英语语言学.doc

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An Introduction to Linguistics语言学导论
胡壮麟主编 《语言学教程》（修订版）北京：北京大学出版社 2001年

Chapter 1 Invitations to Linguistics
1.1 Why study language?
l Languages are the best mirror of the human mind. --Leibniz(莱布尼兹1646-1716) psychology mind/brain pedagogy cognitive science
l The three basic questions that concern Chomsky are:
(i) What constitutes knowledge of language?
(ii) How is knowledge of language acquired?
(iii) How is knowledge of language put to use?
1.2 What is language?
l Language is a purely human and non-instinctive method of communicating ideas, emotions and desires by means of voluntarily produced symbols. – Sapir（萨丕尔1884-1939)
l Language is a system of arbitrary vocal symbols used for human communication.
-- Wardhaugh（沃道）
l A language is a set (finite or infinite) of sentences, each finite in length and constructed out of a finite set of elements. – Chomsky（乔姆斯基1928 -）
l A language is a system for meanings. – Halliday（韩礼德1925 -）
We shall define language as “meaning potential”: that is, as sets of options, or alternatives, in meaning, that are available to the speaker-hearer. -- Halliday
1.3 Design features of language
l Design features Concept introduced by C. F. Hockett in the 1960sof a set of key properties of language not shared or not known to be shared, as a set, with systems of communication in any other species. Their number and names vary from one account to another; but all include, as among the most important, the properties of duality, arbitrariness, and productivity.
1.3.1 Arbitrariness任意性: The property of language by which there is in general no natural (i.e. logical) relation between the form of a single lexical unit and its meaning. 书 book livre rose motivated 理据 sheep cow moo moo quack oink bedroom
What’s in a name? that which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet. – Shakespeare(莎士比亚1564-1616)
名无固宜，约之以命，约定俗成谓之宜，异于约则谓之不宜。-- 《荀子·正名》
1.3.2 Duality二重性Language consists of two levels of structures. The lower (secondary) level is a definite set of meaningless sounds, such as [h], [i:], [l], [e], [f], [t] which combine to form meaningful units (morphemes, words, such as he, left) which constitute a higher (primary) level. a: p k pa:k park ka:p carp
1.3.3 Creativity创造性 Language is creative in the sense that its users can understand and produce sentences they have never heard before.
1.3.4 Displacement移位性 By displacement is meant that language can be used to refer to things that are not present (in time and space) at the moment of communication.
l Dai (1989): 1.creativity, 2.arbitrariness, 3.duality, 4.displacement, 5.cultural transmission
l Hu (1988): 1.arbitrabiness 2.duality 3.productivity 4.displacement 5.cultural transmission
6.interchangability
l Hu (2001): 1. arbitrariness 2.duality 3.productivity 4.displacement
Wang (1988): 1.双层性 2.能产性 3.任意性 4.互易性 5.专用性 6.不受环境限制 7.传授性
1.4 Origin of language speculative and controversial
1.5 Functions of language
1.5.1 Informative信息功能 Language serves an informative function when it is used to express the speaker’s opinion, to state a fact, or to reason things out. (alternatively termed ideational function in Hallidayan framework)
1.5.2 Interpersonal function人际功能 Language serves to establish and maintain social relations between people.
1.5.3 Performative行事功能 Language can be used to do things, to perform action. e.g. “I surrender.” “I’ll do it tonight.” “I declare the meeting open.” “ I sentence you to three years in prison.”
1.5.4 Emotive function感情功能 The use of language to reveal the feelings and attitudes of the speaker. e.g. “Ouch!”, “I’m terribly sorry about… ” (alternatively called expressive function)
1.5.5 Phatic communion寒暄交谈 The use of language to establish or maintain a comfortable social contact between people without involving any factual content. E.g. greetings, farewells, and talking about the weather.
1.5.6 Recreational function娱乐功能 The use of language for the sheer joy of using it. E.g. singing, poetry writing.
1.5.7 Metalingual function元语言功能 The use of language to make statements about language itself. The language about which they are made is called the object language. E.g. a Chinese grammar of English; to say that book is pronounced /bUk/ is to make a metalinguistic statement about that word.
Language A (obj): English park carp Language B (tool): Chinese, English Quirk et al. 1985 pa:k ka:p
Metaphysics metaphysics metachemistry metascience 科学学science
1.5.8 Poetic (Function of language) defined by Jakobson in terms of orientation towards, or focus on, “the message for its own sake”. Thus, in ordinary speech, it is by virtue of the poetic function that e.g. in coordination, one will tend to put shorter phrase first: I remember especially the wine and the view from the terrace, rather than, although in terms of other functions they are equivalent, …the view from the terrace and the wine.
l Hu (1988): 1.phatic 2.directive 3.informative 4.interrogative 5.expressive 6.evocative
7.performative (BTW, Dai 1989 makes no mention of language functions.)
l Hu (2001:10-16): 1.informative 2.interpersonal 3.performative 4.emotive 5.phatic
6.recreational 7.metalingual
l Hu (2001:151-152): Karl Bühler’s tripartite classification: 1.representative 2.expressive
3.appelative (vocative) Roman Jakobson’s six-function classification: 1.referential
2.emotive 3.conative 4.metalinguistic 5.poetic 6.phatic Halliday: p.415 seven functions in children’s language: 1.instrumental 2.regulatory 3.interactional 4.personal 5. heuristic 6. imaginative 7.informative three metafunctions in adult’s language:1.ideational
2.interpersonal 3.textual
l Wang (1988:11-13): 语言是1.交际的工具 2.认知世界的工具3.艺术创作的工具
l Chomsky (1979:88): Language serves essentially for the expression of thought.
l Chomsky (1980:230): We must reject the view that the purpose of language is
communication. (C disagrees that the sole purpose of lang. is communication.)
1.6 What is linguistics? The scientific study of language.
parameter what and why observatory adequacy, descriptive adequacy, explanatory adequacy Mandarin
1.7 Microlinguistics
1.7.1 Phonetics语音学 The study of the nature, production, and perception of sounds of speech, in abstraction from the phonology of any specific language. Variously divided into acoustic phonetics, articulatory phonetics, and auditory phonetics. (The branch of linguistics which studies the physical characteristics of speech sounds and provides methods for their description, classification, and transcription. Cf. transcript
1.7.2 Phonology音系学 The study of the sound systems of individual languages and of the nature of such systems generally. (Phonology identifies the set of speech sounds for each language, how they are arranged to form meaningful units, and the function of each sound. Phonology reveals what the possible combinations of sounds in a language are and explains why certain words take the form they do.)
1.7.3 Morphology形态学 Morphology is concerned with the internal organization of words. It studies the minimal units of meaning – morphemes and word-formation processes.
1.7.4 Syntax句法学 The branch of linguistics which studies the rules governing the combination of words into sentences.
1.7.5 Semantics语义学 The study of meaning. Seen by Bréal, in the late 19th century, as an emerging science (French sémantique) opposed to phonetics (phonétique) as a science of sounds. (Matthews,1997)
1.7.6 Pragmatics语用学 The study of the meanings that sentences have in particular contexts.
1.8 Macrolinguistics
1.8.1 Psycholinguistics心理语言学 Any study of language in or from the viewpoint of psychology. Applied since the1960s to two main fields: the empirical study of the development of language in children (developmental psycholinguistics); and the investigation through experiments of the psychological mechanisms for the production and understanding of speech (experimental psycholinguistics).
1.8.2 Sociolinguistics社会语言学 Any study of language in relation to society, including the social functions of language and the social characteristics of its users. For example, Labov studies the correlations between linguistic variables (e.g. the precise phonetic quality of a vowel, or the absence of a certain element in a construction) and non-linguistics variables such as the social class of speakers, their age, sex, etc.
1.8.3 Anthropological linguistics人类语言学 It uses the theories and methods of anthropology to study language variation and language use in relation to the cultural patterns and beliefs of man. e.g. the study of lesser-known languages through field work; emergence of language; ancestral language
1.8.4 Computational linguistics计算语言学 The use of computers to process or produce human language (also known as “natural language”, to distinguish it from computer languages). E.g. machine translation, speech synthesis
1.9 Important distinctions in linguistics
1.9.1 Descriptive vs. prescriptive描写vs.规定 A linguistic study is descriptive if it describes and analyzes linguistic facts observed; it is prescriptive if it lays down rules for grammatical correctness. It’s me. Who did you speak to? I haven’t done nothing. 呆板
1.9.2 Synchronic vs. diachronic共时vs.历时 The study of language as its exists at a particular point in time is synchronic. E.g. A Grammar of Ancient Chinese; The study of language as it changes through time is diachronic. E.g. From Old English to Standard English. Sars figure skating synchronized swimming
1.9.3 Langue vs. parole语言vs.言语 A distinction made by the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure(索绪尔1857-1913). Langue refers to the abstract linguistic system shared by all the members of a speech community and parole refers to the actualized language, or realization of langue. As a social product, langue is a set of convention that members of a speech community abide by. It can be thought of as the generalized rules of the language. Parole is the concrete use of the conventions or applications of the rules.
i. Langue is abstract; parole is specific to the situation in which it occurs;
ii. Langue is not actually spoken by anyone; parole is always a naturally occurring event; parler Parlez vous francais/anglais?
iii. Langue is relatively stable and systematic; parole is subject to personal and situational constraints.
For de Saussure, parole is a mass of confused facts and not suitable for systematic investigation. What the linguist has to do is to abstract langue from instances of parole – that is, to discover the regularities governing all instances of parole and make them the subject of linguistics. E.g. the memorization of multiplication table (乘法表); BA-construction in Chinese (“把”字句) is the hardest for learners of Chinese as L2.
Langue is the system of a language, “It is the social product whose existence permits the individual to exercise his linguistic faculty.” Parole is actual speech, “executive side of language”. It is the distinction between langue and parole that leads to the distinction between phonetics and phonology. Phonetics studies speech sounds from a physical point of view and phonology studies the functional units within the linguistic system. e.g. book: took. The same distinction between what belongs to particular acts and what belongs to the system leads us also to the distinction between utterance and sentence. An utterance is a unit of parole; a sentence is a unit of langue. Two utterances can be the realization of the same sentence. E.g. I, he, they, Once they are used in specific context, they refer to specific persons. This leads Saussure to suggest the terms of signification and value.
utterance anything spoken on a specific occasion. Often opposed to “sentence”: e.g. the words “Come here!”, spoken by a specific speaker at a specific time, form an utterance which is one instance of a sentence Come here! Hence utterance meaning, as the meaning of something as spoken on a specific occasion, vs. sentence meaning, as the meaning that a sentence is said to have independently of any such occasion.
1.9.4 Competence vs. performance语言能力vs.语言运用 Competence is the speaker-listener’s knowledge of his language and performance is the actual use of language in concrete situations. Competence enables a language user to produce and understand sentences, including sentences that he has never heard before, and to recognize grammatical mistakes and ambiguities (The shooting of the hunter is terrible. Every teacher likes some student. Flying planes can be dangerous. Visiting aunts is annoying. John paints nudes. John broke the window. John loaded the apples onto the cart. John loaded the cart with apples. John sprayed the wall with paint. John sprayed paint onto the wall. Partitive/holistic effect ). A person’s competence is stable but his performance is often affected by psychological and social factors, such as pressure, distress, anxiety, embarrassment, memory limitations, distractions, shifts of attention and interest, and errors (random or characteristic) in applying his knowledge of the language in actual performance. Slips of the tongue, false starts, unnecessary pauses, among other things, all belong to the imperfection of performance. A speaker’s performance does not always match his competence. Chomsky maintains that the task of a linguist is to discover the underlying knowledge of grammar from the data of performance.
i. Saussure’s langue is a social product, a set of conventions for a speech community; Chomsky regards competence as a property of the mind of each individual;
ii. Saussure looks at language more from a sociological point of view while Chomsky looks at it from a psychological point of view.
iii. Saussure regards langue as a systemic inventory of items; Chomsky, influenced by Humboldt, Wilhelm von (洪堡特1767-1835), refers to competence as a system of generative process. (infinite use of finite means)
Communicative competence: The ability not only to form grammatically correct sentences but also to use these sentences appropriately (e.g. knowing how to begin and end a conversation; how to thank, apologize, request, invite, etc.; what topics are tabooed; how to use different address forms称呼语with different persons and in different situations. Communicative competence is proposed by D.H. Hymes(海姆斯), who takes into account the socio-cultural factors of language and emphasizes the various ways of speaking. He criticizes the Chomskyan notion of linguistic competence as “a Garden of Eden view”, arguing that there is differential competence within a heterogeneous speech community, both undoubtedly shaped by acculturation. But Chomsky insists that:
Linguistic theory is concerned primarily with an ideal speaker-listener, in a completely homogeneous speech-community, who knows its language perfectly and is unaffected by such grammatically irrelevant conditions as memory limitations, distr