語言學(xué)教程胡壯麟考研筆記

1、Unit 1 invitations to linguistics1. Design features of language:The design features: the distinctive features of human language that essentially make human language distinguishable from languages of animalsl Arbitrariness The absence of any physical correspondence between linguistic signals and the

2、entities to which they refer. / The forms of linguistic signs bear no natural relationship to their meaning. Arbitrariness relationship between the sound of a morpheme and its meaning.(e.g. murmurous / murderous) Arbitrariness at the syntactic levelFunctionalists hold that the most strictly arbitrar

3、y level of language existed in the distinctive units of sounds by which we distinguish pairs of words like pin and bin, or fish and dish.(e.g. As the night fell, the wind rose.) Arbitrariness and conventionConvention: it is an idiom-it is a convention to say things like this way.(When in Rome, do as

4、 romans do.)l Duality: The structural organization of language into two abstract levels: meaningful units (words and phrase) and meaningless segments(sound and letters) The secondary units are meaningless and the primary units are meaningful. Traffic light system does not have duality: it cannot be

5、divided into meaningless units, so it only has primary level like animals. A large number of meaningful units can be formed out of a small number of elements-productive power.l Creativity The speaker is able to combine the basic linguistic units to form an infinite set of sentences, most of which ar

6、e never before produced or heard. Its potential to create endless sentences. (recursiveness)l DisplacementThe ability of language enable their users symbolize objects, events an d concepts which are not present (in time and space) at the moment of communication.2. Origin of languagel The “bow-bow” t

7、heory: imitating of animal calls in wild environmentl The “pooh-pooh” theory: they utter instinctive sounds of pain, anger and joy.l The “yo-he-yo” theory: as primitive people worked together, they produced some rhythmic grunts which gradually developed into chants and then into language.3. Function

8、s of language：l Informative function: to tell and to give something outl Interpersonal function: (人際功能) by which people establish and maintain their status in a society. For example, the way in which people address others and refer to themselves. Dear Sirl Performative function: the performative fun

9、ction of language is primarily to change the social status of persons, such as in marriage ceremonies, the sentencing of criminals and cursing of enemiesl Emotive function: (also called expressive function) uttered without any purpose of communicating to others, but essentially a verbal response to

10、a persons own feeling.l Phatic communion: It refers to social interaction of language. Broadly speaking it refers to expressions that help define and maintain interpersonal relations, such as slangs, jokes, jargon.l Recreational function: The use of language for hearty joy of using it.l Metalingual

11、function: Our language can be used to talk about itself. (self-reflexive) we human beings can talk about talking and can think about thinking. For example: To be honest, to make a long story short, in a word.4. Main branches of linguistics:l PhoneticsIt studies speech sound, including the production

12、 of speech, the description and classification of speech sounds, words and connected speechl Phonology It is the study of a subset of those sounds that constitute language and meaning. It studies the rules governing the structure, distribution, and sequencing of speech sounds and shape of syllables.

13、l Morphology It is concerned with the internal organization of words. For example: The dog sees the rabbit. In English, different order gives different meaning. However, in Latin and also in Russian, dog and rabbit take on some morphological endings depending on whether they are subject or object. S

14、o, different sentence order did not change its meaning.l Syntax It is about principles of forming and understanding correct English sentences. For example: The children watched the firework from the hill. The children watched the firework from the hill.l Semantics Examine how meaning is encoded in a

15、 language. It is not only concerned with meanings of words as lexical items, but also with levels of language below words and above it, such as meaning of morphemes and sentences.l PragmaticsThe study of meaning in context.5. Macrolinguisticsl Psycholinguistics (心理語言學(xué))It investigates the interrelati

16、on of language and mind, in processing and producing utterances and in language acquisition for example.l Sociolinguistics （社會語言學(xué)）It is the study of the characteristics of language varieties, the characteristics of their functions, and the characteristics of their speakers as these three constantly

17、interact and change within a speech community.l Anthropological linguistics （人類語言學(xué)）Anthropological linguist are concerned with the emergence of language and also the divergence of language over thousands of years.l Computational linguistics （計算機語言學(xué)）The use of computers to process or produce human la

18、nguage.6. Important distinctions in linguisticsl Descriptive and descriptive The distinction lies in prescribing how things are and how things ought to be. Descriptive: To make an objective and systematic account of patterns and use of a language or variety. People dont say X. Prescriptive: To make

19、authoritarian statement about the correctness of a particular use of language. Dont say X l Synchronic and diachronic Synchronic (共時) Said of an approach that studies language at a theoretical “point” of time. For example: the structure of Shakespeares English. Diachronic （歷時） Said of the study of d

20、evelopment of language and languages over time. For example: Pejorative sense development in Englishl Langue and parole Langue The language system shared by a “speech community” Parole The concrete utterances of a speaker. l Competence and performance Competence Unconscious knowledge of the system o

21、f grammatical rules in a language. Performance The language actually used by people in speaking and writing.Unit 2 phonetics and phonology1. The major branches of phonetics:l Articulatory phonetics The study of production of speech soundsl Auditory phoneticsIt studies the sounds from the hearers poi

22、nt of view, that is, the sound perceived by the hearer.l Acoustic phoneticsIt studies the physical properties of the sounds produced in speech.2. Speech organsl Inside the throat: pharynx and larynxl Inside the oral cavity: upper lip, upper teeth, the alveolar ridge, the hard palate and the soft pal

23、ate, and the uvula.l The bottom part of the mouth contains the lower lip, lower teeth, the tongue and the mandible(下頷).l In phonetics: the tongue is divided into five parts: the tip, the blade, the front, the back and the root.l In phonology: the tongue is divided into coronal(tip and blade), dorsal

24、(front and back) and radical(root)3. Manner of articulation (a picture is added here)l Stops: The sound is produced when the obstruction is complete, and the sound is produced when the obstruction audibly released and the air passing out against.l NasalsThe sound is produced by lowing the soft palat

25、e and the air pass through the nose.l Fricatives:It refers to sound produced when an obstruction is partial and the air is forced through a narrow passage in the mouth, so as to cause definite local frication at the point.l Affricatives It refers to the sound produced when obstruction, complete at f

26、irst, is released slowly with the frication resulting from partial obstruction.l ApproximantsOne articulator is close to another but without the vocal tract narrow to cause a turbulent.l LateralsThe obstruction of airstream is at a point along the center of oral tract, with incomplete closure betwee

27、n one or both sides of the tongue and the roof of the mouth.l TrillIt is produced when an articulator is set vibrating by air stream, such as /r/ in red.l TapWhen the tongue makes a single tap against the alveolar ridge to produce only one vibrate.l FlapIt is produced when the tip of the tongue curl

28、ed up and back in a retroflex gesture an then striking the roof of the mouth in the post-alveolar region as it returns to its position behind the lower front teeth.4. Place of articulation:It refers to wherein the vocal tract there is approximation, narrowing or the obstruction of the air.5. Vowels:

29、Vowels are sounds produced without obstruction, so no turbulence or a total stopping of the air can be perceived.6. The criteria of the vowel ( a picture is added here)l The height of the tongue raising: high, mid, lowl The position of highest part of the tongue: front, central, backl The length or

30、tenseness of the tongue: long or short; tense or laxl The shape of the lips: rounded and unrounded7. Monophthongs diphthongs and tripthongsl They are those pure vowels with unchanging qualityl If a single movement from one element of the tongue is involved, the combining vowel is called diphthongsl

31、If two movements from one element to second, from the second to the third of the tongue is involved, the combining vowel is called tripthongs.8. CoarticulationIt refers to the process of simultaneous or overlapping articulations when sounds show the influence of their neighbors.l Anticipatory coarti

32、culation: the sound becomes more like the following sound, such as in the case lambl Preservative coarticulation: the sound becomes more like the preceding sound, such as in the case of map9. Narrow transcription and broad transcription:l Narrow transcription: we try to symbolize all the possible sp

33、eech sounds, including even the minutest shades of pronunciation. It contains a set of diacritics.10. Phonological theory: l Minimal pairs When two different forms are identical in every way except for one sound segment in the same place in strings, the two words are said to form a minimal pair For

34、example, pin and pen; tip and tapl Phone, phoneme, and allophones Phone: it is a basic unit of phonetic study, and it is a minimal sound segment that human speech organs can produce. Phoneme: it is a basic unit of phonological study, and it is an abstract collection of phonetic features. For example

35、, /t/ /d/ The different realization of the same phoneme in different phonetic environment are called the allophones of that phoneme. For example, ph l Complementary distribution When two or more than two allophones of the same phoneme do not distinguishen meaning and never occur in the same context,

36、 then the allophones are said to be in complementary distribution. p and ph; l and ll Free variation If two sounds occurring in the same environment do not contrast, that is, the substitution for another does not produce a different word form, but merely a different pronunciation of the same word, t

37、hen the two sounds are in free variation. For example, in cup the /p/ and /p/l Phonemic contrast and distinctive features Phonetic contrast: if two phonemes occurs in a minimal pair occur in the same place and distinguish meaning, these two phonemes are said to be in phonemic contrast. Distinctive f

38、eatures: they are those features which are phonologically revant properties and can distinguish meaning, for example, plosiveness, bilabiality, and voicelessness in English phonology. Some of the major distinctions include consonantal, sonorant, nasal and voiced. These are known as binary features which have two values denoted by “+” and “-”11. Phonological processl Any phonological process must has aspects to it: A set of sound to undergo the process A set of sound produced by the process A set of situation in which the process appliesl Assimilation: Regressive assimilation: a follow