语言学 常见名词解释

常见名词解释Synchronic: said of an approach that studies language at a theoretical “point” in time. Diachronic: said of the study of development of language and languages over time. Arbitrariness: the absence of any physical correspondence between linguistic signals and the entities to which they refer.Duality: the structural organization of language into two abstract levels; meaningful units and meaningless segments .Competence: unconscious knowledge of the system of grammatical rules in a language.Performance: the language actually used by people in speaking or writing. Langue: the language system shared by a “speech community”.Parole: the concrete utterances of speaker.Morpheme: the smallest unit of language in terms of the relationship between expression and content, a unit that cannot be divided into further smaller units without destroying or drastically altering the meaning, whether it is lexical or grammatical. Inflection: is the manifestation of grammatical relationship through the addition of inflectional affixes such as number, person, finiteness, aspect and cases to which they are attached.Root: refers to the base form of a word that cannot be further analyzed without loss of identity.Stem:is any morpheme or combinations of morphemes to which an inflectional affix can be added.Acronym:is made up from the first letters of the name of an organization,which has a heavily modified headword.Syntax: the study of the interrelationships between elements in sentence structure. Subordination: the process or result of linking linguistic units so that they have different syntactic status, one being dependent upon the other, and usually a constituent of the other.Denotation: denotation involves the relationship between a linguistic unit and the non-linguistic entities to which it refers.Connotation: properties of the entity a word denote.Synonymy: synonymy is the technical name for one of the sense relations between linguistic units, namely the sameness relation.Hyponymy: the technical name for inclusiveness sense relation, is a matter of class membership.Entailment: This a logic 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.Traffic light does not have duality. Obviously, it is not a double-level system. There is only one-to-one relationship between signs and meaning but the meaning units cannot be divided into smaller meaningless elements further. So the traffic light only has the primary level and lacks the secondary level like animals’ call.1. What is language?“Language is system of arbitrary vocal symbols used for human communication. It is a system, since linguistic elements are arranged systematically, rather than randomly. Arbitrary, in the sense that there is usually no intrinsic connection between a work (like “book”) and the object it refers to. This explains and is explained by the fact that different languages have different “books”: “book” in En glish, “livre” in French, “shu” in Chinese. It is symbolic, because words are associated with objects, actions, ideas etc. by nothing but convention. Namely, people use the sounds or vocal forms to symbolize what they wish to refer to. It is vocal, because sound or speech is the primary medium for all human languages. Writing systems came much later than the spoken forms. The fact that small children learn and can only learn to speak (and listen) before they write (and read) also indicates that language is primarily vocal, rather than written. The term “human” in the definition is meant to specify that language is human specific.2. What are design features of language?“Design features” here refer to the defining properties of human language that tell the difference between human language and any system of animal communication. They are arbitrariness, duality, productivity, displacement, cultural transmission and interchangeability3. What is arbitrariness?By “arbitrariness”, we mean there is no logical c onnection between meanings and sounds. A dog might be a pig if only the first person or group of persons had used it for a pig. Language is therefore largely arbitrary. But language is not absolutely seem to be some sound-meaning association, if we think of echo words, like “bang”, “crash”, “roar”, which are motivated in a certain sense. Secondly, some compounds (words compounded to be one word) are not entirely arbitrary either. “Type” and “write” are opaque or unmotivated words, while “type-writer” is les s so, or more transparent or motivated than the words that make it. So we can say “arbitrariness” is a matter of degree.4. What is duality?Linguists refer “duality” (of structure) to the fact that in all languages so farinvestigated, one finds two levels of structure or patterning. At the first, higher level, language is analyzed in terms of combinations of meaningful units (such as morphemes, words etc.); at the second, lower level, it is seen as a sequence of segments which lack any meaning in themselves, but which combine to form units of meaning. According to Hu Zhanglin et al., language is a system of two sets of structures, one of sounds and the other of meaning. This is important for the workings of language. A small number of semantic units (words), and these units of meaning can be arranged and rearranged into an infinite number of sentences (note that we have dictionaries of words, but no dictionary of sentences!). Duality makes it possible for a person to talk about anything within his knowledge. No animal communication system enjoys this duality.5. What is productivity?Productivity refers to the ability to the ability to construct and understand an indefinitely large number of sentences in one‟s native language, including those that has never heard before, but that are appropriate to the speaking situation. No one has ever said or heard “A red-eyed elephant is dancing on the small hotel bed with an African gibbon”, but he can say it when necessary, and he can understand it in right register. Different from artistic creativity, though, productivity never goes outside the language, thus also called “rule-bound creativity” (by N.Chomsky).6.What is displacement?“Displacement”, as one of the design features of the human language, refers to the fact that one can talk about things that are not present, as easily as he does things present. In other words, one can refer to real and unreal things, things of the past, of the present, of the future. Language itself can be talked about too. When a man, for example, is crying to a woman, about something, it might be something that had occurred, or something that is occurring, or something that is to occur. When a dog is barking, however, you can decide it is barking for something or at someone that exists now and there. It couldn‟t be bow-wowing sorrowfully for a bone to be lost. The bee‟s system, nonetheless, has a small share of “displacement”, but it is an unspeakable tiny share.7.What is cultural transmission?This means that language is not biologically transmitted from generation to generation, but that the details of the linguistic system must be learned anew by each speaker. It is true that the capacity for language in human beings (N. Chomsky called it “language acquisition device”, or LAD) has a genetic basis, but the particular language a person learns to speak is a cultural one other than a genetic one like the dog‟s barking system. If a human being is brought up in isolation he cannot acquire language. The Wolf Child reared by the pack of wolv es turned out to speak the wolf‟s roaring “tongue” when he was saved. He learned thereafter, with no small difficulty, the ABC of a certain human language.8. What is interchangeability?Interchangeability means that any human being can be both a producer and a receiver of messages. Though some people suggest that there is sex differentiation in the actual language use, in other words, men and women may say different things, yet in principle there is no sound, or word or sentence that a man can utter and a woman cannot, or vice versa. On the other hand, a person can be the speaker while the other person is the listener and as the turn moves on to the listener, he can be the speaker and the first speaker is to listen. It is turn-taking that makes social communication possible and acceptable. Some male birds, however, utter some calls which females do not (or cannot). When a dog barks, all the neighboring dogs bark. Then people around can hardly tell which dog (dogs) is (are) “speaking” and which listening.9.Why do linguists say language is human specific?First of all, human language has six “design features” which animal communication systems do not have, at least not in the true sense of them. Secondly, linguists have done a lot trying to teach animals such as chimpanzees to speak a human language but have achieved nothing inspiring. Washoe, a female chimpanzee, was brought up like a human child by Beatnice and Alan Gardner. She was taught “American sign Language”, and learned a little that made the teachers happy but did mot make the linguistics circle happy, for few believed in teaching chimpanzees. Thirdly, a human child reared among animals cannot speak a human language, not even when he is taken back and taught to do so.10. What functions does language have?Language has at least seven functions: phatic, directive, Informative, interrogative, expressive, evocative and performative. According to Wang Gang (1988,p.11), language has three main functions: a tool of communication, a tool whereby people learn about the world, and a tool by which people learn about the world, and a tool by which people create art . M .A. K. Halliday, representative of the London school, recognizes three “Macro-Functions”: ideational, interpersonal and textual.11. What is the phatic function?The “phatic function” refers to language being used for setting up a certain atmosphere or maintaining social contacts(rather than for exchanging information or ideas). Greetings, farewells, and comments on the weather in English and on clothing in Chinese all serve this function. Much of the phatic language (e.g. “How are you?” “Fine, thanks.”) is insincere if taken literally, but it is important. If you don't say “Hello” to a friend you meet, or if you don‟t answer his “Hi”, you ruin you r friendship.12. What is the directive function?The “directive function” means that language may be used to get the hearer to do something. Most imperative sentences perform this function, e. g., “Tell me the result when you finish.” Other syntactic str uctures or sentences of other sorts can, according to J. Austin and J. Searle‟s “Indirect speech act theory” at least, serve the purpose of direction too, e.g., “If I were you, I would have blushed to the bottom of my ears!”13. What is the informative function?Language serves an “informational function” when used to tell something, characterized by the use of declarative sentences. Informative statements are often labelled as true (truth) or false (falsehood). According to P. Grice‟s “Cooperative Principle”, one ought not to violate the “Maxim of Quality”, when he is informing at all.14. What is the interrogative function?When language is used to obtain information, it serves an “interrogative function”. This includes all questions that expect replies, statements, imperatives etc., according to the “indirect speech act theory”, may have this function as well, e.g., “I‟d like to know you better.” This may bring forth a lot of personal information. Note that rhetorical questions make an exception, since t hey demand no answer, at least not the reader‟s/listener‟s answer.15. What is the expressive function?The “expressive function” is the use of language to reveal something about the feelings or attitudes of the speaker. Subconscious emotional ejaculations are good examples, like “Good heavens!” “My God!” Sentences like “I‟m sorry about the delay” can serve as good examples too, though in a subtle way. While language is used for the informative function to pass judgment on the truth or falsehood of statements, language used for the expressive function evaluates, appraises or asserts the speaker‟s own attitudes.16. What is the evocative function?The “evocative function” is the use of language to create certain feelings in the hearer. Its aim is , for example, to amuse, startle, antagonize, soothe, worry or please. Jokes(not practical jokes, though) are supposed to amuse or entertain the listener; advertising to urge customers to purchase certain commodities; propaganda to influence public opinion. Obviously, the expressive and the evocative functions often go together, i.e., you may express, for example, your personal feelings about a political issue but end up by evoking the same feeling in, or imposing it on, your listener. That‟s also the case with the o ther way round.17. What is the performative function?This means people speak to “do things” or perform actions. On certain occasions the utterance itself as an action is more important than what words or sounds constitute the uttered sentence. The judge‟s imprisonment sentence, the president‟s war or independence declaration, etc., are performatives.18. What is linguistics?“Linguistics” is the scientific study of language. It studies not just one languageof any one society, but the language of all human beings. A linguist, though, does not have to know and use a large number of languages, but to investigate how each language is constructed. He is also concerned with how a language varies from dialect to dialect, from class to class, how it changes from century to century, how children acquire their mother tongue, and perhaps how a person learns or should learn a foreign language. In short, linguistics studies the general principles whereupon all human languages are constructed and operate as systems of communication in their societies or communities.19. What makes linguistics a science?Since linguistics is the scientific study of language, it ought to base itself upon the systematic, investigation of language data which aims at discovering the true nature of language and its underlying system. To make sense of the data, a linguist usually has conceived some hypotheses about the language structure, to be checked against the observed or observable facts. In order to make his analysis scientific, a linguist is usually guided by four principles: exhaustiveness, consistency, and objectivity. Exhaustiveness means he should gather all the materials relevant to the study and give them an adequate explanation, in spite of the complicatedness. He is to leave no linguistic “stone” unturned. Consistency means there should be no contradiction between different parts of the total statement. Economy means a linguist should pursue brevity in the analysis when it is possible. Objectivity implies that since some people may be subjective in the study, a linguist should be (or sound at least) objective, matter-of-face, faithful to reality, so that his work constitutes part of the linguistics research.20. What are the major branches of linguistics?The study of language as a whole is often called general linguistics. But a linguist sometimes is able to deal with only one aspect of language at a time, thus the arise of various branches: phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, pragmatics, sociolinguistics, applied linguistics, psycholinguistics etc.21. What are synchronic and diachronic studies?The description of a language at some point of time (as if it stopped developing) is a synchrony study (synchrony). The description of a language as it changesthrough ti me is a diachronic study (diachronic). An essay entitled “On the Use of THE”, for example, may be synchronic, if the author does not recall the past of THE, and it may also be diachronic if he claims to cover a large range or period of time wherein THE has undergone tremendous alteration.22. What is speech and what is writing?No one needs the repetition of the general principle of linguistic analysis, namely, the primacy of speech over writing. Speech is primary, because it existed long long before writing systems came into being. Genetically children learn to speak before learning to write. Secondly, written forms just represent in this way or that the speech sounds: individual sounds, as in English and French as in Japanese. In contrast to speech, spoken form of language, writing as written codes, gives language new scope and use that speech does not have. Firstly, messages can be carried through space so that people can write to each other. Secondly, messages can be carried through time thereby, so that people of our time can be carried through time thereby, so that people of our time can read Beowulf, Samuel Johnson, and Edgar A. Poe. Thirdly, oral messages are readily subject to distortion, either intentional or unintentional, while written messages allow and encourage repeated unalterable reading. Most modern linguistic analysis is focused on speech, different from grammarians of the last century and theretofore.23. What are the differences between the descriptive and the prescriptive approaches?A l inguistic study is “descriptive” if it only describes and analyses the facts of language, and “prescriptive” if it tries to lay down rules for “correct” language behavior. Linguistic studies before this century were largely prescriptive because many early grammars were largely prescriptive because many early grammars were based on “high” (literary or religious) written records. Modern linguistics is mostly descriptive, however. It (the latter) believes that whatever occurs in natural speech (hesitation, incomplete utterance, misunderstanding, etc.) should be described in the analysis, and not be marked as incorrect, abnormal, corrupt, or lousy. These, with changes in vocabulary and structures, need to be explained also.24. What is the difference between langue and parole?F. de Saussure refers “langue” to the abstract linguistic system shared by all the members of a speech community and refers “parole” to the actual or actualized language, or the realization of langue. Langue is abstract, parole specific to the speaking situation; langue not actually spoken by an individual, parole always a naturally occurring event; langue relatively stable and systematic, parole is a mass of confused facts, thus not suitable for systematic investigation. What a linguist ought to do, according to Saussure, is to abstract langue from instances of parole, i.e. to discover the regularities governing all instances of parole and make than the subject of linguistics. The langue-parole distinction is of great importance, which casts great influence on later linguists.25. What is the difference between competence and performance? According to N. Chomsky, “competence” is the ideal language user‟s knowledge of the rules of his language, and “performance” is the actual realization of this knowledge in utterances. The former 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 while his performance is often influenced by psychological and social factors. So a speaker‟s performance does not always match or equal his supposed competence. Chomsky believes that linguists ought to study competence, rather than performance. In other words, they should discover what an ideal speaker knows of his native language. Chomsky‟s competence-performance distinction is not exactly the same as, though similar to, F. de Saussure‟s langue-parole distinction. Langue is a social product, and a set of conventions for a community, while competence is deemed as a property of the mind of each individual. Sussure looks at language more from a sociological or sociolinguistic point of view than N. Chomsky since the latter deals with his issues psychologically or psycholinguistically.26. What is linguistic potential? What is actual linguistic behaviour? These two terms, or the potential-behavior distinction, were made by M. A. K. Halliday in the 1960s, from a functional point of view. There is a wide range of things a speaker can do in his culture, and similarly there are many things hecan say, for example, to many people, on many topics. What he actually says (i.e. his “actual linguistic behavior”) on a certain occasion to a certain person is what he has chosen from many possible injustice items, each of which he could have said (linguistic potential).27. In what way do language, competence and linguistic potential agree? In what way do they differ? And their counterparts?Langue, competence and linguistic potential have some similar features, but they are innately different. Langue is a social product, and a set of speaking conventions; competence is a property or attribute of each ideal speaker‟s mind; linguistic potential is all the linguistic corpus or repertoire available from which the speaker chooses items for the actual utterance situation. In other words, langue is invisible but reliable abstract system. Competence means “knowing”, and linguistic potential a set of possibilities for “doing” or “performing actions”. They are similar in that they all refer to the constant underlying the utterances that constitute what Saussure, Chomsky and Halliday respectively called parole, performance and actual linguistic behavior. Parole, performance and actual linguistic behavior enjoy more similarities than differences.28. What is phonetics?“Phonetics” is the science which studies the characteristics of humansound-making, especially those sounds used in speech, and provides methods for their description, classification and transcription, speech sounds may be studied in different ways, thus by three different branches of phonetics. (1) Articulatory phonetics; the branch of phonetics that examines the way in which a speech sound is produced to discover which vocal organs are involved and how they coordinate in the process. (2) Auditory phonetics, the branch of phonetic research from the hearer‟s point of view, looking into the impression which a speech sound makes on the hearer as mediated by the ear, the auditory nerve and the brain. (3) Acoustic phonetics: the study of the physical properties of speech sounds, as transmitted between mouth and ear. Most phoneticians, however, are interested in articulatory phonetics.29. How are the vocal organs formed?The vocal organs or speech organs, are organs of the human body whosesecondary use is in the production of speech sounds. The vocal organs can be considered as consisting of three parts; the initiator of the air-stream, the producer of voice and the resonating cavities.30. What is place of articulation?It refers to the place in the mouth where, for example, the obstruction occurs, resulting in the utterance of a consonant. Whatever sound is pronounced, at least some vocal organs will get involved, e.g. lips, hard palate etc., so a consonant may be one of the following (1) bilabial: [p, b, m]; (2) ]; (4) alveolar:[t, d, l, n, s, z]; (5)T, Plabiodental: [f, v]; (3) dental:[ retroflex; (6) palato-alveolar:[ ]; (7) palatal:[j]; (8) velar[ k, g]; (9) uvular; (10) glottal:[h]. Some sounds involve the simultaneous use of two places of articulation. For example, the English [w] has both an approximation of the two lips and that two lips and that of the tongue and the soft palate, and may be termed“labial-velar”.31. What is the manner of articulation?The “manner of articulation” literally means the way a sound is articulated. At a given place of articulation, the airstream may be obstructed in various ways, resulting in various manners of articulation, are the following: (1) plosive:[p, b, t, d, k, g]; (2) nasal:[m, n,]; (3) trill; (4) tap or flap; (5) lateral:[l]; (6) fricative:[f, v, s, z]; (7) approximant:[w, j]; (8) affricate:[ ].32. What is IPA? When did it come into being ?The IPA, abbreviation of “International Phonetic Alphabet”, is a compromise system making use of symbols of all sources, including diacritics indicating length, stress and intonation, indicating phonetic variation. Ever since it was developed in 1888, IPA has undergone a number of revisions.33. What is narrow transcription and what is broad transcription?In handbook of phonetics, Henry Sweet made a distinction between “narrow” and “broad” transcriptions, which he called “Narrow Romic”. The former was meant to symbolize all the possible speech sounds, including even the most minute shades of pronunciation while Broad Romic or transcription was intended to indicate only those sounds capable of distinguishing one word from another in a given language.34. What is phonology? What is difference between phonetics and phonology?“Phonology” is the study of sound systems- the invention of distinctive speech sounds that occur in a language and the patterns wherein they fall. Minimal pair, phonemes, allophones, free variation, complementary distribution, etc., are all to be investigated by a phonologist. Phonetics is the branch of linguistics studying the characteristics of speech sounds and provides methods for their description, classification and transcription. A phonetist is mainly interested in the physical properties of the speech sounds, whereas a phonologist studies what he believes are meaningful sounds related with their semantic features, morphological features, and the way they are conceived and printed in the depth of the mind phonological knowledge permits a speaker to produce sounds wh ich from meaningful utterances, to recognize a foreign “accent”, to make up new words, to add the appropriate phonetic segments to from plurals and past tenses, to know what is and what is not a sound in one‟s language.35. What is a phone? What is a phoneme? What is an allophone?A “phone” is a phonetic unit or segment. The speech sounds we hear and produce during linguistic communication are all phones. When we hear the following words pronounced: [pit], [tip], [spit], etc., the similar phones we have heard are [p] for one thing, and three different [p]s, readily making possible the “narrow transcription or diacritics”. Phones may and may not distinguish meaning. A “phoneme” is a phonological unit; it is a unit that is of distinctive value. As an abstract unit, a phoneme is not any particular sound, but rather it is represented or realized by a certain phone in a certain phonetic context. For example, the phoneme[p] is represented differently in [pit], [tip] and [spit]. The phones representing a phoneme a re called its “allophones”, i.e., the different (i.e., phones) but do not make one word so phonetically different as to create a new word or a new meaning thereof. So the different [p] s in the above words are the allophones of the same phoneme [p]. How a phoneme is represented by a phone, or which allophone is to be used, is determined by the phonetic context in which it occurs. But the choice of an allophone is not random. In most cases it is rule-governed; these rules are to be found out by a phonologist.36. What are minimal pairs?When two different phonetic forms are identical in every way except for one sound segment which occurs in the same place in the string, the two forms (i. e., word) are supposed to form a “minimal pair”, e.g., “pill” and “bill”, “pill” and “till”, “till” and “dill”, “till” and “kill”, etc. All these words together constitute a minimal set. They are identical in form except for the initial consonants. There are many minimal pairs in English, which makes it relatively easy to know what are English phonemes. It is of great importance to find the minimal pairs when a phonologist is dealing with the sound system of an unknown language.37. What is free variation?If two sounds occurring in the same environment do not contrast; namely, if the substitution of one for the other does not generate a new word form but merely a different pronunciation of the same word, the two sounds then are said to be in “free variation”. The plosives, for example, may not be exploded when they occur before another plosive or a nasal (e. g., act, apt, good morning). The minute distinctions may, if necessary, be transcribed in diacritics. These unexploded and exploded plosives are in free variation. Sounds in free variation should be assigned to the same phoneme.38. What is complementary distribution?When two sounds never occur in the same environment, they are in “complementary distribution”. For example, the aspirated English plosives never occur after [s], and the unsaturated ones never occur initially. Sounds in complementary distribution may be assigned to the same phoneme. The allophones of [l], for example, are also in complementary distribution. The clear [l] occurs only before a vowel, the voiceless equivalent of [l] occurs only after a voiceless consonant, such as in the words “please”, “butler”, “clear”, etc., and the dark [l] occurs only after a vowel or as a syllabic sound after a consonant, such as in the words “feel”, “help”, “middle”, etc.39. What is the assimilation rule? What is the deletion rule?The “assimilation rule” assimilates one segment to another by “copying” a feature of a sequential phoneme, thus making the two phones more similar.。