《英语语言学》复习要点

Chapter 1 Invitations to Linguistics1. Language is a system of arbitrary vocal symbols used for human communication. To give the barest definition language is a means of verbal communication. It is instrumental social and conventional. Linguistics is usually defined as the science of language or alternatively as the scientific study of language. It concerns with the systematic study of language or a discipline that describes all aspects of language and formulates theories as to how language works.2.Design features refers to the defining properties of human language that distinguish it from any animal system of communication. They are arbitrariness, duality, creativity, displacement etc.Arbitrariness refers to forms of linguistic signs bear no natural relationship to their meaning Language is arbitrary. There is no logical connection between meanings and sounds even with onomatopoeic words.Duality refers to the property of having two levels of structure. The units of the primary level are composed of elements of the secondary level and each of the two levels has its own principles of organization. the lower or the basic level- the sound units or phonemes which are meaningless, but can be grouped and regrouped into words. the higher level -morphemes and words which are meaningfulCreativity refers to Words can be used in new ways to mean new things and can be instantly understood by people who have never come across that usage before. Displacement refers to the fact that language can be used to refer to things which are present or not present real or imagined matters in the past present or future or in far-away places. It means that human languages enable their users to symbolize objects events and concepts which are not present in time and space at the moment of communication3. Jakobsons classification of functions of language. Jakobson : In his article Linguistics and Poetics (1960) defined six primary factors of any speech event: speaker, addressee, context,message, code, contact.1).Referential function 所指功能 2).Poetic function诗学功能 3).Emotive function感情功能 4).Conative function意动功能 5).Phatic function交感功能 6).Metalingual元语言功能 Hu Zhuanglin classification of functions of language and use some examples to illustrate them.1).Informative function 信息功能 2).Interpersonal function 人际功能 3).Performative function 施为功能4).Emotive function 感情功能 5).Phatic communion 交感性谈话 6).Recreational function 娱乐性功能 7).Metalingual function 元语言功能 4. What are the major differences between Saussures distinction between langue and parole and Chomskys distinction between competence and performance? According to Saussure,(1) Langue is abstract, parole is specific to the speaking situation;(2) Langue is not actually spoken by an individual , parole is always a naturally occurring event;(3) Langue is relatively stable and systematic, parole is a mass of confused facts, thus not suitable for systematic investigation.According to N. Chomsky, Competence enables a speaker to produce and understand an indefinite number of sentences and to recognize grammatical mistakes and ambiguities; A speakers competence is stable while his performance is often influenced by psychological and social factors. So a speakers performance does not always match or equal his supposed competence; Chomsky believes that linguists ought to study competence, rather than performance. In other words, they should discover what an ideal speaker knows of his native language.Chapter 2 Speech Sounds1. Phonetics studies how speech sounds are produced, transmitted and received. It is concerned with the actual physical articulation, transmission and perception of speech sounds.Phonology is essentially the description of the systems and patterns of speech sounds. It is concerned with the abstract and mental aspect of the sounds in language. Phonology aims to discover how speech sounds in a language form patterns and how these sounds are used to convey meaning in linguistic communication1. Lips2. Teeth3. Teeth ridge (alveolar)齿龈4. Hard palate 硬腭5. Soft palate (velum) 软腭6. Uvula 小舌7. Tip of tongue 8. Blade of tongue 舌面9. Back of tongue10. Vocal cords 声带11. Pharyngeal cavity 咽腔12. Nasal cavity 鼻腔2.Phone（音素): the smallest perceptible discreet segment of sound in a stream of speech. (in the mouth)Phoneme （音位）：A sound which is capable of distinguishing one word or one shape of a word from another in a given language is a phoneme. (in the mind)allophone (音位变体) : phonic variants of a phoneme are called allophone of the same phoneme. / / = phoneme = phone = set of allophonesIPA:the abbreviation of International Phonetic Alphabet.Minimal pairs 最小对立体Three requirements for identifying minimal pairs: 1) different in meaning; 2) only one phoneme different; 3) the different phonemes occur in the same phonetic environment. e.g. a minimal pair: pat-fat; lit-lip; phone-tone minimal set: pat, mat, bat, fat, cat, hat, etc3. complementary distribution 互补分布Phonetically similar sounds might be related in two ways. If they are two distinctive phonemes, they might form a contrast; e.g. /p/and /b/ in pit and bit; If they are allophones of the same phoneme, then they dont distinguish meaning, but complement each other in distribution, i.e. they occur in different phonetic contextSuprasegmental features 超音段特征features that involve more than single sound segment, such as stress （重音）， length（音程）, rhythm （节奏）， tone（音调）， intonation（语调）及 juncture（音渡） Chapter 3 Lexicon/Morphology1. Word 1.1 Three senses of “word”(1) A physically definable unit: a cluster of sound segments or letters between two pause or blank.(2) Word both as a general term and as a specific term.(3) A grammatical unit1.2 Identification of words Some factors can help us identify words:(1) Stability(2) Relative uninterruptibility (3) A minimum free form1.3 The classification of word Words can be classified in terms of: (1) Variable vs. invariable words (可变词/不可变词) (2) Grammatical words vs. lexical words (语法词/词汇词) (3) Closed-class words vs. open-class words (封闭词/开放词) (4) word class(词类) (1) Variable vs. invariable words (可变词/不可变词)the former refers to words having inflective changes（屈折变化） while the latter refers to words having no such endings.Variable words: follow; follows; following; followedInvariable words: since; when; seldom; through; hello(2) Grammatical words vs. lexical words (function words and content words.语法词/词汇词)The former refers to those words expressing grammatical meanings, such as conjunctions(连词), prepositions（介词）, articles(冠词), and pronouns（代词）; the latter refers to words having lexical meanings, those which refer to substance, action etc. such as n., v., adj., and adv.(3) Closed-class words vs. open-class words (封闭词/开放词)the former refers to words whose membership is fixed or limited; e.g. pron., prep., conj., article.the latter of which the membership is infinite or unlimited. e.g.: n., v., adj., adv.(4) word class (词类) The traditionally recognized word classes are: noun, pronoun, adjective, verb, adverb, preposition, conjunction, interjection, article, etc. More word classes have been introduced into grammar: particles 小品词/语助词 (go by, look for, come up); auxiliaries 助词 (can, be, will); pro-form 替代词 (do, so); determiners 前置词/ 限定词 (all, every, few, plenty of, this).2. The formation of word2.1 Morphology 形态学 Definition：Morphology is a branch of linguistics, which studies the internal structure of words and the rules by which words are formed.The two fields (p64) Inflectional morphology: the study of inflections Derivational morphology: the study of word-formation3. Lexical change 3.1 Lexical change proper（词本身的变化）Invention 新造词 Blending混合词 Abbreviation 缩合词 Acronym首字母缩略词back-formation 逆构词 analogical creation 类比造词 Borrowing 借词、外来词 definition: 1) Morphology: Morphology is a branch of linguistics, which studies the internal structure of words and the rules by which words are formed.2) Terminology 术语解释 Morpheme: The smallest unit of meaning, which can not be divided into further smaller units without destroying or drastically altering the meaning, whether it is lexical or grammatical.Free morphemes: morphemes which may constitute words by themselvesBound morphemes: morphemes which can not be used by themselves, but must be combined with other morphemes to form wordsInflectional morpheme: a kind of bound morphemes which manifest various grammatical relations or grammatical categories such as number, tense, degree and case. Derivational morpheme: a kind of bound morphemes, added to existing forms to create new words. There are three kinds according to position: prefix, suffix and infix. Chapter 4 Syntax From Word to TextSyntax is the study of the rules governing the ways different constituents are combined to form sentences in a language, or the study of the interrelationships between elements in sentence structures.Endocentric Constructions: 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 centre or head.Exocentric Constructions: 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 “Centre” or “Head” inside the groupCategory: refers to the defining properties of these general units: Categories of the noun: number, gender, case and countability Categories of the verb: tense, aspect, voicethree kinds of syntactic relations:relations of position 位置关系Positional relation, or WORD ORDER, refers to the sequential arrangement of words in a language. relations of substitutability 可替代性关系The Relation of Substitutability refers to classes or sets of words substitutable for each other grammatically in sentences with the same structure. relations of co-occurrence 同现关系It means that words of different sets of clauses may permit, or require, the occurrence of a word of another set or class to form a sentence or a particular part of a sentence. Immediate Constituent Analysis (IC Analysis)Immediate constituent analysis is a form of linguistic review that breaks down longer phrases or sentences into their constituent parts, usually into single words. This kind of analysis is sometimes abbreviated as IC analysis, and gets used extensively by a wide range of language experts. Endocentric constructions fall into two main types, depending on the relation between constituents: Coordination and subordination Coordination is a common syntactic pattern in English and other languages formed by grouping together two or more categories of the same type with the help of a conjunction such as and, but and or . Subordination refers to the process or result of linking linguistic units so that they have different syntactic status, one being dependent upon the other, and usually a constituent of the other. Characteristics of subjectsA) Word order: Subject ordinarily precedes the verb in the statementB) Pro-forms(代词形式) : The first and third person pronouns in English appear in a special form when the pronoun is a subjectC) Agreement with the verb: In the simple present tense, an -s is added to the verb when a third person subject is singular, but the number and person of the object or any other element in the sentence have no effect at all on the form of the verbD) Content questions (实意问句): If the subject is replaced by a question word (who or what), the rest of the sentence remains unchangedE) Tag question (反意问句): A tag question is used to seek confirmation of a statement. It always contains a pronoun which refers back to the subject, and never to any other element in the sentence. Explain the difference between sense and reference from the following four aspects: 1) A word having reference must have sense; 2) A word having sense might not have reference; 3) A certain sense can be realized by more than one reference; 4) A certain reference can be expressed by more than one senseThe distinction between “sense” and “reference” is comparable to that between “connotation” and “denotation”. The former refers to some abstract properties, while the latter refers to some concrete entities. Firstly, to some extent, we can say that every word has a sense, i.e., some conceptual content; otherwise we would not be able to use it or understand it. Secondly, but not every word has a reference. There are linguistic expressions which can never be used to refer to anything, for example, the words so, very, maybe, if, not, and all. These words do of course contribute meaning to the sentences in which they occur and thus help sentences denote, but they themselves do not identify entities in the world. They are intrinsically non-referring terms. And words like ghost and dragon refer to imaginary things, which do not exist in reality. Thirdly, some expressions will have the same reference across a range of utterances, e.g., the Eiffel Tower or the Pacific Ocean. Such expressions are sometimes described as having constant reference. Others have their references totally dependent on context. Expressions like I, you, she, etc. are said to have variable references. Lastly, sometimes a reference may be expressed by more than one sense. For instance, both evening star and morning star(晚星，启明星), though they differ in sense, refer to Venus.Chapter 6 Language and cognition1. What is Cognition?In psychology it is used to refer to the mental processes of an individual with particular relation to a view that argues that the ming has internal mental states and can be understood in terms of information processing.Another denefition is mental process or faculty of knowing, including awareness, perception, reasoning, and judgment.2. Cognitive LinguisticsCognitive linguistics is the scientific study of the relation between the way we communicate and the way we think.It is an approach to language that is based on our experience of the world and the way we perceive and conceptualize it. 3. What are the differences between metaphor & metonymy? Give some examples.Metaphor is a conceptual mapping（概念映射）, not a linguistic one, from one domain to another（从一个语域到另一个语域）, not from a word to another.Metonymy is a cognitive process in which one conceptual entity, the vehicle（源域）, provides mental access to another conceptual entity, the target（目标域）, within the same domain. The reference point activates the target.1. Metaphor is used for substitution, while metonymy is used for association.2. Metaphor can mean condensation and metonymy can mean displacement.3. A metonymy acts by combining ideas while metaphor acts by suppressing ideas.4. In a metaphor, the comparison is based on the similarities, while in metonymy the comparison is based on contiguity. -For example, the sentence he is a tiger in class is a metaphor. Here the word tiger is used in substitution for displaying an attribute of character of the person. The sentence the tiger called his students to the meeting room is a metonymy. Here there is no substitution; instead the person is associated with a tiger for his nature. .Metaphor is actually a cognitive tool that helps us structure our thoughts and experiences in the world around us.Metaphor is a conceptual mapping（概念映射）, not a linguistic one, from one domain to another（从一个语域到另一个语域）, not from a word to another.Metonymy（换喻，转喻）.It is a cognitive process in which one conceptual entity, the vehicle（源域）, provides mental access to another conceptual entity, the target（目标域）, within the same domain.2. Psycholinguistics is the study of psychological aspects of language; it usually studies the psychological states and mental activity with the use of language.Language acquisition (1) Holophrastic stage（单词句阶段） Languages sound patterns Phonetic distinctions in parents language. One-word stage: objects, actions, motions, routines.2) Two-word stage: around 18m3) Three-word-utterance stage4) Fluent grammatical conversation stageChapter 7 Language, culture and society1. the relationship between language and thought?Generally, the relation of L to C is that of part to whole, for L is part of C. The knowledge and beliefs that constitute a peoples culture are habitually encoded and transmitted in L.There exists a close relationship between language and culture. This is evidenced by the findings of anthropologists such as Malinowski, Firth, Baos, Sapir and Whorf. The study of the relation between language and the context in which it is used is the cultural study of language.2. Whats Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis? Give your comment on it. Edward Sapir (1884 - 1939) and Benjamin Lee Whorf (1897-1941) Our language helps mould our way of thinking and, consequently, different languages may probably express speakers unique ways of understanding the world. Linguistic determinism: L may determine our thinking patterns. Linguistic relativity: a. Similarity between language is relative; b. the greater their structuraldifferentiation is, the diverse their conceptualization of the world will be.Chapter 8 Language in use Pragmatics: The study of language in use and the study of meaning in context, as well as the study of speakers meaning, utterance meaning& contextual meaning.Whats your understanding of conversational implicature? Use one or two examples to discuss the violation of its maxims. People do