1.“Lge is a system of arbitrary vocal symbols used for human communication.” ---(英)Ronald Wardhaugh(沃德霍): Introduction to Linguistics (1977) system: elements in lge are arranged according to certain rules.
arbitrary: there is no intrinsic connection between the word and the things we refer to. vocal: the primary medium is sound for all lges
symbol: words are associated with objects, actions, ideas by convention
human: lge is human specific, different from the communication system of animals 2.“Lge is a means of verbal communication.”
It is instrumental in that communicating by speaking or writing is a purposeful act.
It is social and conventional in that lge is a social semiotic and communication can only
take place effectively if all the users share a broad understanding of human interaction including such associated factors as nonverbal cues, motivation, and socio-cultural roles. -- Hu Zhuanglin (2006) 3. Design Features of Language
Lge distinguishes human beings from animals in that it is far more sophisticated than any animal communication system. Human lge is „unique‟ Arbitrariness(任意性) 3.1 Arbitrarines
Saussure: the forms of linguistic signs bear no natural relationship to their meaning
Arbitrary relationship between the sound of a morpheme and its meaning, even with onomatopoeic words:
The dog barks wow wow in English but “汪汪汪” in Chinese.
Arbitrariness at the syntactic level: lge is not arbitrary at the syntactic level.
He came in and sat down. He sat down and came in. He sat down after he came in.
The link between a linguistic sign and its meaning is a matter of convention. 3.2 Duality
lower level ---- sounds (meaningless) higher level---- meaning
The property of having two levels of structures, such that units of the primary level are
composed of elements of the secondary level and each of the two levels has its own principles of organization:
Primary units „words‟ (meaningful) consist of secondary units „sounds‟ (meaningless).
Hierarchy of lge: stratification as „the infinite use of finite means‟.
Sounds > syllables > morphemes > words > phrases > clauses > sentences/utterances > texts/discourses
3.3 Creativity (productivity)
Lge is resourceful because of its duality and its recursiveness. We can use it to create new meanings.
Words can be used in new ways to mean new things, and can be instantly understood by people
who have never come across that usage before.
Birds, bees, crabs, spiders, and most other creatures communicate in some way, but the
information imparted is severely limited and confined to a small set of messages.
Because of duality, the human 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.
The recursive nature of lge provides a potential to create an infinite number of sentences.
He bought a book which was written by a teacher who taught in a school which was known for
its graduates who ... 3.4 Displacement
lge can be used to refer to things which are present or not present, real or imagined matters in the past, present, or future, or in far-away places.
Human lges enable their users to symbolize objects, events and concepts which are not present
(in time and space) at the moment of communication.
Confucius, or the North Pole
Animal communication is normally under “immediate stimulus control”. For instance, a warning cry of a bird instantly announces danger.
Human lge is stimulus-free. What we are talking about need not be triggered by any external
stimulus in the world or any internal state.
The honeybee's dance exhibits displacement a little bit: he can refer to a source of food, which
is remote in time and space when he reports on it.
A dog cannot tell people that its master will be home in a few days.
Our lge enables us to communicate about things that do not exist or do not yet exist.
Displacement benefits human beings by giving us the power to handle generalizations and
abstractions. Once we can talk about physically distant thing, we acquire the ability to understand concepts which denote “non-things”, such as truth and beauty.
Cultural transmission: Lge is passed on from one generation to the next by teaching and learning, rather than by instinct.
Interchangeability: human being can be both a producer and a receiver of message. 4. Origin of language 4.1 The „Divine‟ origin:
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”
(Gospel福音书, John 1: 1)
“And the Lord said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do; and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do.” (Genesis创世纪, 11: 6)
4.2 The “bow-wow” theory汪汪理论
In primitive times people imitated the sounds of the animal calls in the wild environment they lived and speech developed from that.
Onomatopoeic words seem to be a convenient evidence for this theory. But they are very
different in the degree of resemblance they express with the natural sounds.
This theory lacks supportive evidence.
4.2 The “pooh-pooh” theory
In the hard life of our primitive ancestors, they utter instinctive sounds of pain, anger and joy.
As for evidence, we can only cite the universal use of sounds as interjections.
What makes the theory problematic is that there is only a limited number of interjections in
almost all lges.
Besides, interjections such as Oh, Ah, Oops bear little relationship with the sound system of a
lge and therefore are not good evidence. 4.3 The “yo-he-ho” theory
As primitive people worked together, they produced some rhythmic grunts which gradually developed into chants and then into lge.
We do have prosodic use of rhythms in lges, but rhythmic grunts are far different from lge in its
present sense. The theory is again at most a speculation.
The by-now fruitless search for the origin of lges reflects people's concern with the origin of
humanity and may come up with enlightening findings in future.
One thing we can say for certain is that lge evolves within specific historical, social and cultural
contexts.
5. Functions of language
Linguists talk about the functions of lge in an abstract sense, not in terms of using lge to chat, to think, to buy and sell, to read and write, to greet, praise and condemn people, etc.
They summarize these practical functions and attempt some broad classifications of the basic
functions of lge.
5.1 Jakobson雅各布森:
lge is above all for communication.
Linguistics and Poetics, six primary factors of any speech event:
Speaker说话者, addressee受话者, context语境, message信息, code语码, contact接触. a well-known framework of lge functions based on the six key elements of communication:
referential 所指(to convey message and information), poetic诗学 (to indulge in lge for its own sake),
emotive情感 (to express attitudes, feelings and emotions),
conative 意动(to persuade and influence others through commands and requests), Phatic交感 (to establish communion with others)
metalingual 元语言(to clear up intentions and meanings).
5.2 Halliday韩礼德: a theory of metafunctions of lge: ideational;interpersonal;textual: Ideational概念功能: convey new information, to communicate a content that is unknown to the hearer
Interpersonal人际功能: express social and personal relations
textual语篇功能: make any sketch of spoken or written discourse into a coherent and unified text
In his earlier works, Halliday proposed seven categories of lge functions by observing child lge
development:
Instrumental,Regulatory,,Representational,,Interactional,,Personal,,Heuristic..Imaginative 5.3 The major functions of lge. 1）Informative （信息功能）:
to tell what the speaker believes, to give information about facts, or to reason things out. By use of declarative sentences. The earth revolves around the sun.
2) Interpersonal（人际功能）: to establish and maintain their status in a society
Dear professor Li.
Lge marks our identity:
physically: age, sex, and voiceprints;
psychologically: personality and intelligence; geographically: accents and dialects;
ethnically and socially: social stratification, class, status, role, solidarity and distance.
3) Performative（行事功能）:
the use of lge to “do things”, to perform actions.
Through quite formal and even ritualized lge. I hereby declare the meeting open.
4) Emotive (expressive,evocative)（感情功能）:
the use of lge to create certain feelings in the hearer.
Through Jokes, Advertising, Propaganda, etc. I hate her.
5) Phatic（寒暄功能）:
the use of lge to establish an atmosphere or maintaining social contact.
Greetings, Farewells, and Comments on the weather, etc.
the social interaction of lge, originating from Malinowski's study of the functions of lge
performed by Trobriand Islanders.
We all use such small, seemingly meaningless expressions to maintain a comfortable
relationship between people without involving any factual content.
Ritual exchanges about health or weather such as Good morning, God bless you, Nice day
often state the obvious. Yet they indicate that a channel of communication is open if it should be needed.
Different cultures have different topics of phatic communion. According to David Crystal戴维·克里斯特尔, the weather is not a universal conversation
filler as the English might like to think.
Rundi women (in Burundi布隆迪, Central Africa), upon taking leave, routinely and
politely say “I must go home now, or my husband will beat me.”
8) Recreational（娱乐功能）:
the use of lge for the sheer joy of using it.
baby‟s babbling, poetry, etc.
9）Metalingual（元语言功能）: the use of lge to talk about lge itself.
6. What is Linguistics?
The scientific study of human lge
lge: not any particular lge, but the lge of all human society, lge in general scientific: based on systematic investigation of linguistic data,
7. Main branches of linguistics
Phonetics Phonology Morphology Syntax Semantics Pragmatics
Phonetics: speech sound (description, classification, transcription): articulatory phonetics,
acoustic phonetics, auditory phonetics.
Phonology: sound patterns of lges Morphology: the form of words
Syntax----the rules governing the combination of words into sentence. Semantics----the meaning of lge
Pragmatics----the meaning of lge in context
8. Macrolinguistics
Linguistics is not the only field concerned with lge.
Other disciplines such as psychology, sociology, ethnography, the science of law and
artificial intelligence etc. are also preoccupied with lge.
Applied linguistics----linguistics and lge teaching
Sociolinguistics---- social factors (e.g. class, education) affect lge use Psycholinguistics----linguistic behavior and psychological process Stylistics----linguistic and literature
Anthropological linguistics: anthropology & lge variation and use Neurolinguistics: brain and lge
Computational linguistics: the use of computers and computer tech to do linguistic
research
9. Important distinctions in linguistics
Descriptive vs. prescriptive
(描写性和规定性）
Synchronic vs. diachronic
(共时性和历时性)
Langue & parole
(语言和言语)
Competence and performance (语言能力和语言行为)
9.1 Descriptive vs. prescriptive
Don't say X.
People don't say X.
a prescriptive command, a descriptive statement.
The distinction lies in prescribing how things ought to be and describing how things are.
The reason why present-day linguists are so insistent about the distinction between the
two types of rules is simply that traditional grammar was very strongly normative in character, e.g.
You should never use a double-negative; You should not split the infinitive; etc.
Humorous grammar rules
Never end a sentence with a preposition.
And don't start a sentence with a conjunction. It is wrong to ever split an infinitive.
Avoid cliches like the plague. (They're old hat.)
Also, always avoid annoying alliteration. No sentence fragments.
In the 18th century, all the main European lges were studied prescriptively.
The grammarians tried to lay down rules for the correct use of lge and settle the disputes
over usage once and for all.
Some usages were prescribed to be learned by heart, followed accurately or avoided
altogether. It was a matter of black or white, right or wrong.
These attitudes are still with us, though people realize nowadays the facts of usage count
more than the authority-made “standards”.
The nature of linguistics as a science determines its preoccupation with description
instead of prescription.
9.2 Synchronic vs. diachronic
A synchronic description takes a fixed instant (usually, but not necessarily, the present) as
its point of observation. Most grammars are of this kind.
Diachronic linguistics is the study of a language through the course of its history.
Synchronic study: description of a lge at some point of time (modern linguistics)
Diachronic study: description of a lge through time (historical development of lge over a period of time)
9.3 Langue & parole Saussure:
Langue: the generalized rules of a lge.
abstract, stable, social
Parole: the application of the rules.
concrete, changeable, individual
Saussure takes a sociological view of lge and his notion of langue is a matter of social
conventions.
9.4 Competence and performance
Chomsky in his Aspects of the Theory of Syntax (1965).
A lge user's underlying knowledge about the system of rules is called his linguistic competence.
Performance refers to the actual use of lge in concrete situations.
Chomsky points out that this distinction is related to the langue-parole distinction of
Saussure; but he does not accept the view of seeing langue as a mere systematic inventory of items.
Competence is closer to the famous German linguist Humboldt's conception, that is, it
should refer to the underlying competence as a system of generative processes.
9.7 etic and emic 唯素的和唯位的
etic: linguistic units containing “-etic”, e.g.
phonetic, morphetic, which are usded to describe linguistic facts in detail without distinctive feature, and are first used to describe sounds.
emic: linguistic units containing “-emic”, e.g. phonemic, morphemic, which are used to describe abstract linguistic rules with distinctive features and are first used to describe phonemes.
9.8 linguistic potential and acutual linguistic behaviour
LP: with l, there is s wide range of things a speaker can do in the culture he is in. the set of possibility for “doing” is LP from a functional l view.
ALB: what a speaker actually says on a particular occasion to a particular individual is what he has selected from the many possible things he could have said. This actual selection of things from what one could have said is ALB. _
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