语言学名词解释

Illocutionary act: The illocutionary act is the act performed in the performing of a locutionary act. When we speak we not only produce some units of language with certain meanings, but also make clear our purpose in producing them, the way we intend them to be understood, or they also have certain forces as Austin prefers to say. In the example of “Morning!” we can say it has the force of a greeting, or it ought to have been taken as a greeting.Cooperative principle: This is the principle suggested by Grice about the regularity in conversation, which reads “Make your conversational contribution such as is required, at the stage at which it occurs, by the accepted purpose or direction of the talk exchange in which you are engaged”. There are four categories of maxims under it, namely, quantity maxims, quality maxims, relation maxim, and manner maxims.Conversational implicature: This is a type of implied meaning, which is deduced on the basis of the conventional meaning of words together with the context, under the guidance of the CP and its maxims. In this sense, implicature is comparable to illocutionary force in speech act theory in that they are both concerned with the contextual side of meaning, or 言外之意in Chinese. Entailment: This is a logical relationship between two sentences in which the truth of the second necessarily follows from the truth of the first, while the falsity of the first follows from the falsity of the second. For example, when “I saw a boy” is true, “I saw a child” is necessarily true;and if “I saw a child” is not true, “I saw a boy” will not be true either.Ostensive communication: “Ostensive communication”, or “inferential communication”, is a shorthand for “ostensive-inferential communication”. That is, communication is not simply a matter of encoding and decoding, it also involves inference on the part of the hearer and ostension (making clear of one’s intention to express something) on the part of the speaker.Speech act theory: speech act theory is the first major in theory in the study of language in use which originated with J.L. Austin. In his opinion, to say something is to do something. He classified speech act into three kinds: locutionary act, illocutionary act and perlocutionary act.Image Schema意向图式: is a recurring, dynamic pattern of our perceptual interactions and motor programs that gives coherence and structure to our experience.Sociolinguistics: is the linguistic study of society or the social study of language.Transformation-generative grammar (TG)转换生成语法TG refers to any grammar in which different syntactic structures are related by transformations. Hend commonly, from the 1960s, of the theories of Chomsky, or of Chomsky’s school, in general. In a transformational grammar as Chomsky first proposed it, the main role of transformations was to relate the sentences of a language as a whole to a small set of kernel sentences.Functional sentence perspective (FSP)功能句子观is a theory of linguistic analysis which refers to an analysis of utterances or texts in terms of the information they contain. The principle is that Stimulus-response: A learning theory associated particularly with the American psychologist Skinner, which describes learning as the formation of association between responses. Behaviorism in linguistics holds that children learn language through a chain of “stimulus-response reinforcement”, and the adult’s use of language is also a process of stimulus-response. A stimulus is the behaviorwhich is produced as a creation in an individual or organism. A response is the behavior which is produced as a creation to a stimulus.The Prague School: The Prague School can be traced back to its first meeting under the leadership of V. Mathesius (1882-1946) in 1926. This school practised a special style of synchronic linguistics, and its most important contribution to linguistics is that it sees language in terms of function. It has been stated that “No other European group has wielded quite as much influence as this one”, and the shool “has influenced every important development in the United States”.Structural metaphors: structural metaphors play the most important role because they allow us to go beyong orientation and referring and give us the possiblity to structure one concept according to another.Pragmatics: Pragmatics is the study of meaning in context. In other words, pragmatics is concerned with the way language is used to communicate rather than which the way language is structured. 1. Consider the following dialogue between a man and his daughter. Try to explain the illocutionary force in each of the utterances.[The daughter walks into the kitchen and takes some popcorn.]Father: I thought you were practicing your violin.Daughter: I need to get the [violin] stand.Father: Is it under the popcorn?The illocutionary force of “I thought you were practicing your violin” is a criticism of the daughter for her not practicing the violin. That of the daughter’s answer is a defence for herself—I’m going to do that. And that of the f ather’s retort is a denial of the daughter’s excuse.2. If you ask somebody “Can you open the door?” he answers “Yes” but does not actually do it, what would be your action? Why? Try to see it in the light of speech act theory.I would be angry with him. “Can you open the door” is normally a request of the hearer to do it rather than a question about his ability. The fact that he answers “Yes” but does not actually do it shows that he declines my request.3. On 14 January, 1993, US President-elect Bill Clinton spoke to journalists in the wake of rumours that he might go back on some of his promises made during the electoral campaign. When cornered by some insistent journalists, he came up with the following statement.I think it would be foolish for the President of the United Ststes, for any President of the United States, not to respond to changing circumstances. Every President of the United States, as far as I know, and particularly those who have done a good job, have known how to respond to changing circumstances. It would clearly be foolish for a President of the United States to do otherwise. Some linguists argue that campaign speeches, like all political speeches, are one of the occasions on which the CP and its maxims are suspended, do you agree? Can you think of any other similar occasion?Yes, this is an occasion on which the CP and its maxims are suspended. When he formulated his CP, Grice qualified it with expressions like “normally”, “characteristically” and “ceteris paribus”. In other words, the CP and its maxims are not meant to be observed in all situations. Alternatively, we may say that assumptions like “The speaker believes in what he says” are implicatures, which will be cancelled in situations where there are indications to the contrary. Similar occasions include funeral orations, poetry writing, and joking.4. “The Club” is a device for blocking an automobile’s steering wheel, thus protecting the car from being stolen. And one of its ads reads: THE CLUB! Anti-theft device for cars POLICE S AY: ‘USE IT’ OR LOSE IT. In terms of the Gricean theory, what maxim is exploited here? Find two Chinese ads of the same type.The main maxim exploited here is the Manner maxim of “Avoid ambiguity”. The two tokens of “it” refer to two different things. Two Chinese ads of similar kind are 买一送一and 要想皮肤好，早晚用大宝.5. A is reading newspaper. When B asks “What’s on television tonight?” he answers “Nothing”. What does A mean in normal situations? Think of two situations in which this interpretation of “nothing” will be cancelled.Normally “nothing” here means “nothing interesting”. If A adds after “nothing” “The workers are on strike” or “There’s going to be a blockout tonight”, then the interpretation of “nothing interesting” will be cancelled.6. Each of the following conversational fragments is to some degree odd. To what extent can the oddness be explained by reference to Grice’s CP and maxims?(1)A: Have you seen Peter today?B: Well, if I didn’t deny seeing him I wouldn't be telling a lie.(2)A: Are you there?B: No, I’m here.(3)A: Thank you for your help, you've been most kind.B: Yes, I have.(4)A: Can you tell me where Mr Smith’s office is?B: Yes, not there.(5)A: Would you like some coffee?B: Mary’s a beautiful dancer.(6)A: Has the postman been?B: He leant his bicycle against the fence, opened the gate, strode briskly down the path, stopped to stroke the cat, reached into his bag, pulled out a bundle of letters and pushed them through our letter box.Without a proper context, these conversations can all be regarded as jokes resulting from the exploitation of Grice’s CP and maxims. In (1) Speaker B uses a long and prolix way to express the meaning of “Yes, I have”, thus violating the Manner maxim of “Be brief (avoid prolixity)”. (2B) results from the exploitation of Quality maxims in that the speaker seems to be telling the truth while deliberately misinterpreting Speaker A’s “there”.(3B) is another instance of exploiting the Quality maxims. Though logically speaking it may be true tht Speaker B has been helpful to A, we don't usually respond to others’ thanks in this way.On one hand, (4B) is still another instance of exploiting the Quality maxims in that Mr Smith’s office is really “not here”. On the other hand, Speaker B has violated the Qualit y maxim of being as informative as is required since A needs more specific information than “not here”.（5B）is an indirect way of declining the offer. In terms of Grice’s maxims, this is a case of not being relevant. In the last conversation, Speaker B uses a long and prolix way for the simple answer “Yes, he has”, and has thus violated the Manner maxim of “Be brief (aviod prolixity)”.。