语言学定义

• 2. speech organs: those parts of the human body involved in the production of speech, also known as “ vocal organs”. • 3. voicing: the vibration of the vocal folds. When the vocal folds are close enough, the airstream causes them to vibrate against with each and the resultant sound is said to be “voiced”. When the vocal folds are apart, and the air can pass through easily, the sound produced is said to be “voiceless”.
• 5. descriptive: to make an objective and systematic account of the patterns and use of a language or variety. • 6. arbitrariness: the absence of any physical correspondence between the linguistic signals and the entities to which they refer.
• 7. duality: the structural organization of language into two abstract levels: meaningful units( e.g. words) and meaningless segments( e.g. sounds, letters) • 8. displacement: the ability of language to refer to contexts removed from the speaker’s immediate situations.
• 9. cardinal vowels: a set of vowel qualities arbitrarily defined, fixed and unchanging, intended to provide a frame of reference for the description of the actual vowels of existing languages. • 10. semi-vowel: segments that are neither consonants nor vowels. E.g.[j] and [w].
• 3. diachronic: said of the study of the development of language and languages over time. • 4. prescriptive: to make an authoritarian statement about the correctness of the particular use of language.
• 12. langue and parole: langue refers to the abstract linguistic system shared by all the members of a speech community and parole refers to the actualized language or realization of language.
• 5. consonant: a major category of sound segments, produced by a closure in Βιβλιοθήκη Baiduhe vocal tract, or by a narrowing which is so marked that air can not escape without producing audible friction. • 6. vowel: a major category of sound segments, produced without the obstruction of the vocal tract so that air escapes in a relatively unimpeded way through the mouth and the noise.
• 11. competence and performance: the fundamental distinction is discussed by Chomsky in his Aspects of the Theory of Syntax. A language user’s underlying knowledge about the system of rules is called his linguistic competence; and performance refers to the actual use of language in concrete situations
• 9. metalanguage: a language used for talking about language. • 10. macrolinguistics: a broad linguistic concept of linguistic enquiry, including psychological, cultural, etc.
• Design features: the distinctive features of human languages that essentially make human language distinguishable from languages of animals. • 2. synchronic: said of an approach that studies language at a theoretical “point” in time.
• Phonology: the study of the sound patterns and sound systems of languages. It aims to discover the principles that govern the way sounds are organized in languages, and to explain the variations that occur.
• 12. coarticulation：simultaneous or overlapping articulations. If the affected sound becomes more like the following sound, it is known as anticipatory coarticulation; if the sound shows the influence of the preceding sound, it is perseverative coarticulation. • 比较： assimilation: a process by which one sound takes on some or all the characteristics of a neighboring sound. If the following sound is influencing the preceding sound, the process is known as regressive assimilation; the converse process, in which a preceding sound is influencing the following sound, is known as progressive assimilation.
• 第二章 speech sounds • 1. phonetics: the study of how speech sounds are produced, transmitted, and perceived. It can be divided into three main areas of study---articulatory phonetics, acoustic phonetics, and perceptual/auditory phonetics.
• 11. vowel glide: vowels that involve a change of quality, including diphthongs, when a single movement of the tongue is made, and triphthongs, where a double movement is perceived.
• 4. IPA refers to the acronym of the International Phonetic Association(1897) whose first title was Phonetic Teachers Association established by a small group of language teachers in France in order to popularize their teaching practice or methods. It also stands for the International Phonetic Alphabet (the IPA chart) whose first vision was published in 1888.
• 7. manner of articulation: ways in which articulation of consonants can be accomplished---a) the articulators may close off the oral tract for an instant or a relatively long period; b) they may narrow the space considerably, or c) they may simply modify the shape of the tract by approaching each other. • 8. place of articulation: the point where an obstruction to the flow of air is made in producing a consonant.
• 13. phoneme: a unit of explicit sound contrast. If two sounds make a contrast between two different words, they are said to be different phonemes. • 14. allophone: variants of the same phoneme. If two or more phonetically different sounds don’t make a contrast in meaning, they are said to be allophones of the same phoneme. To be allophones, they must be in complementary distribution and bear some phonetic similarities.