C. Agreement with verb:

        In the simple present tense, an –s is added to the verb when a third person subject is singular. For example: She angers him.

D. Content questions:

       If the subject is replaced by a question word (who or what), the rest of the sentence remains unchanged, as in Who stole my picture?

       But when any other element of the sentence is replaced by a question word, an auxiliary verb must appear before the subject. If the basic sentence does not contain an auxiliary verb, we must insert did or do(es) immediately after the question word, as in What did John steal?

E. Tag question:

       A Tag Question is used to seek confirmation of a statement. It always contains a pronoun which refers back to the subject. For example: John loves Mary, doesn’t he?

= Predicate

      Predicate refers to major constituent of sentence structure in a binary analysis in which all obligatory constituents other than subject were considered together. It usually expresses actions, processes, and states that relate to the subject. The word predicator is suggested for verb or verbs included in a predicate.

= Object

       It is further classified into Direct Object and Indirect Object. In English, |”object” is recognized by tracing its relation to word order (after the verb and preposition) and by inflections (of pronouns).

= The Relation between Classes and Functions

           A class item can perform several functions. For instance, a noun or a nominal phrase can function as the subject, object, modifier, adverbial and complement of a sentence.

          Similarly, a function can be fulfilled by several classes. For instance, the subject of a sentence can be realized by a noun, pronoun, numeral, infinitive, etc.

« Category

       The term Category in some approaches refers to classes and functions in its narrow sense, e.g., noun, verb, subject, predicate, noun phrase, verb phrase, etc. More specifically, it refers to the defining properties of these general units: the categories of the noun, for example, include number, gender, case and countability; and of the verb, for example, tense, aspect, voice, etc.

= Number

(grammatical category; singular and plural; number is also reflected in the inflections of pronouns and verbs; )

= Gender

         Gender displays such contrasts as “masculine: feminine: neuter, “animate: inanimate”, etc. There is a statistical correlation between natural gender and grammatical gender. English gender contrast can only be observed in pronouns and a small number of nouns, and they are mainly of the natural gender type, such as: he: she: it / prince: princess/ author: authoress

= Case

          In English, Case is realized in three channels: 1) inflection 2) following a preposition 3) word order, as manifested : 1) teacher: teacher’s  2) with a man 3) John kicked Peter.

= Agreement (or Concord)

         Agreement (or Concord) maybe defined as the requirement that the forms of two or more words of specific word classes that stand in specific syntactic relationship with one another, shall also be characterized by the same paradigmatically marked category (or categories). This syntactic relationship may be anaphoric照应, as when a pronoun agrees with its antecedent先行词, or it may involve a relation between a head and its dependent从属物, as when a verb agrees with its subject. For instance, the syntactic relationship between this pen and it in the following dialogue:

—Whose is this pen?

—Oh, it’s the one I lost.

« Phrase, Clause and Sentence

= Phrase

       Phrase is a single element of structure containing more than one word, and lacking the subject-predicate structure typical of clauses. Traditionally, it is seen as part of a structural hierarchy等级制度, positioned between clause and word.

(make a distinction between Word Group and Phrase)

= Clause 小句

        A constituent with its own subject and predicate, if it is included in a larger sentence, is a Clause. Clause can also be classified into Finite and Non-finite clause.

= Sentence

« Recursiveness

         It mainly means that a phrasal constituent can be embedded within (i.e., be dominated by) another constituent having the same category, it is used to mean to extend sentences.

        Recursiveness, together with openness, is generally regarded as the core of creativity of language.

= Conjoining

         Conjoining refers to the process where one clause is coordinated or conjoined with another. The sentences made up in this way can be understood as instances of coordination. The conjunctions used in this case are and, but, and or.

= Embedding

         It refers to the means by which one clause is included in the sentence (main clause) in syntactic subordination. The three basic types of subordinate clause are complement, adjunct (or adverbial) and relative clauses.

« Beyond the sentence

          More linguistics are now exploring the syntactic relation between sentences in a paragraph or the whole text, which leads to the emergence of Text Linguistics and Discourse Analysis.

= Sentential Connection

Hypotactic从属关系的—subordinate clause

Paratactic并列的—coordinate clause

= Cohesion

         Cohesion is a concept to do with discourse or text rather than with syntax, it refers to relations of meaning that exist within the text, and defines it as a text. The cohesive devices usually include: conjunction, ellipsis省略, lexical collocation词汇搭配, lexical repetition, reference指示, substitution替代, etc.

        In the following example, the cohesive device is “Reference”, that is, “it” refers back to the door :  He couldn’t open the door.  It was locked tight.

P Chapter 1 Invitation to Linguistics

«Design Feature of language

      What makes human language so complicated and flexible, so unrestrained无拘束的 by the immediate context and so capable of creating new meanings, in a word, so distinctive from languages used by other species? The features that define our human languages can be called Design Features. It include: Arbitrariness; Duality; Creativity; Displacement.

=Arbitrariness

        It refers to the fact that the forms of linguistic signs bear no natural relationship to their meaning. However there seems to be different levels of Arbitrariness. Such as: Arbitrary relationship between the sound of a morpheme and its meaning; Arbitrariness at the syntactic level.

Ÿ Arbitrariness & convention

       The other side of the coin of arbitrariness is Conventionality.

       Arbitrariness of language makes it potentially creative, and conventionality of language makes learning a language laborious. For learners of a foreign language, it is the conventionality of a language that is more worth noticing than its arbitrariness.

= Duality

        By Duality is meant 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.

       To talk about duality we must notice that language is hierarchical. The lowest level consists of dozens of bits of meaningless sounds which occur in chumps that we call syllables. A syllable is the smallest unit that is normally spoken by itself. Scores of syllables become the carriers of hundreds of meaningful segments of words that are called morphemes, such as the prefix trans- or the suffix –ism. With thousands of words we associate millions of meanings, and on the top of these millions—astronomical number of possible sentences/ utterances and texts/ discourses.

       As Bolinger and Sears put it, “Stratification—this organization of levels on levels—is the physical manifestation of the ‘infinite use of finite means’, the trait特征 that most distinguishes human communication and that provides its tremendous resourcefulness.”

= Creativity

          By Creativity we mean language is resourceful because of its duality and its recursiveness.

= 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 communication.

          Displacement benefits human beings by giving them the power to handle generalizations and abstractions. Indeed words are often used not in such immediate physical context when they denote concrete objects. They are often used with a deference for referential application.

« Origin of Language

           (“Bow-wow” theory; “pooh-pooh” theory; “yo-he-ho” theory)

« Functions of Language

= Informative

        Language is the instrument of thought and people often feel need to speak their though aloud. It is also called ideational function in the framework of functional grammar.

= Interpersonal Function

           By far the most important sociological use of language is the interpersonal function, by which people establish and maintain their status in a society.

= Performative

= Emotive Function

           It is crucial in changing the emotional status of an audience for or against someone or something.

= Phatic Communion

           People use some small, seemingly meaningless expressions to maintain a comfortable relationship between people without involving any factual content.

= Recreational Function

       It refers to the use of language for the sheer joy of using it, such as a baby’s babbling or a chanter’s chanting.

= Metalingual Function

       It means that we use language to talk about language.

« What Is Linguistics?

《英语语言学考点测评》P3

« Main Branches of Linguistics

= Phonetics

      Phonetics studies speech sounds, including the production of speech, that is how speech sounds are actually made, transmitted and received, the description and classification of speech sound, words and connected speech, etc. And it divided into three branches: articulatory phonetics; acoustic phonetics; auditory phonetics.

= Phonology

        Phonology studies the rules governing the structure, distribution, and sequencing of speech sounds and the shape of syllables. It deals with the sound system of a language by treating phoneme as the point of departure. A phoneme is the smallest linguistic unit of sound that can signal a difference in meaning. English has approximately forty-five phonemes.

        Phonetics is the study of speech sounds that the human voice is capable of creating whereas phonology is the study of a subset of those sounds that constitute language and meaning. The first focuses on chaos while the second focuses on order.

= Morphology

        Morphology is concerned with the internal organization of words. It studies the minimal of meaning-morphemes and word-formation processes. Although many people think of works as the basic meaningful elements of a language, many words can be broken down into still smaller units, called morphemes.