语言学教程-知识点总结.doc

What is linguistics?
definition: Linguistics is generally defined as scientific study of language.
1What is language? Language can be generally defined as a system of arbitrary vocal symbols used for human communication
The main features of language:
Language is a system. Elements of language are arranged according to rules; can’t be combined at will. e.g. *bkli, *I apple eat.
Language is arbitrary in the sense that there is no intrinsic connection between the word and the thing it denotes, e.g. “pen” by any other name is the thing we use to write with.
language is vocal because the primary medium is sound for all languages; writing system came much later than spoken form.
Language is human-specific . It is different from the communication systems other forms of life possess,
e.g. bird songs, bee dance, animal cries.
symbolic---- words are associated with objects, actions and ideas by convention.
“A rose by any other name would smell as sweet”----Shakespeare
Design Features of Language?
Design features” refers to the defining properties of human language that distinguish it from any animal system of communication

Design features
Arbitrariness

Duality
Productivity/Creativity

Displacement
Arbitrariness at the syntactic level: language is not arbitrary at the syntactic level.
He came in and sat down.
He sat down and came in.
He sat down after he came in.
The link between a linguistic sign and its meaning is a matter of convention
Saussure: the forms of linguistic signs bear no natural relationship to their meaning (No logical
connection between sounds and meanings.)
Arbitrary relationship between the sound of a morpheme and its meaning, even with onomatopoeic words:
The dog barks bow wow in English but “汪汪汪” in Chinese.
Duality refers to the property of language with two levels of structure, one of sounds and the other of meanings. At one level, the sounds, which are meaningless in isolation, can be grouped and regrouped into units of meaning.For example, sounds such as f, g, d, o, mean nothing separately. When combined together, they take on meaning, as in fog, dog, god.
Productivity/CreativityIt means language is resourceful because of its duality and its recursiveness. It refers to the property that language enables language users to produce or understand an indefinite number of sentences includiing novel sentences by use of a finite set of rules.
Displacement Human languages enable their users to symbolize objects, events and concepts which are not present (in time and space) at the moment of communication.
Thus, we can refer to Confucius, or the North Pole, even though the first has been dead for over 2550 years and the second is situated far away from us.

Origin of language

1.The divine-origin theory---- Language is a gift of God to mankind
2. The invention theory---- imitative, cries of nature, the grunts of men working together.
a. The bow-wow theory
b. The pooh-pooh theory pain, anger and joy
c. The yo-he-ho theory
3.The evolutionary theory---- the result of physical and psychological development

Functions of language
1. Informative function
Language is the instrument of thought and people often feel need to speak their thoughts aloud. The use of language to record the facts is a prerequisite of social development. The informative function is indeed a crucial function of language.
It is also called ideational function in the framework of functional grammar.
2. Interpersonal function
For example, the way in which people address others and refer to themselves( e.g. Dear Sir, Dear Professor, Johnny, yours, your obedient servant.) ) indicate the various grades of interpersonal relations.
3. Performative function
the performative function of language is primarily to change the social status of persons, as in marriage ceremonies, the sentencing of criminals, the blessing of children, the naming of a ship at a launching ceremony, and the cursing of enemies.
The kind of language employed in performative verbal acts is usually quite formal and even ritualized.
The performative function can extend to the control of reality as on some magical or religious occasions.
For example, in Chinese when someone breaks a bowl or a plate the host or the people present are likely to say 岁岁平安 as a means of controlling the invisible forces which the believers feel might affect their lives adversely.
4.Emotive function
The emotive function of language is one of the most powerful uses of language because it is crucial in changing the emotional status of an audience for or against someone or something.
It is a means of getting rid of our nervous energy when we are under stress, e.g. swear words, obscenities, involuntary verbal reactions to a piece of art or scenery; conventional words/phrases, e.g.
God, My, Damn it, What a sight, Wow, Ugh, Oh.
5. Phatic communion
• Phatic communion refers to the social interaction of language, originating from Malinowski's study of the functions of language performed by Trobriand Islanders. For example,
Mrs. P sneezes violently.
Mrs. Q: Bless you.
Mrs. P: Thank you.
Good morning, God bless you, Nice day
“I must go home now, or my husband will beat me
6. Recreational function
The recreational function of a language is often overlooked because it seems so restrictive in purpose and supposedly so limited in usefulness.
However, no one will deny the use of language for the sheer joy of using it, such as a baby's babbling or a chanter's chanting.
To take one example, the well-known movie《刘三姐》features a scene of “对歌” (song dueling) mostly for the sheer joy of playing on language.

7.Metalingual function
• Our language can be used to talk about itself.
Main branches of linguistics

Phonetics
Phonology
Morphology
Syntax
Semantics
Phonetics studies speech sounds, including the production of speech, that is how speech sounds are actually made, transmitted and received, the description and classification of speech sounds, words and connected speech, etc.
Phonology studies the rules governing the structure, distribution, and sequencing of speech sounds and the shape of syllables..
Morphology is concerned with the internal organization of words. It studies the minimal units of meaning — morphemes and word-formation processes.
Although many people think of words as the basic meaningful elements of a language，many words can be broken down into still smaller units, called morphemes.

Syntax is about principles of forming and understanding correct sentences.
The form or structure of a sentence is governed by the rules of syntax, which specify word order, sentence organization, and the relationships between words, word classes and other sentence elements.
Semantics examines how meaning is encoded in a language.
It is not only concerned with meanings of words as lexical items, but also with levels of language below the word and above it, e.g. meaning of morphemes and sentences.
Important distinctions in linguistics

Descriptive vs. prescriptive
prescriptive
Synchronic vs. diachronic
Langue & parole
Competence & performance

The first is a prescriptive command, while the second is a descriptive statement.
The distinction lies in prescribing how things ought to be and describing how things are.
They represent two different types of linguistic study.
If a linguistic study aims to describe and analyze the language people actually use, it is said to be descriptive; if the linguistic study aims to lay down rules for “correct and standard” behavior in using language, i. e. to tell people what they should say and what they should not say, it is said to be prescriptive.
Synchronic vs. diachronic
A synchronic description takes a fixed instant (usually, but not necessarily, the present) as its point of observation. Most grammars are of this kind.
Diachronic linguistics is the study of a language through the course of its history.
Langue & par le
Saussure distinguished the linguistic competence of the speaker and the actual phenomena or data of linguistics (utterances) as langue and parole.
Langue ---- the abstract linguistic system shared by all members of the speech community.
Parole ---- the realization of langue in actual use
Competence and performance
This fundamental distinction is discussed by Chomsky in his Aspects of the Theory of Syntax (1965).
A language user's underlying knowledge about the system of rules is called his linguistic competence.
Performance refers to the actual use of language in concrete situations.
Chomsky looks at language from a psychological point of view and to him competence is a property of the mind of each individual

2. Phonology
Main points：
Phones, phonemes & allophones
* Minimal pairs &
Complementary distribution
* Suprasegmental features
Both phonetics and phonology concern the study of speech sounds. The same root: phono-
Phonetics语音学 mainly deals with the description, classification and transcription of speech sounds.(study how speech sounds are produced, transmitted ,and perceived.)研究语音的发生传递和感知。
Phonology 音系学explores the patterns that govern the combination of sounds, i.e, it studies how speech sounds are grouped together to convey meaning in linguistic communication
the phonologists have found that the [ l ] sounds do not occur at random in English; their distribution follows a nicely complementary pattern:
clear [ l ]: before a vowel, such as loaf
dark [ l ]: at the end of the word after a vowel
and before a consonant, such as tell quilt
2.2 phone/phoneme/allophones
phone (音素，语音)
—the phonetic segment and unit is called a phone语音的一部分
In studying speech sounds, we divide this stream into pieces that we call segments.
For example: man [ m ] [æ ] [n ]
2.2.1 Definition
Phoneme—音位a sound segment with distinctive value. It is the smallest unit of sound in a language to distinguish words.
/ p / : [ p ] [ ph ]
/ l / : [ l ] [ l ]
2.2.2 Function — to distinguish different words/meanings.
③ allophones (音位变体)
—the different phones that represent the one phoneme are called allophones of that phoneme.带有同一个音位的不同的音
bean / bi:n / phonemic transcription
[ bi:n ] phonetic transcription
pit / pit / phonemic transcription
[ phit ] phonetic transcription
* The same phonemes /i:/ and /p/ are pronounced as different sounds in different phonetic contexts.
* There is no one-to-one correspondence between phonemes and phonetic segments in a language—one phoneme may be realized (pronounced) as more than one phonetic segments.
2.2.4 minimal pair/minimal set 最小对立体
For two words (pronunciation concerned), if they are identical in every way except for one sound segment that occurs in the same place in the string, then they are minimal pairs(最小对立体).
If more than two sound combinations are involved, then they are minimal sets(最小对立组).
sip [sip] sit [sit
2.2.3 How to determine a phoneme in a language
The easiest way is _ to find the minimal pairs
A basic way is —to substitute one sound segment in a word with another sound, and then to see whether this way can result in a different word
2.3 Distinctive features
It is this phonetic feature [±voiced]that distinguishes the two words.
When a feature distinguishes one phoneme from another, it is a distinctive feature, such as [±voiced] .
sip [sip] zip [zip]
[s] [z]
voiceless voiced
[-voiced [+voiced]

Example 1:
bean [bi:n] [bi:n]
An oral [i:] is used to substitute the nasalized [i:], the
meaning of the word is not changed, though people may
feel your pronunciation is a little bit strange.
Example 1: bean [bi:n]元音鼻化非
[±nasal] is a non-distinctive feature in English vowels.
2[± aspiration] is a non-distinctive feature in English consonants.
pill till kill
[ph il] [th il] [khil]

spill still skill
[spil] [stil] [skil]
In English, a voiceless stop
—aspirated at the beginning of a word
—un-aspirated after an initial [s]

2.5 Complementary distribution(互补分布) & phonemic contrast(音位对立)
* For two phonetically similar sound segments,
① If they are two distinctive phonemes, they are said to be in phonemic contrast.
e.g. [ s ] / [z ] [ b ] / [ p ] [ f ] / [ v ]
② If they are allophones of the same phoneme, then they occur in different phonetic contexts
but not contrast meanings. Then, the allophones are said to be in complementary distribution.
e.g. [ i: ] / [ i: ] [ ph ] / [ p ]
2.6 phonological rules
2.6.2 Assimilation rule (同化规则)
—It assimilates one sound segment to another by “copying” or “spreading” a feature of a sequential sound, thus making the two phones more similar.
Assimilation is a process in which a segment takes on a feature or features from a neighboring segment, thus making the two segments more similar.
bean bom / bi:n / / bɔm /
vowel nasalization rule[ bi:n ] [ bɔm ]
Regressive assimilation: 顺同化a following sound is influencing a preceding sound.
Example; the endings for the plural takes the voicing feature from a preceding consonants.
cups /kΛps/ kubs /kΛbz/
pats /pæts/ pads /pædz
Progressive assimilation:
Assimilation can occur across syllable or word boundaries
Examples: a. pan [ŋ] cake
b. sun [ŋ] glasses
c. You can [ŋ] keep them
d. He can [ŋ] go now
rule: the alveolar nasal/n/ becomes the velar nasal [ŋ] before the velar [k]
a general rule : voiced fricatives are transformed into voiceless fricatives before voiceless segments
voiced fricative voiceless/_______ voiceless
Devoicing
2.6.3 Deletion rule (省略规则)
—A sound may be deleted even though it
may be orthographically represented.
e.g.
sign /sain/ design /di:zain/
signature /signeit∫ə/
Delete a [g] when it occurs before a final nasal consonant. designation /desig nei∫ən/
2.7 Suprasegmental features
2.7.1 Definition
Distinctive features that occur in units larger than sound segments, such as the syllables, words, phrases and sentences, are called suprasegmental features (超音段特征).
The features include tone/pitch, stress and intonation.
Syllable
monosyllabic单音节: with one syllable
polysyllabic:多音节 with more than one syllable
2.7.2 Syllable
A syllable that have no coda is called an open syllable while a syllable with code is called a close syllable.
In English: (((c)c)c) v(((c)c)c)c)
si