Linguistics
Chapter 1 Invitations to Linguistics
1.1 Why study language?
1. Language is very essential to human beings.
2. In language there are many things we should know.
3. For further understanding, we need to study language scientifically.
1.2 What is language?
Language is a means of verbal communication. It is a system of arbitrary vocal symbols used for human communication.
1.3 Design features of language
The features that define our human languages can be called design features which can distinguish human language from any animal system of communication.
1.3.1 Arbitrariness
Arbitrariness refers to the fact that the forms of linguistic signs bear no natural relationship to their meanings.
1.3.2 Duality
Duality refers to the property of having two levels of structures, such that units of the primary level are composed of elements of the secondary level and each of the two levels has its own principles of organization.
1.3.3 Creativity
Creativity means that language is resourceful because of its duality and its recursiveness. Recursiveness refers to the rule which can be applied repeatedly without any definite limit. The recursive nature of language provides a theoretical basis for the possibility of creating endless sentences.
1.3.4 Displacement
Displacement means that human languages enable their users to symbolize objects, events and concepts which are not present (in time and space) at the moment of conversation.
1.4 Origin of language
1. The bow-wow theory
In primitive times people imitated the sounds of the animal calls in the wild environment they lived and speech developed from that.
2. The pooh-pooh theory
In the hard life of our primitive ancestors, they utter instinctive sounds of pains, anger and joy which gradually developed into language.
3. The “yo-he-ho” theory
As primitive people worked together, they produced some rhythmic grunts which gradually developed into chants and then into language.
1.5 Functions of language
As is proposed by Jacobson, language has six functions:
1. Referential: to convey message and information;
2. Poetic: to indulge in language for its own sake;
3. Emotive: to express attitudes, feelings and emotions;
4. Conative: to persuade and influence others through commands and entreaties;
5. Phatic: to establish communion with others;
6. Metalingual: to clear up intentions, words and meanings.
Halliday (1994) proposes a theory of metafunctions of language. It means that language has three metafunctions:
1. Ideational function: to convey new information, to communicate a content that is unknown to the hearer;
2. Interpersonal function: embodying all use of language to express social and personal relationships;
3. Textual function: referring to the fact that language has mechanisms to make any stretch of spoken and written discourse into a coherent and unified text and make a living passage different from a random list of sentences.
According to Hu Zhuanglin, language has at least seven functions:
1.5.1 Informative
The informative function means language is the instrument of thought and people often use it to communicate new information.
1.5.2 Interpersonal function
The interpersonal function means people can use language to establish and maintain their status in a society.
1.5.3 Performative
The performative function of language 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.
1.5.4 Emotive function
The emotive function 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.
1.5.5 Phatic communion
The phatic communion means 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.
1.5.6 Recreational function
The recreational function means people use language for the sheer joy of using it, such as a baby’s babbling or a chanter’s chanting.
1.5.7 Metalingual function
The metalingual function means people can use language to talk about itself. E.g. 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.
1.6 What is linguistics?
Linguistics is the scientific study of language. It studies not just one language of any one community, but the language of all human beings.
1.7 Main branches of linguistics
1.7.1 Phonetics
Phonetics is the study of speech sounds, it includes three main areas: articulatory phonetics, acoustic phonetics, and auditory phonetics.
1.7.2 Phonology
Phonology studies the rules governing the structure, distribution, and sequencing of speech sounds and the shape of syllables.
1.7.3 Morphology
Morphology studies the minimal units of meaning – morphemes and word-formation processes.
1.7.4 Syntax
Syntax refers to the rules governing the way words are combined to form sentences in a language, or simply, the study of the formation of sentences.
1.7.5 Semantics
Semantics examines how meaning is encoded in a language.
1.7.6 Pragmatics
Pragmatics is the study of meaning in context.
1.8 Macrolinguistics
Macrolinguistics is the study of language in all aspects, distinct from microlinguistics, which dealt solely with the formal aspect of language system.
1.8.1 Psycholinguistics
Psycholinguistics investigates the interrelation of language and mind, in processing and producing utterances and in language acquisition for example.
1.8.2 Sociolinguistics
Sociolinguistics is a term which covers a variety of different interests in language and society, including the language and the social characteristics of its users.
1.8.3 Anthropological linguistics
Anthropological linguistics studies the relationship between language and culture in a community.
1.8.4 Computational linguistics
Computational linguistics is an interdisciplinary field which centers around the use of computers to process or produce human language.
1.9 Important distinctions in linguistics
1.9.1 Descriptive vs. prescriptive
To say that linguistics is a descriptive science is to say that 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.
Prescriptive linguistics aims to lay down rules for the correct use of language and settle the disputes over usage once and for all.
For example, “Don’t say X.” is a prescriptive command; “People don’t say X.” is a descriptive statement. The distinction lies in prescribing how things ought to be and describing how things are. In the 18th century, all the main European languages were studied prescriptively. However, modern linguistics is mostly descriptive because the nature of linguistics as a science determines its preoccupation with description instead of prescription.
1.9.2 Synchronic vs. diachronic
A synchronic study takes a fixed instant (usually at present) as its point of observation. Saussure’s diachronic description is the study of a language through the course of its history. E.g. a study of the features of the English used in Shakespeare’s time would be synchronic, and a study of the changes English has undergone since then would be a diachronic study. In modern linguistics, synchronic study seems to enjoy priority over diachronic study. The reason is that unless the various state of a language are successfully studied it would be difficult to describe the changes that have taken place in its historical development.
1.9.3 Langue & parole
Saussure distinguished the linguistic competence of the speaker and the actual phenomena or data of linguistics as langue and parole. Langue is relative stable and systematic, parole is subject to personal and situational constraints; langue is not spoken by an individual, parole is always a naturally occurring event. What a linguist should do, according to Saussure, is to draw rules from a mass of confused facts, i.e. to discover the regularities governing all instances of parole and make them the subject of linguistics.
1.9.4 Competence and performance
According to Chomsky, a language user’s underlying knowledge about the system of rules is called the linguistic competence, and the actual use of language in concrete situations is called performance. Competence enables a speaker to produce and understand and indefinite number of sentences and to recognize grammatical mistakes and ambiguities. A speaker’s competence is stable while his performance is often influenced by psychological and social factors. So a speaker’s performance does not always match his supposed competence. Chomsky believes that linguists ought to study competence, rather than performance. Chomsky’s competence-performance distinction is not exactly the same as, though similar to, Saussure’s langue-parole distinction. Langue is a social product and a set of conventions of a community, while competence is deemed as a property of mind of each individual. Saussure looks at language more from a sociological or sociolinguistic point of view than Chomsky since the latter deals with his issues psychologically or psycholinguistically.
1.9.5 Etic vs. emic
[These two terms are still very vague to me. After I read Ji Daohong’s book, I can understand them better, but because they are vaguely mentioned in Hu’s book, it seems very difficult for me to understand them fully. – icywarmtea]
Being etic means researchers’ making far too many, as well as behaviorally and inconsequential, differentiations, just as often the case with phonetics vs. phonemics analysis in linguistics proper.
An emic set of speech acts and events must be one that is validated as meaningful via final resource to the native members of a speech community rather than via appeal to the investigator’s ingenuity or intuition alone.
Following the suffix formations of (phon)etics vs (phon)emics, these terms were introduced into the social sciences by Kenneth Pike (1967) to denote the distinction between the material and functional study of language: phonetics studies the acoustically measurable and articulatorily definable immediate sound utterances, whereas phonemics analyzes the specific selection each language makes from that universal catalogue from a functional aspect. |
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