory,The Theory of Conversational Implicature,Pragmatics,Pragmatics: It is a comparatively new branch of study in the area of linguistics; its development and establishment in the 1960s and 1970s resulted mainly from the expansion of the study of linguistics, especially th

57、at of semantics. A general definition of pragmatics is the study of how speakers of a language use sentences to effect successful communication,. The scope of pragmatic study includes “speech act theory”, “context”, “principle of conversation” etc.,Pragmatics,Context: The notion of context is essent

58、ial to the pragmatic study of language. It is generally considered as constituted by the speaker and the hearer. The shared knowledge is of two types : the knowledge of language they use, and the knowledge about the world, including the general knowledge about the world and the specific knowledge about the situation in which linguistic communication is taking place.,Pragmatics,Sentence meaning: The meaning of a sentence is often studied as the abstract , intrinsic property of the sentence itself in terms of predication. Utterance: It refers to a sentence as what