1、Chapter 1Invitations to Linguistics,The definition:,Linguistics is the scientific study of language.,It is based on systematic investigation of linguistic data, conducted with the underlying language system.To discover the rules and nature of the language system, the linguists have to collect and ob
2、serve language factshe formulates some hypotheses about the language structureto be checked repeatedly against the observed facts to prove their validity.,北外 2011年语言学考研真题 Answer the following questions.1. Why do we say linguistics is a science?,Linguistics is a branch of science.,science,Social scie
3、nce,Natural science,anthropology,philosophy,linguistics,that studies the origins and social relationships of human beings,sociology,economics,Language here : language in particular ? language in common ?that is , linguistics does not take any specific language as a research object,but all the langua
4、ges as research object, ,Linguistics aims to answer,what is language ? How does language work ?,1. What is language? 2. Design features of language 3. Origin of language 4. Functions of language 5. Linguistics and its branches 6. Important Distinctions in Linguistics,Chapter one,?,2. What is languag
5、e?,what a person says(e.g. bad language, expressions),How are youdoing?,the way of speaking or writing (e.g. Shakespeares language, Luxuns language),His language is abundant and rich.,His language is sharp and meaningful.,a particular variety or level of speech or writing (e.g. language for special
6、purpose, colloquial language),You, a jerk! Stop making me sick!,We celebrate today not a victory of a party, but of freedom and liberty,Language can also mean,the abstract system underlying the totality of the speech/writing behavior of a community(e.g. Chinese language, first language) the common f
7、eatures of all human languages (e.g. He studies language) a tool for human communication.(social function),Brain storming:,Ingredients of the definition of “language”.,Language “is not to be confused with human speech, of which it is only a definite part, though certainly an essential one. It is bot
8、h a social product of the faculty of speech and a collection of necessary conventions that have been adopted by a social body”.,-Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913),Sapirs definition (1921),“Language is a purely human and non-instinctive method of communicating ideas, emotions and desires by means of
9、voluntarily produced symbols.”,Chomskys definition (1957),“From now on I will consider language to be a set of (finite or infinite) sentences, each finite in length and constructed out of a finite set of elements.”,The institution whereby humans communicate and interact with each other by means of h
10、abitually used oral-auditory arbitrary symbols. R.A. Hall,The systematic, conventional use of sounds, signs, or written symbols in a human society for communication and self-expression.,David Crystal,Brain storming:,Ingredients of the definition of “language”.,Language is a system of arbitrary symbo
11、ls.,vocal/spoken ? Written?,Used for communication rather than eating or sleeping.,. A. system: Consist of a set of rules which underlie peoples actual speech or writing B. arbitrary: no intrinsic connection between the word and the thing it refers to C. vocal: sound or oral form is primary to writt
12、en form D. Symbolic- words are associated with objects, actions, ideas by convention. Greek alphabet , Roman alphabet ( Latin alphabet) , Strokes , E. human communication: only for human beings, unique user, human-specific,A widely accepted definition: a system of arbitrary vocal symbols used for hu
13、man communication,dog, 狗，chien,Language is Vocal,The primary medium for all languages is sound. Writing systems came into being much later than the spoken forms People with little or no literacy can also be competent language users.,Three types of signs,icon 图形符号,index 指示符号,symbol 象征符号,CSPiers,美国实用主
14、义和符号学的创始人、著名哲学家皮尔斯（CSPier。e18391914）从能指和所指的关系上，把符号（sign）分成3类：icon，index，Symbol。皮尔斯的三分法认为在能指和所指之间有三种联系方法，即符号的三重指称的观点，,A symbol = a concrete object or form + the meaning or the idea that it conveys,a sign whose form is arbitrarily or conventionally associated with its meaning,based on chance rather th
15、an being planned or based on reason,e.g. house (English)住(Japanese) mansion (French) 房子(Chinese),1. Parrot: talking birds Imitate/ reproduce words and phrases of human language, but their utterances carry no meaning2. gorilla Koko,(Koko a Talking Gorilla) DVD,美国 纪录片,Patterson claims to have taught K
16、oKo to communicate with humans using symbols taken from American Sign Language.,Alex African gray parrot,his life has changed scientific understanding about language and thought.,to gain insights into avian intelligence. thirty-year Alex was no mere mimic: his skills in language (speak more than 150
17、 English words) and reasoning rivaled those of chimps and dolphins. do more than speak and understand count, identify colors. When Alex died in September 2007, his last words to Pepperberg were “You be good. I love you.“ .,Conclusion: It is not the childs ability to acquire the complexities of the g
18、rammar of human language. One property of all human language is the discreteness of the speech or gestural units, which are ordered and reordered, combined and split apart.,DIGRESSION !,Whether animals or some wise ones have their own language system? Answer: not fixed,prairie dogs for many years th
19、ese social, family-oriented animals have one of the most complex communication systems among nonhuman animals,Eg. Constantine Slobodchikoff,Animal communication systems:My primary emphasis is on working with referential communication, using prairie dogs as a model species.Current findings are that p
20、rairie dogs have: a) different alarm calls for different species of predators; b) different escape behaviors for different species of predators;c) transmission of semantic information, in that playbacks of alarm calls in the absence of predators lead to escape behaviors that are appropriate to the k
21、ind of predator who elicited the alarm calls;d) alarm calls containing descriptive information about the general size, color, and speed of travel of the predator.,Prairie Dogs: Communication and Community in an Animal Society by Constantine Slobodchikoff,From lizards using grammar, to whales and mic
22、e singing songs, to squid chatting up potential mates, to prairie dogs calling out words for different predators, Dr. Slobodchikoff builds a new view of animals. Dr. Slobodchikoff says, “Traditionally, language has been viewed as the last bastion that separates us from other species. If animals have
23、 language, then the differences between us and them become ones of degree and not the qualitative differences that some people would like to believe.,据英国每日邮报报道，目前，一位资深动物行为专家称，未来10年内，我们使用一种手机大小的装置便能与动物进行“对话”。斯洛波奇柯夫评估称，未来五至十年将真实研制出这种“宠物翻译器”。,Language can be generally defined as:,a system of arbitrary
24、vocal symbols used for human communication.,3. Design features of language,Defining features that make human language distinguished,Design features:,Arbitrariness,Duality,Productivity (Creativity),Displacement,3.1 Arbitrariness,Can you tell what arbitrariness means here?,It was discussed by Saussure
25、 first.(1857-1913) Father of Modern Linguistics,e.g. house (English)住(Japanese) mansion (French) 房子(Chinese),“Whats in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet“ - William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, 2.2,Arbitrariness : there is no logical/natural connection between
26、 form (sounds) and meanings (concept).,Different language have different words for the same object .,How do you understand onomatopoeia ?,滴答 滴答汪汪汪 Buzz murmur,drip drip (water) tick tick (clock） Bow bow,The words that sound like the sounds they describe.,But even here, the sounds differ from languag
27、e to language, reflecting the particular sound system of the language.,Different levels of arbitrariness,Arbitrariness at the syntactic level ? not arbitrary at the syntactic level. He came in and sat down. He sat down and came in. He sat down after he came in.,Arbitrariness and convention The link
28、between a linguistic sign and its meaning is a matter of convention. e.g. idiomThe difficulties of learning a foreign language.,3.2 Duality,“The property of having two levels of structures, such that units of the primary level are composed of elements of the secondary level and each of the two level
29、s has its own principles of organization.” (Lyons, 1982:20),Sounds: no meaning,Higher level linguistic elements, eg. words,animal communicate with special calls ?call-have correspondent meanings, but can not be divided into elements.,Language is hierarchical,Discrete units-discrete meanings Syllable
30、s (meaningless sounds) Morphemes meaningful segments of words Words Sentences/utterances Texts/discourse,3.3 Productivity (Creativity),due to duality and recursivenesssounds-words-phrases-sentencesits potential to create endless sentences Language is productive in that it makes possible the construc
31、tion and interpretation of new signals by its users.,The aliens from the planet Karb predetermined the fate owning to the great errors of judgment . e-quaintance ,microblog, wechat, young cynic 白细美 屌丝 给力 婚不起 摔锅家有灰常多小强。,Understand some expressions you never heard.,Produce some expressions that never
32、existed before.,3.4 Displacement,Language can be used to refer to things that are present or not present (time and space.) E.g.,有三秋桂子，十里荷花。 Late autumn fragrant with osmanthus flowers , Lotus in bloom for miles and miles.,Animals communication Bee : a certain degree of displacement Stimulus-response
33、 Dog : cannot tell people that its master will be home in a few days. Our language enables us to communicate about things that do not exist or do not yet exist. Displacement benefits human beings by giving us the power to handle generalizations and abstractions. Once we can talk about physically dis
34、tant thing, we acquire the ability to understand concepts which denote “non-things”, such as truth and beauty.,4. Origin of language:,Mysterious originGenesis (chapter 11:Tower of Babel):Bow-bow theory: onomatopoeic origin Pooh-pooh theory: utter instinctive feeling origin yo-he-yo theory: work orig
35、in,Evidence and problem,“And the Lord said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do; and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do.” (Genesis, 11: 6),linguistics,The “bow-wow” theory （汪汪理论）,In primitive times people imitated
36、 the sounds of the animal calls and speech developed from that. Evidence: Onomatopoeic words seem to be a convenient evidence for this theory. Problems: they are very different in the degree of resemblance they express with the natural sounds.,The “pooh-pooh” theory （噗噗理论）,In the hard life of our pr
37、imitive ancestors, they utter instinctive sounds of pain, anger and joy. Evidence: interjections. Problem: only a limited number of interjections in almost all languages; Besides, interjections such as Oh, Ah, Oops bear little relationship with the sound system of a language and therefore are not go
38、od evidence.,The “yo-he-ho” theory （哟嗬哟理论）,As primitive people worked together, they produced some rhythmic grunts which gradually developed into chants and then into language. Evidence: We do have prosodic use of rhythms in languages Problem: rhythmic grunts are far different from language in its p
39、resent sense. The theory is again at most a speculation,LAD,Chomsky :Language Acquisition Device语言习得机制 Genetically endowed; A baby was born with it,Conclusion: not fixed and may come up with enlightening findings in future.,5. Functions of language,Assignment : read the book and explain those functi
40、ons with your own language and examples.,6. Linguistics and its branches,Linguistics is generally defined as the systematic or scientific study of language. Linguistics Linguist linguistic,Main Branches of linguistics,Micro-linguistics（微观语言学） Language in itselfsound form meaningphonetics phonology m
41、orphology syntax semantics pragmaticsMacro-linguistics (宏观语言学）Psycholinguistics (心理语言学)Sociolinguistics （社会语言学）Anthropological linguistics（人类语言学）Computational linguistics （计算语言学）,Phonetics (语音）:study speech soundsstudy the organsHow speech sounds are produced, transmitted and received; the descripti
42、on and classification of speech sounds.Phonology（音系）: study the rules governing the structure, distribution, and sequencing of speech sounds and the shape of syllables.How sounds form systems and function to convey meaning? phoneme: the smallest linguistic unit that can signal a difference in meanin
43、g,Articulatory phonetics,Auditory phonetics,Acoustic phonetics,Morphology（形态学）: study the internal structure of words and the rules by which words are formed. Morpheme: The basic unit in the study of morphology and the smallest meaningful unit of language. How morphemes are combined to form words?,S
44、yntax （句法）:The study of those rules that govern the combination of words to form sentences. e.g. The children watched the firework from the hill.The children watched the firework from the hill.Semantics （语义学）:The study of meaning in language. Morphemes, words and sentencesHow meaning is encoded in l
45、anguage? Pragmatics （语用学）:The study of meaning in context of use. How people use language in their conversation?,1) Psycholinguistics(心理语言学): studies the interrelation of language and mind, in processing and producing utterances and in language acquisition 2) Sociolinguistics(社会语言学): interests in la
46、nguage and society, the social function of language and the social characteristics of its users. 3) Anthropological linguistics(人类语言学): interested in the history and structure of formerly unwritten languages/ the emergence of language and the divergence of languages over thousands of years. 4) Compu
47、tational linguistics(计算语言学): studies the use of computers to process or produce human languages.,1. Descriptive vs. prescriptive （描写式&规定式）,Do/Dont say X. prescriptive command People do/dont say X. descriptive statementDescriptive : describe/analyze linguistic facts observed or language people actual
48、ly use (modern linguistic) Prescriptive : lay down rules for “correct” linguistic behavior in using language (traditional grammar),Some important distinctions in linguistics,Reflection:,Which method does modern linguistics hold? Key: descriptive while traditional grammar is prescriptive.,(2) Synchro
49、nic vs. diachronic,diachronic,synchronic,the study of a language at a fixed instance (usu. the present) as its point of observation,the study of a language through the course of its history,the study of the features of English used in Shakespeares time ? the study of the changes English ?,(3) Speech
50、 and writing,The two major media of communication. Modern linguistics regards ? as primary.the spoken form of language but not the written form 1. Speech precedes writing; 2. There are still many languages that have only the spoken form; 3. In terms of function, the spoken language is used for a wider range of purposes than the written, and carries a larger load of communication than the written.,
