Week 1.

The Nature of Human Lang

Ferdinand de Saussure (1857,11 – 1913,2 ), a Swiss linguist whose ideas laid a foundation for many significant developments in linguistics in the
20th century and widely considered to be one of the fathers of 20th-century linguistics, said in 1916:
“Language is a system of signs that express ideas, and is therefore comparable to a system of writing…”
Edward Sapir (1884, 1-1939, 2), a German-born American anthropologist- linguist, said in 1921:
“Language is a purely human and non-instinctive method of communicating ideas, emotion and desires by means of voluntarily
produced symbols.”
Bernard Bloch (1907–1965) and George Trager(1906–1992), American linguists, said in 1942:
"A language is a system of arbitrary vocal symbols by means of which a social group cooperates."
Noam Chomsky (1928- ) an American linguist, said in 1957:
“A set (finite or infinite) of sentences, each finite in length and constructed out of a finite set of elements.”
R.A. Hall (1911–1997), an American linguist and specialist in the Romance languages, said in 1968:
“The institution whereby humans communicate and interact with each other by means of habitually used oral- auditory arbitrary symbols.”
A language is the system of symbols with the most general meanings of any used by humans.
The perceptible portions of linguistic symbols are articulatory gestures, transmitted one after another usually as sounds.
They are used to communicate or store information, or even to design and think.
★The definition that most linguists agree:
Language is a system of arbitrary vocal symbols used for human communication.
In the sense of our linguistic study, it is generally held that:
Language is a system—It is made up of units, functions, and relations.
Language is a set of symbols—It involves signs, which are sequences of sounds, those can be transferred into vocal signs.
Language is vocal—In linguistics, language is first of all speech, meaningful vocal sounds.
Language is human—In the study of this course, language is restricted to human natural language.
Language is communication—The chief purpose of language.
Of all the aptitudes and behaviors which characterize human beings, language is the most uniquely human, and quite possibly the most
important. Language is a capacity that distinguishes human beings from other creatures.
Major Design Features of Human Language
Arbitrariness Words and their meaning have no a priori connection. We cannot tell from the sound structure which meaning is behind it.
Duality of patterning Language has two levels of structure: at the level of sound and at the level of meanings, and these two levels of
structure are independent of one another.
Productivity Language has the capacity to generate an infinite variety of messages, including messages that have never been said before.
Displacement Language is able to refer to things that are removed from the speaker in both time and space.
Traditional (Cultural) transmission Language is learned through cultural transmission, typically from parents and older siblings,
children build their grammar of language by inference from a limited sample of sentences.
Interchangability Individuals can both receive and transmit messages.
Functions of Language
Language as a means of communication: Communication of information, ideas, feelings and emotion
The cognitive and social functions of language behavior: the former refers to the transmission of propositional, or factual, information and
discursive reasoning or “cogitation”; the second to the establishment and maintenance of social rapport.※
Some descriptions
The well-known model of the functions of language introduced by the Russian-American linguist, Roman Jakobson in "Linguistics and Poetics“,
Jakobson's model of the functions of language distinguishes six elements, or factors of communication, that are necessary for
communication to occur:※
Briefly, these six functions can be described as follows:
(1) the referential function is oriented toward the context (the dominant function in a message like 'Water boils at 100 degrees');
(2) the emotive function is oriented toward the addresser (as in the interjections 'Bah!' and 'Oh!');
(3) the conative function is oriented toward the addressee (imperatives and apostrophes);
(4) the phatic function serves to establish, prolong or discontinue communication [or confirm whether the contact is still there] (as in 'Hello?');
(5) the metalingual function is used to establish mutual agreement on the code (for example, a definition);
(6) the poetic function (e.g., 'Smurf'), puts 'the focus on the message for its own sake' [Jakobson, 1960, p. 356]
Three Basic Functions of Language
1. Informative language function: essentially, the communication of information.
a. The informative function affirms or denies propositions, as in science.
b. This function is used to describe the world or reason about it (e.g.., whether a state of affairs is true or false).
c. These sentences have a truth value; hence, they are important for logic.
2. Expressive language function: reports feelings or attitudes of the writer (or speaker), or of the subject, or evokes feelings in the reader (or
listener).
a. Poetry is one of the best examples, but much of, perhaps most of, ordinary language discourse is
the expression of emotions, feelings or attitudes.
b. Two main aspects are generally noted: (1) to evoke certain feelings and (2) to express feelings.
c. Expressive discourse, qua expressive discourse, is best regarded as neither true or false.
e.g., Shakespeare's King Lear's lament, "Ripeness is all!" Even so, the nature of "fictional statements" is an interesting area of inquiry.
3. Directive language function: language used for the purpose of causing or preventing overt actions.
a. The directive function is most commonly found in commands and requests.
b. Directive language is not normally considered true or false (although a logic of commands have been developed).
c. Example: "Close the windows." The Origin of language
The origin of language is still mystery. Scholars over the centuries have been interested in it because man and language are so closely
related that they believed that if we know how and when language originated we would probably know how and when man arose as well.
There are beliefs throughout the world that language is a gift from God to mankind. One of such beliefs is found in the Holy Bible.
 The Book of Genesis 2:19-20 has God give Adam the task of assigning names to all the animals and plants he had in Eden.
God said, 'They are a single people, all having one language, and this is the first thing they do! Now nothing they plan to do will be
unattainable for them! Come, let us descend and confuse their speech, so that one person will not understand another's speech'. (Book of
Genesis 11:1-9)
God punished human presumption in building the Tower of Babel by confusing the tongues of the builders.
The observed variety of humanlanguages is a consequence of that divine judgment.
Some Hypotheses that try to explain the origins of human language
The "ding-dong" hypothesis This hypothesis places the origin of human language in onomatopoeia: the various imitative sounds that
humans make to mimic the sounds of the world around them. So boom becomes a word for thunder, and oink for a pig.
The "bow-wow" hypothesis Similar to the "ding-dong" hypothesis, this one has humans forming their first words by imitating animal
sounds.
The "pooh-pooh" hypothesis According to this hypothesis, the first words developed from sighs of pleasure, moans of pain, and other
semi-involuntary cries or exclamations. These vocalisms then became the names of the phenomena that made people say them.
The “ta-ta” hypothesis Charles Darwin lent his authority to this hypothesis. According to this, human language represents the use of
oral gestures that began in imitation of hand gestures that were already in use for communication
The Indian-born British neurologist Vilayanur S. Ramachandran’s (拉马钱兰 )research into synesthesia(心理联感) and sound symbolism
（语音象征）would seem to support this hypothesis.语音象征指语言在长期使用的过程中，依据语言符号象 似性的原 理，某些语音常用于
表示某种意思，给人某种语义联想，这些语音似乎具有了自己固定的象征含义。
The "uh-oh" hypothesis Human language begins with the use of arbitrary symbols that represent warnings to other members of the
human band. It is agreed that one sort of vocal cry means that lions have been spotted in the area, and another one indicates a snake. You
holler one thing at your neighbour to warn them, "Don't eat that! It'll make you sick!" and something distinguishable to warn them "Don't
eat that! It's mine!"
The "yo-he-ho" hypothesis According to this hypothesis, language arose in rhythmic chants and vocalisms uttered by people engaged in
communal labour. Written and spoken
"Writing is not language, but merely a way of recording language by visible marks.”Leonard Bloomfield, Language
Evolution and the origin of language
Steven Pinker, following Noam Chomsky and ultimately Immanuel Kant, believes that humans are born with a "language instinct:" a neural
processing network that contains a universal grammar that has developed specifically for encoding and decoding human languages.
Biologists do not yet agree on when or how language use first emerged among humans or their ancestors. Some authorities believe that language
arose suddenly, about 40,000 years ago. This is the time period from which we first see cultural artifacts, such as cave paintings and carved
figurines.In 1886 the Linguistic Society of Paris banned discussion of the origin of language, deeming it to be an unanswerable problem.
One important principle in language study
All languages are equal. No one language is superior to any other.
“Every language so far studied, no matter how primitive or civilized the society might appear to us in other respects, has proved upon
investigation to be a complex and highly developed system of communication.” ---John Lyons, 1981 in Language and Linguistics.
Languages in the World
The most extensive catalog of the world’s languages, generally taken to be as authoritative as any, is that of the Ethnologue organization
whose detailed classified list currently includes 6,809 distinct languages. Out of Ethnologue’s 6,809, for instance, only 230 are spoken in
Europe, while 2,197 are spoken in Asia. Language families and languages
Most languages are known to belong to language families.
A family is a group of languages that can be shown to be genetically related to one another.
An accurately identified family is a phylogenetic unit, i.e., all its members derive from a common ancestor.The ancestor is very seldom
known to us directly, since most languages have a very short recorded history.
The best known languages are those of the Indo-European family, to which English belongs.
The common ancestor of a family (or branch) is known as its "protolanguage". the reconstructible protolanguage of the well-known
Indo-European family is called Proto-Indo-European. This single language family has about 150 languages and about 3 billion speakers.
The Sino-Tibetan Family , Another important language family, includes some 250 languages.
Mandarin Chinese (Putonghua) alone is spoken by 1 billion people!
Questions/Exercises: 1. In what sense is language a system of arbitrary vocal symbols used for human communication?
2. Illustrate the design features of human language with your own examples.
Week 2.Introduciton to the study of language
What is linguistics? Literally, the study of language
Definition: ★ the scientific study of the nature and structure of language
★ the study of the structure and development of a particular language and its relationship to other languages
Linguistics as a scientific study
systematic investigation of data
empirical not speculative/intuitive, publicly verifiable data obtained by means of observation/experiment
observable objective examination
formal methodological theory-based With reference of some general theory of language structure
unbiased All languages are equal. No one language is superior to another language.
There are no primitive languages. The truth is that every language so far studied, no matter how primitive or uncivilized the society using it
might appear to us in other aspects, has proved upon investigation to be a complex and highly developed system of communication.
Language in the sense of linguistics, Human, natural language not animal communication not artificial language not any particular
language, but language in general What does a linguist do?
A linguist is a scientist who studies the nature of language, not a multilingual.
A linguist observes languages as they are, and does not try to change them; so a linguist will note that some people say he don't, and
others say he doesn't, but a linguist will not pass judgment on which is "better." Linguists do not necessarily teach or know many foreign
languages, although it helps, but they ask questions about how LANGUAGE works.
What does LANGUAGE usage indicate about speakers? How is LANGUAGE related to our mind?
How did LANGUAGE originate? Why does LANGUAGE change and what triggers the change?
How do speakers use LANGUAGE to advance their position in society? Why do LANGUAGES enter into political conflicts and peace negotiations?
Aspects of language
Study of the different language aspects: Phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, pragmatics
The subfields of language study
Some subfields in linguistics are: phonology and phonetics (articulatory gestures and sounds of language), semantics (meaning), syntax
(grammar), historical linguistics (history and family trees of languages), psycholinguistics (psychology of language), sociolinguistics
(sociology of language). Development of linguistics
Efforts to describe and explain the human language faculty have been undertaken throughout recorded history. Contemporary
linguistics is the outcome of a continuous European intellectual tradition originating in Ancient Greece. At various stages in history,
linguistics as a discipline has been in close contact with such disciplines as philosophy, anthropology and philology.
In some cultures linguistic analysis has been applied in the service of religion, particularly for the determination of the religiously
preferred spoken and written forms of sacred texts in Hebrew, Sanskrit and Arabic.
Contemporary Western linguistics is close to philosophy and cognitive science.
Modern Western linguistics
In Europe through the 19th century, linguistics is centered on the comparative history of the Indo-European languages, with a concern
for finding their common roots and tracing their development.
About 1880, scholars in the United States began to record the hundreds of native languages once found in North America. As this work
was developing in the early twentieth century, mainly in America, linguists were confronted with languages whose structures differed greatly
from those of known European languages. Scholars decided they needed a theory of linguistic structure and methods of analysis.
In Europe there was a parallel development of structural linguistics, influenced most strongly by Ferdinand de Saussure, a Swiss scholar
of Indo-European and general linguistics whose lectures on general linguistics, published posthumously by his students, set the direction of
European linguistic analysis from the 1920s on; his approach has been widely adopted in other fields under the broad term "Structuralism."
His approach has been widely adopted in other fields under the broad term “Structuralism.” He is thus called
“Father of Modern Linguistics”
Saussure is probably still the greatest linguist and few linguists even today can dispute his theories. He showed us how to separate
historical (diachronic) linguistics from non-historical (synchronic) linguistics.
Leonard Bloomfield’s influential textbook Language, published in 1933, presented a comprehensive description of American structural
linguistics. During the Second World War, he and several of his students and colleagues developed teaching materials for a variety of languages
whose knowledge was needed for the war effort. This work led to an increasing prominence of the field of linguistics, which became a recognized
discipline in most American universities only after the war. From roughly 1980 onwards, pragmatic, functional, and cognitive approaches have
steadily gained ground, both in the U.S. and in Europe.
Branches of linguistics
Historical linguistics (Comparative historical linguistics): the study of languages which are recognizably related through similarities such as
vocabulary, word formation, and syntax.
General linguistics vs. Descriptive linguistics
General linguistics supplies the concepts and categories in terms of which particular languages are to be analyzed.
Descriptive linguistics provides the data which confirm or refute the propositions and theories put forward in general linguistics.
Synchronic description of language vs. Diachronic description of language
A diachronic description of a language traces the historical development of the language and records the changes that have taken place in it
between successive points in time.
A synchronic description of a language is non-historical. It presents an account of the language as it is at some particular point in time. ※
Theoretical linguistics vs. Applied linguistics
Theoretical linguistics studies language and languages with a view to constructing a theory of their structure and functions and without regard to any
practical applications.
Applied linguistics is concerned with the application of the concepts and findings of linguistics to a variety of practical tasks, such as language
teaching, translation, lexicography, stylistics, speech therapy, etc.
Microlinguistics vs. Macrolinguistics
Microlinguistics is concerned solely with the structure of language systems, without regard to the way in which languages are acquired,
stored in the brain or used in their various functions; without regard to the interdependence of language and culture.
Macrolinguistics is concerned with everything that pertains in any way at all to language and languages.
Some basic distinctions in linguistics
Langue and Parole The distinction drawn by Ferdinand de Saussure in French
Langue: the abstract linguistic system shared by all the members of a speech community.
Parole: the actualization of language, or realization of ‘ langue ’.
Competence: the ideal language user’s knowledge of the rules of his/her language.
The linguistic competence of a speaker describes their implicit knowledge of a language, their ability to judge whether sentences are
grammatical or ungrammatical.
Performance: the actual realization of this knowledge in utterance. The linguistic performance of a speaker is the way they actually
talk. Theoretical linguists are interested in competence rather than performance, because they want to design an idealized model of how
language works and how it is represented in the mind. Sociolinguists and variationists, however, analyze the speakers’ performance.
Descriptive and Prescriptive
Linguistic is descriptive, not prescriptive
Descriptive: how things are Prescriptive: how things ought to be
Linguistics is a descriptive science because the linguist tries to discover and record the rules to which the members of a language community
actually conform and does not seek to impose upon them other rules, or norms, of correctness.
Speech and Writing
One general principle of linguistic analysis is the primacy of speech over writing, (In linguistic sense, language is first of all speech.) for the
fundamental substance out of which expression is built, is the sounds of language. It is therefore, speech is primary and writing is secondary.
Speech is time bound, dynamic and transient. It is part of an interaction in which both participants are usually present, and the speaker has a
particular addressee(s) in mind. Writing is space-bound, static and permanent. It is the result of a situation in which the writer is usually distant from
the reader and often does not know who the reader is. ---David Crystal
Traditional grammar and Modern linguistics
Traditional grammar: 1. Prescriptive 2. The importance of written word 3. Force language into a Latin-based framework
Modern linguistics: 1. Descriptive 2. Spoken language more basic 3. Unthinkable to judge one language by standards of another
Why Study Language and Linguistics?
Since language enters into almost every area of human activity, the application of linguistic analysis can be extremely broad, encompassing
almost any area where language is a practical concern.
With language, we can think effectively, communicate interpersonally and collaborate with other people in work. Linguistics takes an
analytical approach to the study of language, and Linguistics concentrators develop skills in data analysis, problem solving, and logical thinking that
can be applied to many fields. What can a language major do on graduating
•language learning and teaching • language in new technologies • writing systems • dictionaries • translation • language issues • multilingual
societies • linguistic difficulties • communication between different social, cultural, ethnic groups • endangered languages • linguistic input to
computer systems
Linguistics will provide you with many skills desirable in a variety of jobs and careers:
• numeracy • logical thinking • data analysis• communication and presentation
• critical thinking• working with others• use of IT
There are some particular skills that are associated with Linguistics that makes it ‘special’:
• respect for accuracy• confidence in learning new systems• attention to form
• understanding of human behaviour• good grasp of the language needed to describe language
Linguistics also requires a certain amount of hard thinking which might involve:
• recognition and use of evidence• speculation• critical and logical thinking
• building complex systems
Linguistics makes you ‘special’ because linguistics might help you to become a more self-aware person by posing a number of questions such as:
• How do I understand language?• How does language operate in my and other societies?
• How might the language I use shape me as a person?
Questions/Exercises: 1. How would you interpret the difference between competence and performance?
2. Illustrate the differences between diachronic study of language and synchronic study of language.
The Sounds of Language Week 3.Phonetics
Sounds →human sounds
speech↓ sounds → The sounds that are produced by the human
Individual ↗sounds ↓ speech-organs in so far as these have a role in language.
The limited range of human sounds used in language
The phonic↓ medium of language Phonetics and scope of phonetics
Definition: Phonetics is the study of speech sounds. It studies the characteristics of human sound-making, especially those sounds used in
speech. 3 subfields of phonetics:
Articulatory phonetics: The study of how speech sounds are produced. It describes, classifies and transcribes speech sounds. Speech sounds are
usually classified according to the position of the lips and tongue, how far open the mouth is, whether or NOT the Vocal Cords are vibrating, etc.
Acoustic phonetics: The study of the physics of speech sounds.
Auditory phonetics: The study of how sounds are perceived by the ear and brain.
The production of speech sounds
Speech sounds are sound waves, produced by air coming out of the human body.
This air has to pass a set of articulators which shape the resultant sound.※
Active articulators: the lips (can be closed or rounded)/ the tongue, which can be divided into the tip (or apex) /the blade (or corona) /the body (or
dorsum)/the root (or radix)/the velum (can be lowered) /the pharynx (can be constricted)
Passive articulators:the teeth/the alveolar ridge/the hard palate/the uvula(the passive articulators are not mobile; instead, the tongue approximates
them, and the sound is produced at the stricture between active and passive articulators)
The Organs of Speech※ Most speech sounds in all languages are produced by modifying, in some way, the air stream that is expelled by the
lungs up the windpipe, through the glottis and along the vocal tract. ※
Vocal tract anatomy
The vocal tract is what we use to articulate sounds. It includes the oral cavity (essentially the mouth), the nasal cavity (inside the nose), and the
pharyngeal cavity (behind the tongue). For most speech sounds, the airstream that passes through this tract is generated by the lungs. ※
Vocal Tract（ 声道） : lips, teeth, tongue, alveolar ridge, palate, uvula,
Pharynx （咽喉）: back wall of throat; epiglottis （会厌）: soft tissue covering the vocal cords during eating;
esophagus （食道）: tube going to stomach;
Larynx （喉）: containing the vocal cords; trachea （气管）: tube going to the lungs. ※
The Vocal Tract 声道
The vocal tract employs anatomical structures that have other functions:
Lungs: Exchange oxygen, carbon dioxide speech: supply airstream
Vocal cords: prevent food from entering lungs speech: produce vibrations in resonating cavity
Tongue: Manipulate food in mouth speech: articulate sounds
Teeth: break up food speech: passive articulator (stationary), etc.
Lips: seal oral cavity speech: articulate sounds
The Vocal Cords 声带
The vocal cords are a pair of muscular flaps that can be brought together to form a seal, or opened to permit airflow.
When the vocal cords are vibrating to create a sounds with a pitch, a voiced speech sound is produced: Unvoiced: s, f, p, k Voiced: z, v, b, g
If you hold your hand to your throat, you can feel vibration for the voiced sounds, as well as for nasals like [m], [n], and vowels like [a]
If the vocal chords are kept close together and made to vibrate as the air passes through the glottis, the sound thus produced is voiced. If the
air passes through the glottis without vibration of the vocal chords, the resultant sound is voiceless.
Consonants and vowels
Consonants: sounds produced with some restriction or closure in the vocal tract.
Vowels: sounds produced without obstruction in the vocal tract.
Consonants
Consonants are sounds produced with some restriction or closure in the vocal tract.
CONSONANTS OF ENGLISH English consonants may be classified by the manner of articulation as plosives, fricatives, nasals, liquids, and
semivowels (Cawley 1990, O'Saughnessy 1987). Plosives are known also as stop consonants. Liquids and semivowels are also defined in some
publications as approximants and laterals. Further classification may be made by the place of articulation as labials (lips), dentals (teeth), alveolars
(gums), palatals (palate), velars (soft palate), glottal (glottis), and labiodentals (lips and teeth).
Place of Articulation
the relationship between the active and passive articulators as they shape or impede the air stream. This specifies where the sound is made.
Place of Articulation 发音位置
1.Bilabial 双唇音 2.Labiodental 唇齿音 3.Dental 齿音 4.Alveolar 齿龈音
5.Retroflex 卷舌音 6.Palato-alveolar 颚齿音 7.Palatal 颚音
8.Pharyngeal 咽喉音 9.Velar 软颚音 10.Uvular 小舌音 11.Glottal 喉音
Bilabial：The articulators are the two lips. (We could say that the lower lip is the active articulator and the upper lip the passive articulator, though
the upper lip usually moves too, at least a little.) English bilabial sounds include [p], [b], and [m].
Labio-dental：The lower lip is the active articulator and the upper teeth are the passive articulator.
English labio-dental sounds include [f] and [v].
Dental：Dental sounds involve the upper teeth as the passive articulator. The active articulator may be either the tongue tip or (usually) the
tongue blade -- diacritic symbols can be used if it matters which. Extreme lamino-dental sounds are often called interdental.
English interdental sounds include {} and {} .
Alveolar：Alveolar sounds involve the alveolar ridge as the passive articulator. The active articulator may be either the tongue blade or
(usually) the tongue tip -- diacritic symbols can be used if it matters which. English alveolar sounds include [t], [d], [n], [s], [z], [l].
Retroflex：made with the tongue tip or blade curled back so that the underside of the tongue tip or blade forms a stricture with the back of
alveolar ridge( the hard palate. In English, the retroflex sound is mainly used in the starting [ r ] sound as the [ r ] in “red”, “read”, etc.
In American English, this is a typical feature of many American speaker.
Palato-alveolar：Palato-alveolar sounds involve the area just behind the alveolar ridge as the passive articulator. The active articulator may
be either the tongue tip or (usually) the tongue blade -- diacritic symbols can be used if it matters which.
English postalveolars include {} and {}.
Palatal：The active articulator is the tongue body and the passive articulator is the hard palate. The English glide [ j ] is a palatal.
Pharyngeal：sounds made with the root of the tongue and the walls of pharynx. (tongue body constricting the pharynx )There are few sounds at this
place because of physiological difficulty. Arabic is a language which contains pharyngeal fricatives, e.g. [ ], [ ])
Velar：The active articulator is the tongue body and the passive articulator is the soft palate. At back of the tongue raised to soft palate (velum)
English velars include [k], [g], and {} .
Uvular：tongue body and root drawn backwards towards the uvula, e.g. [R],[Я ]) at back of the tongue and the uvular
e.g. / Я / as in French ‘rose rouge’
Glottal：This isn't strictly a place of articulation, but they had to put it in the chart somewhere.
Glottal sounds are made in the larynx. For the glottal stop, the vocal cords close momentarily and cut off all airflow through the vocal tract.
at the larynx (space between vocal folds) e.g. [ h ]
Manner of Articulation
the type of closure made by the articulators and the degree of the obstruction of the airstream by those articulators.
This specifies how the sound is produced. Manner of Articulation 发音方式
1.Plosive(Stop) 爆破音（塞音) 2.Fricative （摩）擦音 3.Affricate 塞擦音
3.Trill（Roll) 颤音（滚音） 4.Tap（Flap） 一次接触音（闪音） 6.Nasal 鼻音
7.Lateral (Liquid) 边音/旁流音 8.Approximant 近似音
stop: the active articulator touches the passive articulator and completely cuts off the airflow through the mouth.
English stops include: [p], [d], [k], [m].
fricative: the active articulator doesn't touch the passive articulator, but gets close enough that the airflow through the opening becomes turbulent.
English fricatives include [f], [v],[s] , [z], {θ} , {}, {} , {} ,[h].
affricate: Affricates can be seen as a sequence of a stop and a fricative which have the same or similar places of articulation. They are transcribed
using the symbols for the stop and the fricative. If one wants to emphasize the affricate as a "single" sound, a tie symbol can be used to join the stop
and the fricative {}，{}.
Trill, in which the articulator (usually the tip of the tongue) is held in place, and the airstream causes it to vibrate. Alveolar trill [r] in Russian,
Italian,panish, and Scottish English. Uvular trill [R] in Dutch, Portugese, and French.
Flap, often called a tap, [ ] is a momentary closure of the oral cavity.
Nasal: air allowed to pass through nose [m] [n] {η}
Lateral (Liquid): minimal constriction, with free airflow;
Center of mouth: like with [r]; rhetoric Around side of tongue: like with [ l ]; lateral
approximant: the active articulator approaches the passive articulator, but doesn't even get close enough for the airflow to become turbulent.
(minimal constriction, corresponds to a vowel)
[y] corresponds to [i] [w] corresponds to [u] English approximants include [j], [w], [ X ], and [l].
Vowels
 A speech sound in which the air stream from the lungs is not blocked in any way in the mouth or throat, and is usually pronounced with
vibration of the VOCAL CORDS
For vowels, a different set of terms is used, as shown in this chart.
High/mid/low: height of tongue in mouth. Front/central/back: frontness or backness of tongue in mouth
Rounded/unrounded: state of the lips during production of the vowel. Tense/lax: degree of tenseness in the tongue
The terms round-unrounded refer to the state of the lips, and tense-lax (very roughly) to the degree of tension in the muscles. ※
English Vowel Chart English Consonants Chart
Front Central Back Manner of Place of
articulation articulation

High i: (beat) uː (boot)

tense ɪ (bit) ʊ (book) Labio- Post-
Bilabial Dental Alveolar Palatal Velar Glottal
lax dental alveolar

Mid ɛɪ (bait) ʌ (but) əʊ (boat)

tense ɛ (bet) ə (about) ɔː(paw) Stop       
lax

Low æ (bat) ɒ (pot) Nasal        

Fricative       

Approximant        

Lateral        

Affricate        
Phonetic transcription
Phonetic transcription is a method of writing down speech sounds in a systematic and consistent way. In phonetic studies it serves as an aid to the
description of speech sounds. It is also used to produce a phonetic alphabet to transcribe speech sounds.
Through phonetic transcription, dictionaries tell you about the pronunciation of words. Phonetic transcription is necessary, because the spelling of a
word does not tell you how you should pronounce it.
Narrow versus broad transcription
Phonetic transcription may aim to transcribe the phonology of a language, or it may wish to go further and specify the precise phonetic realization. In
all systems of transcription we may therefore distinguish between broad transcription and narrow transcription.
Broad transcription indicates only the more noticeable phonetic features of an utterance, whereas narrow transcription encodes more information
about the phonetic variations of the specific allophones in the utterance.
For example, one particular pronunciation of the English word little may be transcribed using the IPA as /‘lɪtəl/ or [‘lɪtɫ̩ ]; the broad, phonemic
transcription, placed between slashes, indicates merely that the word ends with phoneme /l/, but the narrow, allophonic transcription, placed between
square brackets, indicates that this final /l/ ([ɫ]) is dark velarized).
IPA
=1.International Phonetic Alphabet国际音标 =2. International Phonetic Association国际音标会
The International Phonetic Association (abbr.: IPA) is an organization that promotes the scientific study of phonetics and the various practical
applications of that science. The IPA’s major contribution to the academic community is the International Phonetic Alphabet
Phonetic transcription is usually written in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), in which each English sound has a special symbol.
Phonetic transcription is in square brackets [ ].
Questions/Exercises: 1. How to describe voiced and voiceless sounds?
2. Describe the place and manner of articulation with examples in English.
Week 4.Phonology
Languages differ from one another, but it is often the differences in the phonetic features of a language that would strike us first of all.
Each language has its own system of sounds and sound combinations. Different languages have different sets of possible sounds that can be
used to create words. For example, the sounds [ʈʂ] and [ʈʂʰ] (Retroflex affricate: zh,ch) are commonly found in Chinese, but not in English, or
German and French. Likewise, the common English sounds like /θ/ and /ð/ do not exist in other languages.
Speech sounds as system
A language is a system of smaller units standing in particular relation to each other and perform particular functions. In addition to
other aspects of units, each language has its own system of sound units.
Phonology is the aspect that deals with the system of sound patterns in a particular language.
The phonological system of a language includes:
★ an inventory of sounds and their features, and ★ rules which specify how sounds interact with each other.
Phonology is concerned with identifying those (what) groups of sounds that can be distinctive in a language and with establishing how
they can be put together to form a sequence.
In a word, phonology specifies what phonetic elements are used and how they group in a particular language.
Phonology and phonetics
Phonetics is essentially concerned with the physical aspects of spoken interaction, i.e. the way in which sounds are produced and transmitted
from speaker to hearer. The basic units for phonetic analysis are phones.
Phonology, on the other hand, is concerned with the regularities in the sound patterns that speakers of particular languages produce in
order to communicate effectively. The basic units for phonological analysis are the phonemes.
In transcribing speech sounds, two ways of transcription are often used:
1. Phonemic notation (also known as broad notation): use only the distinctive sounds of a language (phonemes), but does not show the finer points
of pronunciation. Phonemic notation is written within slanting brackets / /.
2. Phonetic notation (also known as narrow notation): uses phonetic symbols for various sounds, including symbols to show in detail how a
particular sound is pronounced. Phonetic notation is written in square brackets [ ].
The Phoneme theory
The phoneme: the basic, distinctive sounds of a language
The phonemes are referred to as distinctive because they make contrasts between different words.
e.g. /pIg/ and /bIg/ depends on the contrast between /p/ and /b/ because /p/ and /b/ are “distinctive” or “contrastive” sounds in English and
they distinguish meaning. !Sounds that are contrastive in a language are called phonemes.
Phonemic contrast
If two sounds are two distinctive phonemes, they are said to form a phonemic contrast.
e.g. / p / and / b / in / pit / and / bit / / lip/ and / lib /
Being Distinctive: This can be better illustrated for stops by using minimal pairs: a pair of words that differ in only one phoneme
pill bill /p/ vs. /b/ till dill /t/ vs. /d/ kill gill /k/ vs. /g/
The same thing applies to vowels as well. beat bit / i:/ vs. /I/ port pot /ɔ:/ vs. /ɒ/
Distinctive feature
It is a particular characteristic which distinguishes one distinctive sound unit of a language from another or one group of sounds from another group.
One important feature is VOICING, which plays a important part in distinguishing obstruents in English because voicing can distinguish one
phoneme from another.
Distinctive features :elements that are smaller still than phonemes.
Relevant features are e.g. [+/- consonant], which distinguishes formally between vowels ([-consonant]) and consonants ([+consonant]), and [+/-
voice], distinguishing between voiced and voiceless sounds.
The features are generally shown in the form of a binary opposition, i.e. either present +or absent -. If
Differences that are not distinctive Remember that some aspects of pronunciation are not distinctive.
Example: aspiration pit [phIt] vs. spit [spIt] The former [p] is aspirated, but the [p] in the latter is unaspirated. But: the distinction
between aspirated and non-aspirated [p] is not distinctive in English (although it is in other languages).
That is, in English there are no pairs like [phIt] ‘hole in the ground, etc.’ [pIt] (whatever this might be)
Phonemes are sets of simultaneous distinctive features. It is the distinctive features of a phoneme that make it capable of distinguishing meaning.
What is a phoneme?
A phoneme: ★smallest contrastive unit in the sound system of a language; ★basic unit in phonological analysis.
A phoneme is a family of similar sounds which a language treats as being “the same”. Members of the family are called its allophones.
In English, [p] and [pʰ] are allophones of the /p/ phoneme.
Phonemes, Phones and Allophones
A phoneme is an abstract unit in the sound system of a language (it has no physical, only a psychological reality): It is the smallest unit
distinguishing meaning. Phonemes thus have a contrastive function.
A phone (or speech sound) is the actual (physical) realization of a phoneme. Phones that are all realizations of the same phoneme are called
allophones.
A phone is … A phoneme is …
One of many possible sounds in the languages of the world. A contrastive unit in the sound system of a particular language.
The smallest identifiable unit found in a stream of speech. A minimal unit that serves to distinguish between meanings of words.
Pronounced in a defined way. Pronounced in one or more ways, depending on the number of allophones.
Represented between brackets by convention.
Example: [i:], [b], [l] Represented between slashes by convention
Example: /i:/, /b/, /l/
Phonemes and Allophones
Sometimes the same phoneme is pronounced in different ways depending on its context.
The variants of a phoneme are called allophones of that phoneme.
When we are talking about such distinctions, the phoneme is in slashes /…/ and the allophones are in square brackets […] The aspiration of
e.g. /p/ is a case of this type; we say that /p/ in English has the allophones [p] and [ph]
Phonemes and Allophones, cont.
So, for instance, the phoneme /p/ appears in each of the following words: pit [phIt] spit[spIt]
How, the first contains the allophone [ph], while the second contains [p] In fact, the rule for aspiration in English is more general:
English voiceless stops are:
a. Aspirated if word initial, or syllable-initial preceding a stressed vowel: Compare récord vs. record b. Otherwise unaspirated.
An allophone is a phonetic variant of a phoneme in a particular language.
Examples (English): [p] and [ph] are allophones of the phoneme /p/. [t] and [th] are allophones of the phoneme /t/.
A phoneme is manifested as one or more phones (phonetic sounds) in different environments. These phones are called allophones.
The Minimal Pair
A minimal pair is a pair of words with different meanings which differ in only one sound. If two sounds can form a minimal pair, they must belong
to two different phonemes. ※
Examples Differentiations in English The following pairs prove existence of various distinct phonemes in English.
pin bin /pin/, /bin/ rot lot /rɒt/, /lɒt/ zeal seal /zi:l/, /si:l/
bin bean /bin/, /bin/ pen pan /pen/, /pæn/ hat had /hæt/, /hæd/
Complementary distribution
If the sounds are allophones of the same phoneme, then they do not distinguish meaning, but complement each other in distribution. When two
sounds never occur in the same phonetic environment, they are said to be in complementary distribution. For example, in English, the aspirated
plosives [pʰ] [tʰ] [kʰ] never occur after [s], and the unaspirated [p] [t] [k] never occur initially.
 In English, phones [p] as in "spin" and [pʰ] as in "pin" both occur, but are allophones of the phoneme /p/ and no minimal pair can be found to
distinguish them, but the word "bin" shows that the phone [b] forms a phoneme /b/ separate from /p/.
Allophones usually are in complementary distribution. Where one occurs, the others can't. Thus, allophones are predictable.
In Mandarin only phones (and phonemes) [p] and [pʰ] occur. In the Pinyin transcription /pʰ/ is written "p" and /p/ is written "b“
Some rules in English phonology
Sequential Rules: How do phonological elements occur together in a sequence.
Language systems differ from one another phonologically in terms of syntagmatic relations（组合关系） that determine the phonological
well-formedness of possible combinations.
No language permits all its possible distinctive sounds to combine in any order.
In English, not all distinctive sounds of English can occur word-initially. e.g. /ʒ/, /ŋ/ can never occur as the beginning of a word.
Consonant clusters (groups) are even more constrained in English, especially at the beginning of a word. Such combinations as the following do not
exist word-initially in any but foreign words:
stop+stop (e.g.,/pt/, /gb/); stop+nasal (e.g., /dn/,/pm/,/mp/); nasal+stop. The sequence of phonemes /n/,/g/,/r/
The only two consonant clusters permitted word initially in English are:
stop+liquid or glide；voiceless fricative+liquid or glide；and /s/ + voiceless stop or liquid or glide or /m/ or /n/
Assimilation Rules: A segment becomes more similar to that neighboring segment.
vowel nasalization in English. Nasalization commonly affects vowels which are adjacent nasal consonants, e.g. form paint
Remember that nasalized vowels are not phonemic in English, since their occurrence is predictable by rule.
Aspiration rule : Voiceless stops in English are aspirated if they occur initially in a stressed syllable, but become unaspirated if they occur after an
initial /s/, e.g. /st/, /sp/, /sk/. Suprasegmental Phonology
The study of phonological properties of units larger than the segment—phoneme, such as the syllable, word and sentence.
The Syllable
A familiar notion is that of the syllable: as in, ‘Philadelphia’ has five syllables.
The syllable consists of threes parts: Onset（节首辅音）: the beginning of the syllable
Nucleus（音节核）: vowel in the middle of the syllable Coda（音节尾）: consonant(s) at the end of a syllable
Further aspects of the syllable
Onsets: English normally allows two consonants.
[s] can be added initially in many cases as well, resulting in onsets with three consonants (e.g. splash)
All sounds can occur in this position with the exception of [ng]. Thus the subdivision of the syllable is crucial for stating this generalization.
The Nucleus: Sometimes a consonant can function as a nucleus, like in kitten.
The Coda: English normally allows two consonants, although there are cases where more stack up (e.g. belts)
English syllable : starts with 1/2/3 consonant (s) /sit/, /slit/, /split/
Consonant Cluster : 1) initial cluster: /spred/ 2) final cluster: /test/ 3) medial cluster: /pɛɪstri/
Final : any consonant except for h,r,w,j may be final consonant. Two kinds of Final Cluster : pre-final+final/ final+post final
Pre-finals(m,n, l,s :bump,bench,belt,task) Post-finals(s,z,t,d,th : bets,beds)
Pre-initial+Initial+Post-initials Vowel Pre-final+Final+Post-final 1/2/3 Ex. “Sixths, helped, bonds, strings, students”
Length of segments
Not all speech sounds have the same duration.
Some speech sounds are inherently longer than others: e.g. voiceless fricatives are the longest consonants of all.
The duration of a speech sound may be influenced by the sounds around it, e.g. compare beat and bead.
This is a matter of relative length in specific phonetic environments
Stress
Stress : using more muscular energy (production)/prominence makes some syllables be perceived as stressed./ louderness,lenghth, pitch, quality
(bababababa) Words including long vowels and diphthongs or ending with more than 1 consonant are stronger and stressed. (attract, arrive,
ressurect) /protect, disconnect)
Stress : the pronunciation of a word or syllable with more force than the surrounding words or syllables.
A stressed word or syllable is produced by using more air from the lungs.
Words including long vowels and diphthongs or ending with more than 1 consonant are stronger and stressed.
Word stress:When a word has many syllables, one of them is always pronounced more strongly. This is called word stress.
If a word has only one syllable (for example: pen, house), the syllable is always stressed. Dictionaries usually do not put an apostrophe before
the only syllable. So they don't write /’pen/ — they simply write /pen/.
A syllable can be stressed only when there is another syllable which is not stressed. So monosyllabic words cannot be said to have word stress
Sentence stress
Patterns of stress, tempo and pitch together create a rhythm. Sentence stress is what gives English its rhythm or "beat".
Content words are the key words of a sentence. Structure words are not very important words.
More importance, more stressed Ns, Adjs, Vs, Ads, Demonstratives, etc.
Pitch, tone, intonation
Pitch: different rates of vibration, different frequencies. Tone: significant contrasts between words signaled by pitch differences
Intonation: the rise and fall of voice pitch over entire phrases and sentences.
When pitch, stress and length variation are tied to the sentence rather than the word, they are collectively known as intonation.
Questions/Exercises: 1. Explain the phoneme theory with your own examples. 2. How is phonology different from phonetics?
Week 5. Morphology
Morphology is defined as the study of the internal structure of words in human language.
A convenient starting point for morphology is the word. Words are said to be formed out of morphemes, where a morpheme is the
smallest unit of meaning or grammatical function in language.
Most words in language can be broken up into smaller meaningful units or morphemes. Morphology is the study of the internal structure
of words and of the rules by which words are formed or the science of word forms such as disestablishmentarianism (Fromkin and Rodman, 1998).
Morphology deals with morphemes (the minimal units of linguistic form and meaning), and how they make up words. Most of these
words can be divided up into identifiable parts, each of which has some kind of independent status, as evidenced by the fact that it occurs in
other words (usually with a similar meaning or function).
What is a morpheme?
In phonology the basic distinctive unit of sound is phoneme. In morphology, the basic unit is the morpheme.
A morpheme is the smallest meaningful unit in the grammar of a language.
Basic definition: A morpheme is a minimal unit of sound and meaning.
dog + s forms the plural consistently cf. hand+s, cat+s, book+s
walk + ing forms a noun from a verb cf. talk+ing, runn+ing, sing+ing
redd + en forms a verb meaning ‘become ADJ’ from an adjective ADJ cf. black+en, whit+en, short+en
work+er, forms an agentive nominal from a verb, a person or thing who does that activity
Each of these independent elements is a morpheme. The definition includes "minimal" because reddens breaks down into not just redden + s, but
into redd + en + s -- but no further.
Some Examples Many words can be divided into smaller parts, where the parts also occur in other words:
dogs walking blackens player-hater dog-s walk-ing black-en-s play-er hat-er Compare: cat-s; runn-ing; dark-en-s; eat-er
The smaller parts occur consistently with many words:
-s: forms the plural consistently -ing: forms a noun from a verb -en: forms a verb meaning ‘become ADJ’ from an adjective ADJ
-er: forms an agentive nominal from a verb, a person or thing who does that activity
Morphs, allomorphs and morphemes
A morph（形素） is the phonetic realization of a morpheme.
An allomorph is one of two or more complementary morphs which manifest a morpheme in its different phonological or morphological
environments.
A morpheme is manifested as one or more morphs (surface forms) in different environments. These morphs are called allomorphs.
Allomorphs are different pronunciations of the same morpheme.
One inflectional morpheme may have different “surface” forms. For example, not all nouns in English form their plurals by adding
an –s suffix, e.g. (a) one man → two men (b) one sheep → two sheep
Similarly, some verbs are irregular in the sense that they don’t form their past tense and past participle forms by adding the regular –ed
suffix, e.g. (a) bring → brought, brought (b) sing → sang, sung (c) cut → cut, cut (d) go → went
Technically, we call the different versions of a morpheme the allomorphs of that morpheme. So, the plural morpheme, for example, has the
following allomorphs:
(a) –s allomorph: book → books (b) vowel change allomorph: man →men (c) zero allomorph: sheep → sheep (d) –en allomorph: ox → oxen
Types of morphemes
Free morphemes and Bound morphemes:
Free morphemes are morphemes that can stand alone as a word,
e.g. cat, the, house, on, play while bound morphemes cannot stand alone but that have to combine with other morphemes, e.g. in-, un-, -ed, -ly
Most bound morphemes are affixes, which fall into two broad groups, prefixes (attaching to the beginning of the stem) and suffixes
(attaching to the end of a stem).
Bound morphemes are also called affixes, and affixes are of four types: (a) prefixes (b) suffixes (c) infixes (d) circumfixes
Prefixes are bound morphemes that precede other morphemes. e.g. un- in unpopular, unpleasant re- in re-read, re-open
Suffixes are bound morphemes that follow other morphemes. e.g.-ness in happiness, carelessness -ed in walked, visited
An infix morpheme occurs in the middle of another morpheme. This is common in some languages.
Circumfixes circumfixes (at both ends) — "en--en" in "enlighten"
(These always seem to consist of otherwise attested independent prefixes and suffixes.)
Affixes and Roots
Affixes are bound morphemes which attach to stems. The common types of English affixes fall into two large groups,
– prefixes which attach to the stem‘s beginning (sub-culture) – suffixes which attach to the stem‘s end (culture-s, cultur-al)
Affixes often carry little of the core meaning of a word. Many affixes essentially change the word class, the part of speech, to which the
word belongs.
Roots carry the basic meaning from which the rest of the sense of the word can be derived, or at least once was derived at some point in
the history of the word.
Roots can be free or bound. They are free when they can stand alone as words. They are bound when they must compose with other
morphemes to compose other words. Bound roots in English are very few. Most bound roots found in the language today were borrowed
from Latin, Greek, or French. All words contain a root morpheme.
Bound morphemes are also typically divided into two types with respect to whether they signal semantic content or grammatical function. The
former is called derivational morphemes, whereas the latter is called inflectional morphemes.
Inflectional and Derivational Morphemes
Inflectional morphemes vary (or "inflect") the form of words in order to express the grammatical features that a given language chooses, such as
singular/plural or past/present tense. Thus Boy and boys, for example, are two different forms of the "same" word. In English, we must choose the
singular form or the plural form; if we choose the basic form with no affix, we have chosen the singular.
Inflectional Morphemes generally: do not change basic syntactic category big, bigg-er, bigg-est are all adjectives.
express grammatically-required features or indicate relations between different words in the sentence.
In Pat love-s Chris, -s marks the 3rd person singular present form of the verb, and also relates it to the 3rd singular subject Pat.
occur "outside" any derivational morphemes (closer to the edge of the word)
In ration-al-iz-ation-s the final -s is inflectional, and appears at the very end of the word, outside the derivational morphemes -al, -iz, -ation.
Derivational morphemes make new words from old ones. Thus creation is formed from create by adding a morpheme that makes nouns out of
(some) verbs. Basic properties:
☆change the part of speech or the basic meaning of a word. -ment added to a verb forms a noun (judg-ment). re-activate means "activate again."
☆are not required by syntactic relations outside the word.
un-kind combines un- and kind into a single new word, but has no particular syntactic connections outside the word
We can say he is unkind or he is kind or they are unkind or they are kind, depending on what we mean
 Content and function morphemes
Morphemes can also be divided into the two categories of content and function morphemes, a distinction that is conceptually distinct from the
free-bound distinction but that partially overlaps with it in practice.
Content morphemes have an independent lexical meaning, e.g. play but also some affixes; un-
e.g. means “the opposite of”. They are also called lexical morphemes
Function morphemes only provide grammatical information, e.g. plural. They are also called grammatical morphemes.
Content morphemes are also often called open-class morphemes, because they belong to categories that are open to the invention of
arbitrary new items.
Function morphemes are also called "closed-class" morphemes, because they belong to categories that are essentially closed to invention or
borrowing -- it is very difficult to add a new preposition, article or pronoun.
Words are also frequently classified into two types:
Content words: Content words represent the largest part of the vocabulary of a language and are those that have “semantic content.” They
include nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs.
They are often referred to as open class words, since we can add new words to these categories.
Function words: Function words, by contrast, are words with a grammatical function in the language and they are much fewer in number than
content words. They comprise a closed class, since we cannot add to them.
Examples of function words are pronouns, determiners, prepositions and conjunctions.
The basic types of English morphemes

Inflection
Inflection is the manifestation of grammatical relationship through the addition of inflectional affixes, such as number, person, finiteness,
aspect and case, which do not change the grammatical class of the stem to which they are attached.
Inflection is one of the important concepts in morphology
Inflection occurs when a word has different forms but essentially the same meaning, and there is only a grammatical difference between them:
for example, "make" and "makes". The "-s" is an inflectional morpheme.
Words and lexemes（词位）
A word is a unit which is a constituent at the phrase level and above. It is sometimes identifiable according to such criteria as being the minimal
possible unit in a reply having features such as ---a regular stress pattern, and ---phonological changes conditioned by or blocked at word boundaries
being the largest unit resistant to insertion of new constituents within its boundaries, or being the smallest constituent that can be moved within a
sentence without making the sentence ungrammatical.
A lexeme is the minimal unit of language which has a semantic interpretation and embodies a distinct cultural concept.
For example, in English, all inflected forms such as give, gives, gave, giving, given would belong to the one lexeme GIVE.
English Word Formations
Word formation addresses the processes for creating new words in a language.
It investigates past and present means for creating words in languages.
Major types of word formation
Inflection: Creates new forms of the same word in a way that introduces or expresses different grammatical properties, while retaining some core
notions of meaning (and category)
Example: Play and Played describe the same action, but situate it differently in time.
Derivation: As a basic working definition, derivational morphology creates new words from existing ones.
Basic properties: Change of category or part of speech (noun, verb, adjective) is possible: judge, judge-ment
New meaning added: e.g. re-do means to ‘do again’ No syntactic connections outside of the word, like with inflection (e.g. agreement relates
a subject to a verb). This is not so if we have e.g. kind/unkind Sometimes not productive, or unpredictable meanings Transmit ‘send’; transmis-sion
‘sending’; ‘car part’ Destroy/destruction; employ/*empluction/employment
Examples Morpheme Function
-(a)tion verb --> noun deviate, devia-tion
-al noun --> adjective institution, institution-al
-ize noun --> verb color, color-ize
like noun--> adjective Farbman-like
Compounding: A compound is a complex word that is formed out of a combination of stems (as opposed to stem + affix)
These function in a certain sense as ‘one word’, and have distinctive phonological patterns
Examples: olive oil shop talk shoe polish truck driver
Other processes of word-formation
Affixation: a bound morpheme is attached to a free morpheme, or stem. There are three places where the bound morpheme can go: before,
after, or in the middle of the stem. The affixes that go before the stem are called prefixes (from Latin pre- = before). The ones that go after
the stem are referred to as suffixes (from Latin sub- = under). And the affixes that go in the middle are labeled infixes. Examples for pre-
and suffixes are plentiful in English, such as unhappy, unlock, preexist and doubtful, lockable, or lovely for pre- and suffixes respectively.
Acronymy: forming words by using the initials of a group of words that designates one concept (NASA, NATO). Unicef.
Backformation: it is a process that creates a new word by removing a real or supposed affix from another word (option—opt, peas----pea,
enthusiasm---enthuse).
Blending: we connect parts (which are not morphemes) of two already existing words to create a new word (motor and hotel motel, breakfast and
lunch brunch, smoke and fog smog, etc.
Clipping: it is a shortening of polysyllabic word (prof. professor).
Borrowing: a word is taken from another language and it may be adapted to the borrowing language’s phonological system (psychology, telephone,
emotion, are taken from European languages; banana is taken from African languages)
Invention: the invention of a completely new word, such as Xerox, Exxon.
Reduplication: the copying of a part of a word, as in zigzag, chitchat hodgepodge.
Questions/Exercises: 1. Illustrate the basic types of English morphemes with your own examples.
2. Explain the concept of allomorphs by listing the allomorphs of the past tense morpheme in English.
Week 6.Syntax (1)
Defining Syntax: The study of rules governing the ways words, word groups and phrases are combined to form sentences in a language.
Syntax studies the rules at the level of the creation of phrases and larger units (clauses and sentences)
Syntactic relations
3 types of syntactic relations
1. Positional Relation ( Word Order)（位置关系）
Order: convention of a language grammatical and meaningful<>ungrammatical and nonsensical
A basic observation about English word order is that it generally follows the pattern
subject + verb + object (or "SVO"). The dog chased the cat.
If we change the word order, it changes the relation of the nouns to the verb. The cat chased the dog.
This is because English uses word order to mark the role of nouns in the sentence: normally the subject precedes the verb, and the
object (if any) follows the verb.
2. Relation of Substitutability （替换关系）
A) Classes or sets of words substitutable for each other grammatically in the same sentence structures.
e.g. The ________ spoke. ( teacher/ boy/ girl )
B) Groups of more than one word jointly substitutable grammatically for a single word of a particular set.
e.g. He spoke. The teacher spoke. The teacher of English spoke.
The Chinese teacher of English spoke. The old Chinese teacher of English spoke.
 Notice that the Subject of the sentence may consist of more than one word
3.Relation of Co-occurrence（同现关系）Words of different sets of clauses may permit, require, the occurrence of a word of another set or
clause to form a sentence or a particular part of a sentence.
Syntactic function
The syntactic function shows the relationship between a linguistic form and other parts of the linguistic pattern in which it is used.
Names of functions are expressed in terms of subjects, objects, predicates, modifiers, complements, etc.
Basic functional terms in syntax:
Subject refers to one of the nouns in the nominative case. The typical example can be found in Latin, where subject is always in nominative case,
such as Pater filium amat. ( The father loves the son.) Patrem filius amat. ( The son loves the father.)
In English, a GRAMMATICAL SUBJECT refers to a noun which can establish correspondence with the verb and which can be checked by a
tag-question test. e.g. He is a mathematician. (Isn’t he?)
Predicate refers to a major constituent of sentence structure in a binary analysis in which all obligatory constituents other than the subject were
considered together. e.g. The boy is running. Peter broke the glass. John must be mad.
Object is also a term hard to define. Traditionally, Object refers to the “receiver” or “goal” of an action, and it is further classified into “Direct
object” and “Indirect object”. e.g. Mother bought a doll. Mother gave my sister a doll.
Categories
The term category (范畴）refers to classes and functions in its narrow sense, e.g. noun, verb, subject, predicate, noun phrase, verb phrase, etc.
More specifically, it refers to the defining properties of these general units: the categories of the noun, for example, include number, gender, case,
and countability; and of the verb, for example, tense, aspect, voice, etc.
Number is a grammatical category used for the analysis of word classes displaying such contrasts as singular, dual, plural, etc. In English, number is
mainly observed in nouns, and there are only forms : singular and plural.
Gender displays such contrasts as “masculine<>feminine”; “neuter”; “animate<>inanimate”, etc.
English gender contrast can only be observed in pronouns and a small number of nouns.
Case is used in the analysis of word classes to identify the syntactic relationship between words in a sentence. In Latin grammar, cases are
based on variations in the morphological forms of the word, and are given the terms “nominative(主格）”,”accusative（宾格）”,”dative（与
格）”, etc.
Agreement (Concord) may be defined as the requirement that the forms of two or more word classes that stand in specific syntactic
relationship with one another shall also be characterized by the same category. In English, there is agreement between nouns and verbs.
Phrase, clause and sentence
Phrase is a single element of structure containing more than one word, and lacking the subject-predicate structure typical of clauses.
Phrases
Words can combine into phrases, which behave as a single constituent.
Phrases formed of more than one word usually contain these elements:
head（中心成分）, specifier （标志成分） and complement（补足成分 ）
The word around which a phrase is formed is termed head. The word on the left side of the heads are called specifiers. The words on the
right side of the heads are complements.
For example, nouns, adjectives and determiners together form a noun phrase, of which the noun is the head.
 Phrases: There are different types of phrases, named after their heads, for example
• Noun Phrases (NPs)
The head is a noun, modified by adjectives, determiners, prepositional phrases: the pretty girl with the flower dress
A noun is a single word (or compound). dog dog food
A noun phrase normally contains at least one noun (the head of the phrase), possibly with other elements such as determiners and
adjectives, or a relative clause or other modifier. the dog a big dog the dog food that you bought in the store
Determiners fall into several subtypes.
articles a, the
demonstratives this, that, these, those
quantifiers some, many, few, all
possessives my, your, his, her, our, theirPat's, my sister's, ...
Notice that a maximum of one can occur for a particular noun phrase. The expression a few is treated as a single unit: notice that its meaning,
close to "several," is somewhat different from few, which emphasizes small quantity.
a dog that dog my dog Pat's dog *the my dog *Pat's this dog
The man waited The ugly man waited {Noun Phrase (NP)} The ugly man (The Head of the NP )in the shabby raincoat waited
Noun Phrases
Lucy My girlfriend A huge cockroach A very large slice of ham A student who loves linguistics
NP → N NP → (Det) (AP) N (PP) (S)
NP → Det N ↗ ↖
NP → Det AP N The possible shape of a The head of the NP.
noun phrase. Every phrase has a
Bracketed constituents head, and every head
are optional. expands into a phrase!
NP → Det AP N PP
NP → Det N S
NP → (D) (AP) N (PP)
Somebody The man The tall man The very tall man in the raincoat
• Verb Phrases (VPs)
The head is a verb, A verb is (in most languages) the locus of such distinctions as tense (past, present, future) and aspect (progressive,
perfect). they see they saw seeing
Very often it's necessary to talk about the verb phrase, which includes the complements of the verb such as a direct object, indirect object,
and even a sentence. they [ saw me ] she [ gave the book to me ] you [ said that you would arrive on time ]
Much of the interest in syntax is centered on the analysis of verbs and their complements.
Verb Phrases
came read a book read a book about poetry read a book when Kate came told me a lie
VP → V VP→ V (NP) (NP) (PP) (S)
VP → V NP ↗
VP → V NP PP Careful: Only adjuncts are strictly speaking optional. Of course, a transitive
verb requires an NP. Still, not every VP requires an NP. Hence the brackets.
VP → V NP S
VP → V NP NP
• Adjective Phrases (APs)
The head is an adjective, can be modified for example by adverbs: quite pretty
An adjective is a word that modifies a noun, and can occur as a comparative and superlative. a big dog a bigger dog the biggest dog
An adjective phrase is not a prominent category (not nearly as important as a noun phrase or verb phrase), but we can use the term to describe an
adjective that itself is modified or takes a complement. a [ very big ] dog she's [ proud of herself ] I'm [ happy to meet you ]
Adjective Phrases
Happy very happy so happy about my job
AP → A AP → Adv A AP → Adv A PP AP → (Adv) A (PP)
• Prepositional Phrases (PPs)
The head is a preposition, modified by a noun phrase: with the dress
There can be phrases within phrases! e.g. I went out with the really pretty girl from Canada.
A preposition normally takes a noun phrase as a complement. The result is a prepositional phrase.
she gave the book [ to me ] the dog is [ in the yard ] a book [ with a red cover ]
Prepositional Phrases
in the garden over the top about John against all odds along the river beyond belief
Some prepositions are complex. I saw her [ in front of the store ]. The cat pushed the toy [ out of the box ]
Prepositions in English can also occur without a complement; they're often called adverbs or "particles" (when associated with a verb).
The dog ran in the house the dog ran in I'd seen him before that encounter. I'd seen him before.
Units of syntactic structure (building blocks of phrases, clauses, and sentences):

Unit type Form Functions (roles in building larger syntactic units)

Noun, Verb,
word -building block for a phrase -roles in phrases: head, modifier
Adjective, etc.

Noun Phrase, Verb -building block for a clause or phrase -roles in other phrases: modifier of head, complement of head
phrase Phrase, -roles in clauses: subject, direct object, indirect object, adverbial, object complement, subject
Adjective Phrase, etc. complement, etc.
 -finite, nonfinite -building block for a sentence or phrase
-independent (main), -clauses may take the roles of phrases within phrases (modifier, for example)
clause
dependent -a clause may take a role that a phrase usually takes within another clause (e.g., subject or direct object)
(subordinate) -a dependent clause may modify a main clause

consists of at least one

sentence -asserts a fact/belief, asks a question, gives a command, etc.
finite clause
The Function of Phrases
A phrase may function as a verb, noun, an adverb, or an adjective.
Questions/Exercises: 1. What are the major categories in English? 2. Illustrate the concept of syntactic phrase with your own examples.
Week 7.Syntax (2)
Phrase Structure Rules tell us how words can combine into phrases and phrases into sentences. In other words, they give us information
about the constituent structure of phrases.
Phrase Structure Rules define how words can combine into phrases and phrases into sentences. They tell us something about the internal
structure of sentences. In other words, they give us information about the constituent structure of phrases. What does this mean?
Phrase Structure
S → (COMP) NP (AUX) VP: means that a sentence consists of a noun phrase and a verb phrase plus optional complementizer and
auxiliary verb in the order given in the rule (optional components are always in parentheses).
Sentences consist of a noun phrase (NP) and a verb phrase (VP). This can be rewritten as S → NP + VP
Sentences→S → NP + VP
John came.
My older sister put the car in the garage
The man who wasn‘t there lives in the outskirts of London
The girl with glasses arrived late
The basic distinction between NP and VP roughly corresponds to the traditional distinction between subject and predicate!
Other rules: NP → (DET) (AP) N (PP) (S) VP → V (NP) (PP) (S) AP → (ADV) A (PP) PP → P NP
Note: These rules are by no means exhaustive, but they can generate a fair amount of possible English sentences.
The phrase structural rule for NP, VP, AP, and PP can be written as follows:
NP→ (Det) N (PP) VP→ (Qual) V (NP) AP→ (Deg) A (PP) PP→ (Deg) P (NP)
XP rules
In all four phrases, the specifier is attached at the top level to the left of head while the complement is attached to the right. A single general
phrasal structural rule formulated as follows: The XP rule: XP→(specifier) X ( complement) XP (Specifier, X head, Complement）
X_ Theory
It attempts to identify syntactic features common to all languages. It claims that there are certain structural similarities among all phrasal categories
of all languages, including one known as the "X-bar", which does not appear in traditional phrase structure rules.
XP (phrase level)
Specifier x
A partial list of PS rules for English x head Complement
a. S -- NP VP b. NP -- Det N c. NP – N d. VP -- V (for intransitive verbs)
e. VP -- V NP (for transitive verbs) f. VP -- VP conj VPg. NP _ NP conj NP h. VP -- V NP PP
i. VP -- V NP NP j. VP -- V CP k. CP -- Comp S l. PP -- P NP
m. NP -- Det N PP n. NP -- Det N CP o. S -- NP Aux VP
Construction and constituents
Construction: the overall process of internal organization of a grammatical unit.
How a phrase, a clause or a sentence is constructed out of a set of morphemes by following a set of rules.
Constituents: a sequence of units which plays a functional role in grammar.
Immediate constituents: the smallest units in a construction IC analysis= immediate constituents analysis represented by “tree diagrams”.
Trees diagram
Phrase structures can be shown by using so called phrase markers. The commonest of them is the phrase structure tree (or syntactic tree):
How to draw a tree diagram e.g. Some people in this class draw extremely funny trees.
1. identify word classes.
D N PD N V Adv A N
| | | | | | | | |
Some people in this class draw extremely funny trees.
2. identify the heads of phrases
S
NP VP

PP NP PP NP
NP AP NP AP

D N P D N V Adv A N D N PD N V Adv A N
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
Some people in this class draw extremely funny trees. Some people in this class draw extremely funny trees.
To sum up:
1. Identify the word classes. 2. Identify the heads and elements that belong together.
3. Expand the top node (S node). 4. Join the upper and lower subtrees.
When following these steps, also bear in mind the general principles of tree diagram design.
First, make sure that the structure you are building is in line with the phrase structure rules discussed above. Second, make sure that each
and every head expands into a phrase. Thus, every N has a corresponding NP; every P has a PP; every A has an AP, and so on. Third, lines
must not cross. Never are you allowed to cross two branches.
Endocentric construction（内向结构）：A word or a group of words serving as definable Center or Head （中心成分）
NP, VP, AP belong to endocentric types. e.g. The two young girls. VP e.g. will be leaving

Head Head

Exocentric construction（外向结构）
None of the words in a group of syntactically related words is functionally equivalent to the group as a whole.
No definable “Head” PP, Predicate (v+o) construction, and connective (be+ complement) construction are included in this category.
e.g. behind the door drop the ball seemed angry
Questions/Exercises: 1.What is a phrase?
2.Sum up the major phrase structure rules in English with examples. 3. Discuss IC analysis with examples.
Week 8.Semantics (1)
What is semantics? literally the study of meaning in language
Semantics describes (or more accurately, attempts to describe) the relationship between language and the world.
There are many different approaches to the way in which meaning in language is studied. Philosophers, for instance, have investigated
the relation between linguistic expression, such as the words of a language, and person, things and events in the world to which these words
refer.
Linguistic semantics is the study of the relationship between words and meanings.
It deals with the complex meanings of words, and their interrelationships. It is central to the study of communication.
Linguists have investigated, for example, the ways in which meaning in a language structured and have distinguished between different
types of meaning.
Phonetics and phonology are the study of the properties of linguistic forms in this sense -- what sounds make up morphemes, words, phrases,
sentences, whole utterances.Semantics is the study of the meaning of these forms.
Truth conditional semantics
To know what a sentence means is to know the circumstances under which it is true (=its truth conditions)
Semantics (of a sentence) = what must hold true in the world for the sentence to be judged true.
Propositions
“A sentence has truth conditions” – equivalently, it conveys propositional content.
A proposition has a truth value (T or F) It is a statement that certain truth conditions hold. Often thought of as a state of affairs in the world.
A proposition is itself usually expressed as a sentence – we can use quotes to distinguish propositions
Sentence: She hit him with the bloody frying pan. Proposition: ‘Mary hit John with the frying pan.’
Another possibility would be to express propositions in a non-English metalanguage.
Different levels of meaning
Sentence meaning (linguistic semantics)/Propositional meaning (truth-conditional semantics)/Utterance meaning (semantics + pragmatics)
What is meaning ? Some theories:
The naming theory (命名论 ): Words= labels of the objects they stand for. Words→ names or labels for things
Conceptualism or mentalism (概念主义/心灵主义)
The relation between words and things through mediation of concepts of the mind. No direct link between a linguistic form and what it
refers to Following F. de Saussure’s “sign theory”: the linguistic sign= signifier（能指) +signified (所指）
The notion of "form + meaning" was the sign as defined by the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure
Every linguistic sign has two components:
signifier (French signifiant): the "sound image" or form,i.e. pronunciation
signified (French signifié): the concept represented, i.e. meaning
According to Saussure, a linguistic sign＝a concept＋a sound image, but ≠ a thing +a name
The sound image is not just a purely physical thing( sound wave), but a psychological imprint of the sound. ※
Semantic triangle
British linguists C. K. Ogaden (1889—1957 )and I.A. Richards(1893—1979 ) presented the classic “semantic triangle”,as manifested in the
following diagram. Semantic triangle（语义三角关系）
Thought or reference (concept, meaning)
↙ ↘
Symbol or form--- -----------------------------------Referent
(word/sentence) (object)
Semantic Triangle: Richards and Ogden's graphic depiction of the indirect relationship between a symbol and its referent.
Reference: The thought stimulated by a symbol or a referent.
Symbol: A special type of sign (including most words) that has no natural connection with the thing it describes.
Referent: The actual thing to which a symbol refers.
Thus the symbol of a word signified “things” by virtue of the “concept” associated with the form of the word in the minds of the speakers of the
language; and the CONCEPT looked at from this point of view is the meaning of the word.
Contextualism(语境理论）
Contextualism is based on the presumption that one can derive meaning from or reduce it to observable context, i.e.
Meaning can be derived or reduced from observable context.
Two kinds of context
The situational context: all language behaviors occur in a particular spatiotemporal situation. Factors in the situational context: the speaker and
hearer, the action they are performing at the time various external objects and events deictic features
Every utterance occurs in a particular spatiotemporal situation, so the following factors are related to the situational context:
the speaker and hearer; the actions they are performing at the time; various external objects and events;“deictic features”
The linguistic context: the probability of one word’s co-occurrence or collocation with another, which forms part of the “meaning”
The various kinds of meaning
Lexical meaning: the meaning of lexical items –the meaningful parts of speech, such as n. v. adj, adv, etc.
Structural meaning: the meaning of grammatical structures, such as distinction between subject, object, tense, number, etc.
Social meaning: the use of language to establish and maintain social roles and social relations.
Affective meaning: emphasis is on the relationships between language and the mental state of the speaker,(personal/emotional).
Sentence meaning: the meaning of sentences, of the constituent items, of the grammatical structure.
Utterance meaning: the speaker meaning in relation to contextual factors.
Semantic meaning: the content of linguistic units ( items).
Contextual (situational) meaning: when the emphasis is on the way variations in the extralinguistic situation affect the understanding and
interpretation of language.
Speaker meaning: the notion of speaker meaning was derived in order to account for the intuition that we sometimes express thoughts that
are not directly expressed in the sentence meaning but which the audience must derive in order for us to consider the speech act successful.
Indirect speech acts are a good example of speech acts that seem to require an additional SPEAKER MEANING.
Sense and reference
Sense: complex system of relationships that hold between the linguistic elements themselves (mostly the words), concerned only with
intra-linguistic relations. 一个词或短语与其它词语发生关系时所处的地位。例：old与young的意义关系是old＝no more young
Sense is concerned with the inherent meaning of the linguistic form. It is the collection of all the features of the linguistic form; it is abstract
and de-contextualized. It is the aspect of meaning dictionary compliers are interested in.
e.g. (1) The Evening star is the Evening Star. (2) The Morning Star is the Morning Star.
The two expressions 'the morning star' and 'the evening star' had the same reference, since they each referred to the same planet. But
they could not be said to have the same sense.
Reference: the relationships between the linguistic elements, words sentences, etc, and the non-linguistic world of experience.
词与所代表的事物、行为、事件及特性之间的关系
(a) Two expressions that entail each other have the same reference.
(b) If we have an expression A containing an expression B and we replace B in A with an expression C that has the same reference as B, the
reference of A does not change. ex: a. the sister of John. b. the daughter of John's parents.
Questions/Exercises: 1. What are the major aspects of meaning of language?
2. How do you understand ‘semantic triangle’? 3. How does sense differ from reference?
Week 9.Semantics (2)
Semantic field: Semantic field is also called “lexical field”. It is the organization of related words and expressions into a system which
shows their relationship to one another. For example, kinship terms such as father, mother, brother, sister, uncle, aunt belong to a semantic
field whose relevant features include generation, sex, member ship of the father’s or mother’s side of the family, etc.
A semantic field is an area of meaning which can be delimited from others in a language. Thus we might talk about a semantic field of
FOOD or CLOTHING or EMOTIONS. Within CLOTHING we find words for all the different kinds of garments, plus those for making
and wearing them. Grouping words into sets or fields can be a useful way of learning vocabulary.
Semantic Field is a somewhat elastic term. Thus we could say that ANIMALS and PLANTS are semantic fields, or we could group them
together into a single larger field called LIVING THINGS. Semantic fields are composed of smaller groupings called lexical sets or sub-fields.
Within EMOTIONS, we can identify lexical sets of words for Love, Fear, Anger, etc.
Sense relationships
Words are in different sense relations with each other. Some words have more similar senses than others.
The relations which lexical items contract with each other within the language.
The meaning of a word is for the most part based on its sense relationships towards other words surrounding it in a semantic field or by
the role it fulfills within the action described within a sentence.
Major sense relations
Synonymy: sameness / close similarity of meaning A word which has the same, or nearly the same, meaning as another word.
Dictionary makers rely to a great extent on the existence of synonymy for their definition.
Polysemy :a word having two or more closely related meanings
e.g. foot in He hurt his foot. She stood at the foot of the stairs. head in head of the department the head of bear
Homonymy: （同形同音异义词）:Words which are written in the same way and sound alike but which have different meanings
e.g. Don’t lie. You have to lie down.
Antonymy : a word which is opposite in meaning to another word
Binary : e.g. true/ false; dead/ live Gradable: e.g. old/ young; big/ small
Ungradable antonyms: the denial of the one implies the assertion of the other e.g. male/female;
Gradability: antonyms which are gradable, there are often intermediate forms between the pairs. e.g. hot/cold; ( hot/warm/cool/cold)
Relational opposites:Pairs of words that exhibit the reversal of a relationship between the two items are called relati onal opposites.
e.g. husband/ wife father/ son teacher/ student buy/ sell let/ rent
Hyponymy （下义词、下义关系）：a relationship between two words, in which the meaning of one of the words includes the meaning of the
other words Superordinate (上义词） vehicle hyponyms（下义词） bus car truck van pick-up
Sense relations between sentences
As there are certain relations between lexical items, so are there certain relations between sentences and also between constituents of the
same sentence.
The following examples show such relations, and they are analyzed in terms of truth conditions.
1. X is synonymous with Y In terms of truth conditions, if X is true, Y is true, and if X is false, Y is false.
e.g. X: He was a bachelor all his life. Y: He never married all his life.
X: The boy killed the dog. Y: The dog was killed by the boy.
2. X is inconsistent with Y In terms of truth condition, if X is true, Y is false, and if X is false, Y is true.
 e.g. X: John is married. Y: John is a bachelor.
X: This is my first visit to your country. Y: I have been to your country before.
3. X entails Y. ( Y is an entailment of X) Entailment is a relation of inclusion. If X entails Y, then the meaning of X is included in Y.
e.g. X: John married a blond heiress. Y: john married a blond. X: He has been to Paris. Y: He has been to France.
Analyzing the relation of entailment in terms of truth condition, we can come to the following conclusion:
If X is true, Y is necessarily true, i.e. If he has been to Paris, he must have been to France.
If X is false, Y may be true or false, i.e. If he has not been to Paris, he have been to France or he has not been to France.
4. X presupposes Y.( Y is a prerequisite of X.)
e.g. X: John’s bike needs repairing. Y: John has a bike. X: The king of France is bald. Y: France has a king.
Analyzing the relation of presupposition in terms of truth condition, we can conclude: If X is true, Y must be true, i.e. If John’s bike
needs repairing, John must have a bike. If X is false, Y is still true, i.e. If John’s bike does not need repairing, John still has a bike.
Entailment （蕴含）: a relationship between two or more sentences.
If knowing that one sentence is true gives us certain knowledge of the truth of the second sentence, then the first sentence entails the
second.（蕴含所涉及的是句子本身的意义，它不依赖于句子使用的上下文）
Presupposition: (预设) : What a speaker or writer assumes that the receiver of the message already knows.
e.g. A: What about inviting Simon this afternoon? B: What a good idea; then he can give Monica a lift.
Here, the presuppositions are, that both A and B know who Simon and Monica are, that Simon has a car, and that Monica does not have
a car at the moment.
Presupposition can also be seen as a relation between propositions, although many linguists (including George Yule) prefer to see
presupposition as strictly pragmatic, and a relation between a speaker and a proposition.
Proposition : (命题): (in phil, ling, sem) the basic meaning which a sentence expresses. Propositions consist of
(a) something which is named or talked about (known as the argument 主目or entity 实体) (b) an assertion 表述or predication 术题.
A sentence may express or imply more than one proposition
Examples: Sentence Maria’s friend, Tony, who is a dentist, likes apples.
Underlying proposition Maria has a friend. The friend’s name is Tony. Tony is a dentist. Tony likes apples.
Componential analysis
Componential analysis defines the meaning of a lexical element in terms of SEMANTIC COMPONENTS.
Examples: a) man= HUMAN ADULT MALE b) woman= HUMAN ADULT – MALE
Words can be analyzed and described in terms of their semantic components, which usually come in pairs called semantic oppositions:
"Up" and "Down," for example, are related in that they both describe vertical directions, one in one direction (call it "plus") and the other
in the other (call it "minus"). Linguists have devised a number of ways to represent these components.
Here is a version of the one designed by the linguist Geoffrey Leech:
Binary taxonomy +LIVE alive -LIVE dead
Multiple taxonomy *METAL gold #METAL silver @METAL copper etc.
Polarity ^SIZE large vSIZE small
Relation >PARENT is the parent of <PARENT is the child of (also bidirectional, such as sibling)
Hierarchy 1LENGTH inch 2LENGTH foot 3LENGTH yard etc.
Inverse opposition [POSSIBLE possible ]POSSIBLE necessary (also all/some, allow/compel, etc.)
Examples: father = +MALE >PARENT daughter = -MALE <PARENT brother = +MALE <>SIBLING
grandfather = +MALE >PARENT >PARENT or +MALE >LINEAL 2GENERATIONS cousin = <PARENT...<>SIBLING...>PARENT
Questions/Exercises: 1. Illustrate your understanding of sense relations with your own examples.
2. Describe componential analysis with examples.
Week 10.Pragmatics (1)
General definition of pragmatics: Pragmatics studies language use, as opposed to language structure.
More specific definition: Pragmatics studies how linguistic properties and contextual factors interact in the interpretation of utterances.
“Pragmatics studies the use of language in human communication as determined by the conditions of society.”
“Pragmatics studies the factors that govern our choice of language in social interaction and the effects of our choice on others.”
“Pragmatics is the area of language function that embraces the use of language in social contexts (knowing what to say, how to say it, and
when to say it and how to "be" with other people).” of words or
Pragmatics is a systematic way of explaining language use in context. It seeks to explain aspects of meaning which cannot be found in the
plain sense of words or structures, as explained by semantics. As a field of language study, pragmatics is fairly new. Its origins lie in
philosophy of language and the American philosophical school of pragmatism.
As a discipline within language science, its roots lie in the work of (Herbert) Paul Grice on conversational implicature and the
cooperative principle, and on the work of Stephen Levinson, Penelope Brown and Geoff Leech on politeness.
What does pragmatics include?
Speech act theory Felicity conditions Conversational implicature The cooperative principle
Conversational maxims Relevance Politeness Phatic tokens Deixis
Semantics & Pragmatics
Both semantics and pragmatics are concerned with the meaning of language.
★In semantics, meaning: surface meaning ★In pragmatics, meaning: meaning in context
Semantic meaning: static Pragmatic meaning: dynamic
Meaning from the language = semantics Meaning from the context = pragmatics
(identity of / relationship between speaker and hearer, situation, beliefs, intentions …)
Semantics: truth or satisfaction conditions of the sentence. Ignores context
Pragmatics: intentions of speaker and hearer. Context is important ¡°It is cold in here¡±
★Semantics (of a sentence)= what must hold true in the world for the sentence to be judged true.
★Pragmatics = the rest (all speaker- or context-related meaning). [=meaning-semantics]
The semantic-pragmatic distinction fundamentally concerns two types of information associated with an utterance of a sentence.
Semantic information is encoded in the sentence; pragmatic information is generated by, or at least made relevant by, the act of uttering the
sentence. --Kent Bach, a Professor of Philosophy at San Francisco State University
Semantics examines the ways in which words, phrases, and sentences can have meaning.
Semantics usually divides words into their sense and reference.
Pragmatics studies the ways that context affects meaning. The two primary forms of context important to pragmatics are linguistic
context and situational context. Meaning and context
Literal meaning is a property of linguistic expressions. Roughly speaking, the literal meaning of a complex sequence of words is determined
by its grammatical properties and the meanings that are conventionally assigned to those words.
Meaning in context
How do words and sentences acquire new meanings or change their meanings in their use?
The meaning of language in use Meaning in use/meaning in context
What is context?
Four sub-areas involved in fleshing out what we mean by context.
physical context epistemic context linguistic context social context
Discourse that surrounds a language unit and helps to determine its interpretation
Several Types of Context:
Physical context:– Objects surrounding the communication, place and time of the communication, what is going on around, etc.
Epistemic context: the epistemic context refers to what speakers know about the world. For example, what background knowledge is shared by the
speakers is crucially part of your epistemic knowledge when you have a conversation with someone else?
Linguistic context:– What has been said before in the conversation? If my mom heard you talk like that, ….
Linguistic context: the linguistic context refers to what has been said already in the utterance. For example, if I begin a discussion by referring to
Jane Smith and in the next sentence refer to "her" as being a top notch athlete, the linguistic context lets me know that the antecedent of "her" (the
person "her" refers to) is Jane Smith.
Social context: the social context refers to the social relationship among speakers and hearers.
The social context of the linguistic code is the culture - seen as a network of information systems, and the social context of language
behaviour is the situation in which socio-cultural meanings are exchanged by means of, amongst other things, the linguistic code.
Contextual knowledge allows for the hearer to comprehend that the intended meaning is distinct from the literal meaning.
In Halliday's words: "Context is in this kind of model a construct of cultural meanings, realised functionally in the form of acts of meaning
in the various semiotic modes, of which language is one. The ongoing processes of linguistic choice, whereby a speaker is selecting within the
resources of the linguistic system, are effectively cultural choices, and acts of meaning are cultural acts."
Deixis
Definitions: Deixis is the term used to refer generally to those linguistic elements which make interpretable reference only by virtue of an
indexi connection to some aspect of the speech event.
The term ‘deixis’ from the Greek word for pointing, refers to a particular way in which the interpretation of certain linguistic expressions
(‘deictics’ or indexicals’) is dependent on the context in which they are produced or interpreted. Levinson (1994:853)
Deixis is reference by means of an expression whose interpretation is relative to the (usually) extralinguistic context of the utterance, such as
who is speaking the time or place of speaking the gestures of the speaker, or the current location in the discourse.
Examples (English) Here are examples of deictic expressions:
I You Now There That The following Tenses
Person deixis: Person deixis is deictic reference to the participant role of a referent, such as the speaker
the addressee, and referents which are neither speaker nor addressee.
Person deixis is commonly expressed by the following kinds of constituents: Pronouns, Possessive affixes of nouns, Agreement affixes of verbs
Person deixis: encodes the role of participants in the speech event such as speaker, addressee, other entities.
Place deixis: Place deixis is deictic reference to a location relative to the location of a participant in the speech event, typically the speaker.
Place deixis: encodes spatial locations relative to the interlocutors (demonstratives — proximal and distal in English, adverbs of place:
'here' and 'there'. Examples (English) this (way) that (direction) here there
Time deixis: Time deixis is reference to time relative to a temporal reference point. Typically, this point is the moment of utterance.
Time deixis: encodes temporal units relative to the time of the utterance (coding time (time of utterance), and receiving time (time of the
recovery of the information by the hearer). Tense markers and adverbs of time ('now', 'tomorrow', 'next year').
Discourse deixis:: Discourse deixis is deictic reference to a portion of a discourse relative to the speaker's current “location” in the discourse.
e.g. I am hungry — that is what I said;
Examples (English) Use of this to refer to a story one is about to tell in: I bet you haven’t heard this story.
Reference to Chapter 7 of a book by means of in the next chapter or in the previous chapter, depending on whether the reference is made
from Chapter 6 or 8. Use of this in a creaky-voiced utterance of: This is what phoneticians call a creaky voice.
Social deixis: Social deixis is reference to the social characteristics of, or distinctions between, the participants or referents in a speech event.
Social deixis: encodes social relationships and other social distinctions.
Example The distinction, found in many Indo-European languages, between familiar and polite second person pronouns is an expression of
social deixis . e.g. Vous/tu (Fr) Sie/du (Gm) Lei/tu (It) Vy/ty (Ru)
Empathetic(移情的) deixis: Empathetic deixis is the metaphorical use of deictic forms to indicate emotional or other psychological “distance”
or “proximity” between a speaker and a referent.
Examples (English): The use of this to indicate the speaker’s empathy. The use of that to indicate the speaker’s emotional distance.
Entailment and Presupposition
ENTAILMENT: a term derived from formal logic and now often used as a part of the study of semantics. It refers to a relation between
a pair of sentences such that the truth of the second sentence necessarily follows from the truth of the first.
e.g. I can see a dog. I can see an animal.
One cannot both assert the first and deny the second.
Entailment is a relation between sentence meanings, or propositions. (Sometimes, speaking loosely, we talk as though it were a relation between
sentences.) Presupposition can also be seen as a relation between propositions, although many linguists (including George Yule) prefer to see
presupposition as strictly pragmatic, and a relation between a speaker and a proposition.
 Proposition (命题): the basic meaning which a sentence expresses. Propositions consists of (a) something which is named or talked about
( known as the argument or entity[主目])(b) an assertion or prediction[述题]which is made about the argument.
A sentence may express or imply more than one proposition. e.g. Those nice red apples cost a lot.
Expresses propositions that “the apples cost a lot”, “the apples are nice”, and “the apples are red”.
Different linguistic forms can be shown to express the same proposition. e.g. The cat ate the meat. The meat was eaten by the cat.
Entailment is concerned with the meaning of the sentence itself. It does not depend on the context in which a sentence is used.
Presuppositions are implications that are often felt to be in the background — to be assumed by the speaker to be already known to the
addressee. The concept of presupposition is often treated as the relationship between two propositions.
In the case bellow, we have a sentence that contains a proposition (p) and another proposition (q), which is easily presupposed by any
listener. Debora’s cat is cute. (p) Debora has a cat. (q)
Relationship between Entailment and presupposition
Although entailment is not a pragmatic concept, which is defined as what logically follows from what is asserted in the Utterance by
Yule(1996:25),it is related to the understanding of meaning. According to Yule(1996:25), Speakers have presuppositions while sentences, not
speakers, have entailments. Take a look in the example below: Graciela’s brother bought two apartments.
This sentence presupposes that Graciela exists and that she has a brother. The speaker may also hold the more specific presupposition
that she has only a brother and her brother has a lot of money. All these presuppositions are held by the speaker’s and all of them can be
wrong, in fact. The example above will be treated as having the entailments that Graciela’s brother bought something; she bought 2
apartments, one apartment, one house and many other similar logical consequences. These entailments are communicated without being
said and regardless if the speaker’s beliefs are right or wrong.
Entailment (||-).
A sentence (meaning) A entails B (A ||- B) if whenever A is true, then B must also be true. Entailment is a very strong kind of implication.
It is a semantic relation — thus, it holds no matter what the facts of the world happen to be (it holds in all possible worlds).
Examples: a. Mary broke the window ||- The window broke. b. Sue and Fred went to the party ||- Sue went to the party.
Questions/Exercises: 1. Why is context important to the interpretation of language meaning in use?
2. What is the difference between the meaning of language in semantics and that in pragmatics?
Week 11.Pragmatics (2)
Speech Act Theory (SAT): Pragmatics starts from the observation that people use language to accomplish certain kinds of acts, broadly known
as speech acts, and distinct from physical acts like drinking a glass of water, or mental acts like thinking about drinking a glass of water.
What is a speech act?
Definition: A speech act is an act that a speaker performs when making an utterance. It is best described as "in saying something, we do
something," A speech act is a minimal functional unit in human communication.
Speech acts include:asking for a glass of water,promising to drink a glass of water, threatening to drink a glass of water, ordering someone
to drink a glass of water, and so on. What is Speech Act Theory?
Speech act theory was developed by the Oxford philosopher J. L. Austin whose 1955 lectures at Harvard University were Published
posthumously as How to Do Things with Words (1975). In his famous work, "How to do Things with Words," J. L. Austin outlined his theory of
speech acts and the concept of performative language, in which to say something is to do something. He claims that many utterances (things people
say) are equivalent to actions. Speech-Act Theory
1.Speaking is a performance 2.In speaking we do certain things, e.g., promise, request, question, etc. 3.Locutions, Illocutions and Perlocutions
Austin’s speech act theory
Austin distinguishes between illocutionary and perlocutionary speech acts.
An interesting type of illocutionary speech acts are performatives, which are expressions such as "I nominate John to be President.", "I
sentence you to ten years imprisonment." or "I promise to pay you back.".
Performatives
One subtype of direct speech acts exists in English and in many other languages, and allows us to expand the kinds of direct speech acts
we can make beyond the three basic types that have their own special syntax. These are the direct speech acts that use performative verbs to
accomplish their ends.
Performative: implying that by each utterance a speaker not only says something but also does certain things: giving information, stating a fact
or hinting an attitude. The study of performatives led to the hypothesis of Speech act theory that holds that a speech event embodies three acts: a
locutionary act, an illocutionary act and a perlocutionary act (Austin, 1962; Searle, 1969);
Performative verbs can also be used with the three basic speech act types as exemplified above, associated with making statements, requests,
and commands respectively: I assert that Jenny got an A on the test. I ask you who took the photos. I order you to close the window.
To these can be added performative verbs that allow us to directly convey promises, threats, warnings, etc.
I advise you to keep up the payments on your car. I warn you not to step across this line.
I promise you that I will pay the money back by the end of the month. I bet you a dollar that it'll rain on the parade.
Speech act theory attempts to explain how speakers use language to accomplish intended actions and how hearers infer intended
meaning from what is said.
locutionary (what the words say), saying something with a certain meaning in traditional sense.
illocutionary (what the words do) having a certain ‘force’, e.g. informing, ordering, warning, undertaking.
perlocutionary (what the speaker intends to do by uttering the words). bringing about or achieve something, e.g. convincing, persuading,
deterring.
These are speech acts of a special kind where the utterance of the right words by the right person in the right situation effectively is (or
accomplishes) the social act. In some cases, the speech must be accompanied by a ceremonial or ritual action. Whether the speaker in fact
has the social or legal (or other kind of) standing to accomplish the act depends on some things beyond the
mere speaking of the words. These are conditions necessary to the success of a speech act.
Felicity conditions: Conditions That Must Be Satisfied If a Speech Act Is to Be Performed Appropriately, Correctly, and Happily.
It's common to divide speech acts into two categories: direct and indirect. There are three basic types of direct speech acts, and they correspond to
three special sentence types that seem to occur in most of the world's languages, including English.
Direct vs. Indirect
Direct Speech Acts: The meaning is more or less encoded in the literal meaning of the utterance
Indirect Speech Acts: The meaning that is relevant is the speech act meaning, not simply the literal meaning
Indirect Speech Acts
Returning to the speech act of questioning, we can easily come up with a number of alternate ways to ask the same question by using sentence types
other than interrogative. e.g. I wonder whether… I’d like to… It would be nice if…
Searle’s speech act theory
Assertives (Representatives ) – here the speaker asserts a proposition to be true, using such verbs as:
affirm, assert, believe, claim, conclude, deny, inform, notify, remind, report…
Directives – here the speaker tries to make the hearer do something, with such words as:
advise, ask, beg, challenge, command, dare, demand, invite, insist, order, request, tell, urge…
Commissives – here the speaker commits himself (or herself) to a (future) course of action, with verbs such as:
commit, consent, guarantee, offer, pledge, promise, refuse, swear, threaten, vow, undertake…
Expressives – the speaker expresses an attitude to or about a state of affairs, using such verbs as:
apologize, appreciate, boast, congratulate, deplore, detest, regret, thank, welcome…
Declarations – the speaker alters the external status or condition of an object or situation, solely by making the utterance: I now pronounce
you man and wife, I sentence you to be hanged by the neck until you be dead, I name this ship...
These five illocutionary/perlocutionary points:
Assertives/Representatives: statements may be judged true or false because they aim to describe a state of affairs in the world.
Directives: statements attempt to make the other person's actions fit the propositional content.
Commissives: statements which commit the speaker to a course of action as described by the propositional content.
Expressives: statements that express the “sincerity condition of the speech act”.
Declaratives: statements that attempt to change the world by “representing it as having been changed”.
Grice’s Theory of Conversational Implicature
The meaning of implicature:The word “implicature” is derived from the verb “to imply”. Originally, “to imply” means “to fold something
into something else”; hence that which is implied is “ folded in”, and has to be “unfolded” in order to be understood.
An implicature is anything that is inferred from an utterance but that is not a condition for the truth of the utterance.
H. P. Grice, who coined the term “implicature,” and classified the phenomenon, developed an influential theory to explain and predict
conversational implicatures, and describe how they are understood.
An implicature is something meant, implied, or suggested distinct from what is said.
Implicatures can be part of sentence meaning or dependent on conversational context, and can be conventional or unconventional.
Implicature: referring to an indirect or implicit meaning of an utterance derived from context that is not present from its conventional use.
The theory of (conversational) implicature is a theory of how people use language.
e.g. The expression Some of the boys were at the party. implicates in most contexts Not all of the boys were at the party.
The notion of (conversational) implicature stands for pragmatic inferences that derive from principles outside the domain of language -
from principles of general cooperative interaction.
A conversational implicature is, therefore, something which is implied in conversation, that is something which is left implicit in actual
language use. Mey,J.L. (2001).p.45
Conversational implicatures have become one of the principal subjects of pragmatics. Figures of speech provide familiar examples.
Gricean Conversational Maxims
The work of H.P. Grice takes pragmatics farther than the study of speech acts. Grice's aim was to understand how "speaker's meaning" -- what
someone uses an utterance to mean -- arises from "sentence meaning" -- the literal (form and) meaning of an utterance. Grice proposed that many
aspects of "speaker's meaning" result from the assumption that the participants in a conversation are cooperating in an attempt to reach mutual goals
-- or at least are pretending to do so! He called this the Cooperative Principle.
Cooperative principle:
Make your contribution to the conversation such as is required, a the stage at which it occurs, by the accepted purpose or direction of the
exchange in which you are engaged. Four sub-parts or maxims
(1) The maxim of quality ("Tell the truth") Do not say what you believe to be false. Do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence.
(2) The maxim of quantity ("Say just as much as is necessary")
Make your contribution as informative as is required for the current purposes of the exchange. Don’t be more informative than required.
Do not make the contribution more informative than is required.
(3) The maxim of relevance ("Stick to the point") Make your contributions relevant.
(4) The maxim of manner ("Be clear") Avoid obscurity Avoid ambiguity Be brief Be orderly
The Nature of the Maxims
Although the maxims have the form of prescriptive statements, they are not
Rather, they are observations that encode the assumptions that speakers are using in actual discourse situations
We can see how people follow these maxims to deduce speaker’s meaning in simple examples
Relevance theory
The notion of relevance has been used in many areas of cognitive science, including logic, artificial intelligence and psychology of reasoning.
Relevance theory may be seen as an attempt to work out in detail one of Grice’s central claims: that an essential feature of most human
communication, both verbal and non-verbal, is the expression and recognition of intentions. (Grice 1989: Essays 1-7, 14, 18;)
Relevance Theory: a different view for deriving implicatures.
Implicatures are derivable via a deduction procedure after implicated premises are retrieved from the context or from assumed
(speaker/hearer) knowledge. Retrieval of premises is constrained by cost of processing.
Example (1) a. A: Smith doesn’t seem to have a girlfriend these days. b. B: He’s been paying a lot of visits to NY lately.
c. Implicated premise: If Smith has been paying a lot of visits to NY lately, he’s probably got a girlfriend there.
d. Implicated conclusion: Smith has probably got a girlfriend in NY.
Example (2) a. A: Have you read Susan’s book? b. B: I don’t read autobiographies.
c. Implicated premise: Susan’s book is an autobiography. d. Implicated conclusion: B has not read Susan’s book.
What is politeness? Politeness theory
The study of language about how languages express the SOCIAL DISTANCE between speakers and their different ROLE RELATIONSHIPS
 Politeness markers
Politeness markers include differences between FORMAL SPEECH and COLLOQUIAL SPEECH, and the use of ADDRESS FORMS.
In expressing politeness, the anthropologists Penelope Brown and Stephen Levinson (1978) distinguished between POSITIVE POLITENESS
STRATEGIES [ those showing the closeness, intimacy, and rapport between speaker and hearer] and NEGATIVE POLITENESS STRATEGIES
[those indicating the social distance between speaker and hearer]
The Canadian sociologist of language, Erving Goffman wrote about face in conjunction with how people interact in daily life. He claims
that everyone is concerned, to some extent, with how others perceive them. We act socially, striving to maintain the identity we create for
others to see. This identity, or public self-image, is what we project when we interact socially.
face is “the positive social value a person effectively claims for himself by the line others assume he has taken during particular contact”
“Face” in politeness study = a speaker’s sense of linguistic and social identity in social communication
Penelope Brown and Levinson (1987: 62) base their theory on the concept of face, following Goffman (1967).
They define face as the public self image that all rational adult members of society possess.
Basic notions of Politeness Theory: The concept of face
The concept of face is very important for politeness theory.
Brown and Levinson’s definition of ‘face’: “ the public self-image every member wants to claim for himself ” (1987:61)
Face consists of negative face, the desire to be unimpeded, and positive face, the desire to be liked/admired.
Negative face and positive face
negative face: the basic claim to territories, personal preserves, rights to non-distinction – i.e. to freedom of action and freedom from
imposition—wanting your actions not to be constrained or inhibited by others.
positive face: the positive consistent self-image or ‘personality‘ (crucially including the desire that this self-image be appreciated and approved of)
claimed by interactants.
Questions/Exercises: 1. What is conversational implicature?
2. Discuss the differences between positive politeness strategies and negative politeness strategies with examples.
Week 12.Language and society (1)
A society is any group of people (or, less commonly, plants or animals) living together in a group and constituting a single related,
interdependent community.
A society is an extended social group having a distinctive cultural and economic organization.
It is a group of people that form a semi-closed (or semi-open) system, in which most interactions are with other individuals belonging to
the group. Society is distinguished from culture in that society generally refers to the community of people while culture generally refers to
the systems of meaning -- what Geertz calls "webs of significance" which govern the conduct and understanding of people's lives.
More abstractly, a society is a networkof relationships between entities.
Social structure: a system in which people forming the society are organized by a pattern of relationships.
Social structure presents an idea that society is grouped into structures with different functions, meanings or purposes.
Aspects of social organization
Gender Age Health or disability/body image Occupation (trades, law, politics, news media, journalism, broadcasting)
Social class Peer group Ethnic group (may be link to regional variation) Sexuality
Language and Society
Language as a social phenomenon—Language only exists in human societies. A society can not go on without language.
Language as a social product—Language has its origin in society.
Language is a social activity—An individual’s use of language is a social behavior and skill.
Language as a social expression
All social aspects are reflected in language. Language is a mirror of society.
In the normal transfer of information through language, we use language to send vital social messages about who we are, where we come from, and
who we associate with. Language as a social identity
Language reflects not only the person but also his/her social/cultural background.
It is often shocking to realize how extensively we may judge a person's background, character, and intentions based simply upon the person's
language, dialect, or, in some instances, even the choice of a single word.
Language as a socially maintained and socially functioning institution
Language is not simply a means of communicating information. It is also a very important means of establishing and maintaining relationships
between people. The effects of society on language
1. The physical environment in which a society lives being reflected in it language, such as the structure of its lexicon.
2. The social environment reflecting the social effect on the structure of the vocabulary, such as kinship terms.
3. Social change can produce a corresponding linguistic change, such as the meaning of words.
4. The values of a society can also have an effect on its language, such as taboo.
Sociolinguistics—the study of language from social perspective
The study of THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN LANGUAGE AND ITS CONTEXTS OF USE”
The study of the interplay between VARIATION, SOCIAL MEANING and the EVOLUTION AND DEVELOPMENT of the linguistic system
itself. It studies the effect of any and all aspects of society, including cultural norms, expectations, and context, on the way language is used.
Sociolinguistics
The essence of SOCIOLINGUISTICS depends on three facts about language that are often ignored in the field of linguistics.
1. Language VARIES 2. Language CHANGES
3. Language … makes statements … about who a person is, what his or her group loyalties are, how he/she perceives her relationship to
his/her hearers and what sort of speech event she considers herself to be engaged in.
Social context - factors ( the social variables ) which may influence language use
Beliefs and attitudes (science, religion, morality) Ethnicity Gender Status
Political Correctness Notions of propriety Education of speaker/writer and audience
Social situation (work vs. leisure; degree of [in]formality) Intention or purpose Fashions in language use Stereotyping
Language features which may be affected by social categories or contexts:
Variety used Purposes Prescriptivism - notion of "correct" spoken, written and grammatical forms
Meanings (denotation and connotation) Language change Notion of propriety/social acceptability
Language Variation and Language Varieties
Language Variation: differences in pronunciation, grammar, or word choice with a language.
Variation in a language may relate to region, to social class and/ or educational background or to the degree of formality of a situation in
which language is used. Language Varieties
The co-variation of language and society: Language varies with the variation of society. Regional varieties Social varieties
Regional varieties
Accent - “a set of pronunciation features which identify where a person is from, geographically, or socially”
Dialect - “a set of syntactic and lexical features which identify where a person is from geographically, or socially”
The difference＝Accent is related solely to auditory effect, and dialect is related to grammar and vocabulary.
ACCENT: This term refers to phonological variation, i.e. variation in pronunciation Thus, if we talk about a Southern Accent, we're talking
about a generalized property of English pronunciation in the Southern part of the US. But, Southern dialects have more than particular phonological
properties. Accent is thus about pronunciation, while dialect is a broader term encompassing syntactic, morphological, and semantic properties as
well.
DIALECT is NOT synonymous with accent. Accent is only a part of dialectal variation. Non-linguists often think accents define a dialect (or
that accents alone identify people as non-native or foreign language speakers). Also, non-linguists tend to think that it's always the "other" people that
have "an accent".
DIALECT is NOT a negative term for linguists. . Often times, for example, we hear people refer to non-standard varieties of English as
"dialects", usually to say something bad about the non-standard variety (and thus about the people who speak it). But, the term dialect refers to ANY
variety of a language. Thus, by definition, we all speak a dialect of our native language.
Social varieties
Standard variety: the variety of language which has the highest STATUS in a community or nation and which is usually based on the speech
and writing of educated native speakers of the language. A language
A speech community is a group of people who speak a common dialect.
Sociolinguists would define speech community as a group of people who do in fact have the opportunity to interact with each other and who
share not just a single language with its varieties but also attitudes toward linguistic norms.
As a social phenomenon language is closely related to the structure of the society in which it is used, and the evaluation of a linguistic form is
entirely social. To a linguist, all language forms and accents are equally good as far as they can fulfill the communicative functions they are
expected to fulfill. Therefore, judgments concerning the correctness and purity of linguistic varieties are social rather than linguistic.
Major differences between standard and non-standard dialects
Standard：National& Written& Codified& Overt prestige& Less variable in form& Functional diversity& Taught& Not paired with accent
Non-standard: Regional& Rarely written& Less codified& Covert prestige& More variable in form& Little functional range&Not taught &Paired with an accent
The study of linguistic variation is (mostly) the study of synchronic variation: variation at one time, among the speakers of one language.
The study of linguistic history is the study of diachronic change: literally, change across time.
Language change
Change in a language takes place over time. All living languages have changed and continue to change.
Social changes produce changes in language. This affects values in ways that have not been accurately understood. Language incorporates
social values. However, social values are only the same as linguistic values when the society is a stable and unchanging one. Once society
starts changing, then language change produces special effects.
Language and Communication
Definition of Communication: Communication is the process of exchanging information usually via a common system of symbols.
"Communication" is the academic discipline which studies communication.
Language and communication are often defined as the human ability to refer abstractly and with intent to influence the thinking and
actions of other individuals. Communication Methods
Experts say that communication is composed of different methods: words, voice, tone and non-verbal clues.
Of these, some are more effective in delivering a message than others. According to research, in a conversation or verbal exchange:
Words are 7% effective Tone of voice is 38% effective Non-verbal clues are 55% effective.
Communicative competence
Communicative competence is a linguistic term for the ability to not only apply the grammatical rules of a language to form correct utterances, but
to know when to use these utterances appropriately.
According to a 1980 paper by Canale and Swain which has become canonical in applied linguistics,
communicative competence consists of four components:
Grammatical competence: words and rules Sociolinguistic competence: appropriateness
Discourse competence: cohesion and coherence Strategic competence: appropriate use of communication strategies
Questions/Exercises: 1. Explain the interrelationship between language and society with your own example.2. Why do languages vary?
Week 13.Language and society (2)
Bilinguals and bilingualism
Bilingual is a person who knows and uses two languages. In everyday use the word bilingual means a person who speaks, reads, or
understands two languages equally well, but a bilingual person usually has a better knowledge of one language than of the other.
Bilingualism is the use of at least two languages either by an individual or by a group of speakers, such as the inhabitants of a particular
region or a nation. Different types of bilingualism
Additive bilingualism (gain a second while retaining a first language)
Subtractive bilingualism (lose fluency of a first language when acquiring a second language)
Compound bilingualism: two languages are learned in parallel (in the same context)
Coordinate bilingualism: The second language is learned after the first (in different contexts)
Subordinate bilingualism: There is a clear difference in proficiency between L1 and L2.
Bilingual education
The phrase "bilingual education" has multiple definitions:
Education where two distinct languages are used for general teaching education designed to help children become bilingual (sometimes called
"two-way bilingual education"; e.g., Spanish speakers and English speakers in a classroom are all taught to speak both languages.
Education in a child's native language for (a) the first year or (b) however long it takes; followed by mainstreaming in English-only classes(in the
US).Education in a child's native language for as long as his parents wish (with as little as 30 minutes a day of ESL instruction).
A more general definition: a carefully planned instructional program in which two languages are used; the program provides ESL instruction and
utilizes the student's native language as the medium for instruction in the content areas; language arts instruction in the student's native language is
also provided; bilingual education models include transitional, development and dual-language programs.
Models of Bilingual Education
1. Maintenance programmes attempt to foster the minority language of the child’s ethnic group and promotes bilingualism and biculturalism in the
pupils. 2. Transitional programmes aim to shift the child from the home minority language to the dominant majority language. In which case, the
pupils might either lose their first language whilst acquiring their second and main language; or never fully develop their minority mother tongue.
3. Enrichment programmes aim at promoting a second or a foreign language and, depending on the context, aim at fully developed bilingualism or
merely at working competence in the foreign language. Diglossia
Diglossia: In a bilingual community, in which two languages or dialects are used differently according to different social situations. The term was
first used by the American anthropologist Ferguson in1959. It is similar to bilingualism, but in a diglossia situation, two varieties of a language
rather than two languages exist side by side throughout the community, with each having a definite role to play.
Sociolinguists may also use the term diglossia to denote bilingualism. The members of the “bilingual community” regularly use one dialect
for more public or formal purposes and the other in more informal, colloquial situations.
Some examples
In the languages such as Arabic, Greek, Swiss German and Haitian Creole, each has two varieties: the high variety (H) and the low variety (L):
Arabic Greek Swiss G. Haitian
High classical Katharevousa Hochdeutsch French
Low colloquial Schweizerdeutch Schweizerdeutch Creole
The two varieties have overt recognition in the community and have commonly known and used labels. Ferguson gives a sample listing of
possible situations and the variety normally used:
High + + + + + +
Low + + + +
Situation Sermon in Instructions Personal Political University Conversation with News Newspaper Poetry Folk
church or mosque to servants letter speech lecture family, friends broadcast editorial literature
Code-switching
Code-switching is the term given to the use of different varieties of language in different social situations.
A speaker does not necessarily have to follow a particular variety or dialect all the time in the course of communication. He/She may change from the
standard language to the non-standard language.
In bilingual communities, a great deal of switching back and forth from one language to another may be observed. This “code-switching” may at
first look random, but it actually highly systematic and based upon particular appropriateness conditions.
Pidgin and Creole
A simplified language derived from two or more languages is called a pidgin. It is a contact language developed and used by people who do not
share a common language in a given geographical area. It is used in a limited way and the structure is very simplistic.
A pidgin usually has a limited vocabulary and a reduced grammatical structure which may expand when a pidgin is used over a long period and for
many purposes.
e.g. Wok had dis pipl [Philipino English pidgin] "These people work hard" [Subject-Verb-Object]
Creole is a Pidgin which has become the native language of a group of speakers, being used for all or many of their daily communicative
needs. Usually, the sentence structures and vocabulary range of a Creole are far more complex than those of a pidgin language.
Language planning
Language planning refers to deliberate efforts to influence the behaviour of others with respect to the acquisition, structure, or
functional allocation of language. Typically it will involve the development of goals, objectives and strategies to change the way language is
used in a community. At a governmental level, language planning takes the form of language policy.
Language planning is official, government-level activity concerning the selection and promotion of a unified administrative language or
languages. It represents a coherent effort by individuals, groups, or organizations to influence language use or development.
The standard language
The variety of a language which has the highest STATUS in a community or nation and which is usually based on the speech and writing of educated
native speakers of the language.
A standard variety is usually: 1. used in the news media and in literature; 2. Described in dictionaries and grammar;
3. Taught in schools and taught to non-native speakers when they learn the language as a foreign language;
The national language
A national language is a language (or language variant, i.e. dialect) which uniquely represents the national identity of a nation and/or country.
A language which is usually considered to be the main language of a nation. Usually, the national language is also the official language.
Some countries have more than one national language, such as Canada which uses both French and English.
The official language
The language used in government and courts of law, and for official business. In multilingual nations, there may be more than one
official language, and in such cases the term “national language” is often used rather than “national language”. For example, the Republic of
Singapore has four official languages: English, Chinese, Malay, and Tamil.
Questions/Exercises: 1. Why does “code-switching” occur among bilingual speakers?
Week 14.Language and culture (1)
Definition of culture—The English anthropologist Sir Edward B. Tylor wrote in1871 that "culture or civilization, taken in its wide ethnographic
sense, is that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a
member of society" .
The word culture comes from the Latin root colere (to inhabit, to cultivate, or to honor). In general, it refers to human activity;
In 1952, Alfred Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn compiled a list of more than 200 different definitions of culture in their book, Culture: A
Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions. [Kroeber and Kluckhohn, 1952].
Clyde Kluckhohn's Mirror for Man, in which the following meanings are suggested:
"the total way of life of a people“ "the social legacy the individual acquires from his group”
"a way of thinking, feeling, and believing“ "an abstraction from behavior“
a theory on the part of the anthropologist about the way in which a group of people in fact behave
a "storehouse of pooled learning“ "a set of standardized orientations to recurrent problems“
"learned behavior“ a mechanism for the normative regulation of behavior“
a set of techniques for adjusting both to the external environment and to other men“
"a precipitate of history“ a behavioral map, sieve, or matrix
“Culture” may be defined as “the integrated pattern of human knowledge, belief, and behaviour… language, ideas, beliefs, customs, taboos, codes,
institutions, tools, techniques, works of art, rituals, ceremonies, and other related components…” (Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1989).
"A society's culture consists of whatever it is one has to know or believe in order to operate in a manner acceptable to its members"(Ward Goodenough).
A 2002 document from the United Nations agency UNESCO
Culture is the "set of distinctive spiritual, material, intellectual and emotional features of society or a social group and that it encompasses,
in addition to art and literature, lifestyles, ways of living together, value systems, traditions and beliefs". ※
Culture: is a shared, learned, symbolic system of values, beliefs and attitudes that shapes and influences perception and behavior -- an
abstract "mental blueprint" or "mental code." Must be studied "indirectly" by studying behavior, customs, material culture (artifacts, tools,
technology), language, etc.
1) Learned. Process of learning one's culture is called enculturation.
2) Shared by the members of a society. No "culture of one."
3) Patterned. People in a society live and think in ways that form definite patterns.
4) Mutually constructed through a constant process of social interaction.
5) Symbolic. Culture, language and thought are based on symbols and symbolic meanings.
6) Arbitrary. Not based on "natural laws" external to humans, but created by humans according to the "whims" of the society.
Example: standards of beauty.
7) Internalized. Habitual. Taken-for granted. Perceived as "natural."
The Six Levels of Culture
1. Formal Culture 2. literary landmarks 3. contents of museums 4. music of ancestral groups 5. art and dance 6. holidays and parades
Relationship between language and culture
“Culture is reflected in language. It is both a component of culture and a central network through which the other components are
expressed.” Robert Lado 1964. Language Teaching
Language as a reflection of culture
One obvious way in which languages may differ is in the nature of their vocabulary. A famous example -- often mischaracterized -- is the number
of Eskimo words for "snow.“ Eskimos have four different words for snow, where English has just one.
aput for snow on the ground qana for falling snow piqsirpoq for drifting snow qimuqsuq for a snowdrift
Language as an expression of cultural reality
The words people utter refer to common experience. They express facts, ideas or events that are communicable because they refer to a
stock of knowledge about the world that other people share.
Words also reflect their author’s attitudes and beliefs, their point of view.
Language as an embodiment of cultural reality
The members of a community or a social group also create experience through language. They give meaning to it through the medium
they choose to communicate with one another. The way on which people use the spoken, written, or visual medium itself creates meanings
that are understandable to the group they belong to.
Language as a symbol of cultural reality
Language is a system of signs that is seen as having itself a cultural value. Speakers identify themselves and others through their use of
language. They view their language as a symbol of their social identity.
Sapir-Whorf hypothesis
Edward Sapir (1884-1939) was an American anthropologist-linguist, a leader in American structural linguistics, and one of the creators of the
Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. He was born in Lauenburg, Germany. He was the pupil of Franz Boas, teacher of Benjamin Whorf.
The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis as we know it today can be broken down into two basic principles: linguistic determinism and linguistic relativity.
Linguistic Determinism refers to the idea that the language we use to some extent determines the way in which we view and think about the
world around us. The concept has generally been divided into two separate groups - 'strong' determinism and 'weak' determinism. Strong
determinism is the extreme version of the theory, stating that language actually determines thought, that language and thought are identical.
Weak determinism, however, holds that thought is merely affected by or influenced by our language, whatever that language may be. This
version of determinism is widely accepted today.
Linguistic relativity states that distinctions encoded in one language are unique to that language alone, and that "there is no limit to the
structural diversity of languages". Cultural and Linguistic universals
When we learn a foreign language we do not just notice differences between that foreign language and our mother tongue: we are also struck, and
aided, by numerous features shared by the two languages. This is only to be expected, since human beings, whatever language they happen to speak
and wherever they happen to live, have a great deal in common both biologically and culturally. These common biological and cultural features we
may refer to as biological and cultural universals.
All men, regardless of birth and culture, share certain perceptual disposition. Owing to these dispositions, we are more responsive to certain stimuli
than others. Where such stimuli are present in all cultures, the coupling of biological universals with cultural universals may be expected to lead to
linguistic universals.
Questions/Exercises: 1. Illustrate the relationship between culture and language with your examples.
2. How do you understand ‘ Linguistic determinism and linguistic relativity’?
Week 15.Language and culture (2)
Linguistic evidence of cultural differences
Word meanings are bound with cultural encodings or associations, for the meanings of words can not be separated from their associations.
Each language has its own metaphors that provide semantic cohesion within its boundaries. ※
The cultural differences reflected in language use can be found in the following aspects:
1. Greetings and Term of address 2. Thanks and Compliments 3. Color terms 4. Culture-related idioms, proverbs and metaphor
Culture in language teaching and learning
Culture learning is the process of acquiring the culture-specific and culture-general knowledge, skills, and attitudes required for effective
communication and interaction with individuals from other cultures. It is a dynamic, developmental, and ongoing process which engages
the learner cognitively, behaviorally, and affectively.
Culture in Language Teaching and Learning
Language and culture are from the start inseparably connected because:
1) language acquisition does not follow a universal sequence, but differs across cultures;
2) the process of becoming a competent member of society is realized through exchanges of language in particular social situations;
3) every society orchestrates the ways in which children participate in particular situations, and this, in turn, affects the form, the function
and the content of children's utterances;
4) caregivers' primary concern is not with grammatical input, but with the transmission of sociocultural knowledge;
5) the native learner, in addition to language, acquires also the paralinguistic patterns and the kinesics of his or her culture.
Culture learning goals and outcomes.
The learning goals shift from the memorization of cultural facts (including sociolinguistic conventions for language use) to higher order
learning outcomes including: the acquisition of “interactional competence”
Such learning would include:
1) learning about the self as a cultural being,
2) learning about culture and its impact on human communication, behavior, and identity,
3) culture-general learning, i.e., learning about universal, cross-cultural phenomena such as cultural adjustment,
4) culture-specific learning, i.e., learning about a particular culture, including its language, and,
5) learning how to learn, i.e., becoming an effective language and culture learner.
Culture and language learning involve a dynamic relationship between the situation and the actors in which cultural context, prior
experience, and other factors come into play. Putting culture at the core of language education means preparing students to be culture
learners. Words and their meaning are linked to a cultural context, and language and cultural patterns change over time and vary according
to the situation. To become effective culture learners, students must develop a variety of learning strategies ranging from reflective
observation to active experimentation or what Kolb refers to as ‘experiential learning’ style.
Cultural awareness in language learning
Cultural awareness : sensitivity to the impact of culturally-induced behavior on language use and communication
Language learning and cultural learning
Learning a language does not automatically lead to a heightened cultural awareness.
Culture learning needs to be an integral part of language teaching if it is to raise cultural awareness.
Linguistic Communications and culture preferred manner of speaking origins of the language and its elements people and place names
gestures or postures current usage, colloquialisms games and entertainment.
Culture and communication are inseparable because culture not only dictates who talks to whom, about what, and how the communication
proceeds, it also helps to determine how people encode messages, the meanings they have for messages, and the conditions and circumstances
under which various messages may or may not be sent, noticed, or interpreted... Culture...is the foundation of communication.
Intercultural communication
Intercultural communication is, literally, communication between people of different cultures.
Communication is the transfer of a message from one person to another, so that it is understood, and hopefully, so that it invokes a response.
When we add the extra dimension of cultural difference, the process becomes even more complex. There is an even greater chance of
communication breaking down not only because of the language complications, but also because of cultural differences. ※
Intercultural communication can be difficult, inaccurate, and highly stressful. When we are immersed in an environment where the
language, attitudes, values, and behaviors are alien to our own experience, we may suffer disorientation and frustration--an experience
known as "culture shock."
This is because culture affects almost all behaviors. Culture governs how close we stand while talking with another person. Culture
governs how we use (or avoid) eye contact. Culture governs how we express (or suppress) powerful emotions such as joy, disapproval, and
anger. Culture even governs the expression (if not the actual experience) of love, because culture determines whether we feel free to express
love in public settings by holding hands, hugging, or kissing the person we love.
More specifically, communication between people of different cultures can vary according to:
_perception_, _social organization_, _verbal language_, and _nonverbal processes_.
The physical mechanism of perception is pretty much the same in all people: sensory organs such as eyes, ears, and nose permit us to sense
the our environment, and the sensations received by them are routed through our nerve system to our brain, where they are interpreted and
accorded meaning in a two stage sequence.
The first stage is recognition or identification, in which a configuration of light or sound waves is identified as, for example, a car or music.
At the second stage, the interpretation and evaluation of that which has been identified take place. The result of this process, unlike the
biological stage, is not the same of all people, because this process is learned and therefore influenced by all of our past experiences. This fact
alone would make communication difficult even between people with similar backgrounds.
Perception :
Perception. Perception is the process by which a person selects, evaluates, and organizes information from the environment. To a great extent,
our perception is influenced by our culture. For example, the characteristics that determine beauty vary in different cultures. Centuries ago in Japan,
women blackened their teeth, and this was considered beautiful. Today, perceptions of beauty have changed, and that is not considered beautiful.
When most Americans look at snow, they just see snow.
However, Eskimos have more than 15 different words for snow, because they perceive a variety of differences in snow. Similarly, the Japanese
language has many different words for rain. People in different cultures have differences in their perceptions, and these can cause difficulties in
intercultural communication. Belief and value systems
Beliefs and values, of course, vary within each culture, but there are also beliefs and values that are common to most of the people in the
one culture. They define what is good or bad, useful or useless, right or wrong, etc. These beliefs and values also influence our behavior.
 In American culture, workers are supposed to arrive at work at a specified time, parents are supposed to make sure their children do
their homework, and people are supposed to be polite when they make a request that would require the hearer to go to a lot of trouble.
Differences in these expectations can lead to difficulties between people of different cultures.
Social organization
Social organization and the institutions of a culture also influence perception and communication. The family is the smallest unit of
organization and one of the most influential. The family influences a child's attitudes and values, language development, goals, and
education. The school also has a great influence. It helps pass on and maintain culture. It teaches students about what has happened in the
culture, what is considered important and what a member of the culture must know.
Social organization or social institution, refers to a group of social positions, connected by social relations, performing a social role. It can also
be defined in a narrower sense as any institution in a society that works to socialize the groups or people in it.
Common examples include education, governments, families, economic systems, religions, and any people or groups that you have social interaction
with. It is a major sphere of social life organized to meet some human needs.
There is sometimes a distinction made between intercultural communication and cross-cultural communication. According to this distinction,
cross-cultural communication involves the study of similar communication situations or behavior in different cultures. Intercultural
communication, in contrast, involves the study of the process of communication between people from different cultures.
Questions/Exercises: 1. Why are cultural aspects important in language learning and teaching?
Week 16.Language and mind
The nature of the human mind as reflected in human language, the relation between language and thought, and the brain/mind/language
interface are being investigated by cognitive scientists, including linguists, psychologists and neurologists.
While there is overlapping interest in finding an answer to the question 'What are the physical mechanisms that serve as the material
basis for (the) system of (linguistic knowledge) and for the use of this knowledge? (Chomsky, 1988, p 3), the different disciplines
understandably approach these questions differently.
"In the study of language, (linguists) proceed abstractly, at the level of mind, and . . . also hope to be able to gain understanding of how
the entities constructed at this abstract level and their properties and the principles that govern them can be accounted for in terms of
properties of the brain." (Chomsky, 1988. p 5-7).
Thus, linguists are concerned with what linguistic theory can tell us about the neurological basis for the acquisition and use of language,
while psychologists conduct experiments measuring reaction times and lexical decision tasks, eye tracking and priming to see how
psychological processing contributes to our understanding of the nature of human language.
Language and brain
Language is one of the pillars of the human intellect. It is the principal means whereby individuals formulate thoughts and convey them
to others. It plays a role in analyzing the world, in reasoning, solving problems, and planning actions.
It allows us to convey memories of the past and beliefs about the future, to engage others about events that have not taken place, and to
express the relations between events. Relationship between language and brain
Language is a most complex function, one that encompasses numerous sub-processes, including the recognition and articulation of speech sounds,
the comprehension and production of words and sentences, and the use of language in pragmatically appropriate ways. All contribute in special ways
to our ability to process language, and each may, in fact, be handled differently by the human brain.
Neurolinguistics
Neurolinguistics is the science concerned with the human brain mechanisms underlying the comprehension, production, and abstract knowledge of
language, be it spoken, signed, or written. Neural Basis of Language
Investigations into the neural basis of language center around how the brain processes language.
Scientists have tried for over a century to understand how the brain learns, stores, and processes language. The task is difficult because
there are no animals who have symbol systems as rich as language.
Classic neurolinguistic theories, developed over a hundred years ago, have suggested that certain brain areas play specific roles in the
process of language.
Modern techniques are offering us new data on what these areas might actually do and how they might contribute to a network of brain
areas that collectively participate in language processing.
Structure of the brain
The outer layer of the brain, is the cerebral cortex. This part of the brain is responsible for most higher cognitive functions.
This means that damage (even relatively shallow) to the brain can result in severe impairments in cognitive function. ※
The cortex and subcortical structures ※ Hemispheres
The brain is divided into two (roughly symmetrical) hemispheres
There are small differences in the sizes of some regions in the two hemispheres. These differences may form the basis for the first major
brain specialization for language -- lateralization of language to the left hemisphere.
Left hemisphere: Language Math Logic Reasoning
Right hemisphere: Spatial abilities Face recognition Visual imagery Music
Neuropsychology of Language(1)
Broca’s aphasia: Problem in production Patient Tan-Tan who could not speak but understood speech
Wernicke’s aphasia: Problem in comprehension Language-deficient patients who can speak but whose speech makes no sense
Neuropsychology of Language(2)
Event-related potential (ERP) evidence
N400 Sensitive to semantic anomaly in sentences such as “The officer shot the man with a moon.”
P600 Sensitive to syntactic anomalies in sentences such as “The broker persuaded to sell the stock.”
Language areas
According to a picture that has developed over a long period of time, primarily through the study of aphasia, there are two primary
language areas. Broca’s Area（布罗卡区） Wernicke’s Area（韦尼卡区） ※
There are two major areas of the human brain that are responsible for language: Broca's area, which is though to be partially responsible for
language production (putting together sentences, using proper syntax, etc.) and Wernicke's area, which is thought to be partially responsible for
language processing (untangling others' sentences and analyzing them for syntax, inflection, etc.).
Aphasia ("not speaking") is an impairment of language, affecting the production or comprehension of speech and the ability to read or write.
Aphasia is always due to injury to the brain -- most commonly from a stroke, particularly in older individuals.
The two most famous types of aphasia result from injury to two specific areas of the brain, with dramatically different consequences. These areas
and their aphasias are called Broca's and Wernicke's. A very general distinction is that Broca's aphasia limits speech, while Wernicke's aphasia limits
comprehension. ※ Language and thought
"Language is the dress of thought " (Samuel Johnson 1709-1784)
In fact this view can be dated back to the time of Plato. It was commonly held that a speaker’s real intention could be known through
his own language. Therefore, thinking is talking to oneself. Without thinking, language would be meaningless; without language, thought
would have no form and would not be known to others. psycholinguistics
The study of how language is understood and interpreted and how and why the individual responds to discrete aspects of language.
The of the mental process that a person uses in producing and understanding language. The study of how humans learn language.
Psycholinguistics includes the study of speech PERCEPTION, the role of MEMORY, CONCEPTS and other processes in language use, and how
social and psychological factors affect the use of language.
"We have by now, fairly substantial evidence that one of the components of the mind/brain is a language faculty, dedicated to language and its
use - where by "language," now, we mean human language, not various metaphoric extensions of the term." - Noam Chomsky
Speech perception
The ability to comprehend spoken language derives from the operation of a highly complex set of perceptual, cognitive, and linguistic processes
that permit the listener to recover the meaning of an utterance when listening to speech.
Memory
The faculty of the mind by which it retains the knowledge of previous thoughts, impressions, or events.
The cognitive processes whereby past experience is remembered.
Short Term Memory (STM): the memory used for keeping information for periods of time up to a few seconds
Long term memory: part of the memory system where information is stored more permanently. Information in long-term memory may not be
stored in the same form in which it is received
working memory: the memory system used for holding and manipulating information while various mental tasks are carried out
Questions/Exercises: 1. Why is applied linguistics important to the use of language?
2. How is applied linguistics related to language teaching and learning?