1.语言学导论

第一章语言学导论

一. Why Study Language?

二. What is Language?

三. Design Features of Language

The features that define our human languages can be called Design Features.

What makes language unique to human beings?

The design features of language which refer to the defining properties of human language tell the difference between human language and any system of animal communication.

Arbitrariness is a core feature of language, which means that there is no logical connection between meanings and sounds. Duality, which means the property of having 2 levels of sturctures, such that units of the primary level are composed of elements of the secondary level and each of the 2 levels has its own principles of organization. Creativity means language is resourceful because of its duality and its recursiveness. Because of duality, the speaker is able to combine the basic linguistic unites to form an infinite set of sentences, most of which are never heard before. Displacement means that language can be used to refer to things which are present or not present, real or imagined matters, in the past, present, or future, or in far-away places.

So all these features make language unique to human beings.

Design features refer to the distinctive features of human language that essentially make human langugae distinguishable from any animal system of communication.

ARBITRARINESS

By ‘language is arbitrary’ we mean there is no logical connection between meanings and sounds. For example, there is no reason why English speakers use the sounds /dog/ to denote the animal ‘dog’, or /pig/ to refer to the animal ‘pig’ while Chinese speakers use different sounds (狗and 猪respectively) to indicate them. There are different levels of arbitrariness.

(1) Arbitrary relationship between the sound of a morpheme and its meaning.

We must admit that there are certain words with different degrees of onomatopoeia in every language which imitate natural sounds, such as ‘bang, crash, and roar’ in English, and ‘叮叮当，咔嚓，扑哧’ in Chinese. However arbitrariness and onomatopoeic effect may work at the same time. Widdowson’s illustration of a line ‘The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves’ in Keats’Ode to a Nightinggale by attempting the substitution of ‘murderous’ for ‘murmurous’ shows that no connection will be established between sounds and the little noiseness of the flying flies. ‘It is only when you know the meaning that you infer that the form is appropriate.’(Widdowson, 1996:6)

(2) Arbitrariness at the syntactic level

As to arbitrariness at the syntactic level, there are 2 opposite points of view.

According to some functional linguists (Halliday, 1985/1994), language is not arbitrary at the syntactic level because there may be a certain degree of correspondence between the sequence

of clauses and the real happenings. Put it differently, syntax is less arbitrary than words, especially in so far as word order is concerned. Compare: a). He came in and sat down. b). He sat down and came in. c). He sat down after he came in. Sentence a) means the actions occurred in this order. Sentence b) means the opposite sequence of the real happening—perhaps he got into his wheelchair and propelled himself into the room. In sentence c) with the help of the word ‘after’ we can reverse the order of the clauses.

However, formal linguists underscore the autonomy of syntax. ‘Human cognition embodies a system whose primitive terms are non-semantic and non-discourse-derived syntactic elements and whose principles of combination make no reference to system-external factors.’ (Newmeyer, 1998:18) in other words, to them, syntax is purely arbitrary.

(3) Arbitrariness and Convention

Arbitrariness and Conventionality are 2 indispensable sides of the coin of language. Arbitrariness of language makes it potentially creative, and conventionality of languge makes learning a language laborious.

DUALITY

Duality is one of the characteristics of human language. It refers to the fact that language has 2 levels of structures, such that units of the primary level (words) are composed of elements of the secondary level (sounds) and each of the 2 levels has its own principles of organization.

For example, a syllable is the smallest unit that is normally spoken by itself, and scores of syllables become the carriers of hundreds of meaningful segments of words that are called morphemes.

Why do people take duality as one of the important design fuatures of human language? Can you tell us what language will be if it has no such desine feature?

Duality makes our language productive. A large number of different units can be formed out of a small number of elements. For example, tens of thousands of words out of a small set of sounds. And out of the huge number of words, there can be astronomical number of possible sentences and phrases, which in turn can combine to form unlimited number of texts. Most animal communication systems do not have this design feature of human language.

If language had no such design feature, then it would be like animal communicational system which consists only a number of basic sounds and this would be highly limited. Then we would not be able to produce a very large number of sound combinations (e.g. words), which are distinct in meaning. In other words, the number of messages one can send woud be restricted to the number of basic sounds.

CREATIVITY

One of the design features of human language is creativity. What is it? And what makes it possible?

By Creativity, we mean language is resourceful because of its duality and recursiveness. It is one of the design features that only human language has.

Human language is resourceful because of its duality and its recursiveness. The speaker is able to combine the basic linguistic units to form an infinite set of sentences, most of which are never before produced or heard. The recursive nature of langugae provides a theoretical basis for creating endless sentences.

DISPLACEMENT

Human languages enable their users to symbolize objects, events and concepts which are not present (in time and space) at the moment of communication. This quality is labeled as displacement.

For example, we can talk about Hitler, who is already dead; we can even talk about next week, which is in the future.

‘An refer to Confucius even though he was dead 2000 years ago.’ This shows that language has the design feature of displacement.

四. Origin of Language

Theory that primitive man made involuntary vocal noises while performing heavy work has been called the Yo-he-yo theory.

The Bow-wow theory is a theory on the origin of language.

五. Functions of Language

What are the 7 functions of human language?

According to Hu Zhuanglin, language has at least 7 functions, and they are illustrated as follows:

(1)INFORMATIVE FUNCTION: it means that language is the instrument of thought and language

serves an informational function when used to tell something. It is also called ideational function in the framework of functional grammar. The declarative sentences such as ‘This is a book.’ are the typical illustration of this function.

(2)INTERPERSONAL FUNCTION: it means people can use language to estabilish and maintain

their status in a society. It is the most important sociological use of language. In the framework of functional grammar, this function is concerned with interaction between the addresser and addressee in the discourse situation and the addresser’s attitude toward what he speaks or writes about. For example, the ways in which people address others and refer to themselves (such as Dear Sir, Dear Professor, Johnny, yours, your obedient servant) indicate the various grades of interpersonal relations.

(3)PERFORMATIVE FUNCTION: it is primarily to change the social status of persons, as in

marriage ceremonies, the sentencing of criminals, the blessing of children, the naming of a ship at a launching ceremony, and the cursing of enemies. The kind of language employed in performative verbal acts is usually quite formal and even ritualized. The performative function can extend to the control of reality as on some magical or religious occasions. For example, in Chinese when someone breaks a bowl or a plate, the host or the people present are likely to say 碎碎平安(every year be safe and happy) as a means of controling the forces which the believers feel might affect their lives.

(4)EMOTIVE FUNCTION: it is one of the most powerful uses of language because it is so crucial

in changing the emotional status of an audience for or against someone or something. It is a means of getting rid of the nervous energy when people are under stress, for example, swear

words, obscenities, involuntary verbal reactions to beautiful art or scenery; conventional words/phrases, for example, God, My, Damn it, Wow, Ugh, Ow, etc.

(5)PHATIC COMMUNION: it originates form Malinowski’s study of the functions of language

performed by Trobrind Islanders. It refers to the social interaction of language . People always use some small, seemingly meaningless expressions such as ‘Good morning, God bless you, Nice day, etc.’ to maintain a comfortable relationship between people without any factual content.

(6)RECREATIONAL FUNCTION: it means people use language for the sheer joy of using it, such as

a baby’s babbling or a chanter’s chanting.

(7)METALINGUAL FUNCTION: it refers to the fact that people can use language to talk about

itself. For example, I can use the word ‘book’to talk about a book, and I can also use the expression ‘the word book’ to talk about the sign ‘b-o-o-k’ itself.

六. What is Linguistics?

Linguistics is usually defined as the science of language or the scientific study of language.

七. Main Branches of Linguistics

PHONETICS and PHONOLOGY

Phonetics mainly studies the characteristics of speech sounds and provides methods for their description, classification and transcription.

The branch of linguistics which studies the sound patterns of a language is called phonology.

Illustrate the significance of studying speech sounds in linguistics.

Language is first and foremost a ‘system of vocal symbols’. Human beings are capable of making all kinds of sounds, but only some of these sounds have become units in the language system, as we have seen in the discussion of language speech sounds had existed long before writing was invented, and even today, in some parts of the world, there are still languages that have no writing systems. Therefore, the study of speech sounds is a major part of linguistics.

Analysis of speech sounds can be approached on 2 levels: phonetics and phonology. Phonetics deals with speech organs and their functions, speech sounds, waves carrying speech sounds, analysis and processing of the sounds by the listener. Phonology is concerned with the organization of speech within specific languages, or with the systems and patterns of sounds that occur in particular languages. Both phonetics and phonology are main branches of linguistics.

To study speech sounds, linguistics need to analyze the minute processes and acticities of the speaker and explain the way speech organs move to convey meaning. The theory and methods thus developed can be applied to numerous other fields. For example, people who work in recording, language description and language teaching will have some interest in phonetic knowledge while those who work in audiology, speech therapy and speech pathology must have a solid foundation in phonetics and phonology.

MORPHOLOGY

The branch of grammar which studies the internal stucture of words is called Morphology.

SYNTAX

The branch of grammar which studies the internal structrue of sentence is called Syntax.

In linguistics, Syntax refers to the study of the rules governing the way words are combined to form sentences in a language, or simply, the study of the formation as sentence.

SEMANTICS and PRAGMATICS

Semantics and pragmatics investigate different aspects of linguistic meaning.

Pragmatics can be defined as the study of language in use.

Is it possible to separate semantics and pragmatics?

Though both semantics and pragmatics have to do with the meaning of language, and link language to the world, we think it is possible to separate semantics and pragmatics in linguistic study.

Semantics is the study of literal meaning of linguistic expressions, particularly meaning of words, phrases and sentences. In using the term sense rather than reference, the focus of semantics is on the way people relate words to each other within the framework of their language. Pragmatics starts from the observation that people use language to accomplish many kinds of acts, broadly known as speech acts thus it is the study of how to do things with words or of the meaning of language in context. This kind of meaning in pragmatics usually refers to as speaker’s meaning, utterence meaning, or contextual meaning. Its interpretation depends more on who the speaker of the sentence is, who the hearer is, when and where it is used.

Thus the distinction between semantics and pragmatics is clear: the former is more closely related to the words used, the more constant, inherent side of meaning; the later is more closely related to the context, the more indeterminate side, or something extra.

八. Macrolinguistics

Macrolinguistics studies how linguistics is related with other disciplines such as psychology, sociology, ethnography, the science of law and artificial intelligence etc.

Psycholinguistics is concerned primarily with investigating the psychological reality of linguistic structures.

Sociolinguistics is an umbrella term which covers a variety of different interests in languge and society, including the social functions of langugae and the social characteristics of its users. It attempts to show the relationship between language and society.

九. Important Distinctions in Linguistics

DESCRIPTIVE vs. PRESCRIPTIVE

Descriptive study attempts to tell what is in the language, while Prescriptive study tells people what should be in the language. Most comtemporary linguists believe that whatever occurs naturally in the language should be described.

An approach in linguistic study which attempts to lay down rules of correctness as to how language should be used is Prescriptive.

Modern linguistic is Descriptive in the sense that the linguist tries to discover what language is rather than lay down some rules for people to observe.

SYNCHRONIC vs. DIACHRONIC

The description of a language as it changes through time is a diachronic linguistic study. Diachrony is concerned with the evolution of language over time.

The study of language at one point in time is a Synchronic study.

Synchrony refers to the state of a language as it exists at any given time.

LANGUE /PAROLE and COMPETENCE/PERFORMANCE

Saussure puts forward the concept of Langue and Parole, and Chomsky puts forward the concept of Competence and Performance. Please dwell upon the differences and similarities, if any, of the 2 pairs: Langue and Parole vs. Competence and Performance.

According to F. de Saussure, Langue refers to the abstract linguistic system shared by all members of a speech community; while Parole refers to the realization of langue in actual use. We can compare them along the following dimensions: Langue is abstract; Parole is specific to the situation in which it occurs. Langue is not actually spoken by someone; Parole is always a naturally occurring event. Langue is relatively stable and systematic; Parole is subject to personal and situational constraints. The linguists’proper object is the Langue of each community, the lexicon, grammar and phonology implied in each individual by his upbringing in society, and on the basis of which he speaks and understands his language.

For Chomsky, a fundamental distinction between linguistic Competence and Performance should be made. A language user’s underlying knowledge about the system of rules is called linguistic Competence. And Performance refers to the actual use of language in concrete situations. In light with this, Competence enables a speaker to produce and understand an indefinite number of sentences and to recognize grammatical mistakes and ambiguities. A speaker’s Competence is stable but his Performance is often influenced by psychological and social factors, and thus would involve imperfections such as slips of tongue, false starts, unnecessary pauses, and so on. Thus, the point is that a speaker’s Performance does not always match his Competence.

Saussure’s distinction is somewhat similar with Chomsky’s in the sense that the both refer to the constant factor which underlies the utterances that constitute Parole/Performance. However, their difference is quite obvious. Saussure’s Langue is a social product, a set of conventions for a

speech community. Chomsky regards Competence as a property of the mind of each individual. Saussure looks at Language more from a sociological point of view while Chomsky looks at it more from a psychological point of view.

Linguistic potential is similar to Saussure’s langue and Chomsky’s competence.