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语言学概论复习要点
一．
定义
1 language
Language is a
system of arbitrary vocal symbols used for human
communication
2 define features
Design features refer to the defining
properties of human language that distinguish it
from any animal
system of
communication.
3 Synchronic
vs. diachronic
A synchronic
description takes a fixed instant (usually, but
not necessarily, the present) as its point of
observation. Diachronic linguistics is
the study of a language through the course of its
history and
focuses on the differences
in two or more than two states of language over
decades or centuries.
4
Langue
&
parole
Langue is the abstract linguistic
system shared by all the members of a speech
community
Parole is
particular realizations of langue
5
Competence and performance
An ideal language user's underlying
knowledge about the system of rules in his
language is called his
linguistic
competence.
Performance
refers to the actual use of language in concrete
situations, that is, the infinite varied
individual acts of verbal behavior with
irregularities, inconsistencies, and errors.
6 descriptive and prescriptive
7 phonetic transcription
A
phonetic transcription is an economical means for
capturing sounds on paper.
When we use a simple set of symbols in
our transcription, it is called a broad
transcription.
The use of
more specific symbols to show more phonetic detail
is referred to as a narrow transcription.
8 phoneme
Phoneme is a unit of explicit sound
contrast. If two sounds in a language make a
contrast between two
different words,
they are said to be different phonemes.
phoneme is the minimum phonemic unit
that is not further analyzable into smaller units.
9 allophones
[p,
ph] are two different phones
(
音子
) and are variants of the
phoneme /p/. Such variants of a
phoneme
are called allophones of the same phoneme.
(Phonetic similarity, complementary
distribution)
10
assimilation
assimilation, a process by
which one sound takes on some or all the
characteristics of a neighboring
sound
assimilation refers to the phonological
process in which a target or affected segment
undergoes a
structural change in
certain environments or contexts
11
distinctive features
distinctive
features are those phonologically relevant
properties, that is, the features which can
distinguish meaning, for example,
voicing, place and manner of articulation are all
principal
distinctive features of
consonants.
12 morphemes
the
smallest unit of language in terms of relationship
between expression and content, a unit that
cannot be further divided into smaller
units without destroying or drastically altering
the meaning,
1
whether it is lexical or grammatical.
(Free vs. Bound
morphemes:
Free morphemes: those that
may constitute words by themselves, e.g.
boy
,
girl, table,
nation.; Bound morphemes: those that cannot occur
alone, e.g. -s, -ed, dis-, un-
Root vs.
affix morphemes: a root morpheme can be a bound
one or a free one. An affix morpheme can
be a inflectional one or a derivational
one.
Inflectional vs.
Derivative morphemes:
Inflectional
morpheme provides further grammatical meaning to
the existing lexical item.
Derivative
morpheme provides lexical information to the
existing lexical item
）
Root: A
“
root
”
is the base form of a word that cannot
be further analyzed without total loss of
identity. In other words, a
“
root
”
is that part of the word left when all
the affixes are removed.
Affix:
“
affix
”
is a collective
term for the type of formative that can be used,
only when added to
another morpheme
(the root or stem). Affixes are naturally bound
and they are limited in number in a
language.
Stem(
词干
): A stem
refers to the surplus part after the cutting of
inflectional morpheme
(
曲折詞素
)in
a word.
Base(
词基）
: A base
is any form to which affixes of any kind can be
added; any root or stem can be
termed a
base
13 positional relation
Positional relation, or WORD ORDER,
refers to the sequential arrangement of words in a
language.
syntagmatic, horizontal or
chain relations.
14
Relation of Substitutability
The
Relation of Substitutability refers to classes or
sets of words substitutable for each other
grammatically in sentences with the
same structure.
15
Construction and
Constituent
Construction
：
the
grammatical structure of a sentence or any smaller
unit, represented by a set of
elements
and relations between them.
(Endocentric construction 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
construction 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 group)
A constituent is a word or a group of
words that functions as a single unit within a
hierarchical
structure.
IC analysis:
the analysis of
a sentence in terms of its immediate constituents-
word groups or phrases,
which are in
turn analyzed into the immediate constituents of
their own, and the process goes on until
the ultimate constituents are reached.
16 category
The term
category refers to the defining properties of the
general units of different word classes as
well as their syntactic functions
17 agreement
Agreement (or concord) may be defined
as the requirement that the forms of two or more
words of
specific word classes that
stand in specific syntactic relationship should
agree with one another in
terms of some
categories
2
二．
简
答
1
Design Features of Language:
Arbitrariness
Duality
Creativity
Displacement
2
Functions of language
?
referential (to
convey message and information),
?
poetic (to
indulge in language for its own sake),
?
emotive (to
express attitudes, feelings and emotions),
?
conative (to
persuade and influence others through commands and
requests),
?
phatic (to establish communion with
others)
?
metalingual (to clear up intentions and
meanings).-----Jocobson
Metafunctions
of Language
?
ideational
,
interpersonal
and
textual
functions.
4 Functional Grammar
?
Theoretical
approach to the description and explanation of
linguistic phenomena based on
their
various functions.
?
basic assumption: linguistic phenomena
cannot be explained without examining their
function
It
offers an alternative to (post) structuralism
attempts at describing linguistic phenomena
formally
(i.e. assuming the autonomy of
syntax)
5 5.1 The Prague School
?
Prague
Linguistic Circle:
?
Started by
V
. Mathesius (1882-1946) in 1926, with
such activists as R. Jacobson
(1896-1982), N. Trubetzkoy (1890-1938)
and later J. Firbas (1921-2000).
?
The Circle
stood at the heart of important developments in
structural linguistics and
semiotics in
the 1930's.
?
Three important points:
?
Stressed
synchronic linguistics, but not rigidly separated
from diachronic studies.
?
L is systemic in that no element of L
can be satisfactorily analysed or evaluated in
isolation and assessment can only be
made if its relationship is established with the
coexisting elements in the same
language system.
?
L is functional in that it is a tool
for performing a number of essential functions or
tasks for the community using it.
5.1.1
Prague
School Phonology
?
N. Trubetzkoy:
Principle of
Phonology
(1939).
?
Phonetics &
phonology: different for parole & langue.
?
Phoneme: an
abstract unit of the sound system.
?
Distinctive
features: phonological oppositions.
?
Showed
distinctive functions of speech sounds and gave an
accurate definition of the
phoneme.
Trubetzkoy’s contributions
?
Defined the
sphere of phonological studies.
?
Revealed
interdependent syntagmatic and paradigmatic
relations between phonemes.
?
Put forward a
set of methodologies for phonological studies.
5.1.2 Functional Sentence Perspective
3
?
FSP is a theory about analysis of
utterances (or texts) in terms of the information
they contain.
?
Principle: the role of each utterance
part is evaluated for its semantic contribution to
the
whole.
5.1.3
Communicative dynamism
?
J. Firbas
?
Linguistic communication is dynamic,
not static.
?
CD
measures the amount of info an element carries in
a sentence. The degree of CD is
the
effect contributed by a linguistic element. For
example,
5.2 The London School
?
B. Malinowski
(1884-1942), professor of anthropology (1927).
?
J. R. Firth
(1890-1960), the first professor of linguistics in
the UK (1944).
?
M. A. K. Halliday (1925-
), student of Firth.
?
All three
stressed the importance of context of situation
and the system aspect of L.
5.2.1
Malinowski’s theories
?
Language “is to
be regarded as a mode of action, rather than as a
counterpart of thought”.
?
The meaning of
an utterance comes from its relation to the
situational context in which it
occurs.
?
Three types of
situational context:
?
situations in which speech interrelates
with bodily activity;
?
narrative situations;
?
situations in
which speech is used to fill a speech
vacuum
—
phatic communion.
5.2.2 Firth’s theories
a.
语言观
Regarded L as a
social process, a means of social life.
?
L is a means of participation in social
activities.
?
L is a means of doing things and of
making others do things, a means of acting and
living.
?
L is both inborn and acquired.
?
The object of
linguistic study is L in use.
?
The goal of
linguistic inquiry is to analyse meaningful
elements of L in order to establish
corresponding relations between
linguistic and non-linguistic elements.
?
The method of
linguistic study is to decide on the composite
elements of L, explain their
relations
on various levels, and ultimately explicate the
internal relations between these
elements and human activities in the
environment of language use.
b.
意义观
Meaning is use. five parts of its
analysis:
?
the
relationship of each phoneme to its phonetic
context;
?
the
relationship of each lexical item to the others in
the sentence;
?
the morphological relations of each
word;
?
the
sentence type of which the given sentence is an
example;
?
the
relationship of the sentence to its context of
situation.
In sum, he emphasizes three kinds of
meaning: collocational meaning, referential
meaning,
and contextual meaning
c.
语境观
4
contextual analysis: situational
context and linguistic context
?
Internal
relations of the text:
?
syntagmatic relations in structure
?
paradigmatic
relations in system
?
Internal relations of the context of
situation:
?
relations between text and non-
linguistic elements
?
analytical relations between elements
of the text and elements within the situation
d. Prosodic analysis
(
韵律分析
): prosodic phonology
?
Since any human
utterance is continuous speech flow made up of at
least one syllable,
it cannot be cut
into independent units. Mere phonetic and
phonological descriptions
are
insufficient.
?
It is not phonemes that make up the
paradigmatic relations, but Phonematic Units, the
features of which are fewer than those
of phonemes and are called prosodic units.
?
prosodic units
include such features as stress, length,
nasalisation, palatalisation, and
aspiration.
?
prosodic analysis is advantageous in
categorising data and revealing the relations
between
them compared with phonemic
analysis
一．
论述
1 TG grammar
A brief introduction to generative
grammar
?
Generative grammar: a system of rules
that in some explicit and well-defined way assigns
structural descriptions to sentences.
It aims to reveal the unity
of particular grammars and
universal
grammars as well as human cognitive systems. To
achieve this goal, a grammar
should
achieve observational adequacy, descriptive
adequacy and explanatory adequacy.
?
Different from Bloomfield’s
data
-oriented discovery procedure, he
insists on the
Hypothesis-deduction
method.
Five stages of development
?
The Classical
Theory
?
The Standard Theory
?
The
Extended Standard Theory
?
The Revised Extended
Standard Theory
?
The Minimalist Program
4.1 Early theories (1957)
4.1.1 Innateness hypothesis: the
starting point of TG grammar
Language is somewhat
innate, and children are born with a Language
Acquisition Device (LAD)
—
a
unique kind of knowledge that fits them
for language learning.
Children are
endowed with a universal knowledge of the basic
grammatical relations and
categories
and study of language can shed light on the nature
of the human mind.
LAD consists of
three parts: hypothesis maker, linguistic
universal and evaluation procedure.
?
Evidences: children learn mother tongue
very fast and with little effort; similar stages
experienced by them (babbling stage,
nonsense word stage, holophrastic stage, two-word
utterance, developing grammar, near-
adult grammar, and full competence); learn the
total
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