语言学教程胡壮麟考研笔记

Unit 1 invitations to linguistics
1.Design features of language:
The design features: the distinctive features of human language that essentially make human language distinguishable from languages of animals
●Arbitrariness
The absence of any physical correspondence between linguistic signals and the entities to which they refer. / The forms of linguistic signs bear no natural
relationship to their meaning.
✓Arbitrariness relationship between the sound of a morpheme and its meaning.
(e.g. murmurous / murderous)
✓Arbitrariness at the syntactic level
Functionalists hold that the most strictly arbitrary level of language existed in
the distinctive units of sounds by which we distinguish pairs of words like pin
and bin, or fish and dish.
(e.g. As the night fell, the wind rose.)
✓Arbitrariness and convention
Convention: it is an idiom------it is a convention to say things like this way.
(When in Rome, do as romans do.)
●Duality:
The structural organization of language into two abstract levels: meaningful units (words and phrase) and meaningless segments(sound and letters)
The secondary units are meaningless and the primary units are meaningful.
✓Traffic light system does not have duality: it cannot be divided into meaningless units, so it only has primary level like animals.
A large number of meaningful units can be formed out of a small number of
elements----productive power.
●Creativity
The speaker is able to combine the basic linguistic units to form an infinite set of sentences, most of which are never before produced or heard.
It’s potential to create endless sentences. (recursiveness)
●Displacement
The ability of language enable their users symbolize objects, events an d concepts which are not present (in time and space) at the moment of communication.
2.Origin of language
●The “bow-bow” theory: imitating of animal calls in wild environment
●The “pooh-pooh” theory: they utter instinctive sounds of pain, anger and joy.
●The “yo-he-yo” theory: as primitive people worked together, they produced some
rhythmic grunts which gradually developed into chants and then into language.
3.Functions of language：
●Informative function: to tell and to give something out
●Interpersonal function: (人際功能) by which people establish and maintain their status
in a society.
For example, the way in which people address others and refer to themselves.
Dear Sir……
●Performative function: the performative function of language is primarily to change the
social status of persons, such as in marriage ceremonies, the sentencing of criminals and
cursing of enemies
●Emotive function: (also called expressive function) uttered without any purpose of
communicating to others, but essentially a verbal response to a person’s own feeling.
●Phatic communion:
It refers to social interaction of language.
Broadly speaking it refers to expressions that help define and maintain interpersonal relations, such as slangs, jokes, jargon…….
●Recreational function: The use of language for hearty joy of using it.
●Metalingual function:
Our language can be used to talk about itself. (self-reflexive) we human beings can talk about talking and can think about thinking.
For example: To be honest, to make a long story short, in a word.
4.Main branches of linguistics:
●Phonetics
It studies speech sound, including the production of speech, the description and
classification of speech sounds, words and connected speech……
●Phonology
It is the study of a subset of those sounds that constitute language and meaning.
It studies the rules governing the structure, distribution, and sequencing of speech sounds and shape of syllables.
●Morphology
It is concerned with the internal organization of words.
For example: The dog sees the rabbit. In English, different order gives different meaning. However, in Latin and also in Russian, dog and rabbit take on some
morphological endings depending on whether they are subject or object. So,
different sentence order did not change its meaning.
●Syntax
It is about principles of forming and understanding correct English sentences.
For example:
✓The children watched [the firework from the hill].
✓The children watched [the firework] [from the hill].
●Semantics
Examine how meaning is encoded in a language.
It is not only concerned with meanings of words as lexical items, but also with levels of language below words and above it, such as meaning of morphemes and
sentences.
●Pragmatics
The study of meaning in context.
5.Macrolinguistics
●Psycholinguistics (心理語言學)
It investigates the interrelation of language and mind, in processing and producing
utterances and in language acquisition for example.
●Sociolinguistics （社會語言學）
It is the study of the characteristics of language varieties, the characteristics of their
functions, and the characteristics of their speakers as these three constantly interact and
change within a speech community.
●Anthropological linguistics （人類語言學）
Anthropological linguist are concerned with the emergence of language and also the
divergence of language over thousands of years.
●Computational linguistics （電腦語言學）
The use of computers to process or produce human language.
6.Important distinctions in linguistics
●Descriptive and descriptive
The distinction lies in prescribing how things are and how things ought to be.
Descriptive:
✓To make an objective and systematic account of patterns and use of a language or variety.
✓People don’t say X.
Prescriptive:
✓To make authoritarian statement about the correctness of a particular use of language.
✓Don’t say X
●Synchronic and diachronic
Synchronic (共時)
✓Said of an approach that studies language at a theoretical “point” of time.
✓For example: the structure of Shakespeare’s English.
Diachronic （歷時）
✓Said of the study of development of language and languages over time.
✓For example: Pejorative sense development in English
●Langue and parole
Langue
✓The language system shared by a “speech community”
Parole
✓The concrete utterances of a speaker.
●Competence and performance
Competence
✓Unconscious knowledge of the system of grammatical rules in a language. Performance
✓The language actually used by people in speaking and writing.
Unit 2 phonetics and phonology
1.The major branches of phonetics:
●Articulatory phonetics
The study of production of speech sounds
●Auditory phonetics
It studies the sounds from the hearer’s point of view, that is, the sound perceived by the
hearer.
●Acoustic phonetics
It studies the physical properties of the sounds produced in speech.
2.Speech organs
●Inside the throat: pharynx and larynx
●Inside the oral cavity: upper lip, upper teeth, the alveolar ridge, the hard palate and the
soft palate, and the uvula.
●The bottom part of the mouth contains the lower lip, lower teeth, the tongue and the
mandible(下頷).
●In phonetics: the tongue is divided into five parts: the tip, the blade, the front, the back
and the root.
●In phonology: the tongue is divided into coronal(tip and blade), dorsal(front and back)
and radical(root)
3.Manner of articulation (a picture is added here)
●Stops:
The sound is produced when the obstruction is complete, and the sound is produced
when the obstruction audibly released and the air passing out against.
●Nasals
The sound is produced by lowing the soft palate and the air pass through the nose.
●Fricatives:
It refers to sound produced when an obstruction is partial and the air is forced through a
narrow passage in the mouth, so as to cause definite local frication at the point.
●Affricatives
It refers to the sound produced when obstruction, complete at first, is released slowly
with the frication resulting from partial obstruction.
●Approximants
One articulator is close to another but without the vocal tract narrow to cause a
turbulent.
●Laterals
The obstruction of airstream is at a point along the center of oral tract, with incomplete
closure between one or both sides of the tongue and the roof of the mouth.
●Trill
It is produced when an articulator is set vibrating by air stream, such as /r/ in red.
●Tap
When the tongue makes a single tap against the alveolar ridge to produce only one
vibrate.
●Flap
It is produced when the tip of the tongue curled up and back in a retroflex gesture an
then striking the roof of the mouth in the post-alveolar region as it returns to its position
behind the lower front teeth.
4.Place of articulation:
It refers to wherein the vocal tract there is approximation, narrowing or the obstruction of the air.
5.Vowels:
V owels are sounds produced without obstruction, so no turbulence or a total stopping of the air can be perceived.
6.The criteria of the vowel ( a picture is added here)
●The height of the tongue raising: high, mid, low
●The position of highest part of the tongue: front, central, back
●The length or tenseness of the tongue: long or short; tense or lax
●The shape of the lips: rounded and unrounded
7.Monophthongs diphthongs and tripthongs
●They are those pure vowels with unchanging quality
●If a single movement from one element of the tongue is involved, the combining vowel
is called diphthongs
●If two movements from one element to second, from the second to the third of the
tongue is involved, the combining vowel is called tripthongs.
8.Coarticulation
It refers to the process of simultaneous or overlapping articulations when sounds show the influence of their neighbors.
●Anticipatory coarticulation: the sound becomes more like the following sound, such as in
the case lamb
●Preservative coarticulation: the sound becomes more like the preceding sound, such as in
the case of map
9.Narrow transcription and broad transcription:
●Narrow transcription: we try to symbolize all the possible speech sounds, including even
the minutest shades of pronunciation. It contains a set of diacritics.
10.Phonological theory:
●Minimal pairs
When two different forms are identical in every way except for one sound segment in the same place in strings, the two words are said to form a minimal pair For example, pin and pen; tip and tap
●Phone, phoneme, and allophones
Phone: it is a basic unit of phonetic study, and it is a minimal sound segment that human speech organs can produce.
Phoneme: it is a basic unit of phonological study, and it is an abstract collection of phonetic features. For example, /t/ /d/……
The different realization of the same phoneme in different phonetic environment are called the allophones of that phoneme. For example, [p h]
●Complementary distribution
When two or more than two allophones of the same phoneme do not distinguishen meaning and never occur in the same context, then the allophones are said to be in
complementary distribution.
[p] and [p h]; [l] and [l]
●Free variation
If two sounds occurring in the same environment do not contrast, that is, the substitution for another does not produce a different word form, but merely a
different pronunciation of the same word, then the two sounds are in free variation.
For example, in cup the /p/ and /p/
●Phonemic contrast and distinctive features
Phonetic contrast: if two phonemes occurs in a minimal pair occur in the same place and distinguish meaning, these two phonemes are said to be in phonemic
contrast.
Distinctive features: they are those features which are phonologically revant properties and can distinguish meaning, for example, plosiveness, bilabiality, and
voicelessness in English phonology. Some of the major distinctions include
consonantal, sonorant, nasal and voiced. These are known as binary features which
have two values denoted by “+” and “-”
11.Phonological process
●Any phonological process must has aspects to it:
A set of sound to undergo the process
A set of sound produced by the process
A set of situation in which the process applies
●Assimilation:
Regressive assimilation: a following sound is influencing a preceding sound
Progressive assimilation: a preceding sound is influencing a following sound
●Devoicing:
Voiced sounds become voiceless
●Epenthesis:
Insertion of a sound
●Nasalization: a sound in a word is influenced by a nasal sound
●Dentalization: a sound in a word is influenced by a dental sound
●Velarization: it refers to the process in which a sound in a word takes on the features of a
velar segment.
●Deletion rule:
A sound is deleted although it is orthographically represented
For example: sign: delete a /g/ in this word.
12.Suprasegmental features
The features that occur above the level of segments and can distinguish meaning are called suprasegmental features.
●Syllable structure: a syllable can be divided into two parts, the rhyme and the onset. As
the vowel within the rhyme is nucleus, the consonants after it will be termed coda.
Maximal onset principle
On set: at most 3; coda: at most 4
●Stress: it refers to the degree of force used in producing a syllable.
●Tones: tones are pitch variations, which are caused by differing rates of vibration of
vocal cords.
●Intonation: when pitch, stress, and sound length are tied to the sentence rather than the
word in isolation, they are collectively as intonation.
Falling tone
Rising tone
The fall-rise tone.。