A Course on Linguistics for Students of English —— Feng Yujuan School of Foreign Language, SWUN

1. A Course on Linguistics for Students of English—— Feng Yujuan School of Foreign Language, SWUN

2. 1. General Introduction 2. Language and society (social linguistics) 3. Language and culture (cross-cultural communication) 4. Applied linguistics 5. Computational and statistic linguistics 6. Modern theories and school of linguistics 7. Phonetics and phonology 8. Morphology, syntax and semantics 9. Second language acquisition 10.Pragmatics 11.Psycholinguistics

3. The Goals for this Course • To get a scientific view on language; • To understand some basic theories on linguistics; • To understand the applications of the linguistic theories, especially in the fields of language teaching & learning (SLA or TEFL), cross-cultural communication……; • To prepare for the future research work.

4. The Requirements for this course • Class attendance • Classroom discussion • Fulfillment of the assignment • Examination

5. Reference Books • 戴炜栋，何兆熊，(2002)，《新编简明英语语言学教程》，上海外语教育出版社。 • 胡壮麟，(2001)，《语言学教程》，北京大学出版社。 • 胡壮麟，姜望琪，(2002)，《语言学高级教程》，北京大学出版社 • 刘润清，(1995)，《西方语言学流派》，外语教学与研究出版社。 • 丁言仁，Maurice Cogan Hauck，(2001)， 《英语语言学纲要》，上海外语教育出版社 • H.G.Widdowson, (2000), linguistics, Shanghai Foreign Education Press

6. Chapter 1. Introduction

7. What is language? • what a person says (e.g. bad language, expressions) • the way of speaking or writing (e.g. Shakespeare’s language, Luxun’s language) • a particular variety or level of speech or writing (e.g. language for special purpose, colloquial language) • the abstract system underlying the totality of the speech/writing behavior of a community (e.g. Chinese language, first language) • the common features of all human languages (e.g. He studies language) • a tool for human communication. (social function)

8. Sapir’s definition (1921) • “Language is a purely human and non-instinctive method of communicating ideas, emotions and desires by means of voluntarily produced symbols.”

9. Who is Sapir • American anthropologist and linguist Edward Sapir • Sapir-Whorf hypothesis: people do no perceive the world freely but rather do so through language, which will distort the reality and thus influence and control their thought. • LINGUISTIC DETERMINISM / LINGUISTIC RELATIVITY

10. Hall’s definition (1968) • Language is “the institution whereby humans communicate and interact with each other by means of habitually used oral-auditory arbitrary symbols.”

11. Chomsky’s definition (1957) • “From now on I will consider language to be a set of (finite or infinite) sentences, each finite in length and constructed out of a finite set of elements.”

12. Who is Chomsky? • Chomsky is strongly against Bloomfield’s behaviorist psychology and empiricism and adopts cognitive psychology and rationalism. He believes that language is somewhat innate, otherwise there are important facts that can never be adequately explained. • TG Grammar

13. Language can be generally defined as a system of arbitrary vocal symbols used for human communication.

14. Language is a system • Systematic — rule-governed, elements in it are arranged according to certain rules; can’t be combined at will. e.g. *bkli, *I apple eat.

15. Language is arbitrary • Arbitrary — no intrinsic connection between the word and the thing it denotes, e.g. “pen” by any other name is the thing we use to write with.

16. Language is symbolic in nature • Symbolic — words are associated with objects, actions ideas by convention. “A rose by any other name would smell as sweet”—Shakespeare

17. Language is primarily vocal • Vocal — the primary medium is sound for all languages; writing system came much later than spoken form.

18. Language is human-specific • Human-specific — different from the communication systems other forms of life possess, e.g. bird songs, bee dance, animal cries.

19. The design/defining features of human language(Charles Hockett)： • Arbitrariness • Productivity/Creativity • Duality • Displacement • Cultural transmission • Interchangeability

20. Arbitrariness — No logical (motivated or intrinsic) connection between sounds and meanings. • Onomatopoeic words (which imitate natural sounds) are somewhat motivated ( English: rumble, crackle, bang, …. Chinese: putong, shasha, dingdang… ) • Some compound words are not entirely arbitrary, e.g. type-writer, shoe-maker, air-conditioner, photocopy…

21. Duality (double articulation) • Lower level----sounds (meaningless) • Higher level----meaning (larger units of meaning) • A communication system with duality is considered more flexible than one without it, for a far greater number of messages can be sent. A small number of sounds can be grouped and regrouped into a large number of units of meaning (words), and the units of meaning can be arranged and rearranged into an infinite number of sentences. (we make dictionary of a language, but we cannot make a dictionary of sentences of that language.)

22. Productivity/creativity —Peculiar to human languages，users of language can understand and produce sentences they have never heard before, e.g. we can understand sentence like “ A red-eyed elephant is dancing on the hotel bed”, though it does not describe a common happening in the world. • The bee dance does have a limited productivity, as it is used to communicate about food sources in any direction. But food sources are the only kind of messages that can be sent through the bee dance; bees do not “talk” about themselves, the hives, or wind, let alone about people, animals, hopes or desires

23. Displacement — Language can be used to refer to things, which are not present: real or imagined matters in the past, present or future, or in far-away places. • A gibbon never utters a call about something he ate last year

24. Cultural transmission — Language is culturally transmitted (through teaching and learning; rather than by instinct). • Animal call systems are genetically transmitted. All cats, gibbons and bees have systems which are almost identical to those of all other cats, gibbons and bees. • A Chinese speaker and an English speaker are not mutually intelligible. This shows that language is culturally transmitted. That is, it is pass on from one generation to the next by teaching and learning, rather than by instinct. • The story of a wolf child, a pig child shows that a human being brought up in isolation simply does not acquire human language.

25. Interchangeability — any human being can be both a producer and a receiver of messages.

26. Functions of language • Phatic: establishing an atmosphere or maintaining social contact. • Directive: get the hearer to do something. • Informative: give information about facts. • Interrogative: get information from others. • Expressive: express feelings and attitudes of the speaker. • Evocative: create certain feelings in the hearer (amuse, startle, soothe, worry or please) • Performative: language is used to do things, to perform actions.

27. The origin of language • The divine-origin theory — Language is a gift of God to mankind. （Babel） • The invention theory — imitative, cries of nature, the grunts of men working together. • The evolutionary theory — the result of physical and psychological development.

28. 2. What is linguistics? — Linguistics is the scientific study of language. — A person who studies linguistics is known as a linguist.

29. Four principles of linguistic studies • Exhaustiveness/adequacy • Consistency • Economy • Objectivity

30. Exhaustiveness/adequacy： the linguist should father all the material relevant to his investigation and give them an adequate explanation. • Consistency: there should be no contradiction between different parts of the total statement.

31. Economy： other things being equal, a shorter statement or analysis is preferred to a longer or more involved one. • Objectivity: a linguist should be as objective as possible in his description and analysis of data, allowing no prejudice to influence his generalization.

32. The scope or major branches of linguistics • Theoretical linguistics • Phonetics • Phonology • Morphology • Syntax • Semantics • Use of linguistics • Applied linguistics • Sociolinguistics • Psycholinguistics ……

33. Phonetics: phonetics is the branch of linguistics which studies the characteristics of speech sounds and provides methods for their description, classification and transcription. • articulatory phonetics: the study of the speech organs and how they move to produce speech sound. • acoustic phonetics: the study of the physical properties of speech sound. • auditory phonetics: the study of the perception of sounds by the human ear.

34. Phonology: phonology is the branch of linguistics which studies the sound patterns of languages. It identifies the set of speech sounds for each language, how they are arranged to form meaningful units, and the function of each sound.

35. Morphology: morphology is the branch of linguistics which studies the form of words. It identifies the smallest meaningful units in a language which are called morphemes and looks into the ways the morphemes are arranged to form words. • free morpheme / bound morpheme

36. Syntax: syntax is the branch of linguistics which studies the rules governing the combination of words into sentences.

37. Semantics: semantics is the branch of linguistics which studies the meaning of language.

38. Pragmatics: pragmatics is the branch of linguistics which studies language in context and linguistic communication. • The context of situation in which a sentence is used contributes a lot to its meaning, meaning that cannot be accounted for in pure semantic analysis. In this sense, pragmatics can be defined by this formula: PRAGMATICS = MEANING –SEMANTICS

39. Sociolinguistics: sociolinguistics is the branch of linguistics which studies all social aspects of language and its relation with society, such as social background, social norms, social changes, etc.

40. Psycholinguistics: psycholinguistics is the branch of linguistics which studies the relation between language and psychology.

41. Applied linguistics: findings in linguistic studies can often be applied to the solution of such practical problems as the recovery of speech ability. The study of such applications is generally known as applied linguistics.

42. Some important distinctions in linguistics

43. Speech vs writing • Speech ---- primary medium of language • Writing ---- later developed

44. Descriptive vs prescriptive • Descriptive ---- describe/analyze linguistic facts observed or language people actually use (modern linguistic) • Prescriptive ----lay down rules for “correct” linguistic behavior in using language (traditional grammar)

45. Synchronic vs diachronic • Synchronic study---- description of a language at some point of time (modern linguistics) • Diachronic study---- description of a language through time (historical development of language over a period of time)

46. Langue vs parole (F. de Saussure) • Langue ---- the abstract linguistic system shared by all members of the speech community. • Parole ---- the realization of langue in actual use. • Saussure takes a sociological view of language and his notion of langue is a matter of social conventions.

47. Competence and performance (Chomsky) • Competence ---- the ideal user’s knowledge of the rules of his language • Performance ---- the actual realization of this knowledge in linguistic communication • Chomsky looks at language from a psychological point of view and to him competence is a property of the mind of each individual.

48. Linguistic potential and Linguistic behavior (Halliday) • The linguistic competence versus performance distinction is one between what a person “know” and what he “does” • While the linguistic potential versus actual linguistic behavior distinction is one between what a person “can do” and what a person “does”

49. Chapter 2 sociolinguistics

50. 1. Sociolinguistics – language and society • 1.1 What is Sociolinguistics? • A sub-field of linguistics that studies the relation between language and society, between the uses of language and the social structures in which the users of language live.