语言学概论名词解释

Language is a system of arbitrary vocal symbols used for human communication. (Language is a means of verbal communication.)

Arbitrariness 任意性There is no logical connection between meanings and sounds.

( refers to the fact that the forms of linguistic signs bear no natural relationship to their meaning.) Duality 二层性is the property of having two levels of structures, such that units of the primary level are composed of elements of the secondary level and each of the two levels has its own principles of organization.

Creativity (productivity) 创造性Language is creative in that it makes possible the construction and interpretation of new signals by its users.

(Language is resourceful because of its duality and its recursiveness.)

Displacement 移位性Language can be used to refer to contexts removed from the immediate situations of the speaker.

( means that human languages enable their users to symbolize objects, events and concepts which are not present( in time and space) at the moment of communication.)

Linguistics 语言学is the scientific study of language.

Saussure distinguished the abstract linguistic system shared by all the members of a speech community and the actual phenomena or data of linguistics as Langue and Parole. Competence 语言能力the ideal user’s underlying knowledge about the system of rules of his language.

Performance 语言运用the actual realization of this knowledge in concrete situations.

Chapter 2

Phonetics 语音学(the study of sounds) studies how speech sounds are produced, transmitted, and perceived.

Phonology 音系学is the study of sound patterns and sound systems of languages. Coarticulation 协同发音When a speech sound changes, and becomes more like another sound which follows it or precedes it, this is called coarticulation.

(When simultaneous or overlapping articulations are involved, we call this process coarticulation.) Broad Transcription 宽式音标the transcription with letter-symbols only.

Narrow transcription 窄式音标the transcription with letter-symbols together with the diacritics 读音符号.

Phone 音素A phone is a phonetic unit or segment.

Phoneme 音位A phoneme is a phonological unit which is the smallest unit of sound in language which can distinguish two words.

Allophone 音位变体the different phones which can represent a phoneme in different phonetic environments are called the allophones of that phoneme.

Assimilation 同化is a process by which one sound takes on some or all the characteristics of a neighboring sound.

Syllable 音节A syllable is composed of a compulsory nucleus(peak), a non-compulsory onset and a non-compulsory coda.

Stress 重音refers to the degree of force used in producing a syllable.

Intonation 语调involves the occurrence of recurring fall-rise patterns, each of which is used with a set of relatively consistent meanings, either on single words or on groups of words of varying