Modern - Linguistics

Modern Linguistics Chapter 1 Introduction

1、Explain the following definition of linguistics: Linguistics is the scientific study of language. Linguistics investigates not any particular language, but languages in general. Linguistic study is scientific because it is based on the systematic investigation of authentic language data. No serious linguistic conclusion is reached until after the linguist has done the following three things: 1. observing the way language is actually used 2. formulating some hypotheses

3. testing these hypotheses against linguistic acts to prove their validity

2、What are the major branches of linguistics? What does each of them study? Phonetics – How speech sounds are produced and classified

Phonology – How sounds form systems and function to convey meaning Morphology – How morpheme are combined to form words.

Syntax – How morphemes and words are combined to form sentences. Semantics – The study of meaning (in abstraction). Pragmatics – The study of meaning in context of use.

Sociolinguistics – the study of language with reference to society.

Psycholinguistics – the study of language with reference to the workings of the mind.

Applied Linguistics – The application of linguistic principles and theories to language teaching and learning

3、In modern linguistics mainly synchronic or diachronic? Why?

Modern linguistics is mainly synchronic, focusing on the present-day language. Unless the various states of a language are successfully studied, it will not be possible to describe language from a diachronic point of view.

4、Which enjoys priority in modern linguistics, speech or writing?

Speech enjoys priority over writing in modern linguistic study for the following reasons: 1. Speech precedes writing in terms of evolution.

2. A larger amount of communication is carried out in speech than in writing. 3. Speech is the form in which infants acquire their native language.

5、How is Saussure’s distinction between langue and parole similar to Chomsky’s distinction between competence and performance?

1. Both Saussure and Chomsky make the distinction between the abstract language system and the actual use of language. Saussure defines langue as the abstract linguistic system shared by all the members of a speech community, and parole (as) the realization of langue in actual use. Chomsky defines competence as the ideal user‘s knowledge of the rules of his language, and performance (as) the actual realization of this knowledge in linguistic communication.

2. Both made the distinction in order to single out one aspect of language for serious study. Both think that what linguists should do is to study the abstract language system rather than the actual use of language and to discover the rules governing the actual use of language.

3. While Saussure‘s distinction and Chomsky‘s are very similar, they differ at least in one aspect. That is, Saussure takes a sociological view of language and his notion of langue is a matter of social

1

conventions, and Chomsky looks at language from a psychological point of view and to him competence is a property of the mind of each individual.

6、What characteristics of language do you think should be included in a good, comprehensive definition of language.

Language is a rule-governed system. Language is basically vocal. Language is arbitrary.

Language is used for human communication.

7、What features of human language have been specified by C. Hockett to show that it is essentially different from any animal communication system

1. Arbitrariness – a sign of sophistication only humans are capable of.

2. Creativity – animals are quite limited in the messages they are able to send. 3. Duality – a feature totally lacking in any animal communication

4. Displacement – no animal can ―talk‖ about things removed from the immediate situation.

5. Cultural transmission – details of human language system are taught and learned while animals are born with the capacity to send out certain signals as a means of limited communication.

8. Why is language not entirely arbitrary?

Because there are words in every language that imitate natural sounds, such as crash, bang in English. Besides, some compound words are also not entirely arbitrary. These words can not be made freely.

9. Why is language culturally transmitted and why are animal call systems genetically transmitted

Because the details of any language are not genetically transmitted, instead they have to be taught and learned. It is passed on from one generation to another through teaching and learning rather than by instinct. In contrast, animals are born with the capacity to produce the set of calls peculiar to their species, so animal call systems are genetically transmitted.

10. Language has the design feature of duality. Why?

The duality nature of language means that language is a system, which consists of two sets of structures, or two levels, one of sounds and the other of meanings. At the lower or the basic level, there is the structure of sounds, which are meaningless. At the higher level, the units can be arranged and rearranged into an infinite number of sentences.

11. Why is productivity unique to language?

Language is productive or creative in that it makes possible the construction and interpretation of new signals by its users. The users can send messages which no one else has ever sent before.

12. What does the displacement feature of language stem?

Displacement means that language can be used to refer to things which are present or not present, real or imagined matters in the past, present, or future, or in far-away places. In other words, language can be used to refer to contexts removed from the immediate situations of the speaker.

13. How is modern linguistic different from traditional grammar?

Modern linguistics differs from traditional grammar. Traditional grammar is prescriptive; it is based on

2

―high‖ (religious, literary) written language. It sets models for language users to follow. But modern linguistics is descriptive; its investigations are based on authentic and mainly spoken language data. It is supposed to be scientific and objective and the task of linguists is supposed to describe the language people actually use, whether it is ―correct‖ or not.

14. What is the distinction between a synchronic study and a diachronic study?

Language exists in time and changes through time. The description of a language at some point in time is a synchronic study; the description of a language as it changes through time is a diachronic study. It studies the historical development of language over a period.

15. Why does modern linguistic regard the spoken form of language as primary?

Speech and writing are the two major media of communication. Modern linguistics regards the spoken form of language as primary, but not the written form, because the spoken form of language as primary, but not the written form, because the spoken from is prior to the written form and most writing systems are derived from the spoken from of language.

16. What do langue and parole mean respectively?

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 follow while parole is the concrete use of the conventions and the application of the rules.

17. How does Chomsky define competence and performance respectively?

Chomsky defines competence as the ideal user‘s knowledge of the rules of his language, and performance the actual realization of this knowledge in linguistic communication.

Chapter 2 Phonology

1. What are the three branches of phonetics? How do they contribute to the study of speech sounds?

1、 Articulatory phonetics describes the way our speech organs work to produce the speech sounds and how they differ.

2、 Auditory phonetics studies the physical properties of speech sounds, it studies the speech sounds from the hearer‘s point of view, and reaches the important conclusion that phonetic identity is only a theoretical ideal.

3、 Acoustic phonetics studies the physical properties of speech sounds, the way sounds travel from the speaker to the hear.

2. Where are the articulatory apparatus of a human being contained? In the three cavities: pharyngeal cavity, oral cavity, and nasal cavity.

3. What is voicing and how is it caused?

Vibration of the vocal cords results in a quality of speech sounds called voicing, which is a feature of all vowels and some consonants.

3

4. What is the function of nasal cavity? How does it perform this function?

To nasalize the sounds that are produced. It does this by closing the air passage connecting the oral and nasal cavities so that he air stream can only go through the nasal cavity.

5. Describe the various parts in the oral cavity which are involved in the production of speech sounds?

The various parts of the tongue: the tip, the front, the blade, and the back of the tongue; the uvula; the soft palate; the hard palate, the teeth ridge (alveolar); the upper and lower teeth; the lips. Of all, tongue is the most flexible, and is responsible for more varieties of articulation than any other.

6. Explain which examples how broad transcription and narrow transcription differ? Broad transcription – one letter symbol for one sound.

Narrow transcription –a way to transcribe speech sounds. Narrow transcription is the transcription with letter – symbols together with the diacritics. Diacritics are added to show the finer differences between sounds.

7. How are the English consonants classified?

Two ways to classify consonants: by place of articulation and by manner of articulation.

For example, [p] is stop from the classification according to manner of articulation, and from the classification of place of articulation, [p] is a bilabial sound.

8. What criteria are used to classify the English vowels?

I. Position of the tongue. ( front vowel, central vowel, back vowel)

i.e., a front vowel is a vowel which is produced with the front part of the tongue that is held highest. II. Openness of the mouth. (close vowels, semi-close vowels) III. Length of the sound. (long vowel [I:] [u:], short vowel [I]

IV. Shape of the lips (rounded vowels and unrounded vowels) [a:] are rounded vowels. V. Laxity of the glottis.

9. Give the phonetic symbol for each of the following sound description: 1) Voiced palatal affricate: [d]

2) Voiceless labiodental fricative: [f] 3) Voiced alveolar stop: [d] 4) Front, close, short: [i] 5) Back, semi-open, long: [ ] 6) Voiceless, bilabial stop: [p]

Give the phonetic features of each of the following sounds: 1) [d]: voiced, alveolar, stop 2) [l ]: alveolar, liquid, lateral 3) [t ]: voiceless, palatal, affricate 4) [w]: glide, labial

5) [u ]: back, close, short 6) [? ]: front, open

10. How do phonetics and phonology differ in their focus of study? Who do you think will be more interested in the difference between, say, [l] and [l ], [p] and [p ], a phonetician or phonetician or a phonologist? Why?

4

Phonetics: study of the phonic medium of language, it is the description of all speech sounds in the world‘s language and their fine differences.

Phonology: description of sound systems of particular languages and how sounds function to distinguish meaning and how these sounds are used to convey meaning in linguistic communication.

For example the [t] sounds in the two English words stop an top are pronounced differently. The first one is what we call an unaspirated [t] and the second one an aspirated [th]. Phoneticians have recognized two quite distinct sounds for [t] in English; but if we consider these two sounds from the phonological point of view, we wound say these two sounds are fundamentally the same, since they have one and the same function in communication, in distinguishing between words and meanings.

A phonetician would be more interested in such differences because such differences will not cause the differences in meaning.

11. What is a phone? How is it different from a phoneme? How are allophones related to a phoneme? (31)

Phone – a speech sound we use when speaking a language, it is a phonetic unit or segment. Phoneme – a collection of abstract sound features, a phonological unit.

Allophones – the different phones which can represent a phoneme in different phonetic environments are called the allophones of that phoneme. ( actual realizations of a phoneme in different phonetic contexts).

E.g. the phoneme /l/ in English can be realized as dark [t], clear [l], etc, which are allophones of the phoneme /l/.

12. What is a minimal pair and what is a minimal set? Why is it important to identify the minimal set in a language?

Minimal pair refers to two sound combinations identical in every way except in one sound element that occurs in the same position. That is, minimal pairs are word forms that differ from each other only be one sound. pill and till, till and kill, kill and dill, and dill and gill. According, we can conclude that p, b, t, d, k, g are phonemes in English. Then all these sound combinations together constitute a minimal set, they are identical in form except for the initial consonant, this also applies to the vowels. The pronunciations of the following words are identical except for the vowel: beat, bit, bet, bat, ect.

By identifying the minimal pairs of the minimal set of a language, a philologist can identify its phonemes.

13. Explain with examples the sequential rule, the assimilation rule, and the deletion rule. Sequential rule – rule governing the combination of sounds in a particular language. E.g. If a word begins with a [l] or a [r], then the next sound must be a vowel.

Assimilation rule – rule assimilating one sound similar to the following one by copying a feature of a sequential phoneme, thus making the tow phones similar.

E.g. impossible is the negative form of possible, as the [n] sound is assimilated to [m].）

Deletion rule – rule governing the deletion of a sound in a certain phonetic context although it is represented in spelling.

E.g. delete a [g] when it occurs before a final nasal consonant.

14. What are suprasegmental features? How do the major suprasegmental features of English function in conveying meaning?

Suprasengmental features – phonological features above the sound segment level, these are the

5

本文来源：https://www.bwwdw.com/article/9hrd.html