A Course on Linguistics for Students of English Fen

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A Course on Linguistics for Students of
English Feng Yujuan School of Foreign
Language, SWUN
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1. General Introduction 2. Language and society
(social linguistics) 3. Language and culture
(cross-cultural communication) 4. Applied
linguistics 5. Computational and statistic
linguistics 6. Modern theories and school of
linguistics 7. Phonetics and phonology 8.
Morphology, syntax and semantics 9. Second
language acquisition 10.Pragmatics 11.Psycholingui
stics
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The Goals for this Course

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

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The Requirements for this course

• Class attendance
• Classroom discussion
• Fulfillment of the assignment
• Examination

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Reference Books

• ???,???,(2002),???????????,??????????
• ???,(2001),?????,????????
• ???,???,(2002),???????,???????
• ???,(1995),???????,???????????
• ???,Maurice Cogan Hauck,(2001),
  ???????,?????????
• H.G.Widdowson, (2000), linguistics, Shanghai
  Foreign Education Press

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Chapter 1. Introduction
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What is language?

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

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Sapirs definition (1921)

• Language is a purely human and non-instinctive
  method of communicating ideas, emotions and
  desires by means of voluntarily produced symbols.

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Who is Sapir

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

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Halls definition (1968)

• Language is the institution whereby humans
  communicate and interact with each other by means
  of habitually used oral-auditory arbitrary
  symbols.

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Chomskys definition (1957)

• From now on I will consider language to be a set
  of (finite or infinite) sentences, each finite in
  length and constructed out of a finite set of
  elements.

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Who is Chomsky?

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

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Language can be generally defined as

• a system of arbitrary vocal symbols used for
  human communication.

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Language is a system

• Systematic rule-governed, elements in it are
  arranged according to certain rules cant be
  combined at will. e.g. bkli, I apple eat.

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Language is arbitrary

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

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Language is symbolic in nature

• Symbolic words are associated with objects,
  actions ideas by convention. A rose by any other
  name would smell as sweet Shakespeare

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Language is primarily vocal

• Vocal the primary medium is sound for all
  languages writing system came much later than
  spoken form.

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Language is human-specific

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

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The design/defining features of human language
(Charles Hockett)

• Arbitrariness
• Productivity/Creativity
• Duality
• Displacement
• Cultural transmission
• Interchangeability

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Arbitrariness

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

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Duality (double articulation)

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

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Productivity/creativity

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

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Displacement

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

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Cultural transmission

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

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Interchangeability

• any human being can be both a producer and a
  receiver of messages.

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Functions of language

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

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The origin of language

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

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2. What is linguistics?

• Linguistics is the scientific study of
  language.
• A person who studies linguistics is known as a
  linguist.

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Four principles of linguistic studies

• Exhaustiveness/adequacy
• Consistency
• Economy
• Objectivity

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

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

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The scope or major branches of linguistics

• Theoretical linguistics
• Phonetics
• Phonology
• Morphology
• Syntax
• Semantics
• Use of linguistics
• Applied linguistics
• Sociolinguistics
• Psycholinguistics

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Some important distinctions in linguistics
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Speech vs writing

• Speech ---- primary medium of language
• Writing ---- later developed

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Descriptive vs prescriptive

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

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Synchronic vs diachronic

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

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Langue vs parole (F. de Saussure)

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

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Competence and performance (Chomsky)

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

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Linguistic potential and Linguistic behavior
(Halliday)

• The linguistic competence versus performance
  distinction is one between what a person know
  and what he does
• While the linguistic potential versus actual
  linguistic behavior distinction is one between
  what a person can do and what a person does

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Chapter 2 sociolinguistics
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• 1. Sociolinguistics language and society
• 1.1 What is Sociolinguistics?
• A sub-field of linguistics that studies the
  relation between language and society, between
  the uses of language and the social structures in
  which the users of language live.

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• 1.2 What are dialect and accent respectively?
• Dialect refers, strictly speaking, to difference
  between kinds of language which have differences
  of vocabulary and grammar as well as
  pronunciation.
• Accent refers solely to differences of
  pronunciation

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• 1.3 What is standard dialect?
• Standard dialect is the variety of language which
  usually used in print, normally taught in school
  and to non-native speakers learning a language.
  It is also the variety which is normally spoken
  by educated people and used in news broadcasts
  and other similar situations.
• Standard English (dialect)/ RP (received
  pronunciation)

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• Take the pronunciation of non-prevocalic /r/ in
  British dialect as an example
• rat rich
• carry sorry
• cart car
• these words formerly had an /r/ sound, as the
  spelling shows,, but in these accents /r/has been
  lost except where it occurs before a vowel. Thus,
  the /r/ sounds at the end of words (car) or
  before a consonant (cart) can be referred to as
  non-prevocalic /r/

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• Table Attitudes towards the use of
  non-prevocalic /r/ upper middle class in New
  York City
• Age /r/ used
• 819 48
• 2039 34
• 40 9

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• 2 language varieties
• 2.1 varieties of language influenced by social
  factors
• 2.1.1 Language and Social Class (sociolect)
• speaker A speaker B
• I done it yesterday. I did it yesterday.
• He aint got it He hasnt got it
• It was her what said it It was her that said it

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• What happens if we wish to negate the following
  sentence
• I can eat anything.
• There are two possibilities in the standard
  variety of English
• I cant eat anything.
• I can eat nothing.
• There are other varieties of English, where there
  is a third possibility where we can negate both
  elements
• I cant eat nothing.

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• A survey was taken in Detroit, and it was found
  that there was a clear relationship between
  employment of double negation and social class
• UMC 2
• LMC 11
• UWC 38
• LWC 70

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• 2.1.2 Language and Ethnic Group
• Ethnic-group differences may be correlated with
  phonological or grammatical features, as well as
  or instead of with lexical differences.
• An example of BVE (Black Vernacular English)
• A fifteen-year old black boy You know, like some
  people say if youre good your spirit goin t
  heaven n if you bad, your spirit goin to
  hell. Well, bullshit! Your spirit goin to hell
  anyway. Ill tell you why. Cause, you see,
  doesn nobody really know that its a God. An
  when they be sayin if you good, you goin t
  heaven, thas bullshit, cause you aint goin to
  no heaven, cause it aint no heaven for you to
  go to.

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• Contrast between BVE and standard English
• 1) All the white children studied used some s in
  the appropriate verb forms, and the average score
  for the group as a whole was 85 percent s usage.
  On the other hand, only 76 percent of the black
  children used any s, and the overall average
  score for s usage was only 13 percent.

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• 2) the absence or invariance of the verb to be
• BVE Standard English
• He busy right now. Hes busy right now.
• Sometimes he be busy. Sometimes hes busy.
• 3) question inversion in BVE
• A. I asked Mary where did she go.
• B. I asked Mary where she went.
• A. It aint heaven for you to go to.
• B. There is no heaven for you to go to
• A. Cant nobody do nothing about it.
• B. Nobody can do anything about it.

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• 2.1.3 Language and gender
• It is known from linguistic research that in many
  societies the speech of men and women differs.
• In South Africa, research has been carried out,
  comparing the speech of male and female
  high-school pupils of the same age in the same
  town
• boy /b