语言学definition.doc

phonetics (语音学) : it studies the sounds used in linguistic communication;
Phonology (音位学): it studies how sounds are put together and used to convey meaning in communication;
Morphology (形态学): it studies the way in which linguistic symbols representing sounds are arranged and combined to form words;
Syntax (句法): it studies the rules which govern how words are combined to form grammatically permissible sentences in languages;
Semantics (语义学): it studies meaning conveyed by language;
Pragmatics (语用学): it studies the meaning in the context of language use.
Sociolinguistics (社会语言学): The language a person uses often reveals his social background, and there exist social norms that determine the type of language to be used on a certain occasion; and language changes are often caused by social changes. The study of all these social aspects of language and its relation with society form the core of branch called sociolinguistics.
Psycholinguistics (语言心理学): relates the study of language to psychology.
Applied linguistics (应用语言学): finding in linguistic studies can often be applied to the solution of such practical problems as the recovery of speech ability.
Langue (语言): refers to the abstract linguistic system shared by all the members of a speech community.
Parole (言语): refers to the realization of langue in actual use.
Competence (语言能力): Chomsky defines as the ideal user’s knowledge of the rules of his language.
Performance (语言行为): the actual realization of this knowledge in linguistic communication.
Unit 2 Phonetics (音位学): is defined as the study of the phonic medium of language; it is concerned with all the sounds that occurs in the world’s language.
Articulatory phonetics (发音语音学): from the speaker’s view, how the speaker uses his speech organs to articulate the sounds.
Auditory phonetics (听觉语音学): from the hearer’s view, how the sounds are perceived by the hearer.
Acoustic phonetics (声学语音学): from the physical way or means by which sounds are transmitted for one to another.
Suprasegmental features (超切分特征): the phonemic features that occur above the level of the segments. These are the phonological properties of such units as syllable, the word, and the sentence. The main suprasegmental features include stress, intonation, and tone.
Unit 3 Morphology (形态学): refer to the part of the grammar that is concerned with word formation and word structure.
Morpheme (词素): the smallest unit of language that carries information about meaning or function.
Unit 4 Syntactic categories (句法范畴): a fundamental fact about words in all human languages is that they can be grouped together into a relatively small number of classes.
Phrase: syntactic unit that are built around a certain word category. The category is determined by the word category around which the phrase is built.
Phrase structure rule(短语结构规则): a certain word can only concur with certain other words. There must be certain grammatical mechanism that ensures the appropriate positions that specifiers, heads, and complements occupy in phrase structure. It is the special type of grammatical mechanism that regulates the arrangement of elements that make up a phrase.
Subcategorization(次范围化): the information about a word’s complement is included in the head.
Complementizers(补语化成分) words which introduce the sentence complement.
Transformation (转换): a special type of rule that can move an element from one position to another.
Deep structure (深层结构): formed by the XP rule in accordance with the head’s subcategorization properties.
Surface structure (表层结构): corresponding to the final syntactic form of the sentence which results from appropriate transformations.
Unit 5 major views concerning the study of meaning
(1) The naming theory(命名论): proposed by the ancient Greek scholar Plato. According to this theory, the linguistic forms or symbols, in other words, the words used in a language are simply labels of the objects they stand for. So words are just names or labels for things.
(2) The conceptualist view (概念论): has been held by some philosophers and linguists from ancient times. This view holds that there is no direct link between a linguistic form and what it refers to (i. e., between language and the real world); rather, in the interpretation of meaning they are linked through the mediation of concepts in the mind.
(3) The contextualist view（语境论）: held that meaning should be studied in terms of situation, use, context –– elements closely linked with language behaviour. The representative of this approach was J.R. Firth, famous British linguist.
(4) Behaviorists（行为论）: attempted to define the meaning of a language form as the “situation in which the speaker utters it and the response it calls forth in the hearer.” This theory, somewhat close to contextualism, is linked with psychological interest.
Sense (意义): is concerned with the inherent meaning of a linguistic form, the collection of all its features. It is abstract and de-contextualized.
Reference (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.
Synonymy (近义词): refers to the sameness or close similarity of meaning.
Polysemy (多义性): the same word have more than one meaning. Historically speaking, polysemy can be understood as the growth and development of or change in the meaning of words.
Homonymy (同音异义): refer to the phenomenon that words having different meanings have the same form, i.e. different words are identical in sound ( homophones 同音)or spelling ( homographs 同形), or in both (complete homonyms 同形同音异义).
Hyponymy (下义关系): refers to the sense relation between a more general, more inclusive word and a more specific word.
Superordinate (上坐标词): the word which is more general in meaning.
Hyponyms (下义词): the more specific words.
Antonymy (反义现象): is used for oppositeness of meaning; words that are opposite in meaning.
Gradable antonyms (可分级的反义词): there are often intermediate forms between the two members of a pair. Eg. Old and young, cold and hot
Complementary antonyms(互补反义词):a pair of CA is characterized by the feature that the denial of one member of the pair implies the assertion of the other. Male or female, alive or dead.
Relational opposites (关系上相反): pairs of words that exhibit the reversal of a relationship between the two items. Husband and wife, teacher and student, buy and sell.
Unit 6 Pragmatics (语用学): a general definition is that it is the study of how speakers of a language use sentences to effect successful communication.
Constatives (叙事话语): were statements that either state or describe, and were thus verifiable.
Performatives （行事话语）: were sentences that did not state a fact or describe a state, and were not verifiable.
Locutionary act (言内行为): is the act of uttering words, phrases, and clauses. It is the act of conveying literal meaning by means of syntax, lexicon, and phonology.
Illocutionary act (言外行为): is the act of expressing the speaker’s intention. It is the act performed in saying something.
Perlocutionary act （言后行为）: is the act performed by or resulting from saying something.
Pragmatic failure (语用失误): occurs when the speaker fails to use language effectively to achieve a specific communication purpose, or when the hearer fails to recognize the intention or the illocutionary force of the speaker’s utterance in the context of communication.
Pragmalinguistics (语用语言学): is applied to the more linguistic end of pragmatics, i.e. how the linguistic forms of a language are used to serve specific pragmatic purpose.
Sociopragmatics (社交语用学): is the sociological interface of pragmatics, it is concerned with the customary ways in which people of a particular culture behave to achieve a particular purpose.
Unit 7 Historical linguistics (历史语言学): is mainly concerned with both the description and explanation of language changes that occurred over time.
Fusion (融合): refers to this type of grammaticalization ( some lexical forms became grammaticalized over time) in which words develop into affixes, either prefixes or suffixes.
Addition of new words: {Coinage (创新词): a new word can be coined outright to fit some purpose, mostly for new things and objects. (Kodak 柯达)
Clipped words (缩略词):A kind of abbreviation of otherwise longer words or phrases. (gym-gymnasium)
Blending (紧缩词): A process of forming a new word by combining parts of two other words.
(smog-smoke+fog)
Acronyms (词首字母缩略词): A word created by combining the initials of a number of words.
(CEO-chief executive officer)
Back-formation (逆构词法): A process by which new words are formed by taking away he suffix of an existing word. (to beg-derived from begger)
Functional shift (功能性变化): words may shift from one part of speech to another without the addition of affixes, which is also called conversion. (N-V, V-N….)
Borrowing (借用): when different cultures come into contact, words are often borrowed from one language to another.}
Unit 8 Speech community (言语社团): in sociolinguistic studies, speakers are regarded as members of social groups. The social group that is singled out for any special study is called…
Speech variety (言语变体): or language variety, refers to any distinguishable form of speech used by a speaker or a group of speakers.
Regional dialect (地域方言): is a linguistic variety used by people living in the same geographical region.
Sociolect (社会方言): has to do with separation brought about by different social conditions.
Register(语域): A functional speech or language variety that involves degrees of formality depending on the speech situation concerned.{ field of discourse (话语范围): 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. “why” and “about what”
Tenor of discourse (话语基调): 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. “to whom”
Mode of discourse (话语方式): refers to the means of communication. It is concerned with “how” communication is carried out.
Pidgin (皮钦语): 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.
Creole (克里奥尔语，混合语): 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.
Bilingualism (双语现象): in some speech communities, two languages are used side by side with each having a different role to play; and languages switching occurs when the situation changes. (Canada, Belgium, Australia, Singapore, Switzerland, Pakistan Uganda, part of USA)
Diglossia(双言现象) :A sociolinguistic situation in which two very different varieties of language co-exist in a speech community, each serving a particular social function and used for a particular situation. (Arabic, Modern Greek, Swiss German, Haitian Creole)
Unit 9 Linguistic relativity (语言相对性): different languages offer people different ways of expressing the world around, and so they think and speak differently.
Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis (萨丕尔沃尔夫假说): they believe that languages filters people’s perception and the way they categorize their experiences. The interdependence of language and thought is known as…
Acculturation (同化过程): is the process of changing in material culture, traditional practices, and beliefs that occurs when one group’s cultural system interferes with that of another, directly or indirectly challenging the latter to adapt to the ways of the former.
Assimilation: is the process whereby individuals or groups of differing ethnicity are absorbed into the dominant culture of a society- though not always completely.
Amalgamation (文化融合): when a society becomes ethnically mixed in a way that represents a synthesis rather than the elimination or absorption of one group by another.
Cultural overlap (文化重叠): between two societies owing to some similarities in the natural environment and psychology of human beings.
Cultural diffusion (文化扩散): through communication, some elements of culture A enter culture B and become part of culture B.
Linguistics imperialism (语言学中的帝国主义): is a kind of linguicism which can be defined as the promulgation of global ideologies through the worldwide expansion of one language.
Intercultural communication: also known as cross-cultural communication, is acommunication between people whose cultural perceptions and symbols systems are distinct enough to alter the communication event.
Unit 10 Language acquisition (语言习得): Language acquisition refers to the development of the Child’s acquisition of his mother tongue or first language, i.e, how he comes to understand and to speak the language of his community.
The behaviorist view: believe that language learning is simply a matter of imitation and habit formation.
Language Acquisition Device (语言习得机制): the LAD was described as an imaginary “black box” existing somewhere in the human brain. The “black brain” is said to contain principles that are universal to all human languages. Children need access to the samples of a natural language to activate the LAD, which enables them to discover his language's structure by matching the innate knowledge of basic grammatical system to that particular language.
Logical problem (逻辑问题): means the fact that children come to know more about the structure of their language than they could reasonably be expected to learn from the language samples available.
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 he grows.
Motherese or caretaker talk (保姆式语言): shares such characteristics as slow rate of speech, high pitch, rich intonation, shorter and simpler sentence structures, frequent repetition, paraphrasing and limited vocabulary.
Critical Period Hypothesis (临界期假说): Eric Lenneberg, a biologist, argued that the LAD, like other biological functions, works successfully when it is stimulated at the right time—a specific and limited time period for language acquisition.
Telegraphic speech (电文式言语): contains content words(实词) which provide listeners with some information and lack the function elements(起功能作用成分), or function words which by themselves tell nothing.
Atypical language development (abnormal language development): may occur due to trauma or injury. It includes hearing impairment (听力受损) (which can be slight or severe and may lead to minor loss or total lack of language), mental retardation (智障) (which may cause a delayed language acquisition), autism (自闭症) (language impairment from the very beginning), stuttering (口吃) (repetition of sounds, syllables, or phrases where the speaker can not “release” the words), aphasia (失语症) (partial or total loss of language