21世纪英语专业系列教材

Linguistics:

An Elementary Course Book ( Second Edition)

语言学基础教程

(第二版)

苗兴伟 ◎主编

胡壮麟 )主审

Linguistics:

An Elementary Course Book ( Second Edition)

语言学基础教程(第二版)

《语言学基础教程》(第二版)包括语言与语言学、语音学与音位学、形态学、句法学、语义学、语用学、语篇分析、历史语言学、文体学、社会语言学、跨文化交际、心理语言学、认知语言学、应用语言学等十四章。在内容方面，本书在提供基本知识的同时，更注重教材的科学性、系统性、实用性和时代性。在编写过程中，我们力求“化难为简”，尽量做到概念清晰，既要保证知识的系统性，又要避免术语的堆砌。本书在传授基本知识与概念的同时，通过丰富的实例提供了有关语言分析和描述的基本方法，并强调语言学与其他学科的联系，以便适应创新型人才培养的需要。

《语言学基础教程》(第二版) 力求以通俗易懂的语言和内容将语言学知识呈献给读者，章节安排循序渐进，知识体系完整，有助于语言学学习者在掌握语言学理论的基础上进一步拓展知识领域，培养创新能力和应用能力，提高综合素养。

ISBN978-7-301-29658-5

“北大外文学堂”

系列教材

Linguistics:

An Elementary Course Book( Second Edition)

语言学基础教程

(第二版)

苗兴伟 ◎主编

胡壮麟 ◎主审

图书在版编目(CIP)数据

语言学基础教程/苗兴伟主编.一2版.一北京 ：北京大学出版社，2018.7(21 世纪英语专业系列教材)

ISBN 978-7-301-29658-5

Ⅰ.①语⋯ Ⅱ.①苗⋯ Ⅲ.①英语一语言学一高等学校一教材 Ⅳ.①H31中国版本图书馆CIP 数据核字(2018)第136327号

书 名 语言学基础教程(第二版)

YUYANXUE JICHU JIAOCHENG (DI ER BAN)

著作责任者 苗兴伟 主编

责任编辑 刘文静

标准书号 ISBN 978-7-301-29658-5

出版发行 北京大学出版社

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2010年7月第1版

2018年7月第2版 2018年7月第1次印刷

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第二版前言 1

第二版前言

《语言学基础教程》自2010年出版以来，得到了语言学学习者和教师的广泛认可。当然，教材中也有一些问题和不足。在多次印刷中，我们曾经对教材中的个别细节做了适当修改。为使学生能够更为系统地掌握语言学知识，使《语言学基础教程》更好地服务于英语类专业的人才培养，我们决定对本书进行修订。在教材的使用过程中，我们也获得了许多教师和学生的反馈，为本次的修订工作提供了有用的信息。我们在认真梳理反馈的同时，对教材中存在的问题进行了分析，并于2017年底开始了《语言学基础教程》的修订工作。

在修订过程中，除了修改了语言表达方面的细节问题，重点对第六章、第七章和第十三章的内容做了修订。第六章主要增加了对理论的解释，以帮助学生更好地把握语用学的理论。第七章增加了批评话语分析的内容，以反映语篇分析的最新发展和前沿。第十三章增加了“语法化和词汇化”一节，目的使学生了解语法化和词汇化及其背后的认知机制。为使学生巩固所学知识并进一步学习有关知识，拓展语言学学习和研究的空间，每章增加了“深入阅读”( further reading)书单。其他方面的修订就不一一介绍了，希望修订后的《语言学基础教程》能以全新的面目出现在大家的面前，更好地满足广大的语言学教师、学生和爱好者的需要。我们真诚地期待读者的鼓励和反馈，希望《语言学基础教程》在大家的帮助下不断成长。

参加修订本书各章的人员为：

第一章 严世清 苏州大学

第二章 董宏乐 复旦大学

第三章 李 力 厦门大学

第四章 刘世铸 山东大学

第五章 苗兴伟 北京师范大学

第六章 陈新仁 南京大学

第七章 常晨光 中山大学

第八章 向明友 对外经济贸易大学

第九章 陈毅平 暨南大学

第十章 苏立昌 南开大学

语言学基础教程( 第二版)

Linguistics: An Elementary Course Book Second Edition

第十一章 朱 晔 浙江大学

第十二章 刘振前 山东大学

第十三章 文 旭 西南大学

第十四章 崔 刚 清华大学

感谢北京大学胡壮麟教授对本书的关心和鼓励，特别是在第一版的编写和出版过程中，胡壮麟教授为我们出谋划策，并对初稿提出了非常详细的修改意见，保证了本书的质量。感谢北京大学出版社外语部领导张冰女士和责任编辑刘文静女士对修订工作的大力支持和帮助。

热忱欢迎专家同行和读者一如既往地对本教材不吝赐教。

编者

2018年5月29日

第一版前言 1

第一版前言

随着高等教育事业的发展和社会对高层次人才的需求的日益增长，本科生教材的正规化和系统化的必要性越来越明显。语言学知识在高等教育乃至整个社会发展中的作用已不言而喻。为使学生能够系统地掌握语言学知识，满足高校培养创新型、应用型人才的需要，我们应北京大学出版社的邀请编写了《语言学基础教程》(中、英文版)。

本教材的使用者主要为全国各高校英语专业的本科生。在内容方面，体现本科阶段课堂教学的特点，在提供基本知识的同时，更注重教材的科学性、系统性、实用性和时代性。在编写过程中，我们力求“化难为简”，尽量做到概念清晰，既要保证知识的系统性，又要避免术语的堆砌。本教材在传授基本知识与概念的同时，通过丰富的实例提供了有关语言分析和描述的基本方法，同时强调语言学与其他学科的联系，以便适应创新型人才培养的需要。为使学生巩固所学知识并进一步学习有关知识，每一章后都有练习题，并列出了“深入阅读”书单。全书共有十四章，教师可以根据教学大纲的课时安排和课堂教学的需要，合理地安排教学。

《语言学基础教程》的作者是来自全国13所211工程大学的知名中青年学者，都是教学第一线的英语教师，具有丰富的语言学研究和教学经验。参加本书编写的人员为：

2 语言学基础教程( 第二版)

Linguistics: An Elementary Course Book Second Edition

第九章 陈毅平 暨南大学

第十章 苏立昌 南开大学

第十一章 朱 晔 浙江大学

第十二章 刘振前 山东大学

第十三章 文 旭 西南大学

第十四章 崔 刚 清华大学

感谢北京大学胡壮麟教授在百忙之中担任本书的主审并为之作序。胡壮麟教授主编过多部语言学教材，为我国的语言学教学事业做出了巨大贡献。本书的作者也都是在胡教授的教材的引领下步入语言学殿堂的。在此我们谨以此书向胡壮麟教授表示敬意，并衷心地感谢他为本书的编写提出的宝贵建议。

我们还要衷心地感谢同济大学马秋武教授和浙江大学许力生教授对本书的关注和厚爱。感谢北京大学出版社刘强先生和宇航出版社姜军先生对本书的关心和支持。

由于编写人员来自不同的院校，每人分工写一部分，因而各章在写作风格和难易程度方面难免有不尽一致之处。虽然我们在统稿过程中进行了反复的修改和调整，谬误或疏漏在所难免。书中不当之处，恳请专家同行和读者批评指正。

编者

2009年10月16日

第一版序

第一版序

北京大学出版社外语部的领导和编者策划出版供英语专业学生使用的各种教材系列取得重大成就，受到高校英语专业教师的热烈欢迎，被列入教育部精品教材，但在这套系列中缺了有关英语语言学课程的教材，美中不足。我虽然编过《语言学教程》等多种教材，已无法归入这套系列，因此这个问题迟迟未能解决。与此同时，山东大学外国语学院副院长苗兴伟教授跃跃欲试，自愿张罗此事，我对此早有所闻，乐观其成。

此后，苗兴伟教授充分发挥了他的组织才能，拉起了一支庞大的编写队伍，并希望我在书成后写个序，我答应了。2009年7月份在北京清华大学主办的第36届国际系统功能语言学会议上，我从兴伟手中拿到书稿后，才发现我还要担任“主审”的任务。这时我才意识到自己犯了自不量力的错误。一则本人退休多年，已入老弱病残之列，掌握新知识有限，二则本书的作者均是我国学术界中生代的领军人物，不是教授博士，就是院长主任；三则我给不同出版社友情打工多年，尚未脱手的任务众多，加之国内外这个会议那个会议未见有尽头之日，时间上赔不起。

这样，所谓“主审”是仓促上阵的，虚有其名。恳求读者不要把“主审”二字看得太重，而是把我看作一个学习本教材的第一批学生。除了在眼所能及的范围内提出一些印刷错误外，我的学习心得报告如下：首先，本教材各章作者均是有关学科的佼佼者，功底扎实，保证了教材的学术性；第二，本教材作者有第一线教学的丰富经验，做到了论述深入浅出，适合本科生的需要；第三，本教材注意到有关学科在本世纪的最新进展，具有充分的时代性。

国庆和中秋长假，使我得以把大部分时间投入此项任务，借花献佛，以表我对北京大学出版社外语部和各位作者的钦佩之情，更表我对祖国六十华诞的无限喜悦！

胡壮麟

北京大学蓝旗营

2009年10月9日

CONTENTS 1

CONTENTS

1.6.1 Saussure as the Father of Modern

Chapter 2 Phonetics and Phonology: The Sounds and

SoundPatternsofLanguage⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯(14)

2.3.4 Prosodic Features: Stress, Tone and

2 语言学基础教程( 第二版)

Linguistics: An Elementary Course Book Second Edition

Chapter 3 Morphology: The Word Structure of

3.5.3 Inflectional Morphemes and Derivational

CONTENTS 3

5.4.1 Grammatical Meaning and Lexical

5.5.2 Semantic Relations at the Sentential

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Linguistics: An Elementary Course Book Second Edition

Chapter 7 Discourse Analysis: Language Above the

7.5.1 Thematic Structure and Information

Chapter 8 Historical Linguistics: Language

CONTENTS

6 语言学基础教程( 第二版)

Linguistics: An Elementary Course Book Second Edition

Chapter 11 Intercultural Communication:

11.3 The Relationship Between Language and

11.6 Language and Thought: Sapir- Whorf

11.7.1 Intercultural Communication as a Field of

11.7.2 Conquering Obstacles in Intercultural

CONTENTS 7

Chapter 12 Psycholinguistics: Language and

12.2 Language and the Brain: The Biological Foundations

12.2.1 Cerebral Lateralization and Language

12.5.1 First Language, Second Language and

Chapter 13 Cognitive Linguistics: Language and

语言学基础教程( 第二版)

Linguistics: An Elementary Course Book Second Edition

Chapter 14 Applied Linguistics: Language Teaching and

Learning⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯(218)

14.2.2 The Innateness Hypothesis: Universal

14.4 Approaches and Methods in Foreign Language

1.1 What is Language

Language is something that we use almost every day, but we will feel at a loss when asked to define what language is. A most common definition of language might be: Language is a means of human communication. The merit of this definition consists in its brevity and popularity among users of language, yet it does not necessarily follow that it is an adequate definition. For example, it points out only the instrumental aspect of language and does not actually tell us what language is. Suppose someone has never seen a train and asks you what a train is. Do you think he or she will be satisfied with a simple answer like“a train is a means of transportation”? Furthermore, the term human communication also needs further explanation, because communication can happen in various forms, such as gestures, pictures, smoke signals, traffic lights, noises in the throat, or even occasionally secret codes, but none of them can be regarded as language.

The above- mentioned definition of language is not exhaustive in many other aspects as well.

First of all, we have been talking about“ language”, rather than“a language”,“ the languages” or“ languages”. In other words, we use the word“ language” in the singular form without the definite or indefinite article, but the word can certainly be used in other forms. We can talk about languages, because there are several thousand kinds of languages in the world, although the total number of world languages has been decreasing since the twentieth century. Thus, the language we use or learn is only a language shared by a certain number of people.

Second, we can also use the word“ language” to refer to some special features of language use by an individual or people in a certain period of history, such as Shakespearean language or nineteenth century language. Indeed, some radical linguists even argue that everyone's use of language is unique or that language is changing all the time, which might create obstacles to communication. That explains why a teacher sometimes may not understand the jargons used among students.

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Linguistics: An Elementary Course Book Second Edition

There are many other uses of the word“ language”. The Webster’s Dictionary ( Third Edition) provides 13 annotations of the word and perhaps this list is still not yet exhaustive. It can be argued that the dictionary definition of a word is not academic enough, but the situation is even more complicated among linguists, who tend to provide definitions of language from their own theoretical perspectives. Or to put it the other way round, the way a linguist defines language indicates the theoretical perspective that the linguist takes. The following definitions of language are quoted from John Lyons'(1981: 3--7) Language and Linguistics:

· According to Sapir (1921), “ language is a purely human and non- instinctive method of communicating ideas, emotions and desires by means of voluntarily produced symbols.”

According to Blochand Trager (1942),“a language is a system of arbitrary vocal symbols by means of which a social group co- operates.”

Hall (1968) defines language as“ the institution whereby humans communicate and interact with each other by means of habitually used oral- auditory symbols.”

· Chomsky (1957) points out that a language is“a set ( finite or infinite) of sentences, each finite in length and constructed out of a finite set of elements.”

The list of definitions of language can be continued, but we can detect from the above definitions the common aspects of language that linguists generally agree upon and a su mmary of these common aspects can serve as a definition of language of our own. To begin with, language is a system, which means that language consists of a finite set of interrelated elements that can be combined according to rules. Second, language is a system of vocal symbols, which suggests that spoken forms are more cardinal to a language than written forms. Illiterate people can communicate with others at ease even though they do not know how to read and write. Third, communication is an important aspect of the function of language though language can also be said to perform other functions. If we look at language from the angle of the relationship between people, we can argue that language is a means of human interaction. If we look into the psychological aspect of language, we will see language as a kind of knowledge that language speakers share. Fourth, the language we study in linguistics is human language in general, although other forms of communication can also be touched upon and may shed new light on human linguistic communication. Fifth, language is arbitrary in the sense that the relation between speech sounds ( form) and the ideas the sounds convey( meaning) is arbitrary.

To sum up, language can be defined as a system of arbitrary vocal symbols

used for human communication and interaction.

1.2 The Design Features of Language

The st ructural linguist C. F. Hockett (1958) proposed a set of key properties of human language, which are said to be the design features that distinguish human language from the system of communication in any other species, such as bees’ dancing, birds’ singing and even music. Hockett identified 13 features, and later linguists differ from each other as to the number, name and perhaps importance of these features. However, most linguists would recognize the following features as most important, that is, arbitrarriness, duality, productivity, displacement and cultural transmission.

Arbitrariness, as a property of language, means that there is no intrinsic relation between sound and meaning. In Saussure's terms, arbitrariness refers to the arbitrariness of the relation between sound image and concept. As Hudson(1984: 19) puts it, there is no reason why we attach the meaning“ animal with a grunt and a curly tail” to the sequence of sounds p-i-g other than the( perfectly good) reason that this is what we found others doing in our particular community when we arrived on the scene, so we are simply following their example. What Juliet says in Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet makes a lot of sense:“ What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” From this quotation we can say that what matters is what something is, not what or how it is called. This reveals the truth about the arbitrariness of language. Arbitrariness can also be illustrated by cross- linguistic evidence: different sounds are used to signify the same object in different languages. To put it the other way round, the same meaning is represented by different sounds in different languages.

Duality is the property of having two levels of structure or patterning. At the primary, higher level, language is analyzed in terms of combinations of meaningful units ( such as morphemes or words); at the secondary, lower level, language is composed of a sequence of segments ( phonological units) which do not have any intrinsic meaning but combine to form units of meaning. For instance, in the sentence He goes to school, at the first higher level, the sentence consists of meaningful units, he, go, - es (a morpheme indicating third person singular number), to, school. At the lower level, these meaningful units are made up of phonological units, /h/,/i:/,/g/, /əʊ/, etc. As individual sounds, these units do not have any meaning in themselves. Therefore, duality is also termed double articulation. The articulation of words or other meaningful units is the primary articulation, that of phonological units within words the secondary articulation. Duality is a design feature that

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enables language to be productive, because language users can use or produce a large number of forms by combining a relatively small number of lower- level elements in a variety of different ways.

Productivity, also termed creativity, refers to the creative capacity of language users to produce and understand an infinitely large number of sentences, including sentences they have never used or heard before. Productivity is one of the distinctive features of human language because it allows novel combinations of elements and thus contrasts with the“ unproductive” communication systems of animals.

Displacement means that human beings can talk about objects or events which do not belong to the immediate setting in space and time. This is a very normal property of communication in human beings, rarely demonstrated in other species. As Bertrand Russell once said, no matter how eloquently a dog may bark, he cannot tell you that his parents were poor but honest. Human language can be used to talk about real or imagined matters in the past, present, or future. We can write science fictions, tell fairy tales, handle generalizations and abstractions, and even lie and deceive by means of language. This is the chief reason why linguists tend to believe that language is a more distinctive feature of human species than any other features like the use of tools or the size of brain, etc.

Cultural transmission means the transmission of language from one generation to the next through members of a society as opposed to genetic inheritance. In other words, the details of the linguistic system must be learned anew by each speaker. Though the capacity for language in the human being has a genetic basis, the particular language one learns is a cultural fact rather than a genetic one.

1.3 The Origin of Language

Although interest in the origin of language dates back to antiquity, we are still far from knowing when and how language arose. There are three well- known theories concerning the origin of language: the divine- origin theory, the invention theory and the evolution theory.

The divine- origin theory suggests that language is God's gift to mankind. According to Genesis of the Bible, God created Adam and gave him the power to name all things. Similar stories can be found in many religions of the world about a divine source who endows humans with language.

The invention theory maintains that language is a human invention. This theory is manifested in the five theories summarized by the Danish linguist Otto Jespersen (1922) with the following names:

Chapter 1 5

Language and Linguistics

· The bow- wow theory: Language originated by the imitation of natural sounds such as animal calls. The evidence for this theory is the existence of onomatopoeic words in language.

The pooh- pooh theory: Language arose from instinctive cries of emotion, such as pain, anger, pleasure, fear and surprise. This theory can be supported by the interjections in language.

The ding- don g theory: Language arose out of people's responses to the things around them by sounds. The original sounds people made were supposedly in harmony with the world around them. This can be explained by sound symbolism, which is the phenomenon that vocal sounds suggest meaning. One frequently cited example is the“ gl-” words for shiny things: glisten, gleam, glint, glare, glam, glimmer, glaze, glass, glitz, gloss, glory, glow, and glitter. Similar to the ding- don g theory, the oral- gesture theory suggests that language is an oral mirror of physical gestures through the movement of the tongue, lips and other vocal organs. One possible example is the oral gesture( movement of the tongue) in a“ goodbye” message as a vocal mimicry of the physical gesture( waving of the hand or arm).

· The yo- he- ho theory: Language developed out of the rhythmical grunts of humans working together. Examples supporting this theory are the prosodic features, especially of rhythm in language.

· The la- la theory: Language derived from sounds associated with the romantic aspect of life, such as song, love, art and poetry.

The evolution theory maintains that language developed in the course of the evolution of the human species. The development of language is closely related to the evolutionary development of the speech organs, especially the oral cavity and the pharyngeal cavity. For example, the shapes of human teeth, lips and the tongue evolved in such a way that enables humans to produce a variety of speech sounds. However, some people think that the major evolutionary step in the development of language relates to evolutionary changes in the brain( Fromkin & Rodman,1983:28). As Yule(1996/2000:5) puts it, there is an evolutionary connection between the tool- using and language- using abilities of humans, as both are related to the development of the human brain and are largely confined to the left hemisphere of the brain for most humans. The evolution theory seems to provide a better explanation for the origin of language than the divine- origin theory and the invention theory.

1.4 What is Linguistics

Linguistics is often defined as the science of language or as the scientific

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study of language. However, people constantly challenge the possibility of rendering linguistics scientific, because it is first and foremost the study of language by means of language and thus people have every reason to suspect whether linguistic theories are simply the result of linguists' play on words. Furthermore, linguistics clearly belongs to the humanities and social sciences, which are obviously different from disciplines like physics, chemistry or biology, whose scientific status is unquestioned.

Linguistics is a science because linguists share the goal of scientific enquiry, which is objective understanding. The primary aim of linguistics is to understand the nature of language and of languages. Linguists attempt to construct theories of language, and to apply theoretical considerations to a description or analysis of language or languages. Objectivity is the most important principle of the scientific method. In order to obtain objectivity in linguistic study, linguists should see and describe a language as it is, not as what they think it ought to be. Language is something that we tend to take for granted, something with which we are familiar from childhood in a practical and unquestioning manner. As a result, there are some biases that we assume to be truth but are actually unjustifiable. For example, people tend to believe that their own language is the easiest to learn, but scientific study shows that learning a foreign language is equally difficult or easy if you like, though there are rare cases of individuals who seem to be talented for learning new languages. Another deep- rooted bias is that only the standard variety is the pure or correct form of a language, such as the kind of English spoken by BBC and VOA announcers or the kind of Mandarin Chinese spoken by CCTV news broadcasters.

Linguistics is scientific in its methodology. It is concerned with observing facts about language, setting up hypotheses, testing their validity and accepting or rejecting them accordingly. To avoid biases of the kinds mentioned above, modern linguists differ from traditional grammarians in adopting empirical rather than speculative or intuitive approaches in their study. Here follows the first distinction between modern linguistics and traditional grammar. That is, linguistics is descriptive rather than prescriptive. That is, linguists try to make statements which are testable, and take language as it is rather than say how it should be. The empirical approach to language that linguists adopt usually consists of four stages: data collection ( usually in the form of a corpus), tentative rule construction, tentative rule examination and rule finalization. Unlike the traditional grammarians, linguists do not believe that there is any absolute standard of correctness concerning language use which school teachers should view as their duty to maintain. Instead, linguists prefer to be observers or recorders of facts.

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The second contrast between modern linguistics and traditional grammar is that linguistics regards spoken rather than written language as primary. Traditional grammar tends to emphasize the importance of written language and the writings or styles of classical writers are considered the most prestigious ( if not the best) form of language that learners should imitate. Linguists, however, give priority to spoken language, though written language is also part of linguistic research.

Thirdly, linguistics differs from traditional grammar in that it does not force languages into a Latin- based framework. In the past, Latin was considered the language that provided a universal grammar for all languages and other languages were forced to fit into Latin patterns and categories, especially its case system and tense divisions of past, present and future.

It must be emphasized, however, that linguistics, like any other discipline, builds on the past, not only by challenging and refuting traditional doctrines but also by developing and reformulating them. When criticizing traditional grammar for being unscientific, linguists do not deny altogether the contributions of traditional grammar to the development of modern linguistics.A balanced view on traditional grammar, therefore, is needed in order to track down the continuity of Western linguistic theories from the earliest times to the present day ( See Chapter 4 for a detailed discussion of traditional grammar).

1.5 The Scope of Linguistics

Language has been studied from different points of view. As a result, different dimensions of linguistics can be distinguished according to the point of view that is adopted or the special emphasis that is laid on certain aspects of language. Thus, the distinction s in the field of linguistic studies can provide a window on the scope of language.

The first distinction to be made is between general and descriptive linguistics. General linguistics deals with language, aiming at developing a theory that describes the rules of human language in general. Descriptive linguistics, on the other hand, is the study of particular languages, attempting to construct models that describe the rules of individual languages like Chinese, English and Russian. However, it should be made clear that general linguistics and descriptive linguistics are by no means unrelated. Instead, each depends on the other explicitly or implicitly. For example, general linguistics provides descriptive linguistics with a general framework in which a particular language can be studied.

The second distinction to be drawn is between diachronic linguistics and synchronic linguistics. The former is the study of language change, such as the

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changes in grammar from Old English to Modern English; the latter is the study of a language existing in a“ state” at one particular point in time, regardless of its historical change, for example, the grammar of Old English or Modern English. In the nineteenth century, linguists were chiefly concerned with investigating the historical development of particular languages and formulating hypotheses about language change. Such an approach to the historical development of language was termed diachronic description of language by the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure, who argued that priority should be given to the synchronic description of language, that is, the study of language as it is at some particular point in time.

The third distinction is between theoretical linguistics and applied linguistics. According to Lyons (1981: 35),“ theoretical linguistics studies language and languages with a view to constructing a theory of their structure and functions and without regard to any practical applications that the investigation of language and languages might have, whereas applied linguistics has as its concerns the application of the concepts and findings of linguistics to a variety of practical tasks, including language- teaching.” Two points are especially worthy of note here. First, the distinction between theoretical linguistics and applied linguistics does not entail that there is no theoretical concerns in applied linguistics at all. Instead, hypothesis formulation and confirmation are also of vital importance to applied linguistics. Secondly, in talking about the distinction between theoretical linguistics and applied linguistics, people generally neglect the distinction between theoretical linguistics and general linguistics. As illustrated by Lyons (1981: 35),“ the goal of theoretical linguistics is the formulation of a satisfactory theory of the structure of language in general.”

General linguistics attempts to establish a workable theory of language at all levels. On the basis of the stratification of language and the corresponding foci of study, we can further divide general linguistics into several sub- branches, that is, phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics. These areas are traditionally said to form the core of linguistics, because they deal with the mostly formally structured aspects of language. Although the primary object of description for linguists is the structure of language, many linguists study this in relation to its functions and in relation to social and cultural factors. As a result, pragmatics has come to be regarded as a branch of study in general linguistics.

In contrast with the core of linguistics, there are also branches of linguistics often called macrolinguistics where there is an interdisciplinary and applied orientation. Linguists have drawn on recent discoveries or developments from other areas of study and come up with enlightening views

on language. This leads to the emergence of studies like psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics, cognitive linguistics, anthropological linguistics, computational linguistics, forensic linguistics, applied linguistics, and so on. Studies in all these aspects contribute from different perspectives to the edifice of linguistics as a whole.

1.6 A Brief History of Linguistics

Linguistics dates back to more than 2000 years ago and scholars from different civilizations have all contributed to the study of language. For example, linguistics is termed Xiaoxue ( The Primary Learning) in ancient China and perhaps Xunzi is the first philosopher in the world who pointed out the arbitrary relationship between Name(名) and Object(实). In the Indian culture, the grammarian Panini dealt with rules of word formation in the Indian language systematically, in the form of a set of 4000 aphoristic statements, in the era between 5th and 7th centuries B. C. The Western linguistic tradition can be traced back to ancient Greek times around 500 B. C. Serious considerations of linguistic issues can be found in the writings of Plato and Aristotle. Modern linguistics evolves from the Western tradition of linguistic study, which is greatly influenced by the pioneering work of the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure.

1.6.1 Saussure as the Father of Modern Linguistics

Saussure is considered the father of modern linguistics because the book under his name Course in General Linguistics is the first systematic elaboration on linguistic theory. Published in 1916, three years after Saussure's death, the book was actually a collection of the notes taken by his students during his lectures. Saussure's central ideas were expressed in the form of pairs of concepts called dichotomy: diachronic versus synchronic, lan gue versus parole, signifiant versus signifié, and syntagmatic versus paradigmatic.

We have mentioned above the distinction between diachronic and synchronic approaches to language. The former sees language as a continually changing medium; the latter views it as a living whole, existing in a“ state” at a particular moment in time. Saussure's ideas were revolutionary in this aspect because he called for the priority of synchronic study of language, which was opposed to the nineteenth century historical linguistic tradition. According to Saussure, it is always necessary to carry out synchronic work: Before we can say how a language changed from State X to State Y, we should know something about X and Y.

Langue and parole are recognized by Saussure as two important aspects of

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language. Langue is the totality of a language or the abstract language system shared by all the members of a speech community, while parole is the realization of lan gue in actual use, that is, the concrete act of speaking at a particular time and in a specific situation.

Signifiant and signifié are the two aspects of meaning in a linguistic sign. Signifiant( signifier) refers to the thing that signifies, and signifié( signified) is the thing or concept signified. The relationship between them is seen by Saussure as arbitrary.

Syntagmatic and paradigmatic relations are employed by Saussure to describe the relationships between linguistic signs. When the signs are seen as a linear sequence, the relationship between them is syntagmatic. A paradigmatic( or“ associative”) relation is a relation between a linguistic sign in an utterance and other signs in the language. These two dimensions of structures can be applied to phonology, vocabulary, or any other aspect of language, rendering the conception of language as a vast network of interrelated structures and mutually defining entities, a linguistic system.

1.6.2 American Structuralism

The American linguistic tradition chiefly originated from the American anthropologists’ concern to establish adequate description of the American Indian languages and cultures on the brink of extinction. Since the American Indian languages presented drastically different kinds of structure from the European languages, and there were practically no written records to rely on, anthropologists had to develop some efficient and systematic procedures to provide a careful account of the speech patterns of the living languages. Among these anthropologists were scholars like Franz Boas and Edward Sapir, who were pioneering structural linguists as well.

American structuralism flourished from the 1920s to the late 1950s. The st ructural approach to language description and analysis was synthesized in the book Language(1933) by Leonard Bloomfield. This book dominated linguistic thinking for over 20 years and led to progress not only in the studies of phonetics, phonology, morphology and syntax of the American Indian languages but also in the descriptive studies of grammar and phonology of the English language. The Bloomfieldian approach was termed structuralism chiefly because it employed techniques to identify and classify features of linguistic structure, especially the analysis of sentences into constituent parts.

However, the influence of American structuralism diminished in the1950s, especially after Noam Chomsky put forward the notions of generative linguistics as a reaction against structuralism.

1.6.3 Generative Linguistics

In 1957, the publication of Noam Chomsky’s Syntact ic Structures inaugurated the linguistic revolution known as generative grammar. Chomsky might have intended the book as a challenge to the structuralist tradition in America but the impact of this book has gone beyond its era and later proved to be a milestone in the history of modern linguistics.

Chomsky's theory on language is termed generative grammar or generative linguistics because it attempts to describe a native speaker's tacit grammatical knowledge by a system of rules that can generate the well- formed, or grammatical, sentences of a language while excluding all the ungrammatical, or impossible, sentences. The basic tenets of the Chomskyan view on language in the early days are expressed in a set of terms or hypotheses he proposed, including the dichoto my between competence and performance, universal grammar, deep structure and surface structure, and transformation al rules.

To Chomsky, linguistics should discover the men tal realities underlying the way people use language and thus he proposed the distinction between competence and performance. Competence refers to an ideal speaker’s knowledge of his language as manifest in his ability to produce and understand a theoretically infinite number of sentences. Performance refers to the actual use of the language by individuals in speech and writing. Chomsky argues that linguistics should be chiefly concerned with the study of competence rather than restrict itself to performance. That is, linguistic research should not be conducted on the basis of samples or collected data of language users' performance. Such samples are inadequate because they might contain many non- fluencies, changes of speech plan, slips of the tongue and other defects.

Chomsky argues that linguistics not only aims to provide an adequate account of competence in one language, but also attempts to establish principles of grammar shared by all languages, that is, the universal grammar, which can in the long term, shed light on the nature of human mind. The ambition that Chomsky cherishes stimulates a wide range of interest from scholars from many disciplines and has substantially influenced academic domains like psychology, pedagogy, computer science, artificial intelligence and even economics.

Another important pair of concept proposed by Chomsky is deep structure and surface structure. The major aim of generative grammar, according to him, is to provide a means of analyzing the process of deriving surface structures from deep structures. In his own practice in analyzing the English language, Chomsky put forward sets of generative rules and transformational rules, and it is precisely for this reason that Chomsky's theory is also termed Transformational-

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generative(TG) grammar.

1.6.4 Functional Linguistics

Unlike generative linguistics, functional linguistics does not have one unanimously recognized leading figure, nor even generally acknowledged theoretical tenets. What we can be sure of is that early functional linguistics flourished chiefly in Europe, with scholars taking up Saussure's ideas and developing schools of thought that emphasized the study of functions of language in general, or the study of linguistic features in particular texts or contexts.

The first noteworthy school of functional linguistics is perhaps the Prague School, represented by linguists in Czechoslovakia, who founded the linguistic circle of Prague. Notably, the Prague School linguists emphasized the function of units and applied the idea to the study of phonology. The important concept of phoneme in distinguishing or demarcating words, for instance, is one of the contributions of the Prague School linguists. Leading figures in this school include Nikolais Trubetzkoy, Roman Jacobson and V. Mathesius, etc.

The Copenhagen School is a group of linguists who constituted the Copenhagen Linguistic Circle in the mid-1930s. Led by Louis Hjelmslev, the school developed a philosophical and logical basis for linguistic theory. They developed an approach to linguistics known as Glossematics or neo- Saussurean linguistics.

The London School is represented by the British linguist J. R. Firth and his followers. Distinguished from other theorists of his generation, Firth insisted that language should be studied as part of a social process. A linguist's data were for him events embedded in specific contexts and therefore he emphasized the importance of context in linguistic studies at all levels. In addition, he argued for the polysystemic principle of study, that is, the principle of analyzing language patterns with different systems within different contextual frameworks. Firth’s influence is widespread and the systemic linguistic school established by his student M. A. K. Halliday has much in common with his notions and thus is sometimes termed the neo- Firthian school.

In America, functional linguistics flourished since the 1970s, when formalism still held sway, and became mature in the 1980s and 1990s. However, interest in functional approaches to language in America can be traced back to Franz Boas (1858—1942), Edward Sapir (1884—1939) and Benjamin Lee Whorf(1897—1941). In the 1960s—1970s, the contributions made by Dwight Bolinger, Wallace Chafe, Charles Fillmore and Charles Li paved the way for the development of functionalism in America. The major functional approaches include: Tagmemics, Case Grammar, Stratificational

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Grammar, Discourse Grammar, Role and Reference Grammar, Cognitive Grammar, and so on.

Further Readings

Hudson, R. 1984. Invitation to Linguistics. Oxford: Blackwell.

Lyons, J. 1982. Language and Linguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Robins, R. H. 2002. A Short History of Linguistics. 北京:外语教学与研究出版社.

Traugott, E. C. & Pratt, M. L. 1980. Linguistics for Students of Literature. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, INC.

Yule, G.2000. The Study of Language. 北京:外语教学与研究出版社.

Questions and Exercises

1. Define the following terms.

arbitrariness duality productivity

displacement syntagmatic relation paradigmatic relation

synchronic linguistics diachronic linguistics macrolinguistics

2. What is language?

3. How to tell the difference between human language and communication systems of animals?

4. Illustrate the design features of human language with examples.

5. In what sense is language arbitrary? Can you cite some examples to show that language is not arbitrary?

6. Why is displacement an important feature of human language?

7. Why is language seen as a distinctive property of human species? To what extent do you agree that language is a distinctive property of human species?

8. Among the different theories of the origin of language, which one do you think is most convincing?

9. In what sense is linguistics a science?

10. Say something about the difference between traditional grammar and linguistics.

11. Why is Saussure seen as the father of modern linguistics?

12. What is the significance of the distinction between diachronic and synchronic approaches to language study?

13. What are the differences between competence and performance? Is this dichotomy related in any way to Saussure's distinction between lan gue and parole?

14. What are the basic tenet s of Structuralism?

15. Name some of the functional linguistic schools.

2.1 Introduction

Human beings communicate with each other mainly in two modes of language— speaking and writing. In oral communication with someone from a different linguistic community, what first strikes us as different may not be that person's possibly different idea about something, but the exoticness of the speech sounds uttered.

Speech sounds are the sounds utilized by all human languages to represent meaning. They are the sounds produced or heard in using language to speak or understand, and are related by the language system to certain meanings. Anyone who knows a language knows what sounds are in the language and how they are“ strung” together and what these different sound sequences mean( Fromkin & Rodman, 1983: 35). The study of human speech sounds can be done by examining the features of the sounds per se ( Matthews, 2001: 33), which is adopted by the students of phonetics. The speech sounds can also be studied from the point of view of how they are actually used in different languages( Katamba,1989:66), including how some of the sounds interrelate and interact with each other within a given language system, which is adopted by the student of phonology.

2.2 Phonetics

The term“ phonetics” is composed of phone- , which is from the Greek phonê meaning“ sound” or“ voice”, and - ics, which means “a study of”. So phonetics is the general study of the characteristics of speech sounds ( Yule,2006: 30). It is concerned with the physical properties of speech sounds( phones), and the processes of their physiological production, auditory reception, and neurophysiological perception. Thus, there are three branches of phonetics. The study of how speech sounds are made or“ articulated” is called articulatory phonetics. The study of how speech sounds are perceived is called auditory phonetics ( or perceptual phonetics). The study of the physical properties of speech sounds is called acoustic phonetics. The primary concern of

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Phonetics and Phonology: The Sounds and Sound Patterns of Language phonetics is usually articulatory phonetics.

2.2.1 Speech Organs

The study of phonetics helps increase our awareness of the properties of speech sounds, which in turn can improve our ability to articulate them with accuracy by manipulating our speech organs more appropriately. The speech organs of the human beings consist of three major areas: the pharyngeal cavity( the throat), the oral cavity( the mouth) and the nasal cavity( the nose). The power source of our speech sounds is the flow of air from our lungs, and the air stream coming from the lungs may be modified in the cavities in various ways, resulting in different kinds of speech sounds.

The oral cavity is made up of the tongue, the uvular, the soft palate ( the velum), the hard palate( the palatal), the teeth ridge( the alveolar), the teeth( the dental) and the lips( the labial). Of these speech organs, the very flexible tongue is of particular importance, because the principal source of sound modification is the tongue, so much so that the word for it is often used as a synonym for language( Poole, 2000: 42).

The nasal ca vity is a passage which is definitely open or closed, producing sounds either nasalized or non- nasalized.

All speech sounds are produced by manipulating the vocal tract while air is flowing through it. If this manipulation produces significant obstruction of the air stream, the result is a consonant. If it does not produce any obstruction,

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