1、Contents,Chapter 1 Language and Linguistics Chapter 2 Speech Sounds: phonetics and Phonology Chapter 3 Words and Morphology Chapter 4 Sentences: Syntax Chapter 5 Meaning: Semantics Chapter 6 Meaning in use: Pragmatics Chapter 7 Language, Culture and Thought Chapter 8 Language Acquisition and Learnin
2、g Chapter 9 Schools of linguistics,Chapter 1 Language and Linguistics,1.1 Language and Human 1.2 Design features of language 1.3 Functions of Language 1.4 Linguistics and its branches 1.5 Basic Concepts in linguistics,1.1 Definition of language,In the Textbook Language is a means of verbal communica
3、tion. It is instrumental in that communicating by speaking or writing is a purposeful act. It is social and conventional in that language is a social semiotic and communication can only take place effectively if all the users share a broad understanding of human interaction including such associated
4、 factors as nonverbal cures, motivation, and social-cultural roles Language: Language is a system of arbitrary vocal symbols used for human communication.,1.2 Design features of language,Design features: Design features refer to the defining properties of human language that distinguish it from any
5、animal system of communication. Arbitrariness/ Productivity/ Duality/ Displacement/ Cultural transmission,Arbitrariness,Arbitrariness refers to the property of language which reveals that there is no direct natural link between the linguistic form and its meaning. However, language is not entirely a
6、rbitrary. There are words which are created in the imitation of sounds. But the non-arbitrary words are quite limited in number. The arbitrary nature of language makes it possible for language to have an unlimited source of expressions.,Do you think human language is entirely arbitrary? Why?,Languag
7、e is arbitrary in nature, it is not entirely arbitrary, because there are a limited number of words whose connections between forms and meanings can be logically explained to a certain extent, for example, the onomatopoeia, words which are coined on the basis of imitation of sounds by sounds such as
8、 bang, crash,etc Take compounds for another example. The two elements “photo” and “copy” in “photocopy” are non-motivated, but the compound is not arbitrary.,Productivity,Productivity refers to the property of language which enables language to generate new utterances by its users. The property of l
9、anguage enables us to express our unlimited and new ideas. Productivity is unique to human language. Most animal communication systems appear to be highly restricted with respect to the number of different signals that their users can send and receive.,Duality,Duality is the nature of language which
10、 shows that language is a system and consists of two sets of structure, or two levels, one of sounds and the other of meanings. At the lower or the basic level, there is the structure of sounds, which are meaningless, discrete, individual sounds. But the sounds of language can be combined according
11、to rules into units of meaning such as morphemes and words, which, at the higher level, can be arranged into sentences. This duality of structure or double articulation of language enables its users to talk about anything within their knowledge. No animal communication system has duality or even com
12、es near to possessing it.,Displacement,Displacement means 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. In other words, language can be used to refer to contexts removed from the immedia
13、te situations of the speaker Animal calls are mainly uttered in response to immediate changes of situation.,Cultural transmission,Cultural transmission is the property of language which requires us human to learn a language. Human beings were born with the ability to acquire language. The details of
14、 any language are not genetically transmitted or passed down by instinct. They have to be taught and learned, but animal call systems are genetically transmitted .,Discreteness,Discreteness is the property of language which enables the speakers of a language to identify the sound elements in its wor
15、ds. Each sound is discrete and distinct and thus can be combined together to make different forms. It is the structural feature of language that words are made up of elemental sounds,1.3 Functions of language,Malinowski: pragmatic function; magical function; phatic function Jakobson: referential, po
16、etic, emotive, conative, phatic, metaligual functionHalliday: metafunctions: ideational function; interpersonal function; textual function,1.4 Linguistics and its branches,Basic branches of linguistics Phonetics: speech sounds Phonology: rules in speech sounds Morphology: words and their formation S
17、yntax: rules of sentences Semantics: meaning,Grammar,Phonology,Morphology,Syntax,Semantics,Other branches of linguistics,Pragmatics Anthropological linguistics Psycholinguistics Sociolinguistics Neurolinguistics Applied linguistics Computational linguistics,1.5 Some concepts in Linguistics,Descripti
18、ve vs prescriptive Synchronic vs diachronic Speech and writing Langue and parole Competence and performance,1) Prescriptive and Descriptive,Prescriptivism prescribes rules of what is correct. It creates rules of grammar Descriptivism describe the way people actually speak and write their language, n
19、ot to prescribe how they ought to speak or write.,How is modern linguistics different from traditional grammar?,Traditional grammar is prescriptive; it is based on “high “(religious, literary) written language . It sets grammatical rules and imposes the rules on language users. But Modern linguistic
20、s is descriptive; It collects authentic, and mainly spoken language data and then it studies and describes the data in an objective and scientific way.,2) Synchronic and Diachronic,The diachronic study refers to the description of the historical development of a language The synchronic study refers
21、to the description of a particular state of a language at a single point of time. Synchronic description has priority over diachronic description.,How do you understand the distinction between a synchronic study and a diachronic study?,The description of a language at some point in time is a Synchro
22、nic study; the description of a language as it changes through time is a diachronic study. A synchronic study of language describes a language as it is at some particular point in time, while a diachronic study of language is the study of the historical development of language over a period of time.
23、,3) Langue and Parole,What are the major distinctions between langue and parole?,The distinction between langue, and parole was made by the famous Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure early this century. Langue refers to the abstract linguistic system shared by all the members of a speech community,
24、 and parole refers to the realization of langue in actual use. Langue is the set of conventions and rules which language users all have to follow while parole is the concrete use of the conventions and the application of the rules. Langue is abstract; it is not the language people actually use, but
25、parole is concrete; it refers to the naturally occurring language events. Langue is relatively stable, it does not change frequently; while parole varies from person to person, and from situation to situation.,4) Competence and performance,Chomsky Competence refers to the knowledge that native speak
26、ers have of their language as system of abstract formal relations Performance refers to what we do when we speak or listen. The infinite varied individual acts of verbal behavior with their irregularities, inconsistencies and errors.,How do you understand competence and performance ?,American lingui
27、st N. Chomsky in the late 1950s proposed the distinction between competence and performance. Chomsky defines competence as the ideal users knowledge of the rules of his language. This internalized set of rules enables the language user to produce and understand an infinitely large number of sentence
28、s and recognize sentences that are ungrammatical and ambiguous. According to Chomsky, performance is the actual realization of this knowledge in linguistic communication. Although the speakers knowledge of his mother tongue is perfect, his performances may have mistakes because of social and psychol
29、ogical factors such as stress, embarrassment, etc Chomsky believes that what linguists should study is the competence, which is systematic, not the performance, which is too haphazard.,Saussures distinction between langue and parole seems similar to Chomskys distinction between competence and perfor
30、mance. What do you think are their major differences?,Although Saussures distinction and Chomskys are very similar, they differ at least in that Saussure took a sociological view of language and his notion of langue is a mater of social conventions, and Chomsky looks at language from a psychological
31、 point of vies and to him, competence is a property of the mind of each individual.,Speech and writing,Speech and writing are two systems of language. Speech has priority over writing.,Why does modern linguistics regard the spoken form of language as primary, not the written?,First, the spoken form
32、is prior to the written form and most writing systems are derived from the spoken form of language. Second, the spoken form plays a greater role than writing in terms of the amount of information conveyed and it serves a wider range of purposes Finally, the spoken form is the medium through which we
33、 acquire our mother tongue.,Of the two media of language, why do you think speech is more basic than writing?,1) In linguistic evolution, speech is prior to writing. 2) In everyday communication, speech plays a greater role than writing in terms of the amount of information conveyed. 3) Speech is al
34、ways the way in which every native speaker acquires his mother tongue, and writing is learned and taught later at school.,Chapter Two: Speech sounds: phonetics and phonology,2.1 Phonetics 2.2 Phonology,2.1 Phonetics,Phonetics: the scientific study of speech sounds, concerning with defining and class
35、ifying speech sounds. Speech is a chain with three stages: production of the message, the transmission of the message and the reception of the message So phonetics are in three branches: articulatory phonetics (identification and classification of individual sounds), acoustic phonetics (analysis and
36、 measurement of sound waves, the physical features of speech sounds) and auditory phonetics (perception of speech),Speech sounds and non-speech sounds,We can make a variety of sounds. But we choose some of them in our speech.We make sounds by means of the air out of or into our body. So we have:Pulm
37、onic and non-pulmonic speech sounds in our speech.Pulmonic egressive airstream vs nonpulmonic ingressive airstream,Articulation of sounds,Speech organs: lungs, trachea, larynx, pharyngeal, oral cavities, and nasal cavities. Glottis: vocal folds Voicing: vibration of the vocal folds: voiced and voice
38、less: some consonants and all vowels,Description of speech sounds,We use Phonetic Alphabets to describe speech sounds International Phonetic alphabet (IPA): a unique written representation (a list of symbols) of every sound in every language Diacritics: any mark in sound description additional to le
39、tters or other basic elements. , Narrow description: detailed Broad description: general,Consonants,Consonants are produced by temporarily obstructing or restricting the airstream as it passes through the mouth. Consonants may be divided into two groups in terms of 2 dimensions: the place of articul
40、ation and the manner of articulation.,Vowels,Vowels are characterized by the absence of obstruction of the airstream in the mouth. They are produced without any obstruction or restriction of the airstream Three dimensions for the configuration of the vowels : openness, backness and rounding Each of
41、the dimensions is continuous, the difference between any two vowels in terms of the openness, backness and rounding is always a matter of more or less Vowels can be distinguished as oral vowels and nasal vowels,Cardinal vowels,8 primary cardinal vowels another 8 cardinal vowels, the secondary cardin
42、al vowels : the front rounded and the back unrounded Monophthong:a vowel whose quality remains stable during its production is known as monophthong. Diphthong: A vowel whose quality changed during its production, in fact a combination of two monophthongs is known as diphthong.,Give the correct techn
43、ical terms for the following expressions,Both lips bilabial Opening between vocal cords voiceless Teeth dental Hard roof of mouth palatal Ridge behind upper teech alveolar Lower lip to upper teeth labiodental Back of tongue to soft rear roof of mouth velar,Write the corresponding sound segments acco
44、rding to the descriptions.,a) Voiceless bilabial stop: _p_ b) Voiced alveolar nasal: _n_ c) Voiced velar stop: _ d) Central lax unrounded vowel: _ e) High back tense rounded vowel: _u:_,For each group of sounds listed below, state the phonetic feature or features which they all share.,a. f v s frica
45、tive b. i: i e e: front c. d l s z t alveolar d. b d g plosive, voiced e. j w voiced,What are the criteria that a linguist uses in classifying vowels?,1) Vowels may be distinguished as front, central and back in terms of the position of the tongue in the mouth. 2) According to how wide our mouth is
46、opened, we classify the vowels into four groups: close vowels, semi-close vowels, semi-open vowels, and open vowels. 3) According to the shape of the lips, vowels are divided into rounded vowels and unrounded vowels.4) The English vowels can also be classified into long vowels and short vowels accor
47、ding to the length of the sound.,2.2 Phonology: Sound patterns,Phonology focuses on the linguistic (phonological) rules that are used to specify the manner in which speech sounds are organized and combined into meaningful units, which are then combined to form syllables, words and sentences. Sounds
48、are chosen to be combined in different languages: number and type,What are the major differences between phonology and phonetics?,They differ in their approach and focus. Phonetics is of a general nature; it is interested in all the speech sounds used in all human languages: how they are produced, h
49、ow they differ from each other, what phonetic features they possess, how they can be classified. Phonology, on the other hand, is interested in the system of sounds of a particular language; it aims to discover how speech sounds in a language form patterns and how these sounds are used to convey mea
50、ning in linguistic communication.,Assimilation: a rule for neighbouring sounds,Sounds in neighbourhood may influence each other. l and r becomes voiceless when they follow s, p, t and k, as in slay, pray, tray, and clay. Vowels become a bit longer when they are before voiced consonants, as in lip and lid, bit and bid. Vowels before a nasal consonant become nasalized, e.g. fan, beam.,
