语言学概论 名词解释

1. Design features of language:

(1)Arbitrariness (任意性):there is no logical or intrinsic connection between a particular sound and the meaning it is associated with.（声音和意思无直接联系）eg: why English should use the sounds /dog/ to refer to the animal dog, the relationship between the sounds and their meaning is quite accidental.

（2）Duality(双重性)：the way meaningless elements of language at one level(sounds and letters)combine to form meaningful units at another level. That is, sounds such as d, g, f, o, mean nothing separately. They normally take on meaning only when they are combined in certain ways, as in dog, fog, and god. 2．Descriptive grammars(描写性语法): attempt to tell what is in the language(语言第一，语法第二，语法是为语言服务)

Prescriptive grammars（规定性语法）：tell people what should be in the language.

3．Phonetics(语音学): the study of linguistic speech sounds, how they ate produced, how they are perceived, and their physical properties.

It can be divided into 3main branches:(1) articulatory phonetics(有音节的), which is the study of how speech sounds are produced(2)acoustic phonetics（有关声音的）,which deals with the transmission of speech sounds through the air(3)auditory phonetics(听觉的)，which deals with how speech sounds are perceived by the listener.

4.Assimilation(同化): a phonological process whereby a sound becomes phonetically similar to a neighboring sound ,eg: a vowel becomes when

followed by a consonant.

5．Phonology(音系学): the study of the abstract systems underlying the sounds of language.

6．Minimal pairs（最小对立体）: a pair of words that differ by only a single sound in the same position, e.g. look/ took, spill/still and keep/coop Minimal set（最小对立体集）: when a group of words can be differentiated, each one from the others, by changing one phoneme(always in the same position)eg: a minimal set based on the vowel phonemes of English would include feat, fit, fate, fat, fought, foot, and one based on consonants could have big, pig, and wig.

7．Syllable（音节）: these units which are often longer than one should and smaller than a whole word. 1. phonetically, syllables are usually described as consisting of a center which has little or no airflow and which sounds comparatively loud.2.phonologically, syllables are defined by the way in which vowels and consonants combine to form various sequences.

8．Stress (重音): the prominence given to certain sounds in speech. 9．Morphology (形态学)：the study of the structure of words.

10．Root（词根）: the morpheme that remains when all affixes are strippes from

a complex word. eg: system from un- +system + atic +ally

11.Derivational morphemes（派生词缀）可能会改变词性: a morpheme that serves to derive a word of one class or meaning from a word of another class or meaning. eg: -ment derives the noun from the verb establish; re- changes the