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Chapter 2 Phonetics  What is phonetics?  Phonetics is termed as the study of speech sounds.  Sub-branches of phonetics  Articulatory phonetics – the production of speech sounds  Acoustic phonetics – the physical properties of speech sounds  Auditory phonetics – the perceptive mechanism of speech sounds  The speech organs  Where does the air stream come from?  From the lung  What is the function of vocal cords?  Controlling the air stream  What are the cavities?  Oral cavity  Pharyngeal cavity  Nasal cavity  Transcription of speech sounds  Units of representation  Segments (the individual sounds)  Phonetic symbols  The widely used symbols for phonetic transcription of speech sounds is the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA).  The IPA attempts to represent each sound of human speech with a single symbol and the symbols are enclosed in brackets [ ] to distinguish phonetic transcriptions from the spelling system of a language.  In more detailed transcription (narrow transcription) a sound may be transcribed with a symbol to which a smaller is added in order to mark the finer distinctions.  Description of speech sounds  Description of English consonants  General feature: obstruction  Criteria of consonant description  Places of articulation  Manners of articulation  Voicing of articulation  Places of articulation  This refers to each point at which the air stream can be modified to produce a sound.  Bilabial: [p] [m] [w]  Labiodental: [f] [v]  Interdental: [] []  Alveolar: [t] [d]  Palatal: [] [] [t] [d] [j]  Velar: [k] [g] []  Glottal: [h]  Manners of articulation  This refers to how the air stream is modified, whether it is completely blocked or partially obstructed.  Stops: [p] [t] [d] [k] [g]  Fricatives:  Affricates: [t] [d]  Liquids: [l] [r]  Glides: [w] [j]  Nasals: [m] [n] []  Voicing of articulation  This refers to the vibrating of the vocal cords when sounds are produced.  Voiced sounds  Voiceless sounds  Description of English vowels  General feature: without obstruction  Criteria of vowel description  Part of the tongue that is raised  Front  Central  Back  Extent to which the tongue rises in the direction of the palate  High  Mid  Low  Kind of opening made at the lips  Position of the soft palate  Single vowels (monophthongs) and diphthongs  Phonetic features and natural classes  Classes of sounds that share a feature or features are called natural classes.  Major class features can specify segments across the consonant-vowel boundary.  Classification of segments by features is the basis on which variations of sounds can be analyzed. |
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Chapter 3 Phonology  What is phonology?  Phonology is the study of sound systems and patterns.  Phonology and phonetics are two studies different in perspectives, which are concerned with the study of speech sounds.  Phonology focuses on three fundamental questions.  What sounds make up the list of sounds that can distinguish meaning in a particular language?  What sounds vary in what ways in what context?  What sounds can appear together in a sequence in a particular language?  Phonemes and allophones  A phoneme is a distinctive, abstract sound unit with a distinctive feature.  The variants of a phoneme are termed allophones.  We use allophones to realize phonemes.  Discovering phonemes  Contrastive distribution – phonemes  If sounds appear in the same environment, they are said to be in contrastive distribution.  Typical contrastive distribution of sounds is found in minimal pairs and minimal sets.  A minimal pair consists of two words that differ by only one sound in the same position.  Minimal sets are more than two words that are distinguished by one segment in the same position.  The overwhelming majority of the consonants and vowels represented by the English phonetic alphabet are in contrastive distribution.  Some sounds can hardly be found in contrastive distribution in English. However, these sounds are distinctive in terms of phonetic features. Therefore, they are separate phonemes.  Complementary distribution – allophones  Sounds that are not found in the same position are said to be in complementary distribution.  If segments are in complementary distribution and share a number of features, they are allophones of the same phoneme.  Free variation  If segments appear in the same position but the mutual substitution does not result in change of meaning, they are said to be in free variation.  Distinctive and non-distinctive features  Features that distinguish meaning are called distinctive features, and features do not, non-distinctive features.  Distinctive features in one language may be non-distinctive in another.  Phonological rules  Phonemes are abstract sound units stored in the mind, while allophones are the actual pronunciations in speech.  What phoneme is realized by what allophones in what specific context is another major question in phonology.  The regularities that what sounds vary in what ways in what context are generalized and stated in phonology as rules.  There are many phonological rules in English. Take the following ones as examples.  [+voiced +consonant] – [-voiced]/[-voiced +consonant]_  [-voiced +bilabial +stop] – unaspirated/[-voiced +alveolar +fricative]_  Syllable structure  A syllable is a phonological unit that is composed of one or more phonemes.  Every syllable has a nucleus, which is usually a vowel.  The nucleus may be preceded by one or more consonants called the onset and followed by one or more consonants called the coda.  Sequence of phonemes  Native speakers of any language intuitively know what sounds can be put together.  Some sequences are not possible in English. The impossible sequences are called systematic gaps.  Sequences that are possible but do not occur yet are called accidental gaps.  When new words are coined, they may fill some accidental gaps but they will never fill systematic gaps.  Suprasegmental features  Features that are found over a segment or a sequence of two or more segments are called suprasegmental features.  These features are distinctive features.  Stress  Stress is the perceived prominence of one or more syllabic elements over others in a word.  Stress is a relative notion. Only words that are composed of two or more syllables have stress.  If a word has three or more syllables, there is a primary stress and a secondary stress.  In some languages word stress is fixed, i.e. on a certain syllable. In English, word stress is unpredictable.  Intonation  When we speak, we change the pitch of our voice to express ideas.  Intonation is the variation of pitch to distinguish utterance meaning.  The same sentence uttered with different intonation may express different attitude of the speaker.  In English, there are three basic intonation patterns: fall, rise, fall-rise.  Tone  Tone is the variation of pitch to distinguish words.  The same sequence of segments can be different words if uttered with different tones.  Chinese is a typical tone language. |
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Chapter 4 Morphology  What is morphology?  The total number of words stored in the brain is called the lexicon.  Words are the smallest free units of language that unite sounds with meaning.  Morphology is defined as the study of the internal structure and the formation of words.  Morphemes and allomorphs  The smallest meaningful unit of language is called a morpheme.  A morpheme may be represented by different forms, called allomorphs.  “zero” form of a morpheme and suppletives  Some countable nouns do not change form to express plurality. Similarly, some regular verbs do not change form to indicate past tense. In these two cases, the noun or verb contains two morphemes, among which there is one “zero form” of a morpheme.  Some verbs have irregular changes when they are in past tense. In this case, the verbs also have two morphemes. Words which are not related in form to indicate grammatical contrast with their roots are called suppletives.  Free and bound morphemes  Some morphemes constitute words by themselves. These morphemes are called free morphemes.  Other morphemes are never used independently in speech and writing. They are always attached to free morphemes to form new words. These morphemes are called bound morphemes.  The distinction between a free morphemes and a bound morpheme is whether it can be used independently in speech or writing.  Free morphemes are the roots of words, while bound morphemes are the affixes (prefixes and suffixes).  Inflexional and derivational morphemes  Inflexional morphemes in modern English indicate case and number of nouns, tense and aspect of verbs, and degree of adjectives and adverbs.  Derivational morphemes are bound morphemes added to existing forms to construct new words.  English affixes are divided into prefixes and suffixes.  Some languages have infixes, bound morphemes which are inserted into other morphemes.  The process of putting affixes to existing forms to create new words is called derivation. Words thus formed are called derivatives.  Conclusion: classification of morphemes  Morphemes  Free morphemes  Bound morphemes  Inflexional  Derivational: affixes  Prefixes: -s, -’s, -er, -est, -ing, -ed, -s  Suffixes  Formation of new words  Derivation  Derivation forms a word by adding an affix to a free morpheme.  Since derivation can apply more than once, it is possible to create a derived word with a number of affixes. For example, if we add affixes to the word friend, we can form befriend, friendly, unfriendly, friendliness, unfriendliness, etc. This process of adding more than one affix to a free morpheme is termed complex derivation.  Derivation does not apply freely to any word of a given category. Generally speaking, affixes cannot be added to morphemes of a different language origin.  Derivation is also constrained by phonological factors.  Some English suffixes also change the word stress.  Compounding  Compounding is another common way to form words. It is the combination of free morphemes.  The majority of English compounds are the combination of words from the three classes – nouns, verbs and adjectives – and fall into the three classes.  In compounds, the rightmost morpheme determines the part of speech of the word.  The meaning of compounds is not always the sum of meaning of the components.  Conversion  Conversion is the process putting an existing word of one class into another class.  Conversion is usually found in words containing one morpheme.  Clipping  Clipping is a process that shortens a polysyllabic word by deleting one or more syllables.  Clipped words are initially used in spoken English on informal occasions.  Some clipped words have become widely accepted, and are used even in formal styles. For example, the words bus (omnibus), vet (veterinarian), gym (gymnasium), fridge (refrigerator) and fax (facsimile) are rarely used in their complete form.  Blending  Blending is a process that creates new words by putting together non-morphemic parts of existing words. For example, smog (smoke + frog), brunch (a meal in the middle of morning, replacing both breakfast and lunch), motel (motor + hotel). There is also an interesting word in the textbook for junior middle school students – “plike” (a kind of machine that is like both a plane and a bike).  Back-formation  Back-formation is the process that creates a new word by dropping a real or supposed suffix. For example, the word televise is back-formed from television. Originally, the word television is formed by putting the prefix tele- (far) to the root vision (viewing). At the same time, there is a suffix –sion in English indicating nouns. Then people consider the –sion in the word television as that suffix and drop it to form the verb televise.  Acronyms and abbreviations  Acronyms and abbreviations are formed by putting together the initial letters of all words in a phrase or title.  Acronyms can be read as a word and are usually longer than abbreviations, which are read letter by letter.  This type of word formation is common in names of organizations and scientific terminology.  Eponyms  Eponyms are words that originate from proper names of individuals or places. For example, the word sandwich is a common noun originating from the fourth Earl of Sandwich, who put his food between two slices of bread so that he could eat while gambling.  Coinage  Coinage is a process of inventing words not based on existing morphemes.  This way of word formation is especially common in cases where industry requires a word for a new product. For example, Kodak and Coca-cola.  For more detailed explanation to the ways of word formation, see my notes of Practical English Grammar. |
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Chapter 5 Syntax  What is syntax?  The term syntax is from the ancient Greek word syntaxis, which literally means “arrangement” or “setting out together”.  Traditionally, it refers to the branch of grammar dealing with the ways in which words, with or without appropriate inflexions, are arranged to show connexions of meaning within the sentence.  Syntax is a branch of linguistics that analyzes the structure of sentences.  What is a sentence?  Syntax is the analysis of sentence structure. A sentence is a sequence of words arranged in a certain order in accordance with grammatical rules.  A sequence can be either well-formed or ill-formed. Native speakers of a language know intuitively what strings of words are grammatical and what are ungrammatical.  Knowledge of sentence structure  Structural ambiguity  Structural ambiguity is one or more string(s) of words has/have more than one meaning. For example, the sentence Tom said he would come yesterday can be interpreted in different ways.  Word order  Different arrangements of the same words have different meanings. For example, with the words Tom, love and Mary, we may say Tom loves Mary or Mary loves Tom.  Grammatical relations  Native speakers know what element relates to what other element directly or indirectly. For example, in The boats are not big enough and We don’t have enough boats, the word enough is related to different words in the two sentences.  Recursion  The same rule can be used repeatedly to create infinite sentences. For example, I know that you are happy. He knows that I know that you are happy. She knows that he knows that I know that you are happy.  Sentence relatedness  Sentences may be structurally variant but semantically related.  Syntactic categories  A syntactic category is a class of words or phrases that can substitute for one another without loss of grammaticality. For example, consider the following sentences:  The child found the knife.  A policeman found the knife.  The man who just left here found the knife.  He found the knife.  All the italicized parts belong to the same syntactic category called noun phrase (NP). The noun phrases in these sentences function as subject. The knife, also a noun phrase, functions as object.  Traditional grammar  In traditional grammar, a sentence is considered a sequence of words which are classified into parts of speech.  Sentences are analyzed in terms of grammatical functions of words: subjects, objects, verbs (predicates), predicatives, …  Compulsory elements of a sentence: subject, verb, object, complement, adverbial…  Nouns: number, case, gender…  Verbs: tense, aspect, voice…  Adjectives and adverbs: comparative and superlative degrees  Agreement in number/person/gender  Parsing: trying to make detailed analysis in structure  Structural grammar  Structural grammar arose out of an attempt to deviate from traditional grammar. It deals with the inter-relationships of different grammatical units. In the concern of structural grammar, words are not just independent grammatical units, but are inter-related to one another.  Form class  Form class is a wider concept than part of speech in traditional grammar.  Linguistic units which can appear in the same slot are said to be in the same form class. For example, a(n), the, my, that, every, etc. can be placed before nouns in English sentences. These words fall into one form class.  These linguistic units are observed to have the same distribution.  Immediate constituent (IC) analysis  Structural grammar is characterized by a top-down process of analysis.  A sentence is seen as a constituent structure. All the components of the sentences are its constituents. A sentence can be cut into sections. Each section is its immediate constituent. Then each section can be further cut into constituents. This on-going cutting is termed immediate constituent analysis.  Examples:  Old men and women: old | men and women, old || men | and women  The ||| little || girl | speaks || French.  In this way, sentence structure is analyzed not only horizontally but also vertically. In other words, IC analysis can account for the linearity and the hierarchy of sentence structure.  I will suggest | that this || in itself reflects ||| a particular ideology |||| about gender ||||| that deserves to be re-examined.  Two advantages of IC analysis:  It can analyze some ambiguities.  It shows linearity and hierarchy of one sentence.  Transformational-generative (TG) grammar  Background and the goal of TG grammar  Chomsky (1957) – grammar is the knowledge of native speakers.  Adequacy of observation  Adequacy of description  Adequacy of explanation  Writing a TG grammar means working out two sets of rules – phrase structure rules and transformation rules – which are followed by speakers of the language.  TG grammar must account for all and only grammatical sentences.  Syntactic categories  Noun Phrase (NP)  Verb Phrase (VP)  Sentence (S)  Determiner (Det)  Adjective (Adj)  Pronoun (Pro)  Verb (V)  Auxiliary Verb (Aux)  Prepositional Phrase (PP)  Adverb (Adv)  Phrase structure (PS) rules  S → NP VP (Det) (Adj) N  NP →{ Pro  VP → (Aux) V (NP) (PP)  PP → P NP  Tree diagrams (omit)  Recursion and the infinitude of language  S contains NP and VP and that S may be a constituent of NP and VP. NP and PP can be mutually inclusive. If phrasal categories appear on both sides of the arrow in phrase structure rules, the rules are recursive. Recursive rules can be applied again and again, and the phrase structure can grow endlessly.  Sub-categorization of the lexicon.  The process of putting words of the same lexical category into smaller classes according to their syntactic characteristics is called sub-categorization.  Transformational rules (T-rules)  Particle movement T-rule  John turned the machine off. John turned off the machine.  Replacement T-rule  John beat Tom. He beat Tom.  The house needs repairing (to be repaired).  Insertion T-rule  A fish is swimming in the pond. There is a fish swimming in the pond.  Deletion T-rule  They came in and (they) sat down.  Copying T-rule  He is coming, isn’t he?  He has finished his homework, hasn’t he?  Reflexivization T-rule  I wash me (myself).  TG grammar accounts for the mental process of our speaking.  Systematic-functional grammar  Background and the goal of systemic-functional grammar  M. A. K. Halliday  Language is a system of meaning potential and a network of meaning as choices.  Meaning determines form, not vice versa. Meaning is realized through forms.  The goal of systemic-functional grammar is to see how function and meaning are realized through forms.  The three meta-functions of language  Ideational function  Interpersonal function  Textual function  The transitivity system of language  Elements  Process  Participants  Circumstances  Categorization of reality  Doing – material process  Processes involving physical actions: walking, running, throwing, kicking, wrapping, etc.  Actor, goal and circumstance  Being – relational process  Processes representing a relation being set up between two separate entities.  Be (identifying), have (attributive)  Carrier/possessor and attribute/possessed  Sensing – mental process  Processes of sensing, including feeling, thinking, perceiving, imagining, wanting, liking, etc.  Senser and phenomenon  Less central types of linguistic process  Verbal processes – saying something  Sayer and receiver  Behavioural processes – active conscious processes  Behaver and range  Existential processes – existence of an entity  Existent  Mood and modality  Mood expresses the speaker’s attitude and serves for interpersonal function. It is a syntactic constituent made up of the subject and the finite.  Modality is the degree of certainty or frequency expressed by the grammatical forms of finite. It can be categorized by modalization and modulation.  Theme and rheme  Theme is the given information, while rheme is the new information.  Examples:  John | is my friend.  He | should have replied to my letter. |
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Chapter 6 Semantics  What is semantics?  Semantics is defined as the study of meaning. However, it is not the only linguistic discipline that studies meaning.  Semantics answers the question “what does this sentence mean”. In other words, it is the analysis of conventional meanings in words and sentences out of context.  Reference and sense  Linguistic expressions stand in a relation to the world. There are two aspects of meaning.  Reference is the relation by which a word picks out or identifies an entity in the world. But the referential theory fails to account for certain kinds of linguistic expression.  Some words are meaningful, but they identify no entities in the real world, such as the words dragon, phoenix, unicorn, and mermaid.  It is not possible for some words to find referent in the world, such as the words but, and, of, however, the, etc.  Speakers of English understand the meaning of a round triangle although there is no such graph.  Sense is the relation by which words stand in human mind. It is mental representation, the association with something in the speaker’s or hearer’s mind. The study of meaning from the perspective of sense is called the representational approach.  Classification of lexical meanings  Referential meaning (denotative meaning) – central meaning of words, stable, universal  Associative meaning – meaning that hinges on referential meaning, less stable, more culture-specific  Connotative meaning – the communicative value an expression has by virtue of what it refers to, embraces the properties of the referent, peripheral  Social meaning (stylistic meaning) – what is conveyed about the social circumstances of the use of a linguistic expression  Affective meaning – what is communicated of the feeling or attitude of the speaker/writer towards what is referred to  Reflected meaning – what is communicated through association with another sense of the same expression  Taboos  Collocative meaning – the associated meaning a word acquires in line with the meaning of words which tend to co-occur with it  Lexical sense relations  Synonymy  Synonyms are words which have different forms but similar meanings.  Dialectal synonyms – lift/elevator, flat/apartment  Synonyms of different styles – gentleman/guy  Synonyms of different registers – salt/sodium chloride  Synonyms differing in affective meaning – attract/seduce  Synonyms differing in collocation – beautiful/handsome, able/capable  Synonyms are frequently used in speaking and writing as a cohesive device. In order to avoid repetition the writer/speaker needs to use a synonym to replace a word in the previous co-text when he/she wants to continue to address that idea. The synonyms together function to create cohesion of the text.  Antonymy  Antonyms are words which are opposite in meaning.  Gradable antonyms – pairs of words opposite to each other, but the positive of one word does not necessarily imply the negative of the other. For example, the words hot and cold are a pair of antonyms, but not hot does not necessarily mean cold, maybe warm, mild or cool. Therefore, this pair of antonyms is a pair of gradable antonyms.  Complementary antonyms – words opposite to each other and the positive of one implies the negative of the other: alive/dead Reversal (relational) antonyms – words that denote the same relation or process from one or the other direction: push/pull, up/down, teacher/student  Antonymy is frequently utilized as a rhetorical resource in language use. Oxymoron and antithesis based on antonymy. Gradable antonyms may give rise to fuzziness.  Homonymy  Homonyms are words which have the same form, but different meanings.  Homographs – words which are identical in spelling, but different in meaning and pronunciation: tear [] (v.)/tear [] (n.)  Homophones – words which are identical in pronunciation, but different in spelling and meaning: see/sea  Full homonyms – words which are identical in spelling and pronunciation, but different in meaning: bear (v. to give birth to a baby/to stand)/bear (n. a kind of animal)  Rhetorically, homonyms are often used as puns.  Polysemy  A polyseme is a word which has several related senses.  Polysemy is based on the intuition of native speakers as well as the etymology or history of words.  Hyponymy  Hyponymy is a relation of inclusion.  Tiger, lion, elephant and dog are hyponyms of the word animal. Words like animal are called superordinates.  This kind of vertical semantic relation links words in a hierarchical work.  Componential analysis  Componential analysis is the approach that analyze word meaning by decomposing it into its atomic features. It shows the semantic features of a word.  Examples:  Man: +HUMAN +MALE +ADULT  Boy: +HUMAN +MALE –ADULT  Father: +HUMAN +MALE +ADULT →PARENT  Daughter: +HUMAN –MALE 0ADULT ←PARENT  Words and concepts  Categorization  Categorization refers to the process by which people use language to classify the world around and inside them.  It is fundamental to human cognition.  In the past two decades cognitive psychologists and cognitive linguistics have gained new insights into the nature of categories.  Prototypes  A prototype is a set that has typical, central features. Others are peripheral features, which are not typical but related.  Hierarchies  Conceptual network  Sentencial sense relations – semantic relations of sentences  Sentences may be related in sense. I will illustrate sense relations within and between sentences.  Tautology: The bachelor is unmarried.  Contradiction: The bachelor is married.  Inconsistency: John is single./John is married.  Synonymousness: John broke the glass./The glass was broken by John.  Entailment: The meeting was chaired by a spinster./The meeting was chaired by a woman.  Presupposition: Sam has returned the book./Sam borrowed the book.  These semantic relations are found within or between meaningful sentences. There are sentences which sound grammatical but meaningless. These sentences are said to be semantically anomalous. For example:  Colourless green ideas sleep furiously.  The pregnant bachelor killed some phonemes.  Metaphors  From rhetorical device to cognitive device  The classical view sees metaphor as a kind of decorative in addition to ordinary language, a rhetorical device that makes language use colourful.  Another view of metaphor, which has become more influential in the past two decades, holds that metaphors are a cognitive device. Metaphor is an essential element in our categorization of the world and our thinking process.  Cognitive linguistics has shown that metaphor is not an unusual or deviant way of using language. The use of metaphor is not confined to literature, rhetoric and art. It is actually ubiquitous in everyday communication.  The components of metaphors  Target domain – tenor  Source domain – vehicle  Features of metaphors  Metaphors are systematic.  Metaphors can create similarities between the two domains involved.  Metaphors are also characterized by imaginative rationality. |
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Chapter 7 Pragmatics  What is pragmatics?  Pragmatics can be defined as the analysis of meaning in context.  Pragmatic analysis of meaning is first and foremost concerned with the study of what is communicated by a speaker/writer and interpreted by a listener/reader.  Analysis of intentional meaning necessarily involves the interpretation of what people do through language in a particular context.  Intended meaning may or may not be explicitly expressed. Pragmatic analysis also explores how listeners/readers make inferences about what is communicated.  What are the differences between the two linguistic studies of meaning – semantics and pragmatics?  Semantics studies literal, structural or lexical meaning, while pragmatics studies non-literal, implicit, intended meaning, or speaker meaning.  Semantics is context independent, decontextualized, while pragmatics is context dependent, contextualized.  Semantics deals with what is said, while pragmatics deals with what is implicated or inferred.  Deixis and reference  Deixis is a word originally from Greek. It means pointing via language. An expression used by a speaker/writer to identify something is called deictic expression.  Out of context, we cannot understand sentences containing deictic expressions, because we do not know what these expressions refer to respectively.  According to referential content, deixis can be put into person deixis, place deixis, time deixis and discourse deixis.  Person deixis: I, we, you, me, he, etc.  Place deixis: here, there, above, over, this, that…  Proximal and distal terms  Proximal terms are used when something is close to the speaker, while distal terms when something is away from the speaker.  Time deixis: next…, by…, before…, etc.  Tenses: coding time  Discourse deixis  Anaphoric: backward reference  Cataphoric: forward reference  The deictic centre – ego-centric centre  Speech acts  In linguistic communication, people do not merely exchange information. They actually do something through talking or writing in various circumstances. Actions performed via speaking are called speech acts.  Performative sentences  Implicit performatives – It’s cold here.  Explicit performatives – Please close the door.  Types of speech acts  Locutionary speech act – the action of making the sentence  Illocutionary speech act – the intentions  Perlocutionary speech act – the effects  Of these dimensions, the most important is the illocutionary act.  In linguistic communication people respond to an illocutionary act of an utterance, because it is the meaning intended by the speaker.  If a teacher says, “I have run out of chalk” in the process of lecturing, the act of saying is locutionary, the act of demanding for chalk is illocutionary, and the effect the utterance brings about – one of the students will go and get some chalk – is perlocutionary.  In English, illocutionary acts are also given specific labels, such as request, warning, promise, invitation, compliment, complaint, apology, offer, refusal, etc. these specific labels name various speech functions.  As functions may not correspond to forms, speech acts can be direct and indirect.  Searle: two ways of communication (performing acts)  Direct speech act: Close the door.  Indirect speech act: It’s cold in here.  Why do people often speak indirectly in social communication?  Different social variables: age, sex, social condition  Politeness: communicative strategy  Indirect speech acts are related to appropriateness.  Indirect speech acts are made for politeness, not vice versa. To make appropriate choices does not necessarily mean indirect speech acts.  Cooperation and implicature  Conversational Implicature  In our daily life, speakers and listeners involved in conversation are generally cooperating with each other. In other words, when people are talking with each other, they must try to converse smoothly and successfully. In accepting speakers’ presuppositions, listeners have to assume that a speaker is not trying to mislead them. This sense of cooperation is simply one in which people having a conversation are not normally assumed to be trying to confuse, trick, or withhold relevant information from one another.  However, in real communication, the intention of the speaker is often not the literal meaning of what he or she says. The real intention implied in the words is called conversational implicature. For example: [1] A: Can you tell me the time? B: Well, the milkman has come.  In this little conversation, A is asking B about the time, but B is not answering directly. That indicates that B may also not no the accurate time, but through saying “the milkman has come”, he is in fact giving a rough time. The answer B gives is related to the literal meaning of the words, but is not merely that. That is often the case in communication. The theory of conversational implicature is for the purpose of explaining how listeners infer the speakers’ intention through the words.  The study of conversational implicature starts from Grice (1967), the American philosopher. He thinks, in daily communication, people are observing a set of basic rules of cooperating with each other so as to communicate effectively through conversation. He calls this set of rules the cooperative principle (CP) elaborated in four sub-principles (maxims), that is the cooperative principle.  The Cooperative Principle  Make your conversational contribution such as is required, at the stage at which it occurs, by the accepted purpose or direction of the talk exchange in which you are engaged. The maxims are:  Quantity  Make your contribution as informative as is required (for the current purposes of the exchange).  Do not make your contribution more informative than is required.  Quality – Try to make your contribution one that is true.  Do not say what you believe to be false.  Do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence.  Relation – Be relevant.  Manner – Be perspicuous.  Avoid obscurity of expression.  Avoid ambiguity.  Be brief (avoid unnecessary prolixity).  Be orderly.  We assume that people are normally going to provide an appropriate amount of information, i.e. they are telling the relevant truth clearly. The cooperative principle given by Grice is an idealized case of communication.  However, there are more cases that speakers are not fully adhering to the principles. But the listener will assume that the speaker is observing the principles “in a deeper degree”. For example: [2] A: Where is Bill? B: There is a yellow car outside Sue’s house.  In [2], the speaker B seems to be violating the maxims of quantity and relation, but we also assume that B is still observing the CP and think about the relationship between A’s question and the “yellow car” in B’s answer. If Bill has a yellow car, he may be in Sue’s house.  If a speaker violate CP by the principle itself, there is no conversation at all, so there cannot be implicature. Implicature can only be caused by violating one or more maxims.  Four Cases of “Violating” the maxims given by Grice and Conversational Implicature  The people in conversation may violate one or more maxims secretly. In this way, he may mislead the listener.  For this case, in the conversation [2] above, we assume that B is observing the CP and Bill has a yellow car. But if B is intentionally trying to mislead A to think that Bill is in Sue’s house, we will be misled without knowing. In this case, if one “lies” in conversation, there is no implicature in the conversation, only the misleading.  He may declare that he is not observing the maxims or the CP.  In this kind of situation, the speaker directly declares he is not cooperating. He has made it clear that he does not want to go on with the conversation, so there is no implicature either.  He may fall into a dilemma. For example, for the purpose observing the first principle of the maxim of quantity (make your contribution as informative as is required), he may be violating the second principle of the maxim of quality (do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence).  For this case, Grice gave an example: [3] A: Where does C live? B: Somewhere in the south of France.  In [3], if B knows that A is going to visit C, his answer is violating the maxim of quantity, because he is not giving enough information about where C lives. But he has not declared that he will not observe the maxims. So we can know that B knows if he gives more information, he will violate the principle “do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence”. In other words, he has fallen into a “dilemma”. So we can infer that his implicature is that he does not know the exact address of C. In this case, there is conversational implicature.  He may “flout” one or more maxims. In other words, he may be obviously not observing them.  The last situation is the typical case that can make conversational implicature. Once the participant in a conversation has made an implicature, he or she is making use one of the maxims. We can see that from the following examples: [4] A: Where are you going with the dog? B: To the V-E-T.  In [4], the dog is known to be able to recognize the word “vet” and to hate being taken there. Therefore, A makes the word spelled out. Here he is “flouting” the maxim of manner, making the implicature that he does not want the dog to know the answer to the question just asked. [5] (In a formal get-together) A: Mrs. X is an old bag. B: The weather has been quite delightful this summer, hasn’t it?  B is intentionally violating the maxim of relation in [5], implicating that what A has said is too rude and he should change a topic.  The politeness principle (PP)  Leech points out that CP in itself cannot explain why people are often so indirect in conveying what they mean. Grice’s theory of CP is, fundamentally, logic-oriented.  Conversational interaction is also social behaviour. Choice of linguistic codes is central in language use. There are social and psychological factors that determine the choice.  Besides being cooperative, participants of conversations normally try to be polite. The speakers consider the matter of face for themselves and others. Based on this observation, Leech proposes the politeness principle (PP), which contains six maxims.  Tact  Minimize cost to other.  Maximize benefit to other.  Generosity  Minimize benefit to self.  Maximize cost to self.  Approbation  Minimize dispraise of other.  Maximize praise of other.  Modesty  Minimize praise of self.  Maximize dispraise of self.  Agreement  Minimize disagreement between self and other.  Maximize agreement between self and other.  Sympathy  Minimize antipathy between self and other.  Maximize sympathy between self and other.  The maxims expressed in terms of maximize entail the concept of gradience in politeness. The tact maxim expressed in terms of cost and benefit can be exemplified by the following: |
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 Clean the rooms.Cost to HLess polite  Get some chalks for me.↑↑  Look at the map.  Take a seat.  Enjoy your trip. ↓↓  Have another cup of coffee.Benefit to HMore polite  Cost to hearer:  Peel the potatoes.More directLess polite  Can you peel the potatoes? ↑↑  Will you peel the potatoes? ↓↓  Would you possibly peel …?Less directMore polite  Benefit to hearer:  Would you have another sandwich? Less directLess polite  Will you have another sandwich?↑↑  Have another sandwich.↓↓  You must have another sandwich.More directMore polite  Politeness and appropriateness  Distance, power, situational context  Relation between CP and PP  The PP is the superordinate principle standing above the CP. The PP overrides the CP.  People sometimes violate the CP in order to follow the PP.  A general introduction to the principle of relevance (RP)  From the four maxims of CP to the RP  The code model  Communication is a process of coding and decoding.  The inferential model  Communication is a process of producing and interpreting, or coding and inferring.  Theoretical assumptions  General law: to use the minimal effort for the maximal effect for human behaviour.  To communicate is to claim others’ attention.  Contractual effect/processing effort = relevance  The theory of RP introduced here is only a tiny part. For further study, please search the web from google.  Conversational implicature  What is a conversation?  A conversation is changing ideas, or conversing.  Conversation is the basic form of speech in human communication.  Conversation is the dialogic form in spoken and written discourse.  Analysis of conversation  The global analysis – to analyze the whole structure, the whole process of a conversation.  The local analysis – to understand the internal structure of a conversation, the turn-taking.  Turn-taking  Turn-taking refers to having the right to speak by turns.  Conversations normally follow the pattern of “I speak – you speak – I speak – you speak”, if there are two participants.  Any possible change-of-turn point is called a transition relevance place (TRP).  One speaks (takes the floor), the other listens.  Adjacency pair  Adjacency pairs are a fundamental unit of conversational structure.  Greeting/greeting, question/answer, invitation/acceptance, offer/decline, complaint/denial are common cases of adjacency pairs.  Insertion sequence  Not all first parts are immediately followed by second parts. It often occurs that the answer is delayed by another pair of question and answer. Look at the following example: - May I have a bottle of Mich? (Q1) - Are you over 21? (Q2) - No. (A2) - No. (A1)  The second part of adjacency pair is violated here.  A conversation sometimes is organized in a preferential way.  Pre-sequence  Pre-invitation  Pre-request  Pre-announcement  Post-sequence  Explanation |
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Chapter 8 Language in Social Contexts  What is sociolinguistics?  The sociolinguistic study of language  Language in relation to society  Diversity of language, variation between societies or within a society  The distinction between “language” and “a language”  Try to answer the following three questions:  Can language be defined in terms of geography?  Can language be defined in terms of nationality?  Should language be defined by mutual intelligibility?  The answer to these questions should all be no. All languages are equal. If you define language in terms of these factors, you are speaking of “a language”.  Varieties of language  A language varies according to the following factors:  Situation  Geographical areas  Social factors  Purposes and subject matters  Time (through which the language develops)  Geographical varieties and regional dialects  What’s the relationship between a regional dialect and the national standard speech?  A regional dialect is a variety of the national standard speech.  Accent  Pronunciation:  Spelling: -our/-or  Vocabulary:  Grammar: have you/do you have…  Social varieties  Sociolects are forms of a language that characterize the speech of different social classes.  A social variety is a variety of language brought about by the social factors.  Language plays the role of a social indicator.  Social classes and variation  Grammar: third person singular  Pronunciation: popular contracted forms  Sex and variation  Women tend to speak more standard, decent variation.  Women tend to make overstatements, especially when making comment.  Women prefer to use certain adjectives which are not used normally.  Women tend to avoid the use of vulgar words.  Women tend to use certain expressions to show happiness or surprise.  Age and variation  Race and variation  Racial difference  Black English - Pronunciation - Grammar  Temporal dialects  Standard dialect and idiolect  Standard dialect is the highest prestige in a society or a nation. It is usually based on the well-educated speech.  It is used in news media and literature.  It is described in dictionaries and grammar books.  It is taught in schools and to non-native learners.  Idiolect is the language system of an individual. It is one’s particular way of speaking and/or writing.  Register – situational variety  Register is a speech variety which changes according to the situation where language is used. Usually it is shared by a group of people, such as lawyers, doctors, stamp collectors, etc.  To know how to use a register means to know how to use language appropriately.  Register is analyzed on three dimensions: field, mode and tenor. Field is concerned with why and about what we communicate; mode is related to how we communicate; tenor is about with whom we communicate.  Formality  Frozen  Formal  Consultative  Casual  Intimate  Language in contact  Throughout history no natural language is pure or free from the influence of other languages. Due to trade, war, colonization and other causes languages may come into contact. When this occurs, mixed codes may come into being, which are called pidgins and creoles.  The term pidgin is the label for the code used by people who speak different languages. A pidgin is not the native language of any group.  A creole is a mixed language which has become the mother tongue of a speech community.  Bilingualism and multilingualism are normal in many parts of the world today.  Bilingualism gives rise to code-switching and code-mixing. The former refers to the fact that a speaker changes from one language to the other in different situations or when talking about different topics. The latter refers to the change from one language to the other language within the same utterance.  Taboos and euphemisms  Taboo refers to a prohibition on the use of, mention of, or association with particular objects, actions, or persons. Euphemism is an expression that substitutes one which may be seen as offensive or disturbing to the addressee.  Taboo and euphemism are actually two sides of the same coin.  What is taboo or not taboo depends on the context.  A brief introduction to a hot topic nowadays: language and culture  What is culture?  Nature is material, while culture is spiritual.  Linguistic relativity  Language is part of culture, a carrier of culture.  Language is a product of our social life.  Language is the principal mean by which culture is passed down.  Language reflects the way of thinking. Mental activities depend on linguistic activity.  Sapir-Whorf hypothesis (relationship between language and culture)  Determinism  Language determines our way of thinking.  Relativism (linguistic relativity)  For further study of this hot topic, refer to the book Language and Culture written by Claire Kramsch  Competence  Linguistic competence: grammaticality, presented by Chomsky  Communicative competence: four components  Grammaticality  Acceptability  Appropriateness  Effectiveness |
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Chapter 9 Second Language Acquisition (SLA)  What is SLA?  What is language acquisition?  The natural process of children’s language development.  It is different from language learning.  Four stages of language acquisition  Babbling – holophrastic – two-word – telegraphic  What is second language acquisition (SLA)?  SLA is learning a language in F2 (the language being learnt) language environment.  It is different from foreign language learning, which is learning a language in F1 language environment.  The major difference is the environment.  Foreign language teaching (FLT) and second language teaching (SLT)  SLA theory  Factors affecting SLA  External factors: social factors  Social demand  Language policy  Internal factors: learner factors  Motivation  Instrumental  Integrative  Age  Learning strategy  Cognitive  Repetition  Translation  Note-taking  Metacognitive  Organizing  Self-monitoring  Self-evaluation  Personality  Attitude  Analysis of learners’ language  Why analyze?  Learners’ language provides data for research into the nature of the learning process. In order to gain insight into the process, researchers have engaged in the analysis of learners’ language.  How to analyze?  Contrastive analysis  Compare the target language with the mother tongue.  Error analysis  Identifying errors  Errors are due to the fault in knowledge of the speaker, while mistakes are because of unsuccessful performance.  Describing errors  Omission - He came into _ classroom with a book in _ hand.  Addition/wordy - My child goes to his school.  Selection - I hope/wish…  Disordering - I yesterday went to … (I, yesterday, went to …/I went to … yesterday)  Explaining errors and analyzing reason  Interlingual factors - Mother tongue’s influence  Intralingual factors - Overgeneralization - Simplification - Cross-association  Limitation for error analysis  Fail to see what learners’ language will be like if we focus on the errors.  Interlanguage  Approximate language system  Transitional language  Language transfer – to borrow language from L1  Positive transfer: L1 does help  Negative transfer: L1 misleads  Learners extend patterns by analogy – overgeneralized mistakes (overextension).  Communicative strategy  Explaining SLA  Nativist theories  Chomsky: LAD system  Krashen: monitor theory  Input hypothesis (i + 1 hypothesis)  Environmentalist theories  Cultural awareness  Theoretical perspective (language outlook)  Confidence and competence  Functionalist theories  Language use  Communicative strategies (CS) |
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Chapter 10 Linguistics and Foreign Language Teaching (FLT)  FLT as a system  Government planning  Syllabus design and material development  Classroom teaching  Evaluation  Contribution of linguistics: applications and implications  Applications  Linguistic description can be directly used as input into syllabus and material development.  Implications  There is an indirect relationship between linguistics and FLT.  Contents: what to teach?  Methodology: how to teach?  What we learn from a certain theory is helpful in deciding those.  The role of a teacher  Organizer  Language user For further study, refer to my notes of Teaching Method. From: 真题网 |
