General Linguistics I. The Nature of Language1. Definition and characteristics(1)Definition: Language is a system of arbitrary vocal symbols by means of which the members of a speech community communicate, interact, and transmit their culture(2)Characteristicsarbitrarinessduality: sound/ meaningproductivity: (never heard beforedisplacement: refer to things not presentcultural transmissioninterchangeability: any human being can be both producer and receiver

(3)FunctionsPhatic: establishing an atmosphere or maintaining social contact--greetings, comments on weather.Directive:: get hearer to do somethingimperative sentencesInformative: tell what the speaker believes, give information about facts, reason things out Declarative sentencesInterrogative: get information from othersquestionsExpressive: reveal something about the feelings and attitudes of the speakerevaluate, appraise and assert the speakers attitudePerformative: do things, perform actionsI declare the meeting open, I declare war (4)Origin of language: the divine-origin theory; the invention theory; the evolutionary theory

2. Some basic distinctions in linguistics(1)Speech and writingprimacy of speech over writing in linguistic analysis(2)Synchronic and diachronicpriority of synchronic(3)Langue and parole(by Swiss linguist F. de Saussure1857-1913)Langue refers to the abstract linguistic system shared by all the members of a speech community a set of conventions, generalized rules, abstract, not actually spoken by anyone, relatively stable and systematic.Parole refers to the actualized language, or realization of langueconcrete use of conventions or application of rules, specific, naturally occurring event, subject to personal and situational constraints. (4)Competence and performance(Noam Chomsky 1950s)Competence: ideal language users knowledge of the rule of his languagePerformance: actual realization of this knowledge in utterances

(5)Linguistic potential and actual linguistic behavior(English linguist M. A. K. Halliday, 1960s) functional point of view, more concerned with what speakers do with languagemany things, many topicswhat is actually said is what is selected from among the many possibilitiesLinguistic potential: similar to langue and competence// langue social property/ linguistic potentialsomething available for the speaker to select from// competencea form of knowing /linguistic potentiala set of possibilities for doing// The competence and performance distinction is one between what a person knows and what he does/ the linguistic potential and actual linguistic behavior distinction is one between what a person can do and what a person does. Actual linguistic behavior, similar to parole and performance

3. Process of speaking(1)Semantic encoding. (2)Grammatical encoding. (3)Phonological encoding. (4-8)Sending, transmission, receiving. (9-11)Phonological, Grammatical, Semantic decoding

4. Major branches of linguistics(1)Semantics: the study of the semantic codemeaning(2)Lexicology: the study of the total stock of morphemes.(lexicography: the art of making dictionaries of various sort)words(3)Syntax: the study of the grammatical codegrammar(4)Phonology (AmE phonemics): the study of the phonological codephoneme(5)Articulatory phonetics: the study of the movements of the vocal organs in producing the sounds of speech.// Acoustic phonetics: the study of the vibrations of air molecules.// Auditory phonetics: the study of the way the sounds are perceived by the human ear.

5. Use of linguisticsapplied linguistics(1)Linguistic geography: study of the way in which a language varies through geographical space. (2)Socioliguistics: study of the variations in linguistic usage of different social classes. (3)Synchronic linguistics: study of a given language at a given period of time.(4)Diachronic linguistics: study of language change through time.--Two branches: Historical linguistics: study of the historical development of a language.//Comparative linguistics: study of the historical relationships among languages and attempts to group them into families, subfamilies.

(5)Psycholinguistics: study of how language if acquired, understood and produced. (6)Anthropological linguistics: study of how language fits into the larger context of sociocultural behavior and how grammar is a part of culture.(7)Neurolinguistics: study of a number of issues related to the neurological basis of language: the brain's anatomy, the species specificity of language and the relationship between language and consciousness.(8)Stylistic linguisticslinguistics and literature(9)Other branches: language teaching, machine translation, computer linguistics(computational linguistics, mathematical linguistics, statistical linguistics, mechanolinguistics)

II. Phonetics1. Vocal organs2. Consonants: places of articulation; manners of articulation (obstruction)classification3. Vowels: height of tongue raising (high, mid, low); position of the highest part of tongue (front, central, back); degree of lip rounding (rounded, unrounded)classificationAdditional factors: oral or nasal; long or short; pure or gliding4. Phonetic transcription: method of writing down speech sounds in a systematic and consistent way: International Phonetic Alphabet5. Phoneme: sound capable of distinguishing one word from another: get/net, have/ gave

III. Phonology1. Phonology: study of sound systemsdistinctive sounds and their patternsphoneme2. Non-distinctive sounds: members of the same phonemesallophoneslet, play, tell3. Phonologylanguage specific// phoneticsuniversal4. Minimal pair: word forms which differ from each other only by one sound, pen/pin//pin//ping5. Free variation: that boy/thatthe same phoneme

6. Complementary distribution: two sounds never occur in the same environment, /h/--/g/7. Distinctive features: phonological features of a phoneme which distinguish one phoneme from another8. Intonation: stress, length, pitchfour grammatical functions: indicate different sentence type; different pitch indicates connotative meaning(I cant eat anythingfall/fall-rise); different structure (John didnt come because of MaryJohn came, but it had nothing to do with Mary/ John didnt come, because Mary); give prominence to one part of a sentence(John likes fish.)

IV. Morphology1. Morphology: the internal structure of words and rules by which words are formedtwo branches: inflections// word-formation2. Inflection: addition of affixes such as number, person, finiteness, aspect and case, which do not change the grammatical class of the stems3. Word-formation: compound//derivation4. Compound: relationships between lexical wordsnoun compounds (daybreak); verb compounds(brainwash); adjective compounds (carefree); preposition compounds (into/ throughout)5. Derivation: relationships between stems and affixes (word class changed// word class unchanged)

6. Morpheme: minimal unit of meaningphoneme/gouz/ for third-person singular7. Free morpheme: form a word by itselfbed, tree8. Bound morpheme: with at least one other morpheme, -al in national9. Root: polymorphemic words other than compounds may divide into roots and affixes10. Free root morpheme (most, stand by themselves as words)bound root morpheme (relatively few, such as -ceive in receive, perceive, conceive)11. Stem: morpheme or combination of morphemefriends/ friendships12. Affix: prefix (mini-), suffix (-tion), infix (foot/ feet)inflectional (walked) & derivational (sleepy)

V. Lexicon1. Lexicon: similar to vocabulary, deal with the analysis and creation of words, idioms, collocation2. Word: grammatical unit(sentence, clause, word group, word, morpheme); most stable of all linguistic units; smallest unit which can constitute a complete sentence3. Variable words (changeable)// invariable words(unchangeable)4. Grammatical wordfunction wordform word(to be, preposition, articles, possessives, demonstratives, qualifiers, conjunctions, intensifiers, auxiliary verbs, pronouns)// Lexical wordcarry semantic content5. Closed-class word (articles, pron, prep, conj)// open class(n, v, adj, adv)

6. Idiomsemantically and often syntactically restricted(meaning unpredictable, special syntactical restrictions)7. Collocation: habitual co-occurrences of individual lexical itemsFeatures(1) Mutual expectancy, (2)Fixed syntactical-lexical relations (3)Inexplicability

VI. Syntax1. Syntax: study of rules governing the ways to form sentences, or the interrelationships between elements in sentence structures2. Syntactical relations(1)Positional relation(word order)Syntagmatic Relations (2)Relation of substitutabilityAssociative relations (de Saussure)// Paradigmatic Relations (Hjemslev) (3)Relation of co-occurrence3. Immediate constituent: small units of constructing a sentence, such as single words, groups of wordsThe boy ate the apple. (S=NP+VP)4. Coordinate and subordinate constructions5. Syntactic function: subject, predicate, object6. Category: number, gender, case, concord, government7. Extension of sentence: conjoining//embedding// recursive// Hypotactic/Paratactic8. Cohesion: reference, substitution, ellipsis, logical connection, lexical collocation

VII. Semantics1. Semantics: study of meaning2. Meaning: conceptualism(symbol, referent, thought), mechanism, contextualism (linguistic context/ situational context), behaviorism (stimulusresponse), functionalism(meaning explained in use)3. Kinds of meaningtraditional approachlexical meaning/ grammatical meaningfunctional approachconceptual meaning (denotative), associative meaning (connotative), social meaning, affective meaning, reflected meaning, collocative meaning, thematic meaningwoman (female, human, adult)(fragile, emotional)(register)(personal emotion)(The Comforter--comfort)(pretty handsome)(Mr. Smith donated the moneyThe money was donated by Mr. Smith)pragmatic approach (sentence meaning/utterance meaningimplicature)

4. Sense relationships of words: synonymy (sameness or close similarity of meaning); antonymy (oppositeness of meaning); complementarity (single/married); gradability (hot/warm/cool/cold); relational opposites (buy/sell); hyponymy (meaning inclusionflower/rose); polysemy(more than one meaning); homonymy(pupil/studentpupil/ of the eye// flourflower)5. Sense relations between sentences: entailment(); presupposition(The girl he married //He married a girl); implicature; sysnonymous; inconsistent; anomalous6. Semantic analysis: componential analysis; predication analysis; relational analysis (father); logical elements

VIII. Language changeA. Lexical change1. Invention: Kodak2. Compounding: moonwalk, earthrise, black hole3. Blending: smog=smoke+fog, transistor=transfer+resister4. Abbreviation: math=mathematics, prof=professor, telly=television5. Acronym: WB(World Bank), PLO(Palestine Liberation Organization)6. Metanalysis: a nadderan adder, a napronan apron7. Backformation: editoredit, peddlerpeddle, enthusiasmenthuse8. Analogical creation: workwrought(old)worked9. Borrowing: atom(Greek), tsunami(Japanese), wok(Chinese)

B. Grammatical change1. Morphological change: didstdid, hathhas, comethcomes2. Syntactical change: (15th c)more gladder, more lower// (Shakespeare)He saw you not./ I love thee notC. Semantic change1. Broadening: offendstrike againstcreate anger// birdyoung birdany kind of bird2. Narrowing: campopen fieldplace// cattlepersonal propertyanimals// girlyoung person of either sexyoung woman3. Meaning shift: lustpleasuresexual craving// sillyhappy(O.E)nave(M.E)4. Class shift: engineera person trained in a branch of engineering(n)to act as an engineer5. Folk etymology: change due to incorrect popular notion: sparrowgrassasparagus(Greek)wizwizardD. Orthographicchange

IX. Pragmatics1. Pragmatics: study of language in use and linguistic communication; meaning that is not accounted for by semantics2. Context and meaning: John is like a fish.(swim well// drink a lot of wine// as cold as fish)3. Speech act theory(J. Austin in 1962, J. Searle in 1969): language used not only to inform and describe things, often used to do thingsI hereby name this ship Red Flag, I promise to be here at nine oclock, I apologizeperformative sentencesThree kinds of acts are performed at the same time (1)Locutionary act: the utterance of a sentence with determinate sense and reference; (2)Illocutionary act: the making of a statement, offer, promise, etc, in uttering a sentence; (3)Perlocutionary act: the bringing about of effects on the audience by means of uttering the sentence, such effects being special to the circumstances of utterance.Its cold heresaying(1)request(2)shutting the window(3)

4. Types of illocutionary acts: (1)Assertives: truth of somethingI think the film is moving. (2)Directives: get the hearer to do somethingI order you to leave right now. (3)Commisives: some future actionIf you do that again, Ill beat you to death. (4)Declarations: bringing about immediate change in the existing state of things5. Indirect speech act: perform one illocutionary act indirectly by performing anotherLets go to the movies tonight/ I have to study for an exam.

6. Conversational analysis(1) Adjacency pair: one type of utterance is typically followed by a special type of utteranceMay I have a bottle of whisky?/Are you twenty-one?/ No/ No. (2)Preferred second parts: responses to question which are not answers but which count as second parts, some preferred and some dispreferred. (3)PresequenceWhat are you doing tonight?/ Nothing important. Why?/Come to my place for dinner, then.7. The Cooperative principle(P. Grice): (1)Maxim of quality (2)Maxim of quantity (3)Maxim of relevance (4)Maxim of Manner (avoid obscurity and ambiguity, be brief and orderly)8. Conversational implicature: a kind of extra meaning not contained in the utterance. If speaker follows or violates the maxims, he produces implicatureI have 3 children.//I have only 3 children, not more

X. Linguistics and literature1. Stylistics: study of literature from a linguistic orientation. (H. D. Widdowson, 1975)2. Linguistic analysis: (1)Phonological featuressound patterns// prosodyonomatopoeic effect// chiming//expectation and surprise; (2)Lexical featurestotal lexical choices; patterns of lexical choices; evaluation of lexical choices; (3)Grammatical features (4)Semantic features: redundancy, absurdity(a living death), figurative meaning, honest deception(Belinda smiled, and all the world was gay)(5) Graphological features3. Theory of foregrounding: unusual, attractive, unconventional(1)deviation(he sang his didnt he danced his did) (2)parallelism(over-regularityTo err is human, to forgive divine// If you prick us, do we not bleed?/ if you tickle us, do we not laugh?/ if you poison us, do we not die?/ and if you wrong us, shall we no revenge?) (3) patterning