语言学笔记

Chapter One Introduction Chapter One Introduction Exercises: Define the following terms briefly. linguistics language arbitrariness cultural transmission duality competence performance synchronic linguistics diachronic linguistics Chapter Two Phonology The phonic medium of language Phonetics Phonology I. The phonic medium of language The phonic medium of language refers to the limited group of sounds that are produced by humans through their speech organs and are meaningful in their communication. Speech sounds refers to the individual sounds within the range of the phonic medium of language. II. Phonetics What is phonetics? 1. Definition Phonetics is the study of speech sounds in linguistic communication; in other words, it is the study of the phonic medium of language. Three branches of phonetics: Articulatory phonetics It is the study of how speech sounds are produced by the speech organs, in particular the vocal tract. Auditory phonetics It is the study of how speech sounds are perceived by the hearer. Acoustic phonetics It is the study of the physical properties of the speech sound waves generated (produced) by the vocal tract. Note that the sounds we claim to have heard are in most cases only phonetically similar, but rarely phonetically identical. Phonetic similarity, not phonetic identity is the criterion with which we operate in the phonological analysis of language. B. Organs of speech The speech sounds are produced by the organs of speech. The speech organs are contained in three areas: The pharyngeal cavity—the throat The oral cavity—the mouth The nasal cavity—the nose The pharyngeal cavity Air ↓ (that comes from) The lungs and through the windpipe ↓ (passes through) The glottis (the space between the two vocal cords) ↓ (the first point where sound might be changed slightly) ↓ (a part of) The larynx (the voice box, that is, a bony structure at the upper end of the windpipe that contains the vocal cords) ↓ The vocal cords (the two muscular bands of tissue that stretch from front to back within the larynx) → The vocal cords vibrate periodically to produce voiced sounds Voicing: voicing occurs when the vocal cords vibrate as a consequence of air passing between them. Voiced: when the air forces its way through the closed vocal cords, they will vibrate to produce voiced sounds. Speech sounds that are produced with vocal vibration are voiced. Voiceless: when the vocal cords are wide apart to let air pass freely between them, there is no vocal vibration. Speech sounds that are produced in this condition are voiceless. The oral cavity Most modification of the air stream is found in the oral cavity. The speech organs located in this cavity are: The tongue—the tip of tongue, the blade of tongue, and the back of tongue; The uvula—a small piece of flesh that hangs from the back of the roof of the mouth above the throat; The soft palate (the velum) –the back part of the roof of the mouth; there is no bone under the surface; The hard palate—the front part of the roof of the mouth; there is bone under the surface; The teeth ridge (the alveolus) –the bony projection located just behind the upper teeth; The teeth The lips The nasal cavity The nasal cavity is connected with the oral cavity. When the soft palate (the velum) is drawn back to close the passage between these two cavities, all air that comes form the lungs can only go through the mouth. Speech sounds that are produced in this condition are not nasalized, like the vowels and most consonants in English. When the passage between these two cavities is left open, all air (or part of air) that comes from the lungs can go though the nose. Speech sounds that are produced in this condition are nasalized. In English only three nasal sounds are distinguished, [m], [n], and [ŋ]. C. Orthographic representation of speech sounds—broad and narrow transcriptions Transcription Transcription is a system of writing used by linguists that represents the speech sounds of a language in a systematic way. The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) It is a standardized and internationally accepted system of phonetic transcription. Its basic principle is to use one letter selected from major European languages to represent one speech sound. Diacritic It is another set of symbols provided by the IPA, which are added to the letter-symbols to show the differences in some detailed aspects. It is the mark placed above or below a written letter to indicate different sounds. Broad transcription and narrow transcription There are two ways to transcribe speech sounds. Broad transcription is the transcription with letter-symbols. It is often used in dictionaries and textbooks. Narrow transcription is the transcription with letter-symbols together with the diacritics. It is used by the phoneticians in their study of speech sounds. Here is an example to show the difference between these two ways: the sound [p] in the two words pit [pit] and spit [spit]. In the word pit, the sound [p] is pronounced with a strong puff of air. In this case, the sound [p] is aspirated (p18). In the word spit, there is not such a puff of air, thus the [p] sound in spit is unaspirated (p18). In broad transcription, the symbol [p] is used for the sound [p] in these two words—pit [pit] and spit [spit]. There is no difference to show the aspirated [p] and the unaspirated [p]. In narrow transcription, the diacritic [h] is used to indicate aspiration [phit] and spit is transcribed as [spit]. D. Classification of English speech sounds Two categories of English speech sounds The speech sounds in English can be divided into two categories: vowels and consonants. Vowel is defined as a speech sound in which the air stream from the lung is not blocked in way in the mouth or throat, and which is usually produced with vibration of the vocal cords, such as [i:] in see [si:], [u:] in too [tu:]. Consonant is defined as a speech sound where the air stream from the lung is either completely blocked (STOP), partially blocked (LATERAL) or where the opening is so narrow that the air escapes with audible friction (FRICATIVE). With some consonants (NASALS) the air stream is blocked in the mouth but allowed to escape through the nose. In brief, a consonant is a speech sound produced by partially or completely obstructing the airflow (air stream) that comes from the lungs in the vocal tract. The most important difference between these two groups is that in the production of a vowel the air stream that comes from the lungs is not obstructed (restricted; prevented) at all, but in the production of a consonant the air stream is obstructed in one way or another (p 18). Classification of English consonants A consonant is a speech sound produced by partially or completely obstructing the airflow (air stream) that comes from the lungs in the vocal tract. Consonants are usually described in articulatory terms concerning three main features: Whether they are voiced or not; Where the obstruction occurs (place of articulation); The type of sound made (manner of articulation). Classification of English vowels A vowel is a speech sound produced without any obstruction of the airflow (air stream) that comes form the lungs in the vocal tract; in other words, it is produced with a relatively open vocal tract. Vowels are distinguished from consonants by some factors: the position of the tongue in the mouth, the openness of the mouth, the shape of the lips, and the length of the vowels. Basically, vowels can be divided into two types: Monophthongs—the individual vowels; Diphthongs—vowels produced with the tongue starting in one place and moving to another. [ei], [ai], [au]. III. Phonology Phonology and phonetics What is phonology? Phonology is the study of how sounds are put together and used to convey meaning in communication; in other words, it is the study of the structure and systematic patterning of sounds in human language. Differences between phonology and phonetics Although both phonology and phonetics are both about the study of the speech sounds, they differ in their approach and focus. phonetics refers to the study of the articulatory and acoustic features of sounds; that is to say, it is interested in how sounds are produced, how they differ form each other, what phonetic features they have, how they can be classified, etc. phonology is concerned with the abstract rules and principles that govern the distribution of sounds in a language; that is to say, it is interested in how speech sounds in a language form patterns and how these sounds are used to convey meaning in linguistic communication. Phone, phoneme, and allophone Phone A phone is a phonetic unit or segment. It refers to the speech sound we hear and produce during linguistic communication. Phones are represented by square brackets “[ ]”. A phone does no necessarily distinguish meaning; some do, some don’t. Phoneme A phoneme is a phonological unit; it is an abstract unit of speech. It is the speech sound that distinguishes one word form another, so it is a meaning unit. A phoneme is realized by a certain phone in a certain phonetic context and represented by slashes “/ /”. For example, see text book P24. English has 39 phonemes: 24 consonant phonemes and 15 vowel phonemes. For example, the “s” in sip and the “z” in zip are two different consonant phonemes and represented by /s/ and /z/. A phoneme is capable of distinguishing meaning. The features that a phoneme has, making it different from other phonemes, are its distinctive features. Allophone Allophone refers to the different forms/phones of a phoneme. In other words it is the different pronunciation of the same phoneme. An allophone is represented by square brackets. “[ ]”. Every allophone is represented by a phone. Every phone is an allophone of some phonemes. Phonemic contrast, complementary distribution, and minimal pair Phonemic contrast If two phonetically similar sounds are two distinctive phonemes, they are called a phonemic contrast. For example (p25), /p/ and /b/ in [pit] and [bit], [r p] and [r b] are a phonemic contrast. Phonetically similar sounds must share at least two of the following features: voicing, place of articulation, and manner of articulation. Complementary distribution If phonetically similar sounds are allophones of the same phoneme, they do not distinguish meaning, but complement each other in distribution, that is to say, they occur in different phonetic environments; then, they are in complementary distribution. For example (p25), the clear [l] always comes before a vowel, but the dark [l] always comes at the end of a word, or between a vowel and a consonant. Minimal pair A minimal pair is a pair of words that have the same number of phonemes, differ in a single sound in a corresponding position in the two different forms, differ in meaning. Minimal set When more than two different sound combinations are identical in their form except for one sound segment which appears I the same place in the strings, these sound combinations constitute a minimal set. For example (p25): pill, bill, kill, dill, gill etc; beat, bit, bet, bat, boot, but, bait, bite, boat etc. Some rules in phonology Sequential rules They are the rules that govern the combination of sounds in a particular language. Some sequential rules in English: All consonants except /ŋ/ can appear at the beginning of a word. If two consonants occur at the beginning of a word, the possibilities are quite limited; br, dr, gr, bl, gl, pr, tr, kr, pl, kl. If three consonants occur at the beginning of a word, the combination should obey the following three rules: The first phoneme must be /s/, The second phoneme must be /p/ or /t/ or /k/. The third phoneme must be /l/ or /r/ or /w/. Like spring [spriŋ], strict [strikt], square [skweə], splendid [splendid], scream [skri:m]. If a word begins with a [l] or [r], then the next sound must be a vowel. This is why [ibik] and [lkbi] are impossible combinations in English. Sequential rules, the rules that govern the phonological patterning, are language specific. That is to say, what is not permissible in English might be permissible in another language. Assimilation rule It is the rule that assimilates one sound to another by “copying” a feature of a neighboring sound, thus making the two sounds similar. Deletion rule It is the rule that tells us when a sound is to be deleted although it is orthographically represented. For example, the [g] sound is not pronounced in words such as sigh, design, and paradigm although it s represented by the letter g. but it is pronounced in words such as signature, designation, and paradigmatic. Thus, the deletion rule can be stated as : delete a [g] sound when it occurs before a final nasal consonant. Suprasegmental features—stress, tone, intonation Suprasegmental features They are the phonemic features that occur above the level of the sound segments, the individual speech sounds. The main Suprasegmental features include stress, intonation, and tone. Stress There are two kinds of stress: word stress and sentences stress. Stress in English words An important feature of the pronunciation of English words is that one syllable in every word is pronounced more prominently than the other syllables. In the two words increase (n.) and increase (v), the first syllable in the first word and the second syllable in the second word are more prominent, so we say that the first syllable in the noun increase is stressed, and the second syllable in the verb increase is stressed. The location of stress in English distinguishes meaning. For example, a shift of tress in the word increase changes the part of speech of the word from a noun to a verb although its spelling remains the same. The noun has the stress on the first syllable and the corresponding verb has the stress on the second syllable. Similar alteration of stress also occurs between a compound and a phrase consisting of the same elements. In this case, the first element has the stress, and the second element has secondary stress. For example, the compound noun blackbird consists of two elements—black and bird. When we pronounce the word, we stress the first element black. A blackbird is a particular kind of bird, which is not necessarily black. A blackbird is different from a black bird in which bird is stressed and black is a modifier. In the combinations of –ing forms and nouns, there are two types. In the first type, the –ing form is a modifier of the noun, like dining room, reading glasses. They are actually compound nouns in which the first element is primarily stressed while the second one is secondarily stressed. In the second type, the noun is actually the doer of the action represented by the –ing form, like sleeping baby, swimming fish. They are noun phrases with an –ing participle modifier. In these combinations, the head noun is primarily stressed while the –ing form is secondarily stressed. Stress in English sentences Sentence stress refers to the relative force given to the components of a sentence. The parts that are usually stressed in an English sentence are nouns, main verbs, adjectives, adverbs, numerals, and demonstrative pronouns. Tone Tones are pitch variations caused by the differing rates of vibration of the vocal cords. Tones can distinguish meaning, which is especially important in tone languages. English is not a tone language, but Chinese is a typical tone language. It has four tones. The first tone is level, the second is rise, the third is fall-rise, and the fourth is fall. Intonation When pitch, stress and sound length are tied to the sentence rather than the word in isolation, they are collectively known as intonation. Exercise: define the following terms briefly. assimilation consonant intonation phoneme phonetics phonology stress voicing voiceless vowel phonetic contrast minimal pairs Chapter 3 Morphology Morphology Open class and closed class Open class words Open class words refer to a group of words which contain an unlimited number of items, such as nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs. These classes are also called lexical words or content words. Open class words typically refer to entities and events in the world outside the language. That is they express the propositional content of the message, such as thing, quality, state or action. Closed class words Closed class words refer to word classes like conjunctions, prepositions, and pronouns, which have little meaning on their own and consist of relatively few words. And new words are not usually added to them. Closed classed are also called grammatical words, form words, empty words, structural words or function words. They consist a relatively small and stable number of items. The words in closed sets are typically described as having a grammatical function; rather than expressing the prepositional content of the message, they link parts of the message to each other (such as conjunctions, prepositions), or to express subsidiary aspects of the message (e.g. auxiliary) and so on. Morphology Definition It is a branch of linguistics. It studies the internal structure of words and the rules by which words are formed. Morphemes—the minimal units of meaning Morpheme Morpheme is the smallest unit of language that carries meaning or serves a grammatical function. In other words, it is any part of a word that cannot be broken down further into meaningful or recognizable parts. Morphemes can be further divided into two classes: free morphemes and bound morphemes. Free morpheme Free morpheme is a morpheme that can stand alone as an independent word, for example: tree, paint, pretty, very. Bound morpheme Bound morpheme is a morpheme that cannot stand alone as a word but must but attached to another morpheme. For example: -ment (as in establishment), -er (painter) and ‘plural’ (girls). Affix A morpheme which is added to a word, and which changes the meaning or function of the word. Affixes are limited in number in a language, and are generally classified into three subtypes: prefix and suffix. Prefix Prefix is the affix that attaches to the beginning of other morpheme (like re in redo, rewrite, rethink). Suffix Suffix is the affix that attaches to the end of other morpheme (like ize in words such as modernize, equalize, centralize). Root Root is a morpheme which is the basic part of a word and which may occur on its own. (e.g. man, cold, hold, rhythm). Roots may be joined to other roots (e.g. house+holdhousehold) or take affixes (e.g. manly, coldness). Stem Stem is the part of word to which bound morphemes are added. The stem of a word may be a simple stem consisting of only one morpheme (root), e.g. work. two or more roots, e.g. work + shop. Derivational and inflectional morphemes Derivational morpheme Derivational morpheme is a morpheme that serves to derive a word of one class or meaning from a word of another class or meaning. For example: -ment (as in establishment) derives the noun form the verb establish; re- (repaint) changes the meaning of the verb paint to ‘paint again’. Derivational morphemes produce new words from existing words in two ways. First, they can change the meaning of a word: true vs. untrue; paint vs. repaint. Second, they can change the lexical category of a word: true is an adjective, truly an adverb; read is a verb, readable an adjective. Inflectional morpheme Inflectional morpheme is a bound morpheme that creates variant forms of a word to mark its syntactic function in a sentence. For example: the suffix –s added to a verb (as in paints) marks the verb as agreeing with a third-person singular subject. -er (as in taller) marks adjectives for comparative degree. Inflectional morphemes change the form of a word but not its lexical category or its central meaning. To sum up, inflectional morphemes indicate certain grammatical functions of words (such as plurality or tense). They are not associated with certain changes that are associated with