Chapter 1:Introduction
1.1 What is linguistics?
1.1.1 Definition
Linguistics is generally defined as the scientific study of language. It tries to answer the basic questions
What is language?
How does language work?
What do all languages have in common? (language universal语言共同性)
What range of variation(变体) is found among languages? (dialect. Mandarin普通话，accent)
What makes language change?
To what extent are social class differences reflected in language? (sociolinguistics社会语言学)
How does a child acquire his mother tongue? (language acquisition 语言习得)
1.1.2 The scope of linguistics（语言学研究的范围）branches
general linguistics（普通语言学）
phonetics（语音学）
phonology（音系学）
morphology（形态学）
syntax（句法学）
semantics（语义学）
Example:
boy: human male young animate
girl: human female young animate
componential analysis 语义成分分析
pragmatics（语用学）
It is cold here.
Please close the door.
I want to put on more clothes.
I don’t want to stay here.
sociolinguistics（社会语言学）
psycholinguistics （心理语言学）
applied linguistics（应用语言学）
broad sense:广义,
narrow sense:狭义=language teaching
1.1.3 Some important distinctions in linguistics (语言学中一些重要的概念区分)
1.1.3.1 Prescriptive vs. descriptive（规定与描写）
If a linguistic study aims to describe and analyze the language people actually use, it is said to be descriptive;
If the linguistic study aims to lay down(规定) rules for \"correct and standard\" behaviour in using language, i.e. to tell people what they should say
and what they should not say, it is said to be prescriptive.
1.1.3.2 Synchronic（共时语言学） vs. diachronic（历时语言学）
The description of a language at some point of time in history is a synchronic study.
The description of a language as it changes through time is a diachronic study. A diachronic study of language is a historical study; it studies the historical development of language over a period of time.
1.1.3.3 Speech and writing（言语与文字）
Speech and writing are the two major media of linguistic communication. Modern linguistics regards the spoken language as the natural or the primary medium of human language for some obvious reasons. From the point of view of linguistic evolution, speech is prior to writing. The writing system of any language is always \"invented\" by its users to record speech when the need arises. Even in today's world there are still many languages that can only be spoken but not written.
1.1.3.4 Langue and parole（语言与言语）
Langue refers to the abstract linguistic system shared by all the members of a speech community.（语言社区）
Parole refers to the realization of langue in actual use. （actual use of language, concrete）
Differences:
1. Langue is abstract; it is not the language people actually use. Parole is concrete; it refers to the naturally occurring language events.(语言事件)
2. Langue is relatively stable, it does not change frequently; while parole varies from person to person, and from situation to situation.（Saussure索绪尔）
1.1.3.5 Competence and performance(语言能力和语言运用)
competence and performance,
Chomsky（乔姆斯基）（a prof. at MIT） defines competence（langue） as the ideal user's knowledge of the rules of his language, and performance (parole) the actual realization of this knowledge in linguistic communication.
While Saussure's distinction and Chomsky's are very similar, they differ at least in that Saussure took a sociological view of language and his notion of langue is a matter of social conventions, and Chomsky looks at language from a psychological point of view and to him competence is a property of the mind of each individual.
1.1.3.6 Traditional grammar and modern linguistics（传统语法与现代语言学）
《普通语言学教程》Saussure索绪尔
The differences:
Firstly, linguistics is descriptive while traditional grammar is prescriptive. Second, modern linguistics regards the spoken language as primary, not the written.
Then, modern linguistics differs from traditional grammar also in that it does not force languages into a Latin-based framework of the languages used by mankind.
1.2 What is language?
1.2.1 Definitions of language
\"Language is a purely human and non-instinctive method of
communicating ideas, emotions and desires by means of voluntarily produced symbols.\" (Sapir, 1921)
Language is \"the institution whereby humans communicate and interact with each other by means of habitually used oral-auditory arbitrary symbols.\" (Hall, 1968)
\"From now on I will consider language to be a set (finite or infinite) of sentences, each finite in length and constructed out of a finite set of elements.\" (Chomsky, 1957)
Language is a system of arbitrary （任意的）vocal symbols used for human communication.
First of all, language is a system, i.e., elements of language are combined according to rules.
Second, language is arbitrary（任意的） in the sense that there is no intrinsic （天生的，内在的）connection between a linguistic symbol and what the symbol stands for, for instance, between the word \"pen\" and the thing we write with.
（This conventional nature of language is well illustrated by a famous quotation from Shakespeare's play \"Romeo and Juliet\": \"A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.\"）
Third, language is vocal because the primary medium for all languages is sound.
The term \"human\" in the definition is meant to specify that language is human-specific, i.e., it is very different from the communication systems other forms of life possess, such as bird songs and bee dances.
1.2.2 Design features（识别特征)
1) Arbitrariness（任意性）
2) Productivity（多产性)
3) Duality（二重性）
4) Displacement（移位）
5) Cultural transmission（文化传递）
Chapter 2: Phonology
2.1 The phonic medium of language(语言的语音媒介)
Speech and writing are the two media or substances used by natural
languages as vehicles for communication. Many languages in the world today are both written and spoken. But statistics resulting from careful investigations show that there have been over 5,000 languages in the world, about two thirds of which have not had written form.
Of the two media of language, speech is more basic than writing for reasons that were discussed in the last chapter. The writing system of any language is always \"invented\" by its users to record speech when the need arises.
Language is first perceived through its sounds. Thus the study of sounds is of great importance in linguistics. Naturally, linguists are not interested in all sounds; they are concerned only with those sounds that are produced by humans through their speech organs and have a role to play in linguistic communication. These sounds are limited in number. This limited range of sounds which are meaningful in human communication constitute the phonic medium of language(语言的语音媒介); and the individual sounds within this range are the speech sounds（言语语音）.
2.2 Phonetics（语音学）
2.2.1 What is phonetics?
Phonetics is defined as the study of the phonic medium of language; it is concerned with all the sounds that occur in the world's languages.
Phonetics looks at speech sounds from three distinct but related points of view.
First, it studies the sounds from the speaker's point of view, i.e., how a speaker uses his speech organs to articulate the sounds. Then, it looks at the sounds from the hearer's point of view, i.e., how the sounds are perceived by the hearer. Lastly, it studies the way sounds travel by looking at the sound waves, the physical means by which sounds are transmitted through the air from one person to another. These three branches of phonetics are labelled articulatory phonetics （发音语音
学）, auditory phonetics（听觉语音学）, and acoustic phonetics（声学语音学）respectively.
Of the three branches of phonetics, articulatory phonetics has the longest history. However, some important facts have also been either discovered or confirmed by acoustic and auditory phonetics, especially by the former. Acoustic phoneticians try to describe the physical properties of the stream of sounds which a speaker issues. To describe these properties, they record the sound waves on machines called spectrographs（频谱仪）. By studying the sound waves thus recorded, they have discovered that what might be heard as the same one utterance is only coincidentally, if ever, physically identical. The \"same\" sounds we claim to have heard are in most cases only phonetically similar, but rarely phonetically identical. Phonetic similarity, not phonetic identity is the criterion with which we operate in the phonological analysis of languages.
2.2.2 Organs of speech（发音器官）
The articulatory apparatus of a human being are contained in three important areas: the pharyngeal cavity（咽腔） -- the throat, the oral cavity（口腔）- the mouth, and the nasal cavity（鼻腔） -- the nose. The air stream coming from the lungs may be modified in these cavities in various ways. It may also be modified in the larynx before it reaches any of the cavities. Such modification results from some kind of interference with the movement of the air stream. The principal source of such modifications is the tongue, and the word \"language\" itself derives from the Latin word \"lingua\meaning the \"tongue\". The pharyngeal cavity Air
coming from the lungs and through the windpipe passes through the glottis, a part of the larynx, which is a bony structure at the end of the windpipe. This is the first point where sound modification might occur. Lying across the glottis are the vocal cords. These two thin tissues can be held tightly together to cut off the stream of air, as when one is ' holding his breath'. They can be relaxed and folded back at each side to let air flow through freely and silently as in normal breathing. Then they may also be held together tautly so that the air stream vibrates them at different speeds when forcing its passage through them. Vibration of the vocal cords results in a quality of speech sounds called \"voicing'', which is a feature of all vowels and some consonants in English. Such consonants are voiced. When the vocal cords are drawn wide apart, letting air go through without causing vibration, the sounds produced in such a condition are voiceless. The oral cavity The greatest source of modification of the air stream is found in the oral cavity. The speech organs located in this cavity are the tongue, the uvula, the soft palate (the velum), the hard palate, the teeth ridge (the alveolus), the teeth and the lips.
Of all these, the tongue is the most flexible, and is responsible for more varieties of articulation than any other. Obstruction between the back of the tongue and the velar area results in the pronunciation of [k] and [g ]. The narrowing of space between the hard palate and the front of the tongue leads to the sound [j]. The obstruction created between the tip of the tongue and the alveolar ridge results in the sounds [t] and [d]. Partial obstruction between the upper front teeth and the tip of the tongue produces the sounds [θ] and [ð].
1. lips唇
2. teeth牙齿
3. tooth ridge (alveolus)齿龈
4. hard palate硬腭
5. soft palate (velum) 软腭
6. uvula
7. tip of tongue
8. blade of tongue
9. back of tongue
10. vocalcords
11. pharyngeal cavity
12. nasal cavity
The nasal cavity
The nasal cavity is connected with the oral cavity. The soft part of the roof of the mouth, the velum, can be drawn back to close the passage so that all air exiting
from the lungs can only go through the mouth. The sounds produced in this condition are not nasalized , such as the vowels and most consonants in English. Then , the passage can also be left open to allow air (or part of it)to exit through the nose. In this case, the sounds pronounced are nasalized, such as the three nasal consonants in English [m], [n], and [η]. Generally, the passage is definitely open or closed. But in some styles of speaking or in some dialects, partial opening may be observed, and the result is speech with a nasal colouring or \"twang\".
2.2.3 Orthographic representation of speech sounds --broad and narrow transcriptions
Towards the end of the nineteenth century, when articulatory phonetics had developed to such an extent in the West that scholars began to feel the need for a standardized and internationally accepted system of phonetic transcription. Thus the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) came into being. With minor modifications it is still widely used now. The basic principle of the IPA is using one letter selected from major European languages to represent one speech sound.
As some speech sounds produced differ only in some detailed aspects, the IPA provides its users with another set of symbols called diacritics, which are added to the letter-symbols to bring out the finer distinctions than the letters alone may possibly do.
Thus two ways to transcribe speech sounds are now available. One is the transcription with letter-symbols only and the other is the transcription with
letter-symbols together with the diacritics. The former is called broad transcription. This is the transcription normally used in dictionaries and teaching textbooks for general purposes. The latter, i. e. the transcription with diacritics, is called narrow transcription. This is the transcription needed and used by the phoneticians in their study of speech sounds. With the help of the diacritics they can faithfully represent as much of the fine details as it is necessary for their purpose.
In broad transcription, the symbol [I] is used for the sound [1] in the four words leaf [li:f], feel [fi:l], build [bild], and health [helθ]. As a matter of fact, the sound [1] in all these four sound combinations differ slightly. The [1] in [li:f ], occurring before a vowel, is called a clear [l], and no diacritic is needed to indicate it; the [1] in [fi:I] and [bild], occurring at the end of a word or before another consonant, is pronounced differently from the clear [1] as in \"leaf\". It is called dark and in narrow transcription the diacritic [~] is used to indicate it. Then in the sound combination [helθ], the sound [1] is followed by the English dental sound [θ], its pronunciation is somewhat affected by the dental sound that follows it. It is thus called a dental [1], and in narrow transcription the diacritic is used to indicate it. It is transcribed as [helθ].
Another example is the consonant [p]. We all know that [p] is pronounced differently in the two words pit and spit. In the word pit, the sound [p] is pronounced with a strong puff of air, but in spit the puff of air is withheld to some extent. In the case of pit, the [p] sound is said to be aspirated and in the case of spit, the [p] sound is unaspirated. This difference is not shown in broad transcription, but in narrow transcription, a small raised \"h\" is used to show aspiration, thus pit is
transcribed as [phIt] and spit is transcribed as [splt].
2.2.4 Classification of English speech sounds
An initial classification will divide the speech sounds in English into two broad categories: vowels and consonants. Two definitions of vowels as a general phonetic category are quoted below:
\"Vowels are modifications of the voice-sound that involve no closure, friction, or contact of the tongue or lips.\" (Bloomfield)
\"A vowel is defined as a voiced sound in forming which the air issues in a continuous stream through the pharynx and mouth, there being no audible friction.\" (Jones)
The two definitions point to one important feature of vowels, i.e. in producing a vowel the air stream coming from the lungs meets with no obstruction whatsoever. This marks the essential difference between vowels and consonants. In the production of the latter category it is obstructed in one way or another.
2.2.4.1 Classification of English consonants
English consonants can be classified in two ways: one is in terms of manner of articulation and the other is in terms of place of articulation.
In terms of manner of articulation the English consonants can be classified into the following types:
stops: When the obstruction created by the speech organs is total or complete, the speech sound produced with the obstruction audibly released and the air passing out again is called a stop or a plosive. The English stops fall into three pairs: [p][b],[t][d],and [k][g].
fricatives: When the obstruction is partial and the air is forced through a narrow passage in the mouth so as to cause definite local friction at the point, the speech sound thus produced is a fricative.
affricates: When the obstruction, complete at first, is released slowly with the friction resulting from partial obstruction (as in fricatives), the sounds thus produced are affricates.
liquids: When the airflow is obstructed but is allowed to escape through the passage between part or parts of the tongue (the tip or the sides ) and the roof of the mouth, the sounds thus produced are called liquids. The English liquids are [ I ] and [ r ]. [ 1 ] is called a lateral sound because in the production of it the surface of the tongue, instead of being more or less flat, is made slightly convex and causes stoppage in the centre of the roof of the mouth while allowing air to pass at the sides. In the production of the other liquid [r], the tip of the tongue is curled back and the air passes over it. It is also called \"retroflex\".
nasals: When the nasal passage is opened by lowering the soft palate at the back of the mouth and air is allowed to pass through it, the sounds thus produced are called nasals. There are three nasals in English [m] [n] and [η].
glides: Glides, sometimes called \"semivowels\The English glides are [w] and [j], both voiced. They are formed in the same manner as the vowels [u] and [I ], with a narrower passage between the lips or between the tongue and the hard palate to cause some slight noise from the local obstruction.
In terms of place of articulation, the English consonants can be classified into the following types:
bilabial: In the production of these sounds, the upper and the lower lips are brought together to create obstruction. The English bilabials are [p] [b] [m] [w].
labiodental: In the production of these sounds, the lower lip is brought into contact with the upper teeth, thus creating the obstruction. The labiodental sounds in English are [f] and [v].
dental: The obstruction is created between the tip of the tongue and the upper teeth. There are two dental sounds in English; they are [θ] and [ð].
alveolar: The tip of the tongue is brought into contact with the upper teeth-ridge to create the obstruction. The alveolar sounds are [t][d][s][z] [n][l][r].
palatal: The obstruction is between the back of the tongue and the hard palate.
velar: The back of the tongue is brought into contact with the velum, or the soft palate. The sounds thus produced in English are [k][g] and [η].
glottal: The vocal cords are Drought momentarily together to create the obstruction. There is only one glottal sound in English, i.e.[h].
The two classifications are combined in the table below, with the help of which we can adequately describe a consonant, or identify a consonant when given its phonetic features:
2.2.4.2 Classification of English vowels
As in the production of vowels the air stream meets with no obstruction, they cannot be classified in terms of manner of articulatioa:0r place of articulation as consonants. Other criteria have to be found for their classification. Vowel sounds are differentiated by a number of factors: the position of the tongue in the mouth, the openness of the mouth, the shape of the lips, and the length of the vowels.
Vowels may be distinguished as front, central, and back according to which part of the tongue is held highest. A front vowel is one in the production of which the front part of the tongue main-tains the highest position; If it is the central part of the tongue that is held highest, the vowels thus produced are called central
vowels. Then if we raise the 'back of the tongue higher than the rest of it.
To further distinguish members of each group, we need to apply another criterion, i.e. the openness of the mouth. Accordingly, we classify the vowels into four groups: close vowels, semi-close vowels, semi-open vowels, and open vowels.
The following diagram summarises our classification by applying the two criteria.
A third criterion that is often used in the classification of vowels is the shape of the lips. In English, all the front vowels and the central vowels are unrounded vowels, i.e., without rounding the lips, and all the back vowels, with the exception of [a:], are rounded. It should be noted that some front vowels can be pronounced with rounded lips.
After applying the three criteria, we can now aptly describe some of the English vowels. For example, the vowel [e] can be described as front, semi-close, and unrounded. But the feature \"unrounded\" is usually omitted since all front vowels in English are unrounded.
Then the English vowels can also be classified according to the length of the sound. Corresponding to the distinction of long and short vowels is the distinction of tense and lax vowels. The long vowels are all tense vowels and the short vowels are lax vowels. When we pronounce a long vowel, the larynx is in a state of tension, and in the pronunciation of a short vowel, no such tension occurs, the larynx is quite relaxed.
So far we have been classifying the individual vowels, also known as monophthongs. In English there are also a number of diphthongs, which are produced by moving from one vowel position to another through intervening positions.
2.3 Phonology
2.3.1 Phonology and phonetics
Both phonology and phonetics are concerned with the same aspect of language -- the speech sounds. But while both are related to the study of sounds, they differ in their approach and focus. As we have seen in the last section, phonetics is of a general nature; it is interested in all the speech sounds used in all human languages: how they are produced, how they differ from each other, what phonetic features they possess, how they can be classified, etc. Phonology, on the other hand, aims to discover how speech sounds in a language form patterns and how these sounds are used to convey meaning in linguistic communication.
Now'let's take the [1] sound in English as an example and see how the same sound can be investigated from both the phonetic and the phonological point of view. As we know, the [1] sound in the two English words leap and peel is pronounced differently. The first one is what we call a clear [l] and the second one a dark .The difference between these two sounds is what the phoneticians are interested in. But phonologically these sounds are regarded to be two versions of the same one basic entity. From the phonological point of view, these two sounds
are fundamentally the same, since they have one and the same function in communication, in distinguishing between words and meanings despite their difference in pronunciation. If someone should pronounce the dark in the word :\"peel\" incorrectly as a clear [l], an English speaker would not for this reason fail to Understand him, he would still understand what action he is talking about but would only find his pronunciationa little bit strange. The phonologists have found that the various versions of the [I] sound do not occur at random in English; their distribution follows a nicely complementary pattern: we use clear [1] before a vowel, such as loaf, and dark at the end of a word after a vowel or before a consonant, such as tell, quilt. This is an important phonological conclusion. But phonology is concerned with the sound system of a particular language, so the conclusions we reach about the phonology of one language is very often language specific and should not be applied to another language without discretion. What is true in one language may not be true in another language.
2.3.2 Phone, phoneme, and allophone
A phone is a phonetic unit or segment. The speech sounds we hear and produce during linguistic communication are all phones. When we hear the following words pronounced: pit, spit, tip, feel, leaf, the phones we have heard are [ph] (as in pit), [p] (as in spit), [ph](as in tip).
But a phone does not necessarily distinguish meaning; some do, some don't. For example, [s] and [t] do , as [si:m] and [ti:m] are two words with totally different meanings, and [th ] and [t ] don't, as [stDp] and [sthop] mean the same to a speaker
of English. Again, we should remind ourselves that what does not distinguish meaning in one language may probably do in another language.
A phoneme is a phonological unit; it is a unit that is of distinctive value. It is an abstract: unit. It is not any particular sound, but rather it is represented or realized by a certain phone in a certain phonetic context. For example, when we pronounce the two words peak and speak, we are aware that the sound [p] is pronounced differently. In the word peak, the [p] sound is pronounced with a strong puff of air stream; but the same stop sound is pronounced slightly differently in the word speak, the puff of air is withheld a little. The [p] sound in peak is called an aspirated [p], and the [p] sound in speak is an nnaspirated [p]. The relation between aspirated [p ] and unaspirated [p] corresponds to that between clear [1 ] and dark: there is a slight difference in the way they are pronounced, but such a difference does not give rise to difference in meaning. So /p/is a phoneme in the English sound system, and it can be realized differently as aspirated or unaspirated in different contexts. Conventionally phones are placed within square brackets, and phonemes in slashes. The different phones which can represent a phoneme in different phonetic environments are called the allophones of that phoneme. For example, the phoneme/1/in English can be realized as dark, clear [1] , etc. which are allophones of the phoneme /1/.
Then, how a phoneme is represented by a phone, or which allophone is to be used, is determined by the phonetic context in which it occurs. But the choice of an allophone is not random or haphazard; it is rule-governed. One of the tasks of the phonologists is to find out these rules. The rule that governs the distribution of
clear [1] and dark is an example.
Although phonemes are the minimal segments of language systems, they are not their minimal elements. A phoneme is further analyzable because it consists of a set of simultaneous distinctive features. It is just because of its distinctive features that a phoneme is capable of distinguishing meaning. A native speaker of English can tell by intuition that the following sound combinations all carry different meanings: [ mæn ], [ pæn ], [ bæn ], [ tæm ], [ ræm ], [ kæn ], [ðæm]. This is because they all contain a different phoneme. The features that a phoneme possesses, making it different from other phonemes, are its distinctive features.
2,3.3 Phonemic contrast, complementary distribution, and minimal pair
It can be easily observed that phonetically similar sounds might berelated in two ways. If they are two distinctive phonemes, they are said to form a phonemic contrast, e.g. /p/ and /b/ in [pit]and [bit ], [roup]and [roub]. If they are allophones of the same phoneme, then they do not distinguish meaning, but complement each other in distribution, i.e. they occur in different phonetic environments. For instance, the clear [1] always occurs before a vowel while the dark [ 1-] always occurs between a vowel and a consonant, or at the end of a word. So the allohphones are said to be in complementary distribution.
A basic way to determine the phonemes of a language is to see if substituting one sound for another results in a change of meaning. If it docs, the two sounds then represent different phonemes.
An easy way to do this is to find the minimal pairs. When two different forms are identical in every way except for one sound scg ment which occurs in the same place in the strings, the two sound combinations are said to form a minimal pair. So in English, pill and bill are a minimal pair, and so are pill and till, till and kill, kill and dill, and dill and gill. Accordingly, we can conclude that /p//b//t//d//k/ are phonemes in English. Then all these sound combinations together constitute a minimal set; they are identical in form except for the initial consonant. This also applies to the vowels. The pronunciations of the following words are identical except for the vowel: beat, bit, bet, bat, boot, but, bait, bite, boat. So they form a minimal set, from which we can conclude that all these vowels in English.
2.3.4 Some rules in phonology
2.3.4.1 Sequential rules
To identify the phonemes of a language is only part of the task of the phonologist. He also has to find out in what way the phonemes can be combined. The patterning of sounds in a particular language is governed by rules. The phonological system determines which phonemes can begin a word, end a word, and follow each other. Suppose you are given four cards, each of which has a different phoneme in English printed on it:
K b l i
Now if you are asked to arrange these cards to form all the \"possible'' words in
English, you might order them as: blik, klib, bilk, kilb. Your knowledge of English \"tells\" you that these are the only arrangements of these phonemes permissible in English, and that Ibki, ilbk, bkil, ilkb, etc. are not possible words in English. This indicates that there are rules that govern the combination of sounds in a particular language. These rules are called sequential rules.
There are many such sequential rules in English. For example, if a word begins with a [1] or a [r], then the next sound must be a vowel. That is why [lbik] [lkbi] are impossible combinations in English. They have violated the restrictions on the sequencing of phonemes.
Also, if three consonants should cluster together at the beginning of a word, the combination should obey the following three rules:
(1) The first phoneme must be /s/
(2) The second phoneme must be /p/or /t/or /k/
(3) The third phoneme must be /l/or/r/or/w/.
This is why all words beginning with a combination of three consonants in English are words like strict [strikt], square[skweo], splendid ['splendid],scream [skri:m].
Again, the rules governing the phonological patterning are language
specific. What is not permissible in English might be permissible in another language. For example, the velar nasal [η] never occurs in initial position in English or standard Chinese. But it does in other languages and some regional dialects of Chinese, such as :Vietnamese, Shanghai dialect, and Cantonese.
2.3.4.1 Assimilation rule
The assimilation rule assimilates one sound to another by \"copying\" a feature of a sequential phoneme, thus making the two phones similar. Assimilation of neighbouring sounds is, for the most part, caused by articulatory or physiological processes. When we speak, we tend to increase the ease of articulation. This \"sloppy\" tendency may become regularized as rules of language.
We all know that nasalization is not a phonological feature in English, i.e., it does not distinguish meaning. But this does not mean that vowels in English are never nasalized in actual pronunciation; in fact they are nasalized in certain phonetic contexts. For example, the [i:] sound is nasalized in words like bean, green, team, and scream. This is because in all these sound combinations the [i:] sound is followed by a nasal [n] or [m].
The assimilation rule also accounts for the varying pronunciation of the alveolar nasal [n] in some sound combinations. The rule is that within a word, the nasal [n]assumes the same place of articulation as the consonant that follows it. We know that in English the prefix in- can be added to an adjective to make the meaning of the word negative, e.g. discreet -- indiscreet, correct -- incorrect. But
the [n]sound in the prefix in- is not always pronounced as an alveolar nasal. It is so in the word indiscreet because the consonant that follows it, i.e. [d ], is an alveolar stop, but the [n] sound in the word incorrect is actually pronounced as a velar nasal, i.e. [η]; this is because the consonant that follows it is [k], which is a velar stop. So we can see that while pronouncing the sound [n], we are \"copying\" a feature of the consonant that follows it.
The sound assimilation is actually reflected in the spelling in most cases. Instead of inpossible, the negative form of possible is impossible, as the [n] sound is assimilated to [m]. For the same reason, the negative forms of plausible, legal, regular are implausible, illegal, and irregular.
2.3.4.3 Deletion rule
Another phonological rule is the deletion rule. It tells us when a sound is to be deleted although it is orthographically represented. We have noticed that in the pronunciation of such words as sign, design, and paradigm, there is no [g] sound although it is represented in spelling by the letter g. But in their corresponding forms signature, designation, and paradigmatic, the [g] represented by the letter g is pronounced. The rule can be stated as: Delete a [g] when it occurs before a final nasal consonant. Given the rule, the phonemic representation of the stems in sign -- signature, resign --resignation, phlegm -- phlegmatic, paradigm -- paradigmatic will include the phoneme /g/, which will be deleted according to the regular rule if no suffix is added.
2.3.5 Suprasegmental features --stress, tone, intonation
So far we have been dealing with the phonemes -- sound segments that distinguish meaning. But distinctive features can also be found running over a sequence of two or more phonemic segments. The phonemic features that occur above the level of the segments are called suprasegmental features; these are the phonological properties of such units as the syllable, the word, and the sentence. The main suprasegmental features include stress, intonation, and tone.
2.3.5.1 Stress
Depending on the context in which stress is considered, there are two kinds of stress: word stress and sentence stress.
The location of stress in English distinguishes meaning. For example, a shift of stress may change the part of speech of a word from a noun to a verb although its spelling remains unchanged. The noun has the stress on the first syllable and the corresponding verb has the stress on the second syllable. This is exemplified in such words as 'import n. -- im'port v. , 'increase n. --in'crease v., 'progress n. -- progress v. , 'insult n. -- insult v. , 'convict n. --con'vict v., 'rebel n. -- re'bel v. , 'produce n. -- pro'duce v. , 'combine n. -- com'bine v. , 'permit n. -- per'mit v, 'pervert n. -- per'vert v.
Similar alteration of stress also occurs between a compound noun and a phrase consisting of the same elements. A phonological feature of the English
compounds is that the stress of the word always falls on the first element, and the second element receives secondary stress. For example, the compound noun blackbird consists of two elements -- black and bird. In pronouncing the word, we stress the first element black. A blackbird refers to a particular kind of bird, which is not necessarily black. It differs from the noun phrase black bird. The noun phrase is stressed differently from the compound. As it is a noun phrase with bird as its head noun and black a modifier, the word bird is primarily stressed. A similar difference in stress pattern and meaning can be found in such pairs as greenhouse and green house, hotdog and hot dog.
The meaning-distinctive role played by word stress is also manifested in the combinations of -ing forms and nouns. It is common in English to find an -ing form followed by a noun, such as dining-room, reading glasses, sewing machine, sleeping baby, swimming fish. Although identical in form, these -ing + noun combinations are of two types. For one type, the -ing form serves as a modifier of the noun, e.g. dining-room, reading glasses. These are actually compound nouns. As a rule, in pronouncing this type of -ing+ noun combinations , the word stress always falls on the first element; the second element receives secondary stress: 'dining- room, 'reading glasses, 'sewing machine.
For the other type of -ing + noun combinations, the noun is actually the doer of the action indicated by the -ing form, e.g. sleeping baby, swimming fish. These are not compound nouns, but noun phrases with an -lng participle modifier. For these combinations, the primary stress falls on the head noun, and the -ing form receives secondary stress.
Sentence stress refers to the relative force given to the components of a sentence. The parts of speech that are normally stressed in an English sentence are nouns, main verbs, adjectives, adverbs, numerals and demonstrative pronouns; the other categories of words like articles, person pronouns, auxiliary verbs, prepositions, and conjunctions are usually not stressed. To give special emphasis to a certain notion, a word in a sentence that is usually unstressed can be stressed. For example, in the sentence: He is driving my car, the words that are normally unstressed, i.e. He, is, my, can all bear the stress to express what the speaker intends to mean.
2.3.5.2 Tone
Tones are pitch variations, which are caused by the differing rates of vibration of the vocal cords. Pitch variations can distinguish meaning just like phonemes; therefore, the tone is a suprasegmental feature. The meaning-distinctive function of the tone is especially important in what we call tone languages. English is not a tone language. Our mother tongue, Chinese, is a typical tone language. It has four tones. The first tone is level(阴平), the second rise(阳平), the third fall-rise(上声), and the fourth fall(去声). The role of the tone can be well illustrated by pronouncing the same sound combination such as \"ma\" in the four different tones:
ma(妈) m a(麻) ma (马) ma (骂)
2.3.5.3 Intonation
When pitch, stress and sound length are tied to the sentence rather than the word in isolation, they are collectively known as intonation. Intonation plays an important role in the conveyance of meaning in almost every language, especially in a language like English. English has four basic types of intonation, known as the four tones: the falling tone, the rising tone, the fall-rise tone, and the rise-fall tone. The most frequently used are the first three. When spoken in different tones, the same sequence of words may have different meanings. Generally speaking, the falling tone indicates that what is said is a straight-forward, matter-of-fact statement, the rising tone often makes a question of what is said, and the fall-rise tone often indicates that there is an implied message in what is said. Compare the following three different ways of saying :the same sentence:
(1) 'That's 'not the 'book he ' wants.
(2) 'That's 'not the 'book he ,wants.
(3) 'That's ,not the ,book he .wants.
Spoken in the falling-tone, version (1) simply states a fact, i. e., the book in question is not the one he wants. Version (2), said in the rising tone, indicates uncertainty on the part of the speaker; he is asking the question: Is that not the book he wants? Version (3),spoken in the fall-rise tone indicates that apart from what is said :literally, there is an implied message, i.e., besides telling the listener that the book in question is not the one he wants, the speaker implies that there is some other book he wants.
Similarly, the sentence I can't eat anything, when said in the falling tone, is equal in meaning to I can eat nothing. But if the seiitence is said in the fall-rise tone, it implies that there are particular things that I can eat.
Intonation can make a certain part of a sentence especially prominent by placing the nucleus on it. Nucleus refers to the major pitch change in an intonation unit. Within one intonation unit, the nucleus normally falls on the last stressed syllable. Shifting the nucleus to another syllable, normally stressed or unstressed, will cause difference in meaning.
Revision exercises:
1. What are the two major media of linguistic communication? Of the two, which one is primary and why?
2. What is voicing and how is it caused?
3. Explain with examples how broad transcription and narrow transcription differ?
4. How are the English consonants classified?
5. What criteria are used to classify the English vowels?
6. Give the phonetic symbol for each of the following sound descriptions:
1) voiced palatal affricate
2) voiceless labiodental fricative
3) voiced alveolar stop
4) front, close, short
5) back, semi-open, long
6) voiceless bilabial stop
Give the phonetic features of each of the following sounds:
7. How do phonetics and phonology differ in their focus of study?
Who do you think will be more interested in the difference between, say, a phonetician or a phonologist? Why?
8. What is a phone? How is it different from a phoneme? How are allophones related to a phoneme?
9. Explain with examples the sequential rule, the assimilation rule, and the deletion rule.
10. What are suprasegmental features? How do the major
suprasegmental features of English function in conveying meaning?
Chapter 3: Morphology
3.1 Morphology(形态学)
Morphology refers to the study of the internal structure of words, and the rules by which words are formed.
3.1.1 Open class and closed class(开放性词类和封闭性词类)
content words(实义词)
nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs
open class words(开放性词类)
\"grammatical\" or \"functional'' words(功能词)
conjunctions, prepositions, articles, pronouns
closed class words(封闭性词类)
Part of speech词类
3.1.2 Internal structure of words and rules for word formation(词的内部结
构和词的构成)
Examples:
A B
like dislike
order disorder
appear disappear
approve disapprove
agree disagree
ad va n tages disadvantages
entangle disentangle
Morphology thus refers to the study of the inter-nal structure of words, and the rules by which words are formed.
3.2 Morphemes -- the minimal units of meaning (词素—最小的意义单位)
prefixes(前缀)
suffixes (后缀)
bound morphemes(粘着词素)
free morphemes(自由词素)
self
selfless
selflessly
selflessness
selfish selfishness unselfish unselfishness unselfishly
attendence
3.3 Derivational and inflectional morphemes (派生词素和曲折词素)
infinitive marker(不定式标记)
3.4 Morphological rules of word formation
(词汇构成的词素音位规则)
Morphological rules 词素音位规则
Productive Morphological rules 生产性词素音位规则
3.5 Compounds(复合词)
Some noteworthy rules:
a) When the two words are in the same grammatical category, the compound will be in this category:
b) In many cases, the two words fall into different categories.
c) It is often the case that compounds have different stress patterns from the noncompounded word sequence., thus in
d) The meaning of a compound is not always the sum of the meanings of its parts. English language.
Coinages 新造的词
To coin new words 造新词
Chapter 4: Syntax
4.1 What is syntax? (什么是句法?)
Syntax is a branch of linguistics that studies how words are combined to form sentences and the rules that govern the formation of sentences.
Transformational syntax（转换句法）
Chomsky 乔姆斯基
MIT
TG :Transformational grammar转换生成语法
4.2 Categories（范畴）
4.2.1 Word-level categories（词法范畴）
Definition：Category refers to a group of linguistic items which fulfill the same or similar functions in a particular language such as a sentence, a noun phrase or a verb.
word-level categories（词法范畴）
syntactic categories（句法范畴）
affixes（词缀）：prefix， suffix
parts of speech（词类）
determiner (Det)限定词
degree words (Deg) 程度词
qualifier (Qual)修饰词
major lexical categories 主要词汇范畴
minor lexical categories次要词汇范畴
Three criteria to determine words’ category:
1. meaning (词义)
2. inflection (曲折变化)
3. distribution (分布)
Conclusion:
Thus, a word's distributional facts together with information about its meaning and inflectional capabilities help identify its syntactic category.
4．2.2. Phrase categories and their structures
（短语范畴及其结构）
NP (noun phrase)
VP (verb phrase)
AP (adjective phrase)
PP (prepositional phrase)
Two levels: word level phrase level
Elements of a phrase:
head（中心成分）
specifier（标志成分）
complement（补足成分）
Examples:
a cup of tea
all the people of China
4.3 Phrase structure rule（短语结构规则）
NP: a story about a sentimental girl
VP: often have noodles for lunch
AP: very hot in summer
PP: without hesitation
4.3.1 XP rule（X短语规则）
The XP rule: XP(specifier)X(completement)
4.3.2 X- Theory（X标杆理论）
4.3.3 Coordination rule（并列规则）
coordinate structure并列结构
Coordination并列
4.4 Phrase elements短语成分
4.4.1 Specifiers标志成分 semantic roles 语义功能
syntactic roles句法功能
Determiners serve as the specifiers of Ns While qualifiers typically function as the specifiers of Vs and degree words as the specifiers of As and sometimes Ps.
4.4.2 Complements补足成分
The information about a word's complement is included in the head and termed subcategorization(次范畴化).
Tree structure树形结构
The XP Rule (revised)
XP (Specifier) X (Complement*)
a story about a sentimental girl in India in the 1960s
This rule also captures the simple but important fact that complements, however many there are, occur to the right of the head in English.
complementizers(补语化成分) (Cs).
complement clause(补语从句)
complement phrase(补语短语) (CP)
matrix clause(主句)
Example:
Miss Herbert believes that she will win.
4.4.3 Modifiers(修饰成分,修饰语)
Definition: Still another kind of element we have not touched upon (talked about, discussed) so far is modifiers, which specify optionally expressible properties of heads. Although all lexical categories can have modifiers, we will focus here on the types of categories that can modify Ns and Vs.
The Expanded XP rule:
XP (Spec) (Mod) X (Complement*) (Mod)
This rule allows a modifier to occur either before the head or after it. Where there is a complement, a modifier that occurs after the head will normally occur to the right of the complement as well.
4.5 Sentences (The S rule)(句子)(S规则)
The S rule:
S NP VP
The boy had an apple.
A boy found the evidence.
abstract category inflection (抽象的范畴曲折)
(dubbed 'Infl') or shortened 'Infl'
4.6 Transformations(转换)
syntactic movement 句法移位
accommodate: suit to; adapt to
4.6. 1 Auxiliary movement 助动词移位
Inversion(倒装):
Move Infl to the left of the subject NP.
Inversion (revised):
Move Infl to C.
Example: Will the train arrive?
Marked by the symbol e ('empty') and called a trace(语迹), it records the fact that the moved element comes from the head position within S as shown below.
head movement.(中心移位)
4.6.2 Do insertion (插入DO)
Do insertion
Insert interrogative do into an empty Infl position.
Birds fly.
Birds do fly.
Do birds fly?
4.6.3 Deep structure and surface structure(深层结构和表层结构)
deep structure (or D-structure)深层结构
surface structure (or S-structure) 表层结构
4.6.4 Wh Movement(WH移位)
What lanuages can you speak?
What can you talk about?
you can speak What lanuages.
you can talk about What.
4.6.5 Move α and constraints on transformations (α移位及转换制约)
Summary:
In this chapter we have first introduced word categories and phrase categories. Then we have focused on some of the fundamental mechanisms employed in the analysis of sentence formation. These include phrase structure rules that determine the architecture of a sentence's deep structure, subeategorization information that ensures a match between heads and the complements with which they appear in syntactic structure, and transformations that can modify deep structure in various ways to produce a surface structure. Taken together, they make up an important part of our overall linguistic competence(语言能力) which enables us to combine words into sentences in endlessly novel(new) ways.
Communicative competence(交际能力)
linguistic competence(语言能力)
Chapter 5: Semantics
What is semantics?
Definition:
Semantics can be simply defined as the study of meaning. What meaning?
意思是什么意思？
5.2 Some views concerning the study of meaning意义研究的一些理论
The naming theory 命名论
The conceptualist view概念论
Contextualism 语境理论
Behaviorism行为主义理论
Situational context 情景语境
Linguistic context 语言语境
is
Semantic triangle 语义三角
Stimulus---- Response刺激----反应理论
Spatiotemporal situation时空环境
Examples: black
Black hair 黑头发 black coffee 清咖啡
Black tea 红茶
White snow 白雪 white coffee 加牛奶的咖啡
White lie white elehpant
Once in a blue moon.
The seal could not be found.
The seal could not be found in the office. stamp
The seal could not be found in the zoo. Marine animal
5.3 Lexical meaning 词汇意义
5.3.1 Sense and reference意义和所指语义
Sense and reference are two terms often encountered in the study of word meaning. They are two related but different aspects of meaning.
Sense(意义) is concerned with the inherent meaning of the linguistic form. It is the collection of all the features of the linguistic form; it is abstract and de-contextualized. It is the aspect of meaning dictionary compilers are interested in. For example, the word \"dog\" is given the definition\" a domesticated canine mammal, occurring in many breeds that show a great variety in size and form\". (Collins Dictionary of the English Language, 1979) This does not refer to any particular dog that exists in the real world, but applies to any animal that meets the features described in the definition. So this is the sense of the word \"dog\".
Reference (所指语义)means what a linguistic form refers to in the real, physical world; it deals with the relationship between the linguistic element and the non-linguistic world of experience. If we say \"The dog is barkingalking about a certain dog existent in the situation; the word \"dog\" refers to a dog known to both the speaker and the hearer. This is the reference of the word \"dog\" in this particular situation.
A very good example:
morning star
evening star
5.3.2 Major sense relations 主要的意义关系
5.3.2.1 Synonymy 同义词
i. Dialectal synonyms -- synonyms used in different regional dialects 方言同义词
ii. Stylistic synonyms -- synonyms differing in style 文体同义词
iii. Synonyms that differ in their emotive or evaluative meaning 表情意义和评价意义不同的同义词
iv. Collocational synonyms 搭配同义词
v. Semantically different synonyms 语义不同的同义词
5.3.2.2 Polysemy 多义词，多义现象
We eat what we can and we can what we cannot eat.
I saw a saw hanging on the wall.
5.3.2.3 Homonymy同音异义词
Homophones（同音异义词）: rain/reign night/knight piece/peace leak/leek
Homographs（同形异义词）: bow v./bow n. tear v./tear n. lead v./lead n
Complete homonyms（完全同形异义词）: fast adj./fast v. scale n./scale v.
5.3.2.4 Hyponymy 下义关系
Hyponymy refers to the sense relation between a more general, more inclusive word and a more specific word. The word which is more general in meaning is called the superordinate（上坐标词，上义词）, and the more specific words are called its hyponyms（下义词）. Hyponyms of the same su- perordinate are co-hyponyms to each other, e.g.
Superordinate: flower
Hyponyms: rose, tulip, carnation, lily, morning glory ...
Superordinate: animal
Hyponyms: dog, cat, tiger, lion, wolf, elephant, fox, bear ...
Superordinate: furniture
Hyponyms: bed, table, desk, dresser, wardrobe, settee ...
Hyponymy is a relation of inclusion; in terms of meaning, the superordinate includes all its hyponyms.
5.3.2.5 Antonymy反义词
i. Gradable antonyms可分等级的反义词
ii. Complementary antonyms互补反义词
iii. Relational opposites关系反义词
5.4 Sense relations between sentences句际语义关系
i. X is synonymous with Y. X与Y同义
ii. X is inconsistent with Y. X与Y不一致
iii. X entails Y(Y is an entailment of X)蕴涵关系
iv. X presupposes Y (Y is a prerequisite of X )前提预设
v. X is a contradiction 矛盾关系
vi. X is semantically anomalous 语义异常
5.5 Analysis of meaning语义分析
5.5.1 Componential analysis（成分分析） --a way to analyze lexicai meaning
Componential analysis（成分分析） is a way proposed by the structural semantieists to analyze word meaning. The approach is based upon the belief that the meaning of a word can be dissected into meaning components, called semantic features（语义特征）. This is parallel to the way a phoneme is analyzed into smaller components called distinctive features. Plus and minus signs are used to indicate whether a certain semantic feature is present or absent in the meaning of a word, and these feature symbols are usually written in capitalized letters. For example, the word \"man\" is analyzed as comprising the features of
man：+HUMAN, +ADULT, +ANIMATE, + MALE.
Woman: +HUMAN, +ADULT, +ANIMATE, - MALE.
Father: +HUMAN, +ADULT, +ANIMATE, + MALE.
Boy: +HUMAN, -ADULT, +ANIMATE, + MALE.
5.5.2 Predication analysis---a way to analyze sentence meaning述谓结构分析
selectional restrictions 选择限制
the British linguist G. Leech.
Predication述谓结构
statements陈述句
imperative 祈使句
interrogative 疑问句
argument(s)（变元，中项）
predicate 谓词
two-place predication (双位述谓结构)
one-place predication （单位述谓结构）
no-place predication（缺位述谓结构）
Chapter 6: Pragmatics
6.1 Some basic notions
6.1.1 Definition
Definition: Pragmatics can be defined in various ways. A general definition is that it is the study of how speakers of a language use sentences to effect successful communication.
The scope of pragmatics:
language communication语言交际
deixis (定冠词、指示代词等)指示词
speech acts言语行为
indirect language间接语言
conversation 对话
politeness 礼貌
cross-cultural communication 跨文化交际
presupposition 前提
6.1.2 Pragmatics vs. semantics 运用学和语义学
Saussure索绪尔
Course in General Linguistics《普通语言学教程》
Pragmatics: the notion of context was taken into consideration, if it is considered, the study is being carried out in the area of prag matics
Semantics: context is not considered, the study is confined to the area of traditional semantics
6.1.3 Context语境，上下文
Question： What is context?
It is generally considered as constituted by the knowledge shared by the speaker and the hearer. Various components of shared knowledge have been identified, e.g. knowledge of the language they use, knowledge of what has been said before; knowledge about the world in general, knowledge about the specific situation in which linguistic communication is taking place, and knowledge about each other. Context determines the speaker's use of language and also the hearer's interpretation of what is said to him.
Look at the following sentences:
(6-1) How did it go?
(6-2) It is cold in here.
(6-3) It was a hot Christmas day so we went down to the beach in the afternoon and had a good time swimming and surfing.
Sentence(1) might be used in a conversation between two students talking about an examination, or two surgeons talking about an operation, or in some other contexts; (2) might be said by the speaker to ask the hearer to turn on the heater, or leave the place, or to put on more clothes, or to apologize for the poor condition of the room, depending on the situation of context; (3)makes sense only if the hearer has the knowledge that Christmas falls in summer in the southern hemisphere.
6.1.4 Sentence meaning vs. utterance meaning句子意义和话语意义
If we take it as a grammatical unit and consider it as a self-contained unit in isolation from context, then we are treating it as a sentence.
If we take it as something a speaker utters in a certain situation with a certain purpose, then we are treating it as an utterance.
The meaning of a sentence is abstract, and decontextualizd, that of an utterance is concrete, and context dependent.
How to interpret the meaning of “My bag is heavy?”
6.2 Speech act theory 言语行为理论
6.2.1 Austin's model of speech acts
eonstatives述事话语
performatives行事话语
locutionary act 言内行为
illocutionary act言外行为
and perlocutionary act言后行为
6.2.2 Searle's classification of speech acts Searle's的言语行为分类
1. representatives（阐述类）: stating or describing, saying what the speaker believes to be true
2. directives（指令类）: trying to get the hearer to do something
3. commissives（承诺类）: committing the speaker himself to some future course of action
4. expressives（表述类）: expressing feelings or attitude towards an existing state
5. declarations（声明类）: bringing about immediate changes by saying
something
6.3 Principle of conversation会话原则
Paul Grice
Cooperative Principle（CP）
Make your conversational contribution such as required at the stage at which it occurs by the accepted purpose or direction of the talk exchange in which you are engaged.
The maxim of quantity（数量准则）
1. Make your contribution as informative as required (for the current purpose of the exchange)
2. Do not make your contribution more informative than is required.
The maxim of quality（质量准则）
1. Do not say what you believe to be false.
2. Do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence.
The maxim of relation（关联准则）
Be relevant
The maxim of manner（方式准则）
1. Avoid obscurity of expression.
2. Avoid ambiguity.
3. Be brief (avoid unnecessary prolixity).
4. Be orderly.
conversational implicature会话含义
Chapter 7: Language Change
• 7.1 Introduction
7.2 Sound Change语音的变化
Old English古代英语
Middle English中世纪英语
Modern English 现代英语
7.3 Morphological and syntactic change形态变化和句法变化
7.3.1 Change in \"agreement\" rule一致原则的变化
Chaucer乔叟
\"The Canterbury Tales\"《坎特伯雷故事集》
Beowulf
7.3.2 Change in negation rule否定规则的变化
7.3.3 Process of simplification简化过程
7.3.4 Loss of inflections曲折变化的丧失
7.4 Vocabulary change词汇的变化
7.4.1 Addition of new words 新词的增加
Floppy disk
a) Coinage新造词、创新词
Examples:
Discman, Mp3, MD,
Kodak: a brand of film, camera,
Digital camera
Xerox: photocopier 施乐牌复印机
Ford: 福特a brand of a car, Benz奔驰, Toyoda, Toshiba, Haier，马
b) Clipped words缩略词
Fax: facsimile
Tel: telephone
Add: address @
bike :Bicycle
c) Blending 紧缩法
telecom: telecommunications
maglev train: magnetic levitation磁悬浮列车
宝 BMW
d) Acronyms首字母缩略词
Examples:
BBC: British Broadcasting Corperation
ISO 9001: International Standard Organization
WHO: World Health Organization
SARS: Severe Acute Respirotary Syndrome
NATO: North Atlantic Treaty Organization
SALT: Strategic Arms Limitation Talk限制战略武器会谈
IDD: International Direct Dialing国际长途直拨
DDD: Domestic Direct Dialing 国内长途直拨
DC: direct current直流
AC: alternating current交流
CIF: cost , insurance and freight 到岸价格
FOB: free on board 离岸价格
TV: television
VCD: video compact disc
DVD: digital video disc
e) Back-formation逆生成法、逆构词法 f) Functional shift功能性变化
g) Borrowing借用
e.g. Geometry几何 nebla星云
7.4.2 Loss of words词的丧失
7.4.3 Changes in the meaning of words词义的变化
1. Widening of meaning词义的拓宽
2. Narrowing of meaning词义变窄
3. Meaning shift词义的转移
Pigtail辫子
7.5 Some recent trends新的变化趋势
1.Moving towards greater informality倾向于非正式
2.The influence of American English美国英语的影响
3.The influence of science and technology科学技术的影响
a) Space travel宇宙航行
Examples:
Splash down溅落
sunrise ------ earthrise
sunset------- earthset
G-suit gravity suit
b) Computer and internet language计算机与网络
Examples:
Download, surfing on-line, e-commerce,
e-business cyber space , cybercafes= internet bars, virus, update, homepage, frontpage, website, netizen (citizen)
c) Ecology生态学
7.6 Causes of language change语言变迁的原因
Chapter 8: Language and Society
语言与社会
8.1 The scope of sociolinguistics社会语言学研究的范围
8.1.1 The relatedness between language and society语言与社会的关系
DEFINITION：Sociolinguistics is the sub-field of linguistics that studies the relation between language and society, between the uses of language and the social structures in which the users of language live.
8.1.2 Speech community and speech variety言语社团和言语变体
In sociolinguistic studies, speakers are regarded as members of social groups. The social group that is singled out for any special study is called the speech community.
regional dialects 地域方言
sociolects社会方言
registers语域
8.1.3 Two approaches to sociolinguistic studies社会语言学研究的两种方法
8.2 Varieties of language 语言的变体
8.2.1 Dialectal varieties方言变体
8.2.1.1 Regional dialect地方变体
8.2.1.2 Sociolect社会方言
8.2.1.3 Language and gender语言与性别
8.2.1.4 Language and age语言与年龄
8.2.1.5 Idiolect个人方言
8.2.1.6 Ethnic dialect少数民族方言
8.2.2 Register语域
linguistic repertoire所掌握的所有语言变体
Halliday（韩礼德） further distinguishes three social variables that determine the register:
field of discourse话语范围
tenor of discourse话语意旨
mode of discourse话语方式
Field of discourse refers to what is going on: to the area of operation of the language activity. It is concerned with the purpose and subject-matter of communication. It answers the questions of 'why' and 'about what' communication takes place.
Tenor of discourse refers to the role of relationship in the situation in question: who the participants in the communication groups are and in what relationship they stand to each other.
Mode of discourse mainly refers to the means of communication. It is concerned with \"how\" communication is carried out.
Field: scientific (biological)
Tenor: teacher - students (formal, polite)
Mode: oral (academic lecturing)
8.2.3 Degree of formality 正式的程度
Frozen: Visitors would make their way at once to the
upper floor by way of the staircase.
Formal: Visitors should go up the stairs at once.
Consultative: Would you mind going upstairs right
away, please ?
Casual: Time you all went upstairs now.
Intimate: Up you go, chaps !
8.3 Standard dialect 标准方言
8.4 Pidgin and Creole洋泾浜英语和克里奥尔语
A pidgin is a special language variety that mixes or blends languages and it is used by people who speak different languages for restricted purposes such as trading. The term is believed to have originated from the pronunciation of the English word \"business\" in Chinese Pidgin English.
When a pidgin has become the primary language of a speech community, and is acquired by the children of that speech community as their native language, it is said to have become a Creole（克里奥尔语，混合语）.
8.5 Bilingualism and diglossia双语制和双语体现象
Bilingualism：It has been observed that in some speech communities, two languages are used side by side with each having a different role to play; and language switching occurs when the situation changes. This constitutes the situation of bilingualism.
Diglossia： The term diglossia, first used by Ferguson in 1959, refers to a sociolinguistic situation similar to bilingualism. But instead of two different languages, in a diglossic situation two varieties of a language exist side by side throughout the community, with each having a definite role to play.
Chapter 9: Language and Culture
语言与文化
9.1 Introduction
Language and culture, intrinsically dependent on each other, have evolved together through the history. Their mutual interdependence can find proof in the rise of civilization, the development of writing and human communication.
Much of the recent work has revealed that language is related to cognition, and cognition in turn is related to the cultural setting.
9.2 What is culture?
Definition：
Broad Sense: Culture, in a broad sense, means the total way of life of a people, including the patterns of belief, customs, objects, institutions, techniques, and language that characterizes the life of the human community.
Narrow Sense: In a narrow sense, culture may refer to local or specific practice, beliefs or customs, which can be mostly found in folk culture, enterprise culture or food culture etc.
Generally speaking, there are two types of culture: material and spiritual（物质文化与精神文化）. While material culture, as the term itself suggests, is concrete, substantial and observable, most of spiritual culture, the products of mind (ideologies, beliefs, values and concepts of time and space, for example), is abstract, ambiguous, and hidden. In contrast with nature in the sense of what is born and grows, culture refers to what has been grown and brought up with, in other words, what can be nurtured. Culture, especially material culture, is reproduced and preserved through the maintaining of beliefs, traditions,
education and other institutional mechanisms, mean-while, it changes slowly with the development of the society.
9.3 The relationship between language and culture语言与文化之间的关系
1．We can infer that a language not only expresses facts, ideas, or events which represent similar world knowledge by its people, but also reflects the people's attitudes, beliefs, world outlooks etc.
2. On the other hand, as people's language uses express the culture, to be more specific, their community culture represented by its social conventions, norms and social appropriateness, the culture both emancipates and constrains people socially, historically and metaphorically.
the discourse community(话语社区)
discourse accents（话语口音）
3. Historically, each culture has its past and tradition, to put it simply, the culture of everyday practices has been evolved and become consolidated over time.
4. In addition, culture also affects its people's imagination or common dreams which are mediated through the language and reflected in their life.
Summary: To sum up, since the knowledge and beliefs that constitute a people's culture are habitually encoded and transmitted in the language of the people, it is extremely difficult to separate the two. On the one hand, language as
an integral part of human being, permeates his thinking and way of viewing the world, language both expresses and embodies cultural reality. On the other, language, as a product of culture, helps perpetuate the culture, and the changes in language uses reflect the cultural changes in return.
9.4 Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis萨丕尔－沃尔夫假设
In the discussion about the relationship between language and culture, one of the essential issues is that between language and thought. Edward Sapir and Benjamin Whorf, through their studies of American Indian languages, proclaimed that the structure of the language people habitually use influences the ways they think and behave. That is to say, different languages offer people different ways of expressing the world around, they think and speak differently, this is also known as linguistic relativity（语言关联性）. Sapir and Whorf believe that language filters people's perception and the way they categorize experiences. This interdependence of language and thought is now known as Sapir-Whorf hypothesis (SWH). Since its formulation, the hypothesis was subject to fierce controversy and scorn. Until recently with the revival interest in this issue, it regains people's attention.
The hypothesis is now interpreted mainly in two different ways: a strong version and a weak one(强式和弱式). While the strong version believes that the language patterns determine people's thinking and behavior, the weak one holds that the former influence the later. So far, many researches and experiments conducted in various disciplines provide support to the weak version. The studies
have shed new light on our understanding of the hypothesis: people tend tosort out and distinguish experiences differently according to the semantic categories provided by their different codes.
Here is an example. English-speaking culture teaches its people to name what is practical, useful and important. In a general sense, the important things take on specific names while the less important things have general names that must be modified through additional words to become specific. A good illustration of this point is the word snow in Eskimo and English.
The Eskimos have countless words for snow. For them snow is extremely important and so crucial to life that each of its various forms and conditions is named. In English-speaking cultures, snow is far less important and the simple word snow usually suffices the needs. When some needs become more specific, however, longer phrases can be made up to meet these needs: \"corn snow\powder snow\connection between the words a culture selects and the ideas and things of that culture. In short, each culture presents to its members, either consciously or subconsciously through words, the ideas and concepts that culture transmits from generation to generation.
To conclude this section, the study of the linguistic relativity or SWH has shed two important insights:
(1) There is nowadays a recognition that language, as code, reflects cultural
preoccupations and constrains the way people think.
(2) More than in Whorf's days, however, we recognize how important context is in complementing the meanings ehcoded in the language.
9.5 Linguistic evidence of cultural differences 文化差异的语言证据
Any linguistic sign may be simultaneously of a denotative（指示意义的）, connotative（暗涵意义的）, or iconic（图象意义的） kind of meanings. To begin with, any sign has a meaning that can be found in a dictionary, this is the denotative meaning. For example, \"rose\" is a flower that has a pleasant smell and is usually red, pink, white, or yellow etc. On most occasions \"rose\" means more than a flower, it also triggers many associations mostly good ones such as love, fragrance, passion and beauty etc. These are its connotations or connotative meanings. Moreover, the word \"rose\" also invokes image (or icons) to people. The famous line \"My love is a red, red rose\" stirs up vividly the imagination of a beautiful young lady. This is the iconic meaning. Many poetic or literary works use heavily the words filled with iconic meanings.
All these types of meanings are bound with cultural encodings or associations, for the meanings of words cannot be separated from their associations. Each language has its own metaphors that provide semantic cohesion within its boundaries. Motivated by the need and desire to influence others, people choose to use words which emphasize denotative meaning, connotative meaning or iconic meanings or all of them, during the same process its cultural meanings are
created.
The following are some illustrations of the cultural differences in language use which we may often come across in our daily life. We shall examine them one by one.
9.5.1 Greetings and terms of address 招呼与称呼语
It is estimated that in English there are at least a dozen different greetings, from \"Hi\" and \"Hello\" to more specific and longer ones like \"How are you getting on ?\" or \"How is everything with you ?\". People choose the proper one to greet different people they meet on different occasions. For example, people greet a new acquaintance with \"How do you do?\" and expect the same in answer, but they greet an old friend differently. When friends meet, you may find more that once they are uttering \"How are you ?\" at the same time to each o her, and they both answer \"Fine, thank you.\" Differently, a Chinese speaker may greet his friends or new acquaintance with \"Ninhao\" or \"Nihao\or anytime in the day.
Another noticeable difference between the two greeting systems is that most Chinese people tend to greet acquaintances with \"Have you eaten?\" or \"Where are you heading for?\" Obviously, if we greet the native speakers of English in this way, it will certainly cause misunderstanding.
Sometimes different terms of address can be equally misleading for Chinese
learners of English or English learners of Chinese. While in China \"Tongzhi\" was once used for all people irrespective of sex, position or marital status, in English-speaking communities \"Mr.\" \"Mrs.\" \"Miss.\" \"Ms.\" would be appropriate in similar situations. It is also interesting to note that in recent years \"Mr.\" And \"Miss.\" are picked up again to replace \"Tongzhi\" with the changes in society. Meanwhile \"shifu\" (literally means \"master worker\") is frequently used to show respect for strangers. English speakers, on similar occasions, would use \"Sir\" or \"Madam\"
The extension of kinship terms is another feature of Chinese culture. Terms such as \"uncle, aunt, grandpa, and granny\" are used as honorific titles for senior people or strangers, as in \"Granny Li\" and \"Uncle Zhang\". Native speakers of English would be puzzled if they are addressed in this way by people outside the immediate family. Similarly, the use of respectful titles -- Chair-man Jiang, Premier Zhou, Director Ma -- to indicate people's influential status is typical of Chinese culture. Such practice, however, is less common in English-speaking cultures.
9.5.2 Thanks and compliments 感谢与称赞
Cultural differences are also evident in the ways gratitude and compliments are expressed. It is noted that people in the West tend to verbalize their gratitude and compliments more than Chinese speakers and that the westerners tend to accept thanks and compliments more directly and frankly than we Chinese do.
When a native English speaker expresses to us his gratitude, a Chinese speaker may feel embarrassed and would sometimes say \"no, no\" to decline whatever
expressions of gratitude. However, English speakers, in a similar situation, would say something like \"I'm glad to hear it\" or \"I'm glad to be of help\" to acknowledge and accept the thanks. To native speakers of Chinese, expressions like \"Not at all\" or \"It's nothing\" which are sometimes used by Englishmen to turn clown thanks may sometime lead to misunderstanding.
Similarly, many native Chinese speakers will feel embarrassed when they hear compliments like \"You speak excellent English\" or \"You have acquired a native English speaker accent\" To show their modesty and that they do not deserve a compliment, they tend to use an emphatic \"no\". English speaking people, unlike Chinese, will accept compliments by giving a positive response like \"Thank you\for they believe that the compliment is sincere, it is not expressions of pride or impoliteness and that the praise is not unworthy achievement. Therefore, they think it is inappropriate to show false humility, or pretended modesty.
9.5.3 Colour words颜色词
For people all over the world the colours of the rainbow are the same, but this does not necessarily follow that people speaking different languages divide the colour spectrum in the same way or use terms that designate the same range of hue. Some languages have only two colour terms: black and white. The semantic range of the terms is something like \"dark\" and \"light\". If a language has three colour terms, this third term is invariably red, a term that may include yellow and orange but that has a focal point very close to the \"red\" of English. The other colours most commonly entering linguistic systems are yellow, green, blue and
brown, making a total of seven. Languages ordinarily do not have terms for pink, green, orange or purple unless the seven basic colours have previously been differentiated. Even though languages vary somewhat in their colour terminology, the variation is apparently not random. It appears to follow a pattern related to the human capacity for perceiving colours. If this is true, we might expect to find that variation in other semantic and cognitive domains is limited in a similar way.
In addition to the fact that different languages may have different divisions of colour, different languages entail different color related associations. For example, in English \"green\" is associated with envy or jealousy like \"green with envy\" or \"green-eyes\\"Blue\"suggests sentimental or unhappy feelings as in \"blue, blue is my love\is in a blue mood\". Meanwhile \"blue\" is also associated with high social position or being aristocratic as in ,'He's a real blue blood.\" Another example is that people call a book with well-known names blue book in America.
9.5.4 Privacy and taboos 隐私与禁忌词
Although people of different culture have many common areas of privacy or taboos, there are also areas where our culture differs from Western culture. As the saying goes \"A man's home is his castle'', the western people place a high value on privacy. It is not appropriate for us to ask questions about personal information like age, family background, salary, or questions on personal activities. It is advisable we should not talk about such things, when conversing with English-speaking people unless they indicate clearly that they do not mind or they
talk about them first themselves.
Some of these questions are listed below:
How old are you ?
What are your wages ?
How much do you earn ?
You make a lot of money, don't you ?
What's your name? (Better say \"May I know your name?\")
How much did that pair of shoes cost you ?
Moreover, we should be careful to avoid expressions related to sexual intercourse, some organ of human body, four-letter words and racism etc. The way a speech community rounds off its numbers is not haphazard, rather, it is explainable as interplay between language and culture. Members of a speech community often give preference to the numbers that their community regards as significant. Americans, for instance, prefer to round off number to 4, as in 4 ounces in a quarter pound or 4 quarts in a gallon. A Frenchman, however, would not regard such a number as round at all; he would round off to 5 as he is familiar with the decimal system.
It is often out of linguistic convenience that people with different cultures round off numbers differently. Here are some examples to show how the Chinese and the Europeans state their age respectively. Most European systems of stating one's age are different from the Chinese system. In English culture, for example, a speaker usually states his age as his most recent birthday followed by the measure years old though there are exceptions with young children who often place their age between birthdays, as in
(9-1) I'm four and a half years old.
and with parents who usually express the age of infants in months and weeks, as
(9-2) The baby girl will be thirteen months old by next Friday.
We Chinese also use a round number followed by the measure sui in place of the English measure years old, however, sui is not exactly equivalent to \"the number of years during all or part of which one has been alive\". A newly-born infant, according to the sui measure, has already lived for part of the year and he is yi sui, which an English translator usually renders erroneously as \"one year old\" instead of as \"part of one year\". As a result of misunder standing about the way Chinese speakers round off their numbers, many Europeans believe \"in China you are a year old when you are born.”
9.5.6 Words and cultural-specific connotations 词语及其特定的文化内涵
As we have learnt that any linguistic sign may have denotative, connotative and iconic kinds of meanings, it is easy to understand that the same word in different languages may be entailed with different connotations. Connotation means \"the implication of a word, apart from its primary meaninghe Longman Modern English Dictionary, or \"the suggesting of a meaning by a word apart from the thing it explicitly names or describes\" according to the Webster. Therefore the denotation of a word, its dictionary meaning, is different from its connotation. Sometimes, a same word in two different languages many have totally different connotations. Generally the semantic differences between two languages may be grouped as the following:
a) A term in one language that does not have a counterpart in another language.
b) Words or terms in both languages that appear to refer to the same object or concept on the surface, but which actu ally refer to quite different things. For example, \"week-end\" may stir up different connotations in Chinese and English.
c) Things or concepts that are represented by one or perhaps two terms in one language, but by many more terms in the another language, that is, finer distinctions exist in the other language.
d) Terms that have more or less the same primary meaning, but which have considerably different secondary or additional meanings.Therefore one must be careful in assuming that bilingual dictionary definitions give exact equivalents in
meaning or that different languages always have words to express the same thing.
9.5.7 Cultural-related idioms, proverbs and metaphors与文化相关的习语、谚语和比喻
Different languages may reflect different cultures, different cultures entail different language expressions. Idioms, proverbs and sayings and metaphors in different languages, derived from different origins, also demonstrate cultural differences. Different languages may have different idioms owing to different living environments, social conventions and literature tradition etc. For example, since English people view dog as human being's best friend, we can find more English expressions with dog than in Chinese.
lucky dog: a lucky person
clever dog: a clever boy or smart lad
dumb dog: silent person or a person who keeps secrets
lead a dog's life: to live an exhausted and unhappy life
put on the dog: put on air
And some proverbs and sayings with dogs are listed as follows.
Every dog has his day.
Dog does not eat dog.
Give a dog an ill name and hang him.
Barking dogs seldom bite.
Beware of a silent dog and still water.
Love me, love my dog.
As to metaphor, we can easily find that in Chinese anger is compared with \"liquid\" or \"qiti\" as in \"wo qi si lc\" (I am angry to death) while in English anger is more compared with \"fire\" as in \"He is outraged.\" \"His face turned red with anger.\" \"She lost her temper.\
9.6 The significance of cultural teaching and learning文化教育与学习的重要性
Language as the keystone of culture is tightly intertwined with culture. Learning a language is inseparable from learning its culture. When learning a foreign or second language, we should not only learn the mere imitation of the pronunciation, grammar, words and idioms, but also learn to see the world as native speakers do, that is to say, learn the ways in which the foreign language reflects the ideas, customs, and behavior of that society, learn to under stand their \"language of the mind\
about the language's culture so that we can communicate in the target language properly to achieve not only the linguistic competence but. also the pragmatic or communicative competence as well. This is of great significance in learning a foreign or second language. Otherwise the ignorance of cultural differences as seen in the previous sections can create barriers in learning the target language and in communication, thus causing some unnecessary misunderstandings and confusions sometimes.
9.7 Cultural overlap and diffusion文化的重叠与传播
Despite the cultural differences, there exist a greater or lesser degree of cultural overlap between two societies owing to some similarities in the natural environment and psychology of human beings.
In many English speaking societies in Asia such as Japan and Chinese, there are circumstances in which the superior, but not the inferior, may refer to himself by means of the same kinship-term or title with which he is addressed as in
(9-3) Have daddy/mummy/teacher told you that?
Through communication, some elements of culture A enter culture B and become part of culture B, thus bringing about cultural diffusion, which has been shaped gradually and unceasingly. One typical example of cultural diffusion is the appearance of loan words. When cultures come into contact, words are often borrowed from one language to another.
All languages borrow to some extent and for various reasons. Prestige, for example, was an important factor for those Englishmen who wanted to advance in government and who therefore larded their speech with Norman words during the Norman conquer in history. Later English has also borrowed many words in history from French, Latin and Greek and other languages. Besides, it is easier for a speech community when expanding beyond its borders to borrow an existing word from the indigenous language than to coin a new one. For example, we can still find in American English many Indian words for rivers, settlements, plants and animals such as Mississippi, Chicago, squasl~, woodchuck, and moccasin etc. Nowadays, with the spreading of modern technology, more and more loan words have come into our daily use such as email, IT,E-commerce, B2B, etc.
It is worth mentioning that the borrowed words usually reflect the routes of cultural imports, for instance science from the Arabs during the Middle Ages (zero, algebra, alkali) and music from Italy (opera, soprano, piano, virtuoso). However, one point should be made clear, that is, although many languages of the world have borrowed through cultural diffusion, these loan words preserve their own grammatical structures. English is a case in point. Look at the following sentence:
(9-4) The official's automobile functioned erratically.
The sentence consists of borrowed words except \"the\English sentence.
In addition to linguistic expression, people may observe holidays of foreign
origins and accept concepts from other cultures.For example, Christmas, Mother's Day and St. Valentine's Day are celebrated in many non-English speaking countries including China. Also more and more young ladies in China prefer not to tell others their ages and weight and other personal information.
Recently with the increasing cultural diffusion has been recognized a tendency of cultural imperialism owing to linguistie imperialism. Linguistic imperialism is a kind of linguicism which can be defined as the promulgation of global ideologies through the worldwide expansion of one language. With the monopoly of one language over others, its accompanied ideologies, structures and practices will be a potential threat to the individual cultural identity and cultural integrity.
As English is spreading rapidly as a world language, some countries have adopted special language policy to protect the purity of their languages. For example, France has made special efforts to protect its language from being corrupted by other language especially American English. This is a kind of linguistic nationalism against the linguistic imperialism.
9.8 Intercultural communication 跨文化交流
Intimately related to the cultural learning when learning a foreign or second language, intercultural communication is gaining increasing popularity. Intercultural communication, also known as cross cultural communication, is communication between people whose cultural perceptions and symbols systems are distinct enough to alter the communication event. It is frequently used to refer
to communication between people from different cultures, which implies a comparison between cultures. It centers on significant differences regarding social relations and concept of universe from different perspectives such as language, food, dress, attitude towards time, work habits, social behavior that can cause frustration in communications and contacts. As a newly-established discipline, intercultural communication makes multi-disciplinary study of politeness across cultures in great details. It helps to bridge the gap between both cultural and linguistic differences. As the world is becoming a \"global village\international communication in various aspects and language learning is becoming more and more self-evident.
Revision exercises:
1. Try to sum up the relation between language and culture. Can you find similar relationship between local dialect and regional culture?
2. What do you think of Sapir-Whorf hypothesis? Give examples or proof to support your point of view.
3. Can you find some loan words in Chinese from other languages?
Explain how they were used in the original language and how they are used now?
4. Based on your own learning experiences, please illustrate to what extent it
is necessary to learn its culture when learning a foreign language.
5. What do you think of linguistic imperialism and cultural imperi-alism? Is it nonsense or something worth consideration?
6. Work out the meaning of the following underlined expressions.
Find its origin and corresponding Chinese expressions.
a) The boss offers a high pay, but he wants his pound of flesh back in return and make them working very hard.
b) All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
c) That's a dear John letter saying that she would never come back again.
d) The best fish swim near the bottom.
e) By so doing, they have actually opened a Pandora's box.
f) Any engineer worth his salt should know how to deal with such problems.
g) The little girl is the apple of her father's eye.
Chapter 10: Language Acquisition
语言习得
10.1 Introduction
Definition: Language acquisition refers to the child's acquisition of his mother tongue, i.e. how the child comes to understand and speak the language of his community.
Questions to be answered by the theory of language acquisition:
How do children accomplish this?
What enable children to learn words and string them together into meaningful sentences?
What facilitate children to develop the grammatical system of their language?
What help them to achieve the communicative competence using the language to express their various needs?
10.2 Theories of child language acquisition儿童语言习得的有关理论
the behaviorism, 行为主义
the innatism 天生主义
the interactionist views互动主义
10.2.1 A behaviourist view of language acquisition行为主义的语言习得观
Traditional behaviorists view language as behavior and believe that language learning is simply a matter of imitation and habit formation. A child imitates the sounds and patterns of the people around him; people recognize the child's attempts and reinforce the attempts by responding differently, the child repeats the right sounds or patterns to get the reward (reinforcement). The child learns the language gradually in much the same way as
habit-forming. So imitation and practice are preliminary, discrimination and generalization are key to language development in this theory.
The behaviorist theory of child language acquisition offers a reasonable account of how children acquire some of the regular and routine aspects of the language, yet how they acquire more com- plex grammatical structures of the language requires a different ex-planation.
10.2.2 An innatist view of language acquisition
天生主义的语言习得观
Owing to some puzzling evidence that all the children virtuallylearn their native language which is so complicated at almost thesame time in life, that children successfully master the basic struc-ture of their language or dialect in
various conditions and that thelanguage children are exposed to may not contain examples of allthe information which they eventually know, the linguist Noam Chomsky claims that human beings are biologically
programmed for language and that the language develops in the child just as other biological functions such as walking.
Originally Chomsky referred to this innate ability as Language Acquisition Device, (also known as LAD). 语言习得机制
Universal Grammar (UG)普遍语法
Summary：The innatists argue that children could not discover the rules of reflexive pronouns by trial and error. Instead children's acquisition of these grammatical rules is guided by principles of an innate UG. Different languages have different rules about reflexives, and children seem to be able to 'know' the rules by being exposed to a limited number of examples.
10.2.3 An interactionist view of language acquisition互动主义的语言习得观
Main points of the theorty: The interactionist view holds that language develops as a result of the complex interplay between the human
characteristics of the child and the environment in which the child develops. Integrated with the innatist view, the interactionist further claims that the modified language which is suitable for the child's capability is crucial in his language acquisition.
\"motherese\"保姆式的语言
10.3 Cognitive factors in child language development
儿童语言发展过程中的认知因素
The cognitive factors relate to language acquisition mainly in two ways.
First, language development is dependent on both the concepts children form about the world and what they feel stimulated to eommunicate at the early and later stages of their language development.
Secondly, the cognitive factors determine how the child makes sense of the linguistic system himself instead of what meanings the child perceives and expresses. Many careful studies of children's acquisition sequences and errors in various languages have revealed that children have some \"operating principles\" for making sense of language data.
This demonstrates that in the course of acquiring the native language, children seem to look initially for a system which is rule-governed in a consistent way, then a system in which the clues to meaning are clearly displayed, and finally the one in which each item or distinction has a definite function in communicative meaning.
10.4 Language environment and the Critical Period Hypothesis语言环境与
临界期假说
All child language acquisition theories talk about the roles of two factors to different degrees: the linguistic environment children are exposed to and the age they start to learn the language. These two factors bear remarkable relevance to their language development. This subsection is devoted to the discussion of these factors.
In behaviorist approach, language environment plays a major role in providing both language models to be imitated and the necessary feedbacks among which the positive reinforcement or reward encourages children's efforts and facilitates the \"correct\" learning of the language while the negative feedback discourages children to repeat the \"mistakes\". However, the innatist view em phasizes more on children's internal processing of the language items to be learnt. The environment functions as a stimulus that triggers and activates the pre-equipped UG to process the materials provided by the linguistic environment around the children. The interactionist view calls for the quality of the language samples available in the linguistic environment, only when the language is modified and adjusted to the level of children's comprehension, do they process and internalize the language items.
Closely related to the external language environment, age is another factor that is worth mentioning in first language acquisition. Observed that children's ability to develop normal behaviors and knowledge in environments does not continue indefinitely and that children who have never learned
language (for various reasons) cannot return to normal if these deprivations go on for too long, Eric Lenneberg, a biologist, argued that the LAD, like other biological functions, works successfully only when it is stimulated at the right time -- a specific and limited time period for language acquisition -- which is referred to as the Critical Period Hypothesis (CPH). （临界期假说）
There are two versions of the CPH. While the strong one suggests that children must acquire their first language by puberty or they will never be able to learn from subsequent exposure, the weak holds that language learning will be more difficult and incomplete after puberty. These two views can find some support respectively in Victor's and Genie's cases.
Victor had been deprived of language contact for 12 years when he was found naked in the woods of Aveyron in France. Upon capture, he was found completely wild. A young doctor, Jean Marc-Gaspard Itard, devoted five years to civilizing Victor and teaching him French. In spite of some success in developing Victor's sociability, memory, judgment, and all the functions of his senses, Victor remained unreceptive to all sounds other than those which had meaning for him in the forest such as the cracking of nuts, animal sounds, or the sound of rain. He only succeeded in saying two words: \"lait\" and \"O Dieu\". Finally, Itard gave up. Genie was a thirteen-and-a-half-year old girl when first discovered in 1970. She had been tied to a chair or a crib in a small and darkenedroom since the age of 20 months. Due to this isolation, deprivation of language and abuse, she was unsocialized, primitive and undeveloped physically, emotionally and intellectually and could not speak. With all the
desired care and treatments and after five years of exposure to language during which~ a normal child would have developed an elaborated language system, Genie's language contained many of the features of abnormal language development.
Despite the above mentioned differences, people have now reached the consensus that there is a critical period for first language acquisition. This is proved by some recent natural experiments conducted by Elissa Newport and her colleagues (1990) on three groups of deaf sign users: (1) native signers who were born to deaf parents and exposed to sign language frombirth, (~) early learners who were first exposed to American Sign Language (ASL) at the age of 4 to 6 at school, and (3)later learners whose first exposure to ASL began after the age,of 12. Thexesults show that the native signers outperform both~the early signers and the later signers and were highly consistent in their use of the grammatical forms.
10.5 Stages in child language development儿童语言发展的阶段
10.5.1 Phonological development 语音的发展
10.5.2 Vocabulary development词汇的发展
a) Under-extension扩展不足
b) Over-extension 扩展过头
10.5.3 Grammatical development 语法发展
10.5.4 Pragmatic development 语用能力的发展
10.6 Atypical development非典型发展
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