语言学教程胡壮麟考研笔记

1. Design features of language:

The design features: the distinctive features of human language that essentially make human language distinguishable from languages of animals

 Arbitrariness

➢ The absence of any physical correspondence between linguistic signals and the

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 level

Functionalists hold that the most strictly arbitrary 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 convention

Convention: it is an idiom------it is a convention to say things like this way. (When in Rome, do as romans do.)

 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 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.

 Creativity

➢ The speaker is able to combine the basic linguistic units to form an infinite set of

sentences, most of which are never before produced or heard. ➢ It’s potential to create endless sentences. (recursiveness)  Displacement

The 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 language

 The “bow-bow” theory: imitating of animal calls in wild environment

 The “pooh-pooh” theory: they utter instinctive sounds of pain, anger and joy.

 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. Functions of language：

 Informative function: to tell and to give something out

 Interpersonal function: (人际功能) 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 Sir……

 Performative function: the performative function of language is primarily to change the

social status of persons, such as in marriage ceremonies, the sentencing of criminals and cursing of enemies

 Emotive function: (also called expressive function) uttered without any purpose of

communicating to others, but essentially a verbal response to a person’s own feeling.  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…….

 Recreational function: The use of language for hearty joy of using it.  Metalingual 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:

 Phonetics

It studies speech sound, including the production of speech, the description and classification of speech sounds, words and connected speech……  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.

 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. So, different sentence order did not change its meaning.

 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].

 Semantics

➢ Examine 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 words and above it, such as meaning of morphemes and sentences.

 Pragmatics

The study of meaning in context.

5. Macrolinguistics

 Psycholinguistics (心理语言学)

It investigates the interrelation of language and mind, in processing and producing utterances and in language acquisition for example.  Sociolinguistics （社会语言学）

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 interact and change within a speech community.

 Anthropological linguistics （人类语言学）

Anthropological linguist are concerned with the emergence of language and also the divergence of language over thousands of years.  Computational linguistics （计算机语言学）

The use of computers to process or produce human language.

6. Important distinctions in linguistics

 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 don’t say X. ➢ Prescriptive:

✓ To make authoritarian statement about the correctness of a particular use of

language. ✓ Don’t say X

 Synchronic and diachronic

➢ Synchronic (共时)

✓ Said of an approach that studies language at a theoretical “point” of time. ✓ For example: the structure of Shakespeare’s English. ➢ Diachronic （历时）

✓ Said of the study of development of language and languages over time. ✓ For example: Pejorative sense development in English

 Langue and parole

➢ Langue

✓ The language system shared by a “speech community” ➢ Parole

✓ The concrete utterances of a speaker.

 Competence and performance

➢ Competence

✓ Unconscious knowledge of the system of grammatical rules in a language.

➢ Performance

✓ The language actually used by people in speaking and writing.

Unit 2 phonetics and phonology

1. The major branches of phonetics:

 Articulatory phonetics

The study of production of speech sounds  Auditory phonetics

It studies the sounds from the hearer’s point of view, that is, the sound perceived by the hearer.

 Acoustic phonetics

It studies the physical properties of the sounds produced in speech.

2. Speech organs

 Inside the throat: pharynx and larynx

 Inside the oral cavity: upper lip, upper teeth, the alveolar ridge, the hard palate and the

soft palate, and the uvula.

 The bottom part of the mouth contains the lower lip, lower teeth, the tongue and the

mandible(下颔).

 In phonetics: the tongue is divided into five parts: the tip, the blade, the front, the back

and the root.

 In phonology: the tongue is divided into coronal(tip and blade), dorsal(front and back)

and radical(root)

3. Manner of articulation (a picture is added here)

 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.  Nasals

The sound is produced by lowing the soft palate and the air pass through the nose.  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.  Affricatives

It refers to the sound produced when obstruction, complete at first, is released slowly with the frication resulting from partial obstruction.  Approximants

One articulator is close to another but without the vocal tract narrow to cause a turbulent.  Laterals

The obstruction of airstream is at a point along the center of oral tract, with incomplete closure between one or both sides of the tongue and the roof of the mouth.  Trill

It is produced when an articulator is set vibrating by air stream, such as /r/ in red.  Tap

When the tongue makes a single tap against the alveolar ridge to produce only one vibrate.  Flap

It is produced when the tip of the tongue curled 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:

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)

   

The height of the tongue raising: high, mid, low

The position of highest part of the tongue: front, central, back The length or tenseness of the tongue: long or short; tense or lax The shape of the lips: rounded and unrounded

7. Monophthongs diphthongs and tripthongs

 They are those pure vowels with unchanging quality

 If a single movement from one element of the tongue is involved, the combining vowel is

called diphthongs

 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. Coarticulation

It refers to the process of simultaneous or overlapping articulations when sounds show the influence of their neighbors.

 Anticipatory coarticulation: the sound becomes more like the following sound, such as in

the case lamb

 Preservative coarticulation: the sound becomes more like the preceding sound, such as in

the case of map

9. Narrow transcription and broad transcription:

 Narrow transcription: we try to symbolize all the possible speech sounds, including even

the minutest shades of pronunciation. It contains a set of diacritics.

10. Phonological theory:

 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 example, pin and pen; tip and tap  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, /t/ /d/……

➢ The different realization of the same phoneme in different phonetic environment are

called the allophones of that phoneme. For example, [ph]

 Complementary distribution

➢ When two or more than two allophones of the same phoneme do not distinguishen

meaning and never occur in the same context, then the allophones are said to be in complementary distribution. ➢ [p] and [ph]; [l] and [l]  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, then the two sounds are in free variation. ➢ For example, in cup the /p/ and /p/  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 features: 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 process

 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 applies  Assimilation:

➢ Regressive assimilation: a following sound is influencing a preceding sound ➢ Progressive assimilation: a preceding sound is influencing a following sound  Devoicing:

Voiced sounds become voiceless  Epenthesis:

Insertion of a sound

 Nasalization: a sound in a word is influenced by a nasal sound

 Dentalization: a sound in a word is influenced by a dental sound

 Velarization: it refers to the process in which a sound in a word takes on the features of a

velar segment.  Deletion rule:

➢ A sound is deleted although it is orthographically represented ➢ For example: sign: delete a /g/ in this word.

12. Suprasegmental features

The features that occur above the level of segments and can distinguish meaning are called suprasegmental features.

 Syllable structure: a syllable can be divided into two parts, the rhyme and the onset. As

the vowel within the rhyme is nucleus, the consonants after it will be termed coda. ➢ Maximal onset principle

➢ On set: at most 3; coda: at most 4

 Stress: it refers to the degree of force used in producing a syllable.

 Tones: tones are pitch variations, which are caused by differing rates of vibration of vocal

cords.

 Intonation: when pitch, stress, and sound length are tied to the sentence rather than the

word in isolation, they are collectively as intonation. ➢ Falling tone ➢ Rising tone

➢ The fall-rise tone.