胡壮麟《语言学教程》（修订版）
    学习指导

    前 言

    其实我的这一个语言学学习指导系列本来没有想做得这么大的，最初只是我买了一本语言学教程的辅导资料，发现里面有的名词解释总结得很不错，所以就想整理一下各章的名词解释。后来觉得既然是整理，光整理名词解释，还不如对知识点做一个较全面的学习指导材料。结果就此一发而不可收，终于形成了现在的这一整套资料。不明白是什么的朋友们可以参考考研论坛外语版的相关帖子。

    本资料主要分为三部分，第一部分为各章节提纲笔记，第二部分为重点章节测试题，第三部分为测试题参考答案。

    整理这一套资料真得很劳心费力，希望能够对大家有所帮助。在考研论坛上，我所有的相关资料都设置了阅读权限和K币，一个是为了防止盗用，但更重要的不是为了限制什么，只是希望大家在能够很容易得到资料的同时，也能够想到要付出一些，将来考上研了以后能够回到这里，与后来的研友们分享一些所能够得到的信息，资源共享，信息交流，这才是考研论坛的本意。也希望大家在以后复习语言学的时候，能够想到冰暖茶在这门课程上作的小小的努力，如果大家都能成功，我的努力就是值得的。

    需要说明的是，我在整理资料的过程中，得到了ksguobw, lxm1000w, micronannan, 天使精灵（排名不分先后）等朋友的资源共享和大力协助，在此对他们以及一贯支持冰暖茶的朋友们表示感谢！

    由于水平有限，加之时间仓促，疏漏之处在所难免，欢迎各位读者批评指正。

    冰暖茶 2006年11月

    目 录

    前言…………………………………………………………………………………………… 1

    目录…………………………………………………………………………………………… 3

    第一部分 各章节提纲笔记…………………………………………………………………… 4

    Chapter 1 Invitations to Linguistics…………………………………………………………… 4

    Chapter 2 Speech Sounds……………………………………………………………………… 8

    Chapter 3 Lexicon……………………………………………………………………………… 14

    Chapter 4 Syntax…………………………………………………………………………… … 21

    Chapter 5 Meaning……………………………………………………………………………… 26

    Chapter 6 Language Processing in Mind……………………………………………………… 29

    Chapter 7 Language, Culture and Society……………………………………………………… 35

    Chapter 8 Language in Use……………………………………………………………………… 38

    Chapter 9 Language and Literature……………………………………………………………… 44

    Chapter 10 Language and Computer…………………………………………………………… 49

    Chapter 11 Linguistics and Foreign Language Teaching……………………………………… 53

    Chapter 12 Theories and Schools of Modern Linguistics……………………………………… 59

    第二部分 重点章节测试题…………………………………………………………………… 67

    Test One Invitations to Linguistics……………………………………………………………… 67

    Test Two Phonetics and Phonology…………………………………………………………… 70

    Test Three Morphology………………………………………………………………………… 73

    Test Four Syntax………………………………………………………………………………… 76

    Test Five Semantics…………………………………………………………………………… 79

    Test Six Pragmatics……………………………………………………………………………… 82

    Test Seven Language, Culture and Society……………………………………………………… 85

    Test Eight Theories and Schools of Modern Linguistics……………………………………… 88

    第三部分 测试题参考答案…………………………………………………………………… 91

    参考书目……………………………………………………………………………………… 100

    第一部分 各章节提纲笔记

    Chapter 1 Invitations to Linguistics

    1.1 Why study language?

     1. Language is very essential to human beings.

     2. In language there are many things we should know.

     3. For further understanding, we need to study language scientifically.

    1.2 What is language?

     Language is a means of verbal communication. It is a system of arbitrary vocal symbols used for human communication.

    1.3 Design features of language

     The features that define our human languages can be called design features which can distinguish human language from any animal system of communication.

     1.3.1 Arbitrariness

    Arbitrariness refers to the fact that the forms of linguistic signs bear no natural relationship to their meanings.

     1.3.2 Duality

    Duality refers to the property of having two levels of structures, such that units of the primary level are composed of elements of the secondary level and each of the two levels has its own principles of organization.

     1.3.3 Creativity

    Creativity means that language is resourceful because of its duality and its recursiveness. Recursiveness refers to the rule which can be applied repeatedly without any definite limit. The recursive nature of language provides a theoretical basis for the possibility of creating endless sentences.

     1.3.4 Displacement

    Displacement means that human languages enable their users to symbolize objects, events and concepts which are not present (in time and space) at the moment of conversation.

    1.4 Origin of language

     1. The bow-wow theory

    In primitive times people imitated the sounds of the animal calls in the wild environment they lived and speech developed from that.

     2. The pooh-pooh theory

    In the hard life of our primitive ancestors, they utter instinctive sounds of pains, anger and joy which gradually developed into language.

     3. The “yo-he-ho” theory

    As primitive people worked together, they produced some rhythmic grunts which gradually developed into chants and then into language.

    1.5 Functions of language

     As is proposed by Jacobson, language has six functions:

     1. Referential: to convey message and information;

     2. Poetic: to indulge in language for its own sake;

     3. Emotive: to express attitudes, feelings and emotions;

     4. Conative: to persuade and influence others through commands and entreaties;

     5. Phatic: to establish communion with others;

     6. Metalingual: to clear up intentions, words and meanings.

     Halliday (1994) proposes a theory of metafunctions of language. It means that language has three metafunctions:

    1. Ideational function: to convey new information, to communicate a content that is unknown to the hearer;

    2. Interpersonal function: embodying all use of language to express social and personal relationships;

    3. Textual function: referring to the fact that language has mechanisms to make any stretch of spoken and written discourse into a coherent and unified text and make a living passage different from a random list of sentences.

    According to Hu Zhuanglin, language has at least seven functions:

    1.5.1 Informative

     The informative function means language is the instrument of thought and people often use it to communicate new information.

    1.5.2 Interpersonal function

     The interpersonal function means people can use language to establish and maintain their status in a society.

    1.5.3 Performative

     The performative function of language is primarily to change the social status of persons, as in marriage ceremonies, the sentencing of criminals, the blessing of children, the naming of a ship at a launching ceremony, and the cursing of enemies.

    1.5.4 Emotive function

     The emotive function is one of the most powerful uses of language because it is so crucial in changing the emotional status of an audience for or against someone or something.

    1.5.5 Phatic communion

     The phatic communion means people always use some small, seemingly meaningless expressions such as Good morning, God bless you, Nice day, etc., to maintain a comfortable relationship between people without any factual content.

    1.5.6 Recreational function

     The recreational function means people use language for the sheer joy of using it, such as a baby’s babbling or a chanter’s chanting.

    1.5.7 Metalingual function

     The metalingual function means people can use language to talk about itself. E.g. I can use the word “book” to talk about a book, and I can also use the expression “the word book” to talk about the sign “b-o-o-k” itself.

    1.6 What is linguistics?

     Linguistics is the scientific study of language. It studies not just one language of any one community, but the language of all human beings.

    1.7 Main branches of linguistics

     1.7.1 Phonetics

    Phonetics is the study of speech sounds, it includes three main areas: articulatory phonetics, acoustic phonetics, and auditory phonetics.

     1.7.2 Phonology

    Phonology studies the rules governing the structure, distribution, and sequencing of speech sounds and the shape of syllables.

     1.7.3 Morphology

    Morphology studies the minimal units of meaning – morphemes and word-formation processes.

     1.7.4 Syntax

    Syntax refers to the rules governing the way words are combined to form sentences in a language, or simply, the study of the formation of sentences.

     1.7.5 Semantics

     Semantics examines how meaning is encoded in a language.

     1.7.6 Pragmatics

     Pragmatics is the study of meaning in context.

    1.8 Macrolinguistics

     Macrolinguistics is the study of language in all aspects, distinct from microlinguistics, which dealt solely with the formal aspect of language system.

     1.8.1 Psycholinguistics

    Psycholinguistics investigates the interrelation of language and mind, in processing and producing utterances and in language acquisition for example.

     1.8.2 Sociolinguistics

    Sociolinguistics is a term which covers a variety of different interests in language and society, including the language and the social characteristics of its users.

     1.8.3 Anthropological linguistics

    Anthropological linguistics studies the relationship between language and culture in a community.

     1.8.4 Computational linguistics

    Computational linguistics is an interdisciplinary field which centers around the use of computers to process or produce human language.

    1.9 Important distinctions in linguistics

     1.9.1 Descriptive vs. prescriptive

    To say that linguistics is a descriptive science is to say that the linguist tries to discover and record the rules to which the members of a language-community actually conform and does not seek to impose upon them other rules, or norms, of correctness.

    Prescriptive linguistics aims to lay down rules for the correct use of language and settle the disputes over usage once and for all.

    For example, “Don’t say X.” is a prescriptive command; “People don’t say X.” is a descriptive statement. The distinction lies in prescribing how things ought to be and describing how things are. In the 18th century, all the main European languages were studied prescriptively. However, modern linguistics is mostly descriptive because the nature of linguistics as a science determines its preoccupation with description instead of prescription.

     1.9.2 Synchronic vs. diachronic

    A synchronic study takes a fixed instant (usually at present) as its point of observation. Saussure’s diachronic description is the study of a language through the course of its history. E.g. a study of the features of the English used in Shakespeare’s time would be synchronic, and a study of the changes English has undergone since then would be a diachronic study. In modern linguistics, synchronic study seems to enjoy priority over diachronic study. The reason is that unless the various state of a language are successfully studied it would be difficult to describe the changes that have taken place in its historical development.

     1.9.3 Langue & parole

    Saussure distinguished the linguistic competence of the speaker and the actual phenomena or data of linguistics as langue and parole. Langue is relative stable and systematic, parole is subject to personal and situational constraints; langue is not spoken by an individual, parole is always a naturally occurring event. What a linguist should do, according to Saussure, is to draw rules from a mass of confused facts, i.e. to discover the regularities governing all instances of parole and make them the subject of linguistics.

     1.9.4 Competence and performance

    According to Chomsky, a language user’s underlying knowledge about the system of rules is called the linguistic competence, and the actual use of language in concrete situations is called performance. Competence enables a speaker to produce and understand and indefinite number of sentences and to recognize grammatical mistakes and ambiguities. A speaker’s competence is stable while his performance is often influenced by psychological and social factors. So a speaker’s performance does not always match his supposed competence. Chomsky believes that linguists ought to study competence, rather than performance. Chomsky’s competence-performance distinction is not exactly the same as, though similar to, Saussure’s langue-parole distinction. Langue is a social product and a set of conventions of a community, while competence is deemed as a property of mind of each individual. Saussure looks at language more from a sociological or sociolinguistic point of view than Chomsky since the latter deals with his issues psychologically or psycholinguistically.

     1.9.5 Etic vs. emic

    [These two terms are still very vague to me. After I read Ji Daohong’s book, I can understand them better, but because they are vaguely mentioned in Hu’s book, it seems very difficult for me to understand them fully. – icywarmtea]

    Being etic means researchers’ making far too many, as well as behaviorally and inconsequential, differentiations, just as often the case with phonetics vs. phonemics analysis in linguistics proper.

    An emic set of speech acts and events must be one that is validated as meaningful via final resource to the native members of a speech community rather than via appeal to the investigator’s ingenuity or intuition alone.

    Following the suffix formations of (phon)etics vs (phon)emics, these terms were introduced into the social sciences by Kenneth Pike (1967) to denote the distinction between the material and functional study of language: phonetics studies the acoustically measurable and articulatorily definable immediate sound utterances, whereas phonemics analyzes the specific selection each language makes from that universal catalogue from a functional aspect.

    End of Chapter 1

    Chapter 2 Speech Sounds

    2.1 Speech production and perception

     Phonetics is the study of speech sounds. It includes three main areas:

     1. Articulatory phonetics – the study of the production of speech sounds

    2. Acoustic phonetics – the study of the physical properties of the sounds produced in speech

     3. Auditory phonetics – the study of perception of speech sounds

     Most phoneticians are interested in articulatory phonetics.

    2.2 Speech organs

     Speech organs are those parts of the human body involved in the production of speech. The speech organs can be considered as consisting of three parts: the initiator of the air stream, the producer of voice and the resonating cavities.

    2.3 Segments, divergences, and phonetic transcription

     2.3.1 Segments and divergences

    As there are more sounds in English than its letters, each letter must represent more than one sound.

     2.3.2 Phonetic transcription

    International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA): the system of symbols for representing the pronunciation of words in any language according to the principles of the International Phonetic Association. The symbols consists of letters and diacritics. Some letters are taken from the Roman alphabet, some are special symbols.

    2.4 Consonants

     2.4.1 Consonants and vowels

    A consonant is produced by constricting or obstructing the vocal tract at some places to divert, impede, or completely shut off the flow of air in the oral cavity.

    A vowel is produced without obstruction so no turbulence or a total stopping of the air can be perceived.

     2.4.2 Consonants

    The categories of consonant are established on the basis of several factors. The most important of these factors are:

    1. the actual relationship between the articulators and thus the way in which the air passes through certain parts of the vocal tract (manner of articulation);

    2. where in the vocal tract there is approximation, narrowing, or the obstruction of the air (place of articulation).

     2.4.3 Manners of articulation

    1. Stop/plosive: A speech sound which is produced by stopping the air stream from the lungs and then suddenly releasing it. In English, [] are stops and [] are nasal stops.

    2. Fricative: A speech sound which is produced by allowing the air stream from the lungs to escape with friction. This is caused by bringing the two articulators, e.g. the upper teeth and the lower lip, close together but not closes enough to stop the airstreams completely. In English, [] are fricatives.

    3. (Median) approximant: An articulation in which one articulator is close to another, but without the vocal tract being narrowed to such an extent that a turbulent airstream is produced. In English this class of sounds includes [].

    4. Lateral (approximant): A speech sound which is produced by partially blocking the airstream from the lungs, usually by the tongue, but letting it escape at one or both sides of the blockage. [] is the only lateral in English.

    Other consonantal articulations include trill, tap or flap, and affricate.

     2.4.4 Places of articulation

     1. Bilabial: A speech sound which is made with the two lips.

    2. Labiodental: A speech sound which is made with the lower lip and the upper front teeth.

    3. Dental: A speech sound which is made by the tongue tip or blade and the upper front teeth.

    4. Alveolar: A speech sound which is made with the tongue tip or blade and the alveolar ridge.

    5. Postalveolar: A speech sound which is made with the tongue tip and the back of the alveolar ridge.

    6. Retroflex: A speech sound which is made with the tongue tip or blade curled back so that the underside of the tongue tip or blade forms a stricture with the back of the alveolar ridge or the hard palate.

    7. Palatal: A speech sound which is made with the front of the tongue and the hard palate.

    8. Velar: A speech sound which is made with the back of the tongue and the soft palate.

    9. Uvular: A speech sound which is made with the back of the tongue and the uvula, the short projection of the soft tissue and muscle at the posterior end of the velum.

    10. Pharyngeal: A speech sound which is made with the root of the tongue and the walls of the pharynx.

    11. Glottal: A speech sound which is made with the two pieces of vocal folds pushed towards each other.

     2.4.5 The consonants of English

    Received Pronunciation (RP): The type of British Standard English pronunciation which has been regarded as the prestige variety and which shows no regional variation. It has often been popularly referred to as “BBC English” or “Oxford English” because it is widely used in the private sector of the education system and spoken by most newsreaders of the BBC network