语言学期末复习总结

5. What is Linguistics?

⏹The scientific study of human language

⏹Aims of linguistic theory:

⏹What is knowledge of language? (Competence)

⏹How is knowledge of language acquired? (Acquisition)

⏹How is knowledge of language put to use?

(Performance/languageprocessing)

⏹ A grammar includes everything one knows about the structure of one’s

language:

⏹Phonetics and Phonology (the sounds and the sound system or

patterns)

⏹Lexicon (the words or vocabulary in the mental dictionary)

⏹Morphology (the structure of words)

⏹Syntax (the structure of phrases and sentences and the constraints on

well-formedness of sentences)

⏹Semantics (the meaning of words and sentences)

Semantics

⏹The following are what the key concepts look like:

⏹semantic components

⏹denotation of words

⏹sense relations between words such as antonymy and

synonymy

⏹sense relations between sentences such as entailment

and presupposition and others

⏹The following are some book titles of linguistics. Can you judge the

synchronic or diachronic orientation just from the titles?

⏹ 1. English Examined: Two Centuries of Comment on the Mother-Tongue.

⏹ 2. Protean Shape: A study in Eighteenth-century Vocabulary and Usage.

⏹ 3. Pejorative Sense Development in English.

⏹ 4. The Categories and Types of Present-Day English Word-Formation.

⏹ 5. Language in the inner City: Studies in the Black English Vernacular.

Synchronic: 2, 4, 5.

Diachronic: 1, 3.

⏹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 langue.

⏹As a social product, langue is a set of conventions that members of a speech

community seem to abide by. It can be thought of as the generalized rules of

the language. Parole, on the other hand, is the concrete use of the conventions or application of the rules.

⏹We can compare them along the following dimensions. Langue is abstract;

parole is specific to the situation in which it occurs. Langue is not actually

spoken by anyone; parole is always a naturally occurring event. Langue is

relatively stable and systematic; parole is subject to personal and situational

constraints.

⏹Parole is a mass of confused facts and not suitable for systematic investigation.

What the linguist has to do is to abstract langue from instances of parole —

that is, to discover the regularities governing all instances of parole and make

them the subject of linguistics.

⏹For language (langue) is not complete in any speaker; it exists perfectly only

within a collectivity. In separating language (langue) from speaking (parole)

we are at the same time separating (1) what is social from what is individual ;

and (2) what is essential from what is accessory and more or less accidental. Competence and performance

This fundamental distinction is discussed by Chomsky in his Aspects of the Theory of Syntax (1965).

Competence is the ideal language user’s knowledge of the rules of his language. Performance is the actual realization of this knowledge in utterances.

⏹Competence enables a speaker to produce and understand an indefinite

number of sentences and to recognize grammatical mistakes and ambiguities.

⏹ A speaker’s competence is stable but his performance is often influenced by

psychological and social factors.

⏹Chomsky’s distinction and Saussure’s distinction are not exactly the same.

Saussure’s langue is a social product, a set of conventions for a speech

community. Chomsky regards competence as a property of the mind of each

individual. Saussure looks at language more from a sociological point of view

while Chomsky looks at it more from a psychological point of view.

8.5 Linguistic potential and actual linguistic behavior

⏹Another similar distinction is made by English linguist M. A. K. Halliday in

the 1960s, the distinction between linguistic potential and actual linguistic

behavior.

⏹Halliday looks at language from a functional point of view, he is

more concerned with what speakers do with language.

⏹With language, there is a wide range of things a speaker can do in

the culture he is in. There are many things he can say, for example, to many

people, on many topics.

⏹What he actually says on a particular occasion to a particular

individual is what he has selected from among the many possible things he

could have said.

⏹This leads to Halliday’s distinction between linguistic potential and

actual linguistic behaviour.

⏹His linguistic potential is similar to Saussure’s Langue and

Chomsky’s competence, and his actual linguistic behaviour is similar to the

notions of parole and performance.