语言学——精选推荐

语⾔学
Lectures on Modern Linguistics
Main Sections for the Lectures:
Chapter One Introduction Study questions: 2.3.4.5.7.
1.1 Definition of linguistics
1.3 Some important distinctions in linguistics:
Prescriptive vs. descriptive
Synchronic vs. diachronic
Speech and writing
2. What is Language?
2.1 Definition of language
2.2 Design features
Chapter Two Phonology Study questions: 1.2.8.9.12.13
2.4 Classification of English speech sounds
Classification of English consonants
Classification of English vowels
3.1 Phonology and phonetics
3.2 Phone, phoneme, and allophone
3.5 Supresegmental features
Stress
Chapter Three Morphology Study questions: 1.2.3.4.6.7.
1. Definition
2. Morpheme
3. Compounding
Chapter Four Syntax Study questions: 2.3
2. Sentence structure
2.2 Types of sentences
Chapter Five Semantics Study questions: 1.2.3.4.5.
1. What is semantics?
2. Some views concerning the study of meaning
3. Lexical meaning
Sense and reference
Major sense relations
Chapter Six Pragmatics Study questions: 1.2.3.
1. What is pragmatics?
2. Speech act theory
Study questions for Chapter 1 Introduction: 2.3.4.5.7.
2. What are the major branches of linguistics? What does each of them study?
Phonetics ---- How speech sounds are produced and classified
Phonology ---- How sounds form systems and functions to convey meaning.
Morphology ---- How morphemes are combined to form words.
Syntax ----- How morphemes and words are combined to form sentences.
Semantics ----- The study of meaning (in abstraction).
Pragmatics ----- The study of meaning in context of use
Sociolinguistics ---- The study of language with reference to society.
Psycholinguistics ----- The study of language with reference to the working of the mind.
Applied linguistics ----- The application of linguistic principles and theories to language teaching and learning.
3. What makes modern linguistic traditional grammar?
Modern linguistics is descriptive; its investigations are based on authentic, and mainly spoken language data. Traditional grammar is prescriptive; it is based on “high” written language.
4. Is modern linguistics mainly synchronic or diachronic? Why?
Modern linguistics is mainly synchronic, focusing on the present-day language. Unless the various states of a language are successfully studied, it will not be possible to describe language from a diachronic point of view.
5. Which enjoys priority in modern linguistics, speech or writing? Why?
Speech enjoys priority over writing in modern linguistic study for the following reasons:
(1) Speech precedes writing in terms of evolution.
(2) A large amount of communication is carried out in speech than in writing.
(3) Speech is the form in which infants acquire their native language.
7. What characteristics of language do you think should be inclu
ded in a good, comprehensive definition of language?
Language is a rule-governed system.
Language is basically vocal.
Language is arbitrary.
Language is used for human communication.
Study questions for Chapter 2 Phonology: 1.2.8.9.12.13
1. What are the two major media of communication? Of the two, which one is primary and why?
Speech and writing.
Speech is considered primary over writing.
The reasons are : speech is prior to writing in language evolution, speech plays a greater role in daily communication, and speech is the way in which people acquire their native language.
2. What are the three branches of phonetics? How do they contribute to the study of speech sounds?
Articulatory, auditory, and acoustic phonetics.
Articulatory phonetics describes the way our speech organs work to produce the speech sounds and how they differ. Auditory phonetics studies the physical properties of speech sounds, and reaches the important conclusion that phoneticidentity is only a theoretical ideal.
Acoustic phonetics studies the physical properties of speech sounds, the way sounds travel from the speaker to the hearer.
8. How are the English consonants classified?
Two ways to classify consonants: by place of articulation and by manner of articulation.
9. What criteria are used to classify the English vowels?
(1) Position of the tongue, i.e. the part of the tongue that is held highest.
(2) Openness of the mouth.
(3) Length of the sound.
(4) Shape of the lips.
(5) Laxity of the glottis.
12. What is phone? How is it different from a phoneme? How are allophones related to a phoneme?
Phone---- a speech sound, a phonetic unit.
Phoneme ---- a collection of abstract sound features, a phonological unit.
Allophone ---- actual realization of a phoneme in different phonetic contexts.
13. What is a minimal pair and what is a minimal set? Why is it important to identify the minimal set in a language? Minimal pair ----- Two sound combinations identified in every way except in one sound element that occurs in the same position.
Minimal set ----- A group of sound combinations with the above feature.
By identifying the minimal pairs or the minimal set of a language, a phonologist can identify its phonemes.
Study questions for Chapter 3 Morphology: 1.2.3.4.6.7.
1. What does morphology study?
The internal structure of words and the rules that govern their formation.
2. What is a morpheme? Dissect the following words into morphemes
description underdeveloped photosynthetic anatomy
radiation geography philarmonic defrosted
refreshment demobilized conducting suppression
circumspect dialogue deformed combination
The smallest unit of meaning.
de-script-tion under-develop-ed photo-synthe-tic ana-tomy
radia-tion geo-graph-y phi-harmon-ic de-frost-ed
re-fresh-ment de-mobil-iz-ed con-duct-ing sup-press-ion
circums-spect dia-logue de-form-ed com-bina-tion
3
. Describe with examples the various types of morpheme used in English.
Free morpheme e.g. mate, sun, fame, like
Bound morpheme, e.g. roots and affixes
(1) roots e.g. fin-, spect-, cide
(2) affixes, e.g. inflectional and derivational
Derivational: prefix and suffix
Inflectional affixes: -ing, -ed, -(e)s
Prefixes: un-, dis-, de-, en-,
Suffixes: -ly, -less, -tion, -ize
4. What are the main inflectional affixes in English? What grammatical meaning do they convey?
-(e)s ------plural number
-(e)s ------third person singular present tense
-(e)d ------past tense
-ing ------progressive aspect
-er ------ comparative degree
-est ------superlative degree
-‘s ------ possessive case
6. State the morphological rules that govern the use of the given derivational affixes.
Example: -er: This suffix is added to a verb to form a noun indicating the agent that carries out the action, e.g. write—writer -ant -ment -sub- -en en-
-ee -ful -some -wise un-
-ant: suffix added to a verb to form a noun indicating the agent e.g. assistant
-ment: suffix added to a verb to form its corresponding noun e.g. development
sub-: prefix added to an adjective to form another adjective to indicate a lesser degree e.g. substandard
-en: suffix added to an adjective to form a verb to indicate the acquisition of the quality denoted by the adjective e.g. darken en-: prefix added to an adjective to form a verb to indicate the acquisition of the quality denoted by the adjective e.g. enrich -ee: suffix added to a verb to form a noun indicating the recipient of the action denoted by the verb e.g. employee
-ful: suffix added to a noun to form an adjective indicating the quality denoted by the noun e.g. plentiful
-some: suffix added to a noun to form an adverb meaning “with regard to the area indicated by a noun” e.g. careerwise
un-: prefix added to an adjective to indicate the absence of the quality indicated by the adjective e.g. unemployed
7. What are the main features of the English compounds?
Orthographically a compound can be written as one word, two separate words with or without a hyphen in between. Syntactically, the part of speech of a compound is determined by the last element.
Semantically, the meaning of a compound is idiomatic, not calculable from the meanings of all its components. Phonetically, the word stress of compound usually falls on the first element.
Study questions for Chapter 4 syntax: 2.3
2. Examine each of the following sentences and indicate if it is a simple, coordinate, or complex sentence.
1) Jane did it because she was asked to. (complex)
2) The soldiers were warned to remain hidden and not to expose themselves. (simple)
3) David was never there, but his brother was. (coordinate)
4) She leads a tranquil life in the country. (simple)
5) Unless I hear from her, I won’t leave this town. (complex)
3. Use the appropriate phrase structure rules to draw a labled constituent structure
tree diagram for each of the following sentences:
1) A clever magician fooled the audience.
2) The tower on the hill collapsed in the wind.
3) They knew that the senator would win the election.
1)
S
NP VP
Det Adj. N V NP
Det N
A clever magician fooled the audience.
2)
S
NP VP
Det N PP V PP
P NP P NP
The tower on the hill collapsed in the wind.
3)
S
NP VP
V S’
They knew that the senator would win the election.
Study questions for Chapter 5 Semantics: 1.2.3.4.5.
1. What are the major views concerning the study of meaning?
The naming theory, the conceptualist view, the contextualist view, and the behaviorist view
2. What is sense and what is reference? How are they related?
Sense refers to the inherent meaning of a linguistic form, which is a collection of semantic meanings, abstract and decontextualized. Reference is what a linguistic form refers to in the real world; it is a matter of the relationship between the form and the reality.
3. What are the major types of synonyms in English?
Dialectal synonyms, stylistic synonyms, emotive synonyms, collocational synonyms, and semantic synonyms.
4. Explain with examples “homonymy”, “polysemy” and “hyponymy”.
Homonymy---identical in form (rather in sound or in spelling, or in both) but different in meaning, e.g. night—knight; lead v. ---lead n.; bank (a financial institution) ---bank (side of a river).
Polysemy---one form having more than one meaning, e.g. earth: our planet, the soil on its surface
Hyponymy---relation of semantic inclusion between a word which is more general and a word which is more specific, e.g. furniture—table
5. How can words opposite in meaning be classified? To which category does each of the following pairs of antonyms belong?
Left/right far/near vacant/occupied father/daughter north/south doctor/patient dark/bright ugly/beautiful
Study questions for Chapter Pragmatics: 1.2.3.
1. What does pragmatics study? How does it differ from traditional semantics?
Pragmatics studies how meaning is conveyed in the process of communication.
The basic difference between pragmatics and traditional semantics is that pragmatics considers meaning in context and traditional semantics studies meaning in isolation from the context of use.
2. How is the notion of context interpreted?
Context is regarded as constituted by all kinds of knowledge assumed to be shared by the speaker and the hearer.
3. How are sentence meaning and utterance meaning relate
d, and how do they differ?
Utterance meaning is based on sentence meaning; the former is concrete and context-dependent and the latter is abstract and decontextualized.。