Design features of language The features that define our human languages can be called design features which can distinguish human language from any animal system of communication. Arbitrariness Duality Creativity Displacement 1.4 Origin of language 1. The bow-wow theory
In primitive times people imitated the sounds of the animal calls in the wild environment they lived and speech developed from that. 2. The pooh-pooh theory
In the hard life of our primitive ancestors, they utter instinctive sounds of pains, anger and joy which gradually developed into language. 3. The “yo-he-ho” theory
As primitive people worked together, they produced some rhythmic grunts which gradually developed into chants and then into language. 1.5 Functions of language As is proposed by Jacobson, language has six functions: 1. Referential: to convey message and information; 2. Poetic: to indulge in language for its own sake; 3. Emotive: to express attitudes, feelings and emotions; 4. Conative: to persuade and influence others through commands and entreaties; 5. Phatic: to establish communion with others; 6. Metalingual: to clear up intentions, words and meanings. Halliday (1994) proposes a theory of metafunctions of language. It means that language has three metafunctions:
1. Ideational function: to convey new information, to communicate a content that is
unknown to the hearer;
2. Interpersonal function: embodying all use of language to express social and personal
relationships;
3. Textual function: referring to the fact that language has mechanisms to make any stretch
of spoken and written discourse into a coherent and unified text and make a living passage different from a random list of sentences.
According to Hu Zhuanglin, language has at least seven functions: 1.5.1 Informative The informative function means language is the instrument of thought and people
often use it to communicate new information. 1.5.2 Interpersonal function The interpersonal function means people can use language to establish and
maintain their status in a society. 1.5.3 Performative 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. 1.5.4 Emotive function
The emotive function is one of the most powerful uses of language because it is so crucial in changing the emotional status of an audience for or against someone or something. 1.5.5 Phatic communion The phatic communion means people always use some small, seemingly
meaningless expressions such as Good morning, God bless you, Nice day, etc., to maintain a comfortable relationship between people without any factual content. 1.5.6 Recreational function The recreational function means people use language for the sheer joy of using it,
such as a baby’s babbling or a chanter’s chanting. 1.5.7 Metalingual function The metalingual function means people can use language to talk about itself. E.g. I
can use the word “book” to talk about a book, and I can also use the expression “the word book” to talk about the sign “b-o-o-k” itself.
1.7 Main branches of linguistics 1.7.1 Phonetics
Phonetics is the study of speech sounds, it includes three main areas: articulatory phonetics, acoustic phonetics, and auditory phonetics.
1.7.2 Phonology
Phonology studies the rules governing the structure, distribution, and sequencing of speech sounds and the shape of syllables.
1.7.3 Morphology
Morphology studies the minimal units of meaning – morphemes and word-formation processes.
1.7.4 Syntax
Syntax refers to the rules governing the way words are combined to form sentences in a language, or simply, the study of the formation of sentences.
1.7.5 Semantics Semantics examines how meaning is encoded in a language. 1.7.6 Pragmatics Pragmatics is the study of meaning in context. 1.8 Macrolinguistics Macrolinguistics is the study of language in all aspects, distinct from microlinguistics, which dealt solely with the formal aspect of language system. Descriptive vs. prescriptive
To say that linguistics is a descriptive science is to say that the linguist tries to discover and record the rules to which the members of a language-community actually conform and does not seek to impose upon them other rules, or norms, of correctness.
Prescriptive linguistics aims to lay down rules for the correct use of language and settle the disputes over usage once and for all.
For example, “Don’t say X.” is a prescriptive command; “People don’t say X.” is a descriptive statement. The distinction lies in prescribing how things ought to be and describing how things are. In the 18th century, all the main European languages were studied prescriptively. However, modern linguistics is mostly descriptive because the
nature of linguistics as a science determines its preoccupation with description instead of prescription.
1.9.2 Synchronic vs. diachronic
A synchronic study takes a fixed instant (usually at present) as its point of observation. Saussure’s diachronic description is the study of a language through the course of its history. E.g. a study of the features of the English used in Shakespeare’s time would be synchronic, and a study of the changes English has undergone since then would be a diachronic study. In modern linguistics, synchronic study seems to enjoy priority over diachronic study. The reason is that unless the various state of a language are successfully studied it would be difficult to describe the changes that have taken place in its historical development.
1.9.3 Langue & parole
Saussure distinguished the linguistic competence of the speaker and the actual phenomena or data of linguistics as langue and parole. Langue is relative stable and systematic, parole is subject to personal and situational constraints; langue is not spoken by an individual, parole is always a naturally occurring event. What a linguist should do, according to Saussure, is to draw rules from a mass of confused facts, i.e. to discover the regularities governing all instances of parole and make them the subject of linguistics.
1.9.4 Competence and performance
According to Chomsky, a language user’s underlying knowledge about the system of rules is called the linguistic competence, and the actual use of language in concrete situations is called performance. Competence enables a speaker to produce and understand and indefinite number of sentences and to recognize grammatical mistakes and ambiguities. A speaker’s competence is stable while his performance is often influenced by psychological and social factors. So a speaker’s performance does not always match his supposed competence. Chomsky believes that linguists ought to study competence, rather than performance. Chomsky’s competence-performance distinction is not exactly the same as, though similar to, Saussure’s langue-parole distinction. Langue is a social product and a set of conventions of a community, while competence is deemed as a property of mind of each individual. Saussure looks at language more from a sociological or sociolinguistic point of view than Chomsky since the latter deals with his issues psychologically or psycholinguistically.
Phonetics is the study of speech sounds. It includes three main areas: 1. Articulatory phonetics – the study of the production of speech sounds
2. Acoustic phonetics – the study of the physical properties of the sounds produced in
speech
3. Auditory phonetics – the study of perception of speech sounds Most phoneticians are interested in articulatory phonetics. 2.2 Speech organs Speech organs are those parts of the human body involved in the production of speech. The speech organs can be considered as consisting of three parts: the initiator of the air stream, the producer of voice and the resonating cavities.
International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA): the system of symbols for representing the pronunciation of words in any language according to the principles of the International Phonetic Association.
The symbols consists of letters and diacritics. Some letters are taken from the Roman alphabet, some are special symbols. Consonants and vowels
A consonant is produced by constricting or obstructing the vocal tract at some places to divert, impede, or completely shut off the flow of air in the oral cavity.A vowel is produced without obstruction so no turbulence or a total stopping of the air can be perceived. 2.4.2 Consonants
The categories of consonant are established on the basis of several factors. The most important of these factors are:1. the actual relationship between the articulators and thus the way in which the air passes through certain parts of the vocal tract (manner of articulation);2. where in the vocal tract there is approximation, narrowing, or the obstruction of the air (place of articulation).
Coarticulation: The simultaneous or overlapping articulation of two successive phonological units.
A phoneme is the smallest linguistic unit of sound that can signal a difference in meaning. Any of the different forms of a phoneme is called its allophones. E.g. in English, when the phoneme // occurs at the beginning of the word like peak //, it is said with a little puff of air, it is aspirated. But when // occurs in the word like speak //, it is said without the puff of the air, it is unaspirated. Both the aspirated [] in peak and the unaspirated [=] in speak have the same phonemic function, i.e. they are both heard and identified as // and not as //; they are both allophones of the phoneme //.
Assimilation: A process by which one sound takes on some or all the characteristics of a neighboring sound.
Phonological processes and phonological rules
The changes in assimilation, nasalization, dentalization, and velarization are all phonological processes in which a target or affected segment undergoes a structural change in certain environments or contexts. In each process the change is conditioned or triggered by a following sound or, in the case of progressive assimilation, a preceding sound. Consequently, we can say that any phonological process must have three aspects to it: a set of sounds to undergo the process; a set of sounds produced by the process; a set of situations in which the process applies. 2.10 Distinctive features Distinctive feature: A particular characteristic which distinguishes one distinctive sound unit of a language from another or one group of sounds from another group. Binary feature: A property of a phoneme or a word which can be used to describe the phoneme or word. A binary feature is either present or absent. Binary features are also used to describe the semantic properties of words.
Suprasegmental features: Suprasegmental features are those aspects of speech that involve more than single sound segments. The principal suprasegmental features are syllables, stress, tone, and intonation.Syllable: A unit in speech which is often longer than one sound and smaller than a whole word. Open syllable: A syllable which ends in a vowel. Closed syllable: A syllable which ends in a consonant. Maximal onset principle: The principle 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. E.g. The correct syllabification of the word country should be //. It shouldn’t be // or // according to this principle.
2.12 StressStress refers to the degree of force used in producing a syllable. In transcription, a raised vertical line [] is used just before the syllable it relates to. Syntagmatic and paradigmatic relations
Syntagmatic (a.k.a. horizontal / chain) relation 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, we’ll go out.
Paradigmatic (a.k.a. vertical / choice) relation is 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.
Endocentric and exocentric constructions
An endocentric construction is one whose distribution is functionally equivalent, or approaching equivalence, to one of its constituents, which serves as the center, or head, of the whole. It is also called headed construction. Typical endocentric constructions are noun phrases, verb phrases and adjective phrases. They may be further divided into two subtypes: subordinate and coordinate constructions. Those, in which there is only one head, with the head being dominant and the other constructions dependent, are subordinate constructions. In the coordinate construction, there are more than one head, e.g. boys and girls, in which the two content constituents, boys and girls, are of equal syntactic status, and no one is dependent on the other.
The exocentric construction is defined negatively as a construction whose distribution is not functionally equivalent to any of its constituents. There is no noticeable center or head in it. Typical exocentric constructions are prepositional phrases, subordinate clauses, English basic sentences, and the verb plus object constructions. 2 The referential theory
1. The referential theory: The theory of meaning which relates the meaning of a word to
the thing it refers to, or stands for, is known as the referential theory. 2. The semantic triangle theory
Ogden and Richards presented the classic “Semantic Triangle” as manifested in the following diagram, in which the “symbol” refers to the linguist elements (word, sentence, etc.), the “referent” refers to the object in the world of experience, and the “thought” or “reference” refers to concept or notion. Thus the symbol of a word signifies “things” by virtue of the “concept,” associated with the form of the word in the mind of the speaker of the language. The concept thus considered is the meaning of the word. The connection (represented with a dotted line) between symbol and referent is made possible only through “concept.” Synonymy Synonymy is the technical name for the sameness relation. 5.3.2 Antonymy
Antonymy is the name for oppositeness relation. There are three subtypes: gradable, complementary and converse antonymy.
1. Gradable antonymy
Gradable antonymy is the commonest type of antonymy. They are mainly adjectives, e.g. good / bad, long / short, big / small, etc.
2. Complementary antonymy
The members of a pair in complementary antonymy are complementary to each
other. That is, they divide up the whole of a semantic filed completely. Not only the assertion of one means the denial of the other, the denial of one also means the assertion of the other, e.g. alive / dead, hit / miss, male / female, boy / girl, etc.
3. Converse antonymy
Converse antonyms are also called relational opposites. This 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, e.g. buy / sell, parent / child, above / below, etc.
Hyponymy
Hyponymy involves us in the notion of meaning inclusion. It is a matter of class membership. That is to say, when x is a kind of y, the lower term x is the hyponym, and the upper term y is the superordinate. Two or more hyponyms of the same one superordinate are called co-hyponyms, e.g. under flower, there are peony, jasmine, tulip, violet, rose, etc., flower is the superordinate of peony, jasmine, etc., peony is the hyponym of flower, and peony, jasmine, tulip, violet, rose, etc. are co-hyponyms.
4 Componential analysis Componential analysis defines the meaning of a lexical element in terms of semantic components. That is, the meaning of a word is not an unanalyzable whole. It may be seen as a complex of different semantic features. There are semantic units smaller than the meaning of a word. E.g. Boy: [+human][-adult][+male] Girl: [+human][-adult][-male] Son: child (x, y) & male (x) Daughter: child (x, y) & -male (x) Take: cause (x, (have (x, y))) Give: cause (x, (-have (x, y))) An integrated theory
1. Compositionality: A principle for sentence analysis, in which the meaning of a sentence depends on the meanings of the constituent words and the way they are combine.
2. Selection restrictions: Restrictions on the choice of individual lexical units in construction with other units. E.g. the word breathe will typically select an animate subject (boy, man, woman, etc.) not an abstract or an inanimate (table, book, etc.). The boy was still breathing. The desk was breathing. 5.5.2 Logical semantics
1. Prepositional logic / prepositional calculus / sentential calculus: Prepositional logic is the study of the truth conditions for propositions: how the truth of a composite proposition is determined by the truth value of its constituent propositions and the connections between them. 2. Predicate logic / predicate calculus: Predicate logic studies the internal structure of simple propositions.
What is pragmatics? What’s the difference between pragmatics and semantics? Pragmatics is the study of the use of language in communication, particularly the relationships between sentences and the contexts and situations in which they are used. Pragmatics includes the study of
(1) How the interpretation and use of utterances depends on knowledge of the real world; (2) How speakers use and understand speech acts;
(3) How the structure of sentences is influenced by the relationship between the speaker and
the hearer.
Pragmatics is sometimes contrasted with semantics, which deals with meaning without reference to the users and communicative functions of sentences. 8.1 Speech act theory 8.1.1 Performatives and constatives
1. Performative: In speech act theory an utterance which performs an act, such as
Watch out (= a warning).
2. Constative: An utterance which asserts something that is either true or force.
E.g. Chicago is in the United States. 3. Felicity conditions of performatives:
(1) There must be a relevant conventional procedure, and the relevant
participants and circumstances must be appropriate.
(2) The procedure must be executed correctly and completely.
(3) Very often, the relevant people must have the requisite thoughts, feelings
and intentions, and must follow it up with actions as specified.
8.1.2 A theory of the illocutionary act 1. What is a speech act?
A speech act is an utterance as a functional unit in communication. In speech act theory, utterances have two kinds of meaning.
Propositional meaning (locutionary meaning): This is the basic literal meaning of the utterance which is conveyed by the particular words and structures which the utterance contains.
Illocutionary meaning (illocutionary force): This is the effect the utterance or written text has on the reader or listener. E.g. in I’m thirsty, the propositional meaning is what the utterance says about the speaker’s physical state. The illocutionary force is the effect the speaker wants the utterance to have on the listener. It may be intended as request for something to drink. A speech act is a sentence or utterance which has both propositional meaning and illocutionary force.
A speech act which is performed indirectly is sometimes known as an indirect speech act, such as the speech act of the requesting above. Indirect speech acts are often felt to be more polite ways of performing certain kinds of speech act, such as requests and refusals.
2. Locutionary act: A distinction is made by Austin in the theory of speech acts
between three different types of acts involved in or caused by the utterance of a sentence. A locutionary act is the saying of something which is meaningful and can be understood.
3. Illocutionary act: An illocutionary act is using a sentence to perform a
function.
4. Perlocutionary act: A perlocutionary act is the results or effects that are
produced by means of saying something.
The cooperative principle 1. The cooperative principle (CP)
Cooperative principle refers to the “co-operation” between speakers in using the maxims during the conversation. There are four conversational maxims:
(1) The maxim of quantity: a. Make your contribution as informative as required. b. Don’t make your contribution more informative than is required. (2) The maxim of quality: Try to make your contribution one that is true. a. Don’t say what you believe to be false. b. Don’t say that for which you lack adequate evidence. (3) The maxim of relation: Say things that are relevant. (4) The maxim of manner: Be perspicuous. a. Avoid obscurity of expression. b. Avoid ambiguity. c. Be brief. d. Be orderly.
2. Conversational implicature: The use of conversational maxims to imply
meaning during conversation is called conversational implicature.
8.3.1 Relevance theory
This theory was formally proposed by Dan Sperber and Deirdre Wilson in their book Relevance: Communication and Cognition in 1986. They argue that all Gricean maxims, including the CP itself, should be reduced to a single principle of relevance, which is defined as: Every act of ostensive communication communicates the presumption of its own optimal relevance.
8.3.2 The Q- and R-principles
These principles were developed by L. Horn in 1984. The Q-principle is intended to invoke the first maxim of Grice’s Quantity, and the R-principle the relation maxim, but the new principles are more extensive than the Gricean maxims.
The definition of the Q-principle (hearer-based) is: (1) Make your contribution sufficient (cf. quantity); (2) Say as much as you can (given R).
The definition of the R-principle (speaker-based) is:
(1) Make your contribution necessary (cf. Relation, Quantity-2, Manner); (2) Say no more than you must (given Q)
8.3.3 The Q-, I- and M-principles
This tripartite model was suggested by S. Levinson mainly in his 1987 paper Pragmatics and the Grammar of Anaphor: A Partial Pragmatic Reduction of Binding and Control Phenomena. The contents of these principles are:
Q-principle:
Speaker’s maxim: Do not provide a statement that is informationally weaker than your knowledge of the world allows, unless providing a stronger statement would contravene the I-principle.
Recipient’s corollary: Take it that the speaker made the strongest statement consistent with what he knows, and therefore that:
(1) If the speaker asserted A (W), and (2) If the speaker asserted A (W) and A (W) fails to entail an embedded sentence Q, which a stronger statement A (S) would entail, and {S, W} form a contrast set, then one can infer ~ K (Q), i.e. the speaker does not know whether Q obtains or not. I-principle Speaker’s maxim: the maxim of minimization Say as little as necessary, i.e. produce the minimal linguistic information sufficient to achieve your communicational ends. Recipient’s corollary: the enrichment rule Amplify the informational content of the speaker’s utterance, by finding the most specific interpretation, up to what you judge to be the speaker’s m-intended point. M-principle Speaker’s maxim: Do not use a prolix, obscure or marked expression without reason. Recipient’s corollary: If the speaker used a prolix or marked expression M, he did not mean the same as he would have, had he used the unmarked expression U – specifically he was trying to avoid the stereotypical associations and I-implicatures of U. Cognition is the process or result of recognizing, interpreting, judging, and reasoning. Perception is considered a part of cognition by some psychologists, but not by others. In linguistics and cognitive science, cognitive linguistics (CL) refers to the school of linguistics that views language as based in evolutionarily-developed and speciated faculties, and seeks explanations that advance or fit well into the current understandings of the human mind. Language acquisition is the process by which humans acquire the capacity to perceive, produce and use words to understand and communicate. An image schema is a recurring structure within our cognitive processes which establishes patterns of understanding and reasoning. Image schemas are formed from our bodily interactions, from linguistic experience, and from historical context. The term is explained in Mark Johnson's book The Body in the Mind, in case study 2 of George Lakoff's Women, Fire and Dangerous Things and by Rudolf Arnheim in Visual Thinking. A metaphor is an analogy between two objects or ideas; the analogy is conveyed by the use of a metaphorical word in place of some other word. Metonymy is a figure of speech used in rhetoric in which a thing or concept is not called by its own name, but by the name of something intimately associated with that thing or concept. For instance, \"Washington,\" as the capital of the United States, could be used as a metonym (an instance of metonymy) for its government. Construal is a social psychological term that refers to the way in which people perceive, comprehend, and interpret the world around them. Construals are the way a person comprehends the behavior or actions of others towards him or herself. 因篇幅问题不能全部显示，请点此查看更多更全内容