Introduction to General Linguistics
(Outline of the lectures )
Overview of Linguistics and Language
(Four Periods)
I. Introduction to the course
A. Some features:
1.Theoretical: probably more abstract or abstruse than some other courses; with more special terms, concepts, definitions, hypotheses, etc.
2.Rudimentary and incomprehensive (because of limited time, a semester only)
3.Brief and Condensed
4.Controversial: possibly with certain open-ended questions, arguments about or different views on the same phenomenon or issue, open to further research
B. Requirements:
1.being serious
2.being patient
3.being attentive
II. What is general linguistics
A. Linguistics is the scientific study of language/ the science of language. (social science v. natural science)
B. Some cannons/principles of science:
1.exhaustive—adequate treatment of all relevant materials/data; thorough in the treatment of problems
2. consistent—absence of contradiction between different parts of the total statement
3. economical—brief while being precise and explicit; preference of shorter accounts, e.g. using formulae & abbreviation
4. objective—allowing no prejudice; not to be ethnocentric or biased; exempt from subjective examination, statement or conclusion; there is no primitive language. (citing some misconceptions)
5. empirical—the very hallmark of science for most people, indicating that linguistics should not be speculative or intuitive, but with publicly verifiable data obtained by means of observation or experiment. “Empirical” does not imply any commitment to “Empiricism”, which refers to the philosophical view that all knowledge comes from experience, perception and sense-data.
C. Define “general linguistic”
1.what “general” means
2.the scope of general linguistics
3.several dichotomies/pairs of distinctions:
Descriptive vs. Prescriptive
Diachronic vs. Synchronic
Theoretical/general vs. Applied
Microlinguistics vs. Macrolinguistics
III. What is the use of linguistics
There are a number of purposes for which we bother to study language in a scientific way, for instance:
A. to understand our humanity or to study what makes us human. The possession of language among other attributes distinguishes man from other creatures/animals.
B. to know the indispensable role of language in our life. To get insight into the nature of language is absolutely conducive to what we do with language.
C. to apply linguistic theories to other disciplines. Linguistics is a pilot science.
D. to help us with using a language or languages.
IV. A brief review of some famous linguists and their contributions
V. What is language
A. certain definitions
B. design features
1.arbitrariness
2.duality
3.productivity
4.displacement
5.discreteness
C. functions of language
1. micro-functions
a. to release nervous/physical energy (physiological function) (expressive)
b. for purpose of sociability (phatic function)
c. to provide a record (record function)
d. to identify and classify things (identifying function)
e. to think(reasoning function)
f. to communicate ideas or feelings (communicating function)
g. to give delight (pleasure function)
2. macro-functions
a. ideational function
b. interpersonal function
c. poetic function
d. textual function
Phonetics and Phonology
(four periods)
I. Different levels of language
A. Possible and necessary to separate language into several levels
B. Different ways of separation
II. Basic knowledge of phonetics
A. The aims of phonetics
1.different types of phonetics
B. Articulatory Apparatus/Vocal organs/tract
C. Two major types of speech sounds in terms of articulatory characteristics
1.consonants/ contoids
2.vowels / vocoids
3.vowel-like consonants
D. Two measures to distinguish consonants
1.Place of articulation (articulators involved)
2.Manner of articulation
E. Several dimensions/parameters employed to distinguish vowels
1.Height of the tongue (high, middle/mid, low)
2.Position of the highest part of the tongue (front, central, back)
3.Degree of lip rounding/shape of lips (rounded, unrounded/spreading)
4.Length of the vowel (long, short)
5.Pure or gliding (monophthong, diphthong)
6.Nasal or not
F. Primary and Secondary Cardinal Vowels devised by Daniel Jones (16 cardinal Vowels--total)
III. Basic knowledge of phonology
A. The aims of phonology
B. Phoneme and allophone
1. Definitions of phoneme and allophone
2. Different languages have different phoneme systems.
3. Three criteria linguists use to group phones into phonemes:
a. Free variation
b. Complementary distribution
c. Phonetic similarity (which can compensate for the loophole of the first two criteria.)
4. Distinctive features
C. Phonological rules
1. Three specific purpose:
a. class of sounds
b. context/phonetic environment
c. phonetic changes
2. Assimilation Rules:
a. explanations of assimilation
b. nasal assimilation
c. nasalization
IV. Suprasegmental features
Morphology
(four periods)
I. Word-structure
A. What is a of word?
B. Different kinds of words
C. Analyzing words
II. Definition of morphology
A. The objective of morphology
B. The relationship between morphology and syntax
C. Two fields of morphology
1.inflection
2.word-formation
a. derivational
b. compound
III. Basic knowledge of morpheme and allomorph
A. What is a morpheme?
B. The classes of morphemes:
1. Free morpheme
2. Bound morpheme
C. Stem, root and affix
D. What is an allomorph?
E. Two different approaches to describing allomorphs:
1.Phonologically conditioned
2.Grammatical conditioned
IV. Relation between phoneme & morpheme
V. Some morphological changes
A. Loss
B. Addition
C. Metathesis
D. Assimilation
Semantics(four periods )
I. What is semantics
A. Its aim
B. Its history
C. Its problem
II. Different kinds of meaning
A. Meaning at different levels of language:
1. Lexical meaning( cf. “Sense relations”)
2. Sentence meaning (studied in several aspects)(Crystal, 2002:107)
B. Seven types of meaning (classified by Leech)(Leech, 1981:9-23)
III. Referential theory
A. Sense and reference
B. ‘Semiotic triangle’ of Ogden & Richards (Ogden & Richards,1989:11)
IV. Basic knowledge of formal/logic semantics
A. Propositional calculus
1. Logical connectives
2. Truth table for the two-place connectives
B. Predicate calculus
1. Simplified predicate calculus
2.Universal quantifier vs. existential quantifier
C. Some formalized sense relations
1. symmetric (vs. asymmetric)
2. transitive (vs. intransitive)
3. Reflexive (vs. irreflexive)
V. Sense relations
A. Synonymy
1.Definition of synonymy
2.Why are there no real synonyms?
a. belonging to different dialects
b. used in different styles (different social sense in Leech’s terms)
c. in different emotive (or evaluative ) meanings
d. with different collocative meanings (Collocationally restricted)
(Palmer,1983:89-91)
B. Antonymy
1.Definition of antonymy
2.Three major types of antonymy:
a. Grading antonymy
b. Complementary (binary) antonymy
c. Converse antonymy (relational opposite)
C. Hyponymy
VI. Ambiguity
Syntax
(Four Periods)
I. What is syntax?
A. Definition of syntax
1. Morphological analysis of the word syntax:
a. syn-putting things together; combing of separate parts to form a complex whole (e.g. synthesis)
b. tax-arrange, putting things in order or in a principled way
2. Syntax-A scientific study of the ways (rules or principles) in which words are combined to form sentences.
3. What is the relationship between syntax and grammar?
a. Grammar in its broad sense is equal to morphology plus grammar.
b. Grammar in its narrow sense just means syntax.
B. What to be studied in syntax
1. What to be put together: syntactic elements
2. Syntactic relations between syntactic elements
3. Different views on the ways in which syntactic elements are organized into sentences
a. the traditional grammar (prescriptive)
b. the structural grammar (descriptive)
c. the generative grammar (interpretive)
d. the functional grammar (interpretive)
II. The traditional grammar
A. What is traditional grammar?
1. Time span: from ancient India to the beginning of the 20th century
2. Characteristics
a. Prescriptivism (*Who did you see?/Whom did you see?)
b. Focus on written language
B. Syntactic elements: words and their defining properties
1. Defining properties of nouns: number, gender and case
a. number
b. gender
c. case
2. Defining properties of verbs: tense, aspect and voice
a. tense
b. aspect
c. voice
d. finiteness (He went to school./He wanted to go to school.)
e. mood (declarative, interrogative, imperative, subjunctive)
C. Relations between words
1. Agreement relations between words
a. Agreement between nouns and their articles
b. Agreement between subjects and their verbs
c. Agreement between articles/adjectives and nouns
2. Government relations
D. The way words are organized into sentence: parts of speeches
1. Parts of speeches in a clause
a. Subjects
b. Predicates
c. Objects
d. Attributives
e. Adverbials
f. Complements
2. Clause patterns in English
3. Coordinate clauses
4. Subordinate clauses
III. The structural approach
A. What “structural” means
1. Saussure and structural linguistics
2. Signified and signifier
3. Descriptivism
B. Word class and sentence analysis
1. Distinction between form class words and function words
a. Form class words (nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbials, etc.)
b. Function words (determiners, auxiliaries, modifiers, prepositions, etc.)
2. Constituents and constructions
3. Immediate constituent analysis
a. How to carry out the IC analysis?
b. What is the criterion of dividing the ICs in a construction?
c. Advantages as well as disadvantages of IC analysis
4. Endocentric constructions and exocentric constructions
C. Relations between constituents in a construction
1. Syntagmatic and paradigmatic relations
2. Coordination and subordination
IV. The generative approach
A. Chomsky and generative grammar: What “generative” means
a. Sentences we spoke are infinite.
b. Linguistic means we use are finite.
c. There must be rules to generate infinite sentences with finite linguistic means in a recursive way.
B. A brief survey of the five stages of generative grammar
1. The Classical Theory
2. The Standard Theory
3. The Extended Standard Theory
4. The Government and Binding Theory
5. The Minimalist Program (1993- )
C. The Classical Theory
1. The syntactic model
2. Deep structure and surface structure
a. Deep structure is the underlying level of a sentence showing the original semantic relations between constituents. It is the output of the phrase structure rules.
b. Surface structure is close to the actual form of the sentence we speak and hear. It is the product of the transformational rules. For example,
The apple was eaten by John. (Surface Structure) (Surface subject)
John ate the apple. (Deep Structure) (Underlying Object)
3. Phrase structure rules
a. rewrite rules
S→NP + VP
VP→V + NP
NP→Det + N
Det → the, a…
N → boy, girl…
V → saw, hit
b. tree-diagram
S
NP VP
Det N V NP
the boy saw Det N
the girl
4. Transformational rules are rules to change deep structure into surface structure:
5. Morphophonemic rules are rules responsible for the correct spelling and pronunciation of the surface structure:
6. There is no semantic component in the construction of grammar. The meaning of a sentence is merely determined by its deep structure.
D. The Standard Theory
1. The syntactic model
2. Interpretation of the model
a. A semantic component is newly added.
b. Syntax = Base + Transformational component
c. Items in the lexicon are inserted at the end of derivation with proper semantic features.
d. Verbs are subcatogerized according to the context they occur:
e. The meaning of a sentence is merely determined by its deep structure. Semantics is not related to the surface structure at all. That is to say, transformational rules can not change meaning.
E. The Extended Standard Theory Model
1.The syntactic model
2. Interpretation of the model:
Transformation may change meaning. That is, meaning is also related to surface structure.
3. The introduction of traces into the grammar changed the model
With the help of traces, some of the information contained in the deep structure might also be seen from the surface structure. In this way, the semantic component could totally rely on the output of the surface structure:
a. Damsi are built ti by beavers.
b. Which booki have you read ti?
F. The Government and Binding Theory Model (1981-1993)
1. The syntactic model
a. The rule system:
The transformational component is reduced to a single principle, namely Move α. That means that we can move any element to anywhere if only the movement satisfies the constraints in the following principle system.
b. The principle system:
(i) x’-theory (ii) government theory (iii) binding theory (iv) θ-theory (v) case theory (vi) control theory (vii) bounding theory
Next, we shall discuss the first three principles respectively.
2. Government theory
An element α governs β if α is under the same node directly with β and α is a head.
a. A preposition P will govern its complement NP:
PP
P NP
in the room
b. A verb V will also govern its complement NP
VP
V NP
eat an apple
3. The binding theory
a. Three binding principles in the governing theory:
(i) An anaphor is bound in its governing category.
(ii) A pronominal is free in its governing category.
(iii) An r-expression is always free.
b. Relevant notions:
(i) Anaphor
(ii) “To be bound”
(iii) Governing category
c. Examples illustrating the three binding principles:
(i) John1 likes himself1.
(ii) John1 likes him*1/2.
(iii) *She1 likes Laura1.
G. The Minimalist Program Model
1. The syntactic model
2. Interpretation of the model
Pragmatics
(four periods)
I. Philosophical Inspirations
A. Semiotics: Morris (1938)
1. Triadic relation of semiosis: Syntax / Semantic / Pragmatic
2. The classical definition of “Pragmatics” by Morris: the study of the relationship between signs and their interpreters.
B. Philosophy of ordinary language:
1. Wittgenstein (1958) & Benviniste (1966):
a. Wittgensteinian programme to relate “meaning” to “use”.
b. Benveniste’s main thesis was fundamentally pragmatic.
2. Austin (1962) & Searle (1969) & Habermas (1979):
a. Austin & Searle’s Speech act theory.
b. Habermas’s Universal Pragmatics.
3. Grice’s (1975) Conversational implicature.
II. Critical Concepts
A. Speech act theory(Austin 1962):
1. Constative vs. Performative
2. Locutionary, Illocutionary vs. Perlocutionary
3. Searle’s constitutive rules:
a. Propositional content rule
b. Preparatory rules
c. Sincerity rule
d. Essential rule
B. Implicature theory: (Grice 1975; Leech 1983; Horn 1984; Levinson 1987; Brown & Levinson 1978)
1. Cooperation principles.
2. Politeness Principles and 2-scale, 3-scale Maxims.
3. Brown & Levinson: Face theory
C. Relevance theory(Sperber & Wilson 1986):
1. Cognitive component: the inferential basis of relevance processing.
2. Communication component.
D. Deixis
1. Person and social deixis
2. Time and place deixis
3. Discourse deixis
E. Presupposition
1. Entailment and proposition
2. Defeasibility
3. Presupposition trigger
III. Prospects
A. Inter-language pragmatics(Kasper & Blum-Kulka 1993):
B. Adaptation theory: (Verschueren 1995)
C. Pragmatic disorders: (Craig 1991)
Language and Society
(2 periods)
I. Language and society
A. Possible relationship between language and society
1.Social structure influencing or determining linguistic structure and linguistic behavior;
2.Linguistic behavior helps to reinforce or change social reality;
3.The influence is bi-directional: interactional approach.
B. Differences between traditional linguistics and sociolinguistics
1. Nature of speech communities: homogeneous versus heterogeneous;
2. Methodology: non-empirical and qualitative versus empirical and quantitative;
3. Data: written language versus vernacular;
4. Style: single style versus style shift.
II. Language and Use
A. Register: varieties according to use.
Halliday’s three general dimensions:
1.Field
2.Mode
3.Tenor
B. Register and style
1. Register describes the language of groups of people with common interests or jobs;
2. Styles are often analyzed along a scale of formality: types of styles.
III. Language and User
A. Variable, variant, variation, variety
Illustration of the concepts with the example of ( ŋ):[ ŋ]or[n].
B. Social variables and language variation
1.Social class
2.Gender
a. Phonology
b. Morphology and vocabulary
c. Grammar and conversational styles
d. Other gender-linked differences
3.Age
4.Contextual style
5.Region
IV. Two important concepts in sociolinguistics:
A. Speech Community
1.Definition
2.Possible standards: one single speech variety; shared attitudes towards linguistic behavior in the community; in-group social cohesiveness.
B. Communicative Competence
1.Linguistic Competence versus Communicative Competence
2.Four basic components: linguistic competence, sociolinguistic competence, discourse competence and strategic competence.
V.Other research areas in sociolinguistics
A. Micro-sociolinguistics:
Language change, code- switching, diaglossia, pidgins and Creoles, language contact, generation, and degeneration.
B. Macro-sociolinguistics:
Language attitudes, language shift, maintenance, and replacement, language conflict, linguistic politeness, language planning and reform, bilingualism and multilingualism.
Language Change
(2 periods)
I. Views on language change
A. Traditional viewpoint: only the results of language change can be observed, like hands of a clock.
B. Sociolinguitic view: the language change in progress can be observed. Example of /r/ in the same household in Northern America.
II. Theories of language change
A. Family tree theory: observe the consequences of language change;
B. Theory of ‘wave’ and ‘diffusion’: focuses on the process of language change.
III. Forms of language change
A. Phonological change
B. Morphology
C. Vocabulary: addition, loss, and meaning changes
D. Syntax
IV. Causes of language change
A.. Inter-lingual and inter-cultural communication
B. The development of science and technology
C. Language planning and reforming
D. Several causes discovered in sociolinguistics
Language, Culture and Thought
(2 periods )
I. Language, culture and thought
A. Language and thought
B. Language and culture
1.Culture:
a. Art, literature, music, and architecture, etc.
b. Values, and beliefs, etc.(spiritual vs material culture; high vs low culture)
c. Customs, manners, habits and attitudes, etc.
d. Language and what is related to language.
2. Relationship between language and culture
II. Whorf Hypothesis
A. Linguistic determinism and linguistic relativity
1. Linguistic determinism: the way one thinks is determined by the language one speaks; 2. Linguistic relativity: the way one thinks is influenced by the language one speaks.
B. Comment on the Whorfian Hypothesis
1.Structure (past tense of Hopi and English)
2.Lexicon (‘snow’, ‘ant’, ‘camel’ in some cultures)
Summary: the weakness of the Whorfian Hypothesis is that it is impossible to be generalized about all cultures.
III. Some linguistic/cultural items
A. Terms of address
B. Greetings
C. Kinship terms
D. Taboo& euphemism
E. Color terms
Language Development
（two periods）
I. First Language Acquisition
A. Language Acquisition Stages
1. Holophrastic stage
2. Two-word stage
3. Stage of three-word utterances
4. Fluent grammatical conversation stage
B. Language Comprehension
1. Word recognition
2. Comprehension of sentences
3. Comprehension of text
C. Language Production
1. Access to words
2. Generation of sentences
3. Written language production
II. Second Language Learning
A. Foreign and Second Language Learning
1. Foreign language learning
2. Second language learning
3. Major differences between foreign and second language learning
B. Reasons for the superiority of first language Acquisition
1. Cognitive differences
a. Transfer
b. Meta-linguistic knowledge
2. Affective differences
a. Motivation
b. Acculturation
c. Biological differences
Schools of Modern Linguistics
(two periods)
I. The Prague School
A. Introduction
B. Phonology and phonological oppositions
C. Functional Sentence Perspective (FSP)
II. The London School
A. Malinowski’s theories
B. Firth’s theories
C. Halliday and Systemic-Functional Grammar
III. American Structuralism
A. Early period: Boas and Sapir
B. Bloomfield’s theory
C. Post-Bloomfieldian linguistics
IV. Transformational-Generative Grammar
A. The innateness hypothesis
B. What is a generative grammar?
C. Main features of TG Grammar
V. Revisionists
A. Case Grammar
B. Generative Semantics
C. Cognitive Grammar
D. Cognitive Semantics and Grammar