Chapter 1
Chapter 1
Chapter 1
Cao Ning
School of English Language
Longdong University
Key points in this unit
1 About LANGUAGE
The definition of Language
Design Features of Language
Functions of Language
2 About LINGUISTICS
Main branches of linguistics
Important distinctions in linguistics
tree
树
Arbitrariness
At lexical level:
A rose by any other name would smell
as sweet (Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet,
1594 )
Arbitrariness
at the syntactic level
language is not arbitrary at the syntactic
level.
(a) He came in and sat down.
(b) He sat down and came in.
(c) He sat down after he came in.
How to understand
Arbitrariness and convention?
Design Features of Language
Duality
Language possess the property of having two
levels of structures:
Sounds (lower or basic level)
Meaning (higher level)
Sounds are combined with one another to form
meaningful units such as words. The secondary
units sounds are meaningless and the primary
units have distinct and identifiable meaning.
Design Features of Language
Creativity
Language can be used to send messages we
have never said or heard before.
Creativity is unique to human language.
Language is creative in that it makes
possible the construction and interpretation of
new signals by its users.
Creativity cool
Words can be used in new
ways to mean new things, and
can be instantly understood by
people who have never come
across that usage before.
Creativity
Language is resourceful because of its
duality and its recursiveness.
The recursive nature of language provides a
potential to create an infinite number of
/endless sentences.
“Limited rules can produce unlimited
sentences.” (Chomsky,1958).
Creativity
For instance:
This is the cat that killed the rat that ate the malt
that lay in the house that Jack built.
He bought a book which was written by a teacher
who taught in a school which was known for its
graduates who ...
从前有座山………
Design Features of Language
Creativity
Users can understand and produce words or
sentences they have never heard before. Every day
we sent messages that have never been sent before
and understand novel messages.
Much of what we say and hear for the first time;
yet there seems no problem of understanding.
Design Features of Language
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.
Thus, we can refer to Confucius, or
the North Pole, even though the first
has been dead for over 2550 years
and the second is situated far away
from us.
Displacement
Animal communication is
normally under “immediate
stimulus control”.
For instance, a warning cry of a
bird instantly announces danger.
My master
will be home The honeybee's dance exhibits
in a few days. displacement a little bit: he can
refer to a source of food, which is
remote in time and space when he
reports on it.
×
Displacement
Human language is stimulus-free. What we
are talking about need not be triggered by
any external stimulus in the world or any
internal state.
Our language enables us to communicate
about things that do not exist or do not yet
exist.
Displacement
Displacement benefits
human beings by giving us
the power to handle
generalizations and
abstractions.
Design Features of Language
Cultural transmission
Animal call systems are genetically transmitted.
Language is culturally transmitted. It is passed
on from one generation to the next by teaching
and learning, rather than by instinct.
Topics for discussion
No matter how eloquently a dog may bark, he cannot
tell you that his parents were poor but honest.
- Bertrand Russell
A rose by other name would smell as sweet.
– Shakespeare
He bought a book which was written by a teacher
who taught in a school which was known for its
graduates who …
/tr/, /a/, /n/, /s/, /l/, /ei/, /t/- translate – translate a
novel- translate a novel by Lu Xun
Do we have
language
?
Questions
What if there were no language?
Informative
Language is used to convey messages, that is to inform
somebody of some information.
Declarative sentences are employed to realize the
function.
One of the features of this function is the proposition
has the true or false value,
e.g. Water boils at 90ºC. Water boils at 100ºC.
Functions of Language
Interpersonal
By far the most important sociological use of
language, and by which people establish and
maintain their status in a society,
society “polite
expressions, humble words”, expression of identity.
For example, the ways in which people address
others (Dear
( Sir, Dear Professor, Johnny), and refer
to themselves (yours, your obedient servant ) indicate
the various grades of interpersonal relations.
Functions of Language
Interpersonal
In the framework of functional grammar,
it 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.
Functions of Language
Performative function
This concept originates from the philosophical
study of language represented by Austin and
Searle, whose theory now forms the back-bone
of pragmatics. For example,
– I now declare the meeting open.
– I bet you two pounds it will rain tomorrow.
Functions of Language
Performative function
It is 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. (formal and
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 岁岁平安 as a means of
controlling the invisible
forces which the believers feel
might affect their lives
adversely.
Functions of Language
Emotive function
to change the emotional status of an audience for
or against someone or something: swear words,
obscenities, involuntary verbal reactions to beautiful
art or scenery; conventional words/phrases, ( e.g.,
My God, Damn it, What a sight, Wow, Ugh, Ow… )
Functions of Language
Phatic communion
It refers to the social interaction of language.
Small, seemingly meaningless topic to maintain a
comfortable relationship between people without
involving any factual content, “health, weather”
Expressions that help define and maintain
interpersonal relations, such as slangs, jokes, jargons,
ritualistic exchanges, switches to social and regional
dialects.
Phatic communion
We all use such small, seemingly meaningless
expressions to maintain a comfortable
relationship between people without involving
any factual content.
Good morning, God bless you, Nice day,
hello
吃饭了吗?到哪里去?
Greetings, farewells, and comments on the
weather in English and on clothing in Chinese
Functions of Language
Recreational function
To use language for the sheer joy of using it, such as a
baby’s babbling, a chanter’s chanting, verbal dueling,
poetry writing.
To take one example, the well-known movie 《刘三
姐》 features a scene of “ 对歌” (song dueling) mostly
for the sheer joy of playing on language.
Functions of Language
Metalingual function
Language can be used to talk about itself.
metalanguage ( 元语言;纯理语言 ) : certain kinds of
linguistic signs or terms for the analysis and description
of particular studies, e.g. approving, formal, non
technical, old-fashioned; [u] , [c], etc.
Functions of Language
Informative Hello, do you know …? With language people can express
I heard that … themselves and communicate with others.
Inter-personal Dear sir, Dear professor, John, yours, By language people establish and maintain
your obedient servant their social status in a society.
Performative Marriage ceremonies, the sentence of a People use language to change social status
criminal, sui sui ping an (to break a or control the reality on some special
bowl on Spring Festival) occasions
Emotive Oh, my God! What a sight. Language can be used to get rid of the
And hurrah! nervous energy when we are under stress
Meta-lingual book---- number of printed or written People use language to talk about language
sheets of paper bound together in a itself.
cover.
Linguistics
Linguistics can be defined as the scientific
or systematic study of language. It is a
science in the sense that it scientifically
studies the rules, systems and principles of
human languages.
Linguistics has two main purposes
One is that it studies the nature of language
and tries to establish a theory of language
and describes languages in the light of the
theory established.
The other is that it examines all the forms of
language in general and seeks a scientific
understanding of the ways in which it is
organized to fulfill the needs it serves and the
functions it performs in human life.
About LINGUISTICS
Main branches of linguistics Phonetics
Phonology
Morphology
Syntax
Semantics
Pragmatics
Macrolinguistics
Psycholinguistics
Sociolinguistics
Anthropological
Computational
Scope of linguistics
Microlinguistics includes phonetics,
phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics
and pragmatics.
Macrolinguistics includes sociolinguistics,
Psycholinguistics, neurolinguistics,
stylistics, discourse analysis, computational
linguistics, cognitive linguistics, applied
linguistics,etc.
Core branches of Linguistics
Linguistics
Language
Synchronic Linguistics
Important distinctions in linguistics
Langue vs. Parole
The distinction made by Swiss linguist F. de Saussure
in the early 20th century.
Langue and parole are French words.
Langue refers to the abstract linguistic system shared
by all the members of a speech community, and parole
refers to the realization of langue in actual use.
Langue is the set of conventions and rules which
language users all have to abide by, and parole is the
concrete use of the conventions and the application of
the rules.
Langue is abstract; it is not the language people
actually use. Parole is concrete; it refers to the naturally
occurring language events.
Important distinctions in linguistics
Competence vs. Performance
Proposed by American linguist N. Chomsky in the late
1950’s.
Competence: the ideal user’s knowledge of the rules of
his language.
Performance: the actual realization of this knowledge in
linguistic communication.
According to Chomsky, a speaker has internalized a set
of rules about his language, this enables him to produce
and understand an infinitely large number of sentences
and recognize sentences that are ungrammatical and
ambiguous.
Then, what’s the
distinction between
Chomsky’s and Saussure’s
Important distinctions in linguistics
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 Chomsky since
the latter deals with his issues psychologically or
psycholinguistically.
Important distinctions in linguistics
Etic vs. Emic
The two terms originate from the American linguist
Pike’s (派克) distinction of phonetics and
phonemics.
Etic is related to an approach to the study of a
particular language or culture that is general, non-
structural and objective in its perspective.
Being etic means making far too many, as well as
behaviorally inconsequential, differentiations, just as
was often the case with phonetic vs. phonemic analysis in
linguistics proper.
Important distinctions in linguistics
Emic is related to an approach to the study of a
particular language or culture in terms of its
internal elements and their functioning rather than
in terms of any existing external scheme.
That is to say, 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.