胡壮麟的语言学笔记（1）
2010-08-26 09:31阅读：
胡壮麟的语言学笔记
1. What is language?
“Language is system of arbitrary（随意的） vocal（发音的，口头的） symbols used
for human communication. It is a system, since linguistic elements
are arranged systematically, rather than randomly. Arbitrary, in
the sense that there is usually no intrinsic（固有的，内在的，本质的）
connection between a work (like “book”) and the object it refers
to. This explains and is explained by the fact that different
languages have different “books”: “book” in English, “livre” in
French, “shu” in Chinese. It is symbolic, because words are
associated with objects, actions, ideas etc. by nothing but
convention. Namely, people use the sounds or vocal forms to
symbolize what they wish to refer to. It is vocal, because sound or
speech is the primary medium for all human languages. Writing
systems came much later than the spoken forms. The fact that small
children learn and can only learn to speak (and listen) before they
write (and read) also indicates that language is primarily vocal,
rather than written. The term “human” in the definition is meant to
specify that language is human specific.
2. What are design features of language?
“Design features” here refer to the defining properties of human
language that tell the difference between human language and any
system of animal communication. They are arbitrariness,
duality（二元性）, productivity, displacement, cultural
transmission（文化传播） and interchangeability（可交换性）
3. What is arbitrariness?
By “arbitrariness”, we mean there is no logical connection between
meanings and sounds. A dog might be a pig if only the first person
or group of persons had used it for a pig. Language is therefore
largely arbitrary. But language is not absolutely seem to be some
sound-meaning association, if we think of echo words, like “bang”,
“crash”, “roar”, which are motivated in a certain sense. Secondly,
some compounds (words compounded to be one word) are not entirely
arbitrary either. “Type” and “write” are opaque（不透明的，难理解的，晦涩的）or
unmotivated words, while “type-writer” is less so, or more
transparent or motivated than the words that make it. So we can say
“arbitrariness” is a matter of degree.
4. What is duality?
Linguists refer “duality” (of structure) to the fact that in all
languages so far investigated, one finds two levels of structure or
patterning. At the first, higher level, language is analyzed in
terms of combinations of meaningful units (such as morphemes, words
etc.); at the second, lower level, it is seen as a sequence of
segments which lack any meaning in themselves, but which combine to
form units of meaning. According to Hu Zhanglin et al., language is
a system of two sets of structures, one of sounds and the other of
meaning. This is important for the workings of language. A small
number of semantic units (words), and these units of meaning can be
arranged and rearranged into an infinite number of sentences (note
that we have dictionaries of words, but no dictionary of
sentences!). Duality makes it possible for a person to talk about
anything within his knowledge. No animal communication system
enjoys this duality.
5. What is productivity?
Productivity refers to the ability to the ability to construct and
understand an indefinitely large number of sentences in one’s
native language, including those that has never heard before, but
that are appropriate to the speaking situation. No one has ever
said or heard “A red-eyed elephant is dancing on the small hotel
bed with an African gibbon”, but he can say it when necessary, and
he can understand it in right register. Different from artistic
creativity, though, productivity never goes outside the language,
thus also called “rule-bound creativity” (by N.Chomsky).
6.What is displacement?
“Displacement”, as one of the design features of the human
language, refers to the fact that one can talk about things that
are not present, as easily as he does things present. In other
words, one can refer to real and unreal things, things of the past,
of the present, of the future. Language itself can be talked about
too. When a man, for example, is crying to a woman, about
something, it might be something that had occurred, or something
that is occurring, or something that is to occur. When a dog is
barking, however, you can decide it is barking for something or at
someone that exists now and there. It couldn’t be bow-wowing
sorrowfully for a bone to be lost. The bee’s system, nonetheless,
has a small share of “displacement”, but it is an unspeakable tiny
share.
7.What is cultural transmission?
This means that language is not biologically transmitted from
generation to generation, but that the details of the linguistic
system must be learned anew by each speaker. It is true that the
capacity for language in human beings (N. Chomsky called it
“language acquisition device”, or LAD) has a genetic basis, but the
particular language a person learns to speak is a cultural one
other than a genetic one like the dog’s barking system. If a human
being is brought up in isolation he cannot acquire language. The
Wolf Child reared by the pack of wolves turned out to speak the
wolf’s roaring “tongue” when he was saved. He learned thereafter,
with no small difficulty, the ABC of a certain human
language.
8. What is interchangeability?
Interchangeability means that any human being can be both a
producer and a receiver of messages. Though some people suggest
that there is sex differentiation in the actual language use, in
other words, men and women may say different things, yet in
principle there is no sound, or word or sentence that a man can
utter and a woman cannot, or vice versa. On the other hand, a
person can be the speaker while the other person is the listener
and as the turn moves on to the listener, he can be the speaker and
the first speaker is to listen. It is turn-taking that makes social
communication possible and acceptable. Some male birds, however,
utter some calls which females do not (or cannot). When a dog
barks, all the neighboring dogs bark. Then people around can hardly
tell which dog (dogs) is (are) “speaking” and which
listening.
9.Why do linguists say language is human specific?
First of all, human language has six “design features” which animal
communication systems do not have, at least not in the true sense
of them. Secondly, linguists have done a lot trying to teach
animals such as chimpanzees to speak a human language but have
achieved nothing inspiring. Washoe, a female chimpanzee, was
brought up like a human child by Beatnice and Alan Gardner. She was
taught “American sign Language”, and learned a little that made the
teachers happy but did mot make the linguistics circle happy, for
few believed in teaching chimpanzees. Thirdly, a human child reared
among animals cannot speak a human language, not even when he is
taken back and taught to do so.
10. What functions does language have?
Language has at least seven functions: phatic, directive,
Informative, interrogative, expressive, evocative and performative.
According to Wang Gang (1988,p.11), language has three main
functions: a tool of communication, a tool whereby people learn
about the world, and a tool by which people learn about the world,
and a tool by which people create art . M .A. K. Halliday,
representative of the London school, recognizes three
“Macro-Functions”: ideational, interpersonal and textual.
11. What is the phatic function?
The “phatic function” refers to language being used for setting up
a certain atmosphere or maintaining social contacts(rather than for
exchanging information or ideas). Greetings, farewells, and
comments on the weather in English and on clothing in Chinese all
serve this function. Much of the phatic language (e.g. “How are
you?” “Fine, thanks.”) is insincere if taken literally, but it is
important. If you don't say “Hello” to a friend you meet, or if you
don’t answer his “Hi”, you ruin your friendship.
12. What is the directive function?
The “directive function” means that language may be used to get the
hearer to do something. Most imperative sentences perform this
function, e. g., “Tell me the result when you finish.” Other
syntactic structures or sentences of other sorts can, according to
J. Austin and J. Searle’s “Indirect speech act theory” at least,
serve the purpose of direction too, e.g., “If I were you, I would
have blushed to the bottom of my ears!”
13. What is the informative function?
Language serves an “informational function” when used to tell
something, characterized by the use of declarative sentences.
Informative statements are often labelled as true (truth) or false
(falsehood). According to P. Grice’s “Cooperative Principle”, one
ought not to violate the “Maxim of Quality”, when he is informing
at all.
14. What is the interrogative function?
When language is used to obtain information, it serves an
“interrogative function”. This includes all questions that expect
replies, statements, imperatives etc., according to the “indirect
speech act theory”, may have this function as well, e.g., “I’d like
to know you better.” This may bring forth a lot of personal
information. Note that rhetorical questions make an exception,
since they demand no answer, at least not the reader’s/listener’s
answer.
15. What is the expressive function?
The “expressive function” is the use of language to reveal
something about the feelings or attitudes of the speaker.
Subconscious emotional ejaculations are good examples, like “Good
heavens!” “My God!” Sentences like “I’m sorry about the delay” can
serve as good examples too, though in a subtle way. While language
is used for the informative function to pass judgment on the truth
or falsehood of statements, language used for the expressive
function evaluates, appraises or asserts the speaker’s own
attitudes.
16. What is the evocative function?
The “evocative function” is the use of language to create certain
feelings in the hearer. Its aim is , for example, to amuse,
startle, antagonize, soothe, worry or please. Jokes(not practical
jokes, though) are supposed to amuse or entertain the listener;
advertising to urge customers to purchase certain commodities;
propaganda to influence public opinion. Obviously, the expressive
and the evocative functions often go together, i.e., you may
express, for example, your personal feelings about a political
issue but end up by evoking the same feeling in, or imposing it on,
your listener. That’s also the case with the other way round.
17. What is the performative function?
This means people speak to “do things” or perform actions. On
certain occasions the utterance itself as an action is more
important than what words or sounds constitute the uttered
sentence. The judge’s imprisonment sentence, the president’s war or
independence declaration, etc., are performatives.
18. What is linguistics?
“Linguistics” is the scientific study of language. It studies not
just one language of any one society, but the language of all human
beings. A linguist, though, does not have to know and use a large
number of languages, but to investigate how each language is
constructed. He is also concerned with how a language varies from
dialect to dialect, from class to class, how it changes from
century to century, how children acquire their mother tongue, and
perhaps how a person learns or should learn a foreign language. In
short, linguistics studies the general principles whereupon all
human languages are constructed and operate as systems of
communication in their societies or communities.
19. What makes linguistics a science?
Since linguistics is the scientific study of language, it ought to
base itself upon the systematic, investigation of language data
which aims at discovering the true nature of language and its
underlying system. To make sense of the data, a linguist usually
has conceived some hypotheses about the language structure, to be
checked against the observed or observable facts. In order to make
his analysis scientific, a linguist is usually guided by four
principles: exhaustiveness, consistency, and objectivity.
Exhaustiveness means he should gather all the materials relevant to
the study and give them an adequate explanation, in spite of the
complicatedness. He is to leave no linguistic “stone” unturned.
Consistency means there should be no contradiction between
different parts of the total statement. Economy means a linguist
should pursue brevity in the analysis when it is possible.
Objectivity implies that since some people may be subjective in the
study, a linguist should be (or sound at least) objective,
matter-of-face, faithful to reality, so that his work constitutes
part of the linguistics research.
20. What are the major branches of linguistics?
The study of language as a whole is often called general
linguistics. But a linguist sometimes is able to deal with only one
aspect of language at a time, thus the arise of various branches:
phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, pragmatics,
sociolinguistics, applied linguistics, psycholinguistics etc.
21. What are synchronic and diachronic studies?
The description of a language at some point of time (as if it
stopped developing) is a synchrony study (synchrony). The
description of a language as it changes through time is a
diachronic study (diachronic). An essay entitled “On the Use of
THE”, for example, may be synchronic, if the author does not recall
the past of THE, and it may also be diachronic if he claims to
cover a large range or period of time wherein THE has undergone
tremendous alteration.
22. What is speech and what is writing?
No one needs the repetition of the general principle of linguistic
analysis, namely, the primacy of speech over writing. Speech is
primary, because it existed long long before writing systems came
into being. Genetically children learn to speak before learning to
write. Secondly, written forms just represent in this way or that
the speech sounds: individual sounds, as in English and French as
in Japanese. In contrast to speech, spoken form of language,
writing as written codes, gives language new scope and use that
speech does not have. Firstly, messages can be carried through
space so that people can write to each other. Secondly, messages
can be carried through time thereby, so that people of our time can
be carried through time thereby, so that people of our time can
read Beowulf, Samuel Johnson, and Edgar A. Poe. Thirdly, oral
messages are readily subject to distortion, either intentional or
unintentional, while written messages allow and encourage repeated
unalterable reading. Most modern linguistic analysis is focused on
speech, different from grammarians of the last century and
theretofore.
23. What are the differences between the descriptive and the
prescriptive approaches?
A linguistic study is “descriptive” if it only describes and
analyses the facts of language, and “prescriptive” if it tries to
lay down rules for “correct” language behavior. Linguistic studies
before this century were largely prescriptive because many early
grammars were largely prescriptive because many early grammars were
based on “high” (literary or religious) written records. Modern
linguistics is mostly descriptive, however. It (the latter)
believes that whatever occurs in natural speech (hesitation,
incomplete utterance, misunderstanding, etc.) should be described
in the analysis, and not be marked as incorrect, abnormal, corrupt,
or lousy. These, with changes in vocabulary and structures, need to
be explained also.
24. What is the difference between langue and parole?
F. de Saussure refers “langue” to the abstract linguistic system
shared by all the members of a speech community and refers “parole”
to the actual or actualized language, or the realization of langue.
Langue is abstract, parole specific to the speaking situation;
langue not actually spoken by an individual, parole always a
naturally occurring event; langue relatively stable and systematic,
parole is a mass of confused facts, thus not suitable for
systematic investigation. What a linguist ought to do, according to
Saussure, is to abstract langue from instances of parole, i.e. to
discover the regularities governing all instances of parole and
make than the subject of linguistics. The langue-parole distinction
is of great importance, which casts great influence on later
linguists.
25. What is the difference between competence and
performance?
According to N. Chomsky, “competence” is the ideal language user’s
knowledge of the rules of his language, and “performance” is the
actual realization of this knowledge in utterances. The former
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 while his performance is often
influenced by psychological and social factors. So a speaker’s
performance does not always match or equal his supposed competence.
Chomsky believes that linguists ought to study competence, rather
than performance. In other words, they should discover what an
ideal speaker knows of his native language. Chomsky’s
competence-performance distinction is not exactly the same as,
though similar to, F. de Saussure’s langue-parole distinction.
Langue is a social product, and a set of conventions for a
community, while competence is deemed as a property of the mind of
each individual. Sussure looks at language more from a sociological
or sociolinguistic point of view than N. Chomsky since the latter
deals with his issues psychologically or
psycholinguistically.
26. What is linguistic potential? What is actual linguistic
behaviour?
These two terms, or the potential-behavior distinction, were made
by M. A. K. Halliday in the 1960s, from a functional point of view.
There is a wide range of things a speaker can do in his culture,
and similarly there are many things he can say, for example, to
many people, on many topics. What he actually says (i.e. his
“actual linguistic behavior”) on a certain occasion to a certain
person is what he has chosen from many possible injustice items,
each of which he could have said (linguistic potential).
27. In what way do language, competence and linguistic potential
agree? In what way do they differ? And their counterparts?
Langue, competence and linguistic potential have some similar
features, but they are innately different. Langue is a social
product, and a set of speaking conventions; competence is a
property or attribute of each ideal speaker’s mind; linguistic
potential is all the linguistic corpus or repertoire available from
which the speaker chooses items for the actual utterance situation.
In other words, langue is invisible but reliable abstract system.
Competence means “knowing”, and linguistic potential a set of
possibilities for “doing” or “performing actions”. They are similar
in that they all refer to the constant underlying the utterances
that constitute what Saussure, Chomsky and Halliday respectively
called parole, performance and actual linguistic behavior. Parole,
performance and actual linguistic behavior enjoy more similarities
than differences.
28. What is phonetics?
“Phonetics” is the science which studies the characteristics of
human sound-making, especially those sounds used in speech, and
provides methods for their description, classification and
transcription, speech sounds may be studied in different ways, thus
by three different branches of phonetics. (1) Articulatory
phonetics; the branch of phonetics that examines the way in which a
speech sound is produced to discover which vocal organs are
involved and how they coordinate in the process. (2) Auditory
phonetics, the branch of phonetic research from the hearer’s point
of view, looking into the impression which a speech sound makes on
the hearer as mediated by the ear, the auditory nerve and the
brain. (3) Acoustic phonetics: the study of the physical properties
of speech sounds, as transmitted between mouth and ear. Most
phoneticians, however, are interested in articulatory
phonetics.
29. How are the vocal organs formed?
The vocal organs or speech organs, are organs of the human body
whose secondary use is in the production of speech sounds. The
vocal organs can be considered as consisting of three parts; the
initiator of the air-stream, the producer of voice and the
resonating cavities.
30. What is place of articulation?
It refers to the place in the mouth where, for example, the
obstruction occurs, resulting in the utterance of a consonant.
Whatever sound is pronounced, at least some vocal organs will get
involved, e.g. lips, hard palate etc., so a consonant may be one of
the following (1) bilabial: [p, b, m]; (2) ]; (4)
alveolar:[t, d, l, n, s, z]; (5)T, Plabiodental: [f, v]; (3)
dental:[ retroflex; (6) palato-alveolar:[ ]; (7)
palatal:[j]; (8) velar[ k, g]; (9) uvular; (10) glottal:[h]. Some
sounds involve the simultaneous use of two places of articulation.
For example, the English [w] has both an approximation of the two
lips and that two lips and that of the tongue and the soft palate,
and may be termed “labial-velar”.
31. What is the manner of articulation?
The “manner of articulation” literally means the way a sound is
articulated. At a given place of articulation, the airstream may be
obstructed in various ways, resulting in various manners of
articulation, are the following: (1) plosive:[p, b, t, d, k, g];
(2) nasal:[m, n,]; (3) trill; (4) tap or flap; (5) lateral:[l]; (6)
fricative:[f, v, s, z]; (7) approximant:[w, j]; (8) affricate:[
].
32. What is IPA? When did it come into being ?
The IPA, abbreviation of “International Phonetic Alphabet”, is a
compromise system making use of symbols of all sources, including
diacritics indicating length, stress and intonation, indicating
phonetic variation. Ever since it was developed in 1888, IPA has
undergone a number of revisions.
33. What is narrow transcription and what is broad
transcription?
In handbook of phonetics语音学, Henry Sweet made a distinction between
“narrow” and “broad” transcriptions, which he called “Narrow
Romic”. The former was meant to symbolize all the possible speech
sounds, including even the most minute shades of pronunciation
while Broad Romic or transcription was intended to indicate only
those sounds capable of distinguishing one word from another in a
given language.
34. What is phonology? What is difference between phonetics and
phonology?
“Phonology” is the study of sound systems- the invention of
distinctive speech sounds that occur in a language and the patterns
wherein they fall. Minimal pair, phonemes, allophones, free
variation, complementary distribution, etc., are all to be
investigated by a phonologist. Phonetics is the branch of
linguistics studying the characteristics of speech sounds and
provides methods for their description, classification and
transcription. A phonetist is mainly interested in the physical
properties of the speech sounds, whereas a phonologist studies what
he believes are meaningful sounds related with their semantic
features, morphological features, and the way they are conceived
and printed in the depth of the mind phonological knowledge permits
a speaker to produce sounds which from meaningful utterances, to
recognize a foreign “accent”, to make up new words, to add the
appropriate phonetic segments to from plurals and past tenses, to
know what is and what is not a sound in one’s language.
35. What is a phone? What is a phoneme? What is an allophone?
A “phone” is a phonetic unit or segment. The speech sounds we hear
and produce during linguistic communication are all phones. When we
hear the following words pronounced: [pit], [tip], [spit], etc.,
the similar phones we have heard are [p] for one thing, and three
different [p]s, readily making possible the “narrow transcription
or diacritics”. Phones may and may not distinguish meaning. A
“phoneme” is a phonological unit; it is a unit that is of
distinctive value. As an abstract unit, a phoneme is not any
particular sound, but rather it is represented or realized by a
certain phone in a certain phonetic context. For example, the
phoneme[p] is represented differently in [pit], [tip] and [spit].
The phones representing a phoneme are called its “allophones”,
i.e., the different (i.e., phones) but do not make one word so
phonetically different as to create a new word or a new meaning
thereof. So the different [p] s in the above words are the
allophones of the same phoneme [p]. How a phoneme is represented by
a phone, or which allophone is to be used, is determined by the
phonetic context in which it occurs. But the choice of an allophone
is not random. In most cases it is rule-governed; these rules are
to be found out by a phonologist.
