Semantic analysis:
Predication (basic unit)à the abstract meaning of the sentence
Argument(s) 论元 predicate（谓词）
Logical participant(s) Sth said about an argument or states the logical relation linking the argument(s) in a sentence
The predicate can be regarded as the main element.
Tom smokes.à TOM (SMOKE)à one-place predication
Kids like apples.à KID, APPLE (LIKE)à two-place predication
It’s raining.à (RAIN)à no-place predication
Chapter 8 Pragmatics
[A] The definition of pragmatics
Definition: the study of how speakers of a language use sentences to effect successful communication
What essentially distinguish semantics and pragmatics is whether in the study of meaning the context of use is considered.
If it is not, it is semantics.
If it is, it is pragmatics.
[B] Context
It is generally considered as constituted by the knowledge shared by the speaker and the hearer.
Linguistic contextà co-text
Physical context
[C] Sentence meaning v. utterance meaning
The dog is barking.
If we take it as a grammatical unit and consider it as a self-contained unit in isolation, then we treat it as a sentence.
If we take it as something a speaker utters in a certain situation with a certain purpose, then we are treating it as an utterance.
Meaning of a sentence is abstract, and de-contextualized.
Meaning of an utterance is concrete, and contextualized.
Utterance is based on sentence meaning; it is the realization of the abstract meaning of a sentence in a real situation of communication, or simply in a context.
[D] Speech Act Theory（言语行为理论）
Direct speech act
Indirect speech act
Face-threatening
Face-saving
Proposed by British philosopher John Austin in the late 1950s
Answer: what do we do when using language?
Constatives: statements that either state or describe, and thus verifiable
Performatives: sentences that don’t state a fact or describe a state, and are not verifiable (perform certain acts)
Gave the distinction between constatives and performatives and gave rise to a new model:
[A speaker might be performing three acts simultaneously when speaking]
① locutionary act:（言内行为）the act of uttering words, phrases, clauses
It is the act of conveying literal meaning by means of syntax, lexicon and phonology.
② illocutionary act:（言外行为）the act of expressing the speaker’s intention
It is the act preformed in saying something.
③ perlocutionary act:（言后行为）the act performed by or resulting from saying something
It is the consequence of, or the change brought about by the utterance.
Linguists are more concerned about or interested in illocutionary act.
The classification of illocutionary act made by American philosopher-linguist John Searle
Five general categories:
① representatives:（阐述类）stating or describing, saying what the speaker believes to be true
② directives:（指令类）trying to get the hearer to do something
③ commissives:（承诺类）committing the speaker himself to some future course of action
④ expressives:（表达类）expressing feelings or attitude towards an existing state
⑤ declaratives:（宣告类）bringing about immediate changes by saying something
All the acts that belong to the same category share the same purpose or the same illocutionary point, but they differ in their strength or force.
All the utterances that can be made to serve the same purpose may vary in their syntactic form.
[E] Principles of conversation (Co-operative principles)
会话原则或合作原则
Proposed by Paul Grice, a logician and philosopher
The maxim of quantity: 量准则
The maxim of quality: 质准则
The maxim of relation: 关联准则
The maxim of manner: 方式准则
Significance: it explains how it is possible for the speaker to convey more than is literary said.
CP is nearly always observed, while these maxims are not, which gives rise to “Conversational implicatures”, i.e. the language becomes indirect.
[F] Deixis, reference, anaphora, presupposition
① Deixis: There are some words in the language that cannot be interpreted at all unless the physical context, esp. the physical context of the speaker is known.
Person deixis
Place deixis
Time deixis
② Reference: an act by which a speaker or writer uses language to enable a listener or reader to identify something
Inference: any additional information used by the listener to connect what is said to what must be meant.
③ Anaphora: the second and any subsequent referring expression is an example of anaphora, and the first mention is called the antecedent.
Anaphora: subsequent reference to an already introduced entity
④ Presupposition: What a speaker assumes is true or is known by the speaker can be described as a presupposition
Constancy under negation: the presupposition remains true when a sentence is negated.
[G] Background knowledge
We actually create what the text is about, based on our expectations of what normally happens, i.e. using the concept of a SCHEMA.
Schema: a general term for a conventional knowledge structure which exists in memory. (Schemata)
Script: a dynamic schema, in which a series of conventional action takes place.
Chapter 9 Discourse Analysis
[A] Interpreting discourse
We, as language users, can cope with fragments, notices, or even ungrammatical sentences and texts apart from simply recognizing correct versus incorrect forms and structures.
The key element investigated in the study of discourse is that we attempt to arrive at a reasonable interpretation of what the writer intended to convey.
[B] Cohesion and coherence 连接与连贯（衔接）
Cohesion: the ties and connections which exist within texts that make the texts systematic and smooth.
Cohesive links (ties)
Connectedness based on the lexical level is not sufficient enough to make a text readable, or interpretable.
Coherence: connection within meaning, or in people.
[C] Speech event and conversational interaction
Conversational interaction: take turns, when someone interrupts, the speaker will stop until the end of the intruder’s sentence
Completion point: by asking a question; by pausing
The one who keeps the turn will avoid having those two indicators occur together
Rudeness v. shyness
Chapter 10 Historical linguistics
[A] The purpose and significance of historical linguistics
Historical linguistics is the subfield of linguistics that studies language change. Diachronic linguistics
① the identification of the changes enables us to reconstruct the linguistic history of that language, hypothesizes its earlier forms
② also it enables us to determine how non-linguistic factors, such as social, cultural and psychological factors, interact over time to trigger linguistic change
[B] The nature of language change
Language change is universal, continuous and, to a considerable degree, regular and systematic; a gradual and constant process, often indiscernible to speakers of the same generation
Language change is extensive, all aspects of grammar-phonology, morphology, syntax, lexicon, and semantics.
[C] Major periods in the history of English
The division of changes in English only makes it easier, more convenient and more practical to study language change.
Old English: (449-1100)
Middle English: (1100-1500)
Modern English: (1500-now)
[D] Linguistic change of English
Language change is essentially a matter of change in the grammar.
① sound change
a) vowel sound changeàca. 1400-1600, known as the great vowel shift
b) sound loss (apocope) 词尾脱落
c) sound addition (epenthesis) 插音
d) sound movement (metathesis) 换位
② morphological change
a) affix loss: loss of gender and case markings
drop of causative verb formation rule
b) affix addition: -able, -ment (from French), -ize
③ syntactic change
a) rule loss: (1) adj, agree with the head noun in case, number and gender; (2) double-negation rule
b) rule addition: (1) particle movement rule; (2) distinction between auxiliary verbs and main verbs
c) rule change: (1) negation way; (2) sentence structure: SVO, VSO, SOV, OSV
The loss of case contrasts in English was compensated for with the adoption of the consistent SVO order.
④ lexical changeà most vigorous and on-going change
a) lexical loss: no longer in use
b) lexical addition: borrowing and word-formation (refer to syntax)
c) Semantic change: (1) semantic broadening; (2) semantic narrowing; (3) semantic shift: a process of semantic change in which a word loses its former meaning and acquires a new, sometimes related one.
[E] Language familyà historical and comparative linguistics
Protolanguage: the original form of a language family that has ceased to exist
A language family is established by the use of a method known as comparative reconstruction.
The Indo-European Family: 150
The Sino-Tibetan Family: 300
The Austro-wesian Family: 1000
The Afro-asiatic Family: 250
Grim’s (the German scholar) major contribution to historical linguistics is his explanation of the relationships among cognates in terms of a sound shift.
Grim’s law:
Voiced stops become voiceless
Voiceless stops become fricatives
Voiced aspirates become de-aspirated
[F] The causes of language change
As a matter of fact, no linguist has ever claimed to know all the causes of language change.
Physiological, linguistic, or sociological factors
① sound assimilation
② rule simplification and regularization
③ internal borrowingàanalogue
④ elaboration: 规则细化
⑤ social triggers: Norman Conquest, British colonial settlement, the country’s political, cultural and economic advances in distant lands
⑥ cultural transmittion
⑦ children’s approximation toward the adult grammar: 儿童语言习得
Children acquire their native language not through formal instruction of grammatical rules.
Chapter 11 Sociolinguistics
The sub-discipline of linguistics that studies language in society
[A] Speech community and speech variety
SC: a speech community is a group of people who form a community, which may have as few members as a family or as many members as a country, and share the same language or a particular variety of language.
The linguistic markers that characterize individual social groups may serve as social markers of group membership.
SV: also known as language variety refers to any distinguishable form of speech used by a speaker or group of speakers.
A speech variety is no more than a dialectal variety of a language.
Regional dialects
Sociolects (social dialects) carry no value judgment and simply
Registers (functional dialects) refer to a distinct form of a language
[B] Regional, social, stylistic, and idiolectal variations
Regional variation: is a speech variation according to the particular area where a speaker comes from, which is the most discernible and definable
Geographical barriers: loyalty to one’s native speech; physical and psychological resistance to change
Accent (refers to a way of pronunciation which tells the listener something about the speaker’s regional or social background); pronunciation; vocabulary; syntax
Language standardizationàlanguage planning is one way out of the communication dilemma.
Social variation (sociolect): linguistic differences associated with respective definable social groups even within the same geographical location.
Stylistic variation: (register)
① ranges on a continuum from casual or colloquial to formal or polite according to the type of communicative situation
② may be used by a particular group of people
③ a particular register often distinguishes itself from other register by having a number of distinctive words, by special grammatical constructions
Idiolectal variation: (idiolect)
A speaker’s linguistic performance is heterogeneous, rather than homogeneous.
Idiolect is a personal dialect of an individual speaker that combines aspects of all the elements regarding regional, social, and stylistic variation, in one way or another.
[C] Standard and non-standard language
The standard language is a superposed, socially prestigious dialect of language. SAE (Standard American English)ßà Network English
Non-standard, or vernacular, languages:
All dialects of a language are equally effective in expressing ideas.
Government policy, historical and cultural tradition
National (official) language
[D] Lingua franca, pidgins, and creoles
Lingua franca: is a variety of language that serves as a medium of communication among groups of people from diverse linguistic backgrounds. It can be generalized to refer to nay other language used as a trade or communication medium.
Pidgin: is a variety of language that is generally used by native of speakers of other languages as a medium of communication. It may contain significant grammatical features of two or more languages, but rule-governed.
Creole: is originally a pidgin that has become established as a native language in some speech community. A pidgin becomes a Creole when it is adopted by a population as its primary language, and children learn it as their first language.
[E] Diglossia and bilingualism
Diglossia: is a situation in which two very different varieties of language co-exist in a speech community, each with a distinct range of purely social functions and appropriate for certain situations. One is a more standard variety called the high variety (H-variety), the other is a non-prestige variety called the low variety (L-variety).
Classical languageà local vernacular
The use of a particular variety may not be determined by a speaker’s social status, but by the communicative situation the speaker is in.
Generally, these two levels of varieties are generally two varieties of the same language. But in the history, there are some other situations in which the high variety may have no genetic relationship with the low one. (the Middle Ages)
Bilingualism: refers to a linguistic situation in which two standard languages are used either by an individual or by a group of speakers, such as the inhabitants of a particular regions or a nation.
Perfect bilingualism is uncommon. One language is usually more dominant than the other.
Most bilingual communities have one thing in common, i.e. a fairly clear functional differentiation of the two languages in respect of speech situations known as domains.
Code-switching: a bilingual speaker often uses two languages alternatively during a conversation with another bilingual speaker.
[F] Ethnic dialect àBlack English Vernacular (BEV)
Ethnic dialect: a social dialect of a language, often cutting across regional differences
BEV: spoken mostly by a large section of non-middle-class American blacks. It is stigmatized as bad English, a purely social attitude that has no linguistic basis.
The social environment of BEV:
The distinctive features of BEV persist not for racial reasons, but for social, educational, and economical reasons.
Speaker of an ethnic dialect like BEV regard the language they speak the major symbol of their socio-cultural identity.
Some features of BEV:
① phonological characteristics: The frequent simplification of consonant clusters at the end of words when one of the two consonants is an alveolar /t/, /d/, /s/, or /z/; the l-deletion rule; the deletion of some word-final stop consonants in words like “side” and “borrowed”;
② syntactical characteristics: the frequent absence of the copula “be”; the systematic use of the expression “it is” where SE uses “there is” in the sense of “there exists”; the use of double negation constructions.
[G] Social dialect
Varieties of language used by groups defined according to class, education, age, sex, and a number of other social parameters
Overt prestige v. covert prestige
① Educational varieties
One extreme form of the educational influence on the way one speaks is the fact that some college professors talk like a book.
Lower class and less educated: [n] rather than [N]
[h]-dropping
② Age varieties
Lexical variation according to the age correlates with time periods is more noticeable across three-generation time span.
Old people tend to be more conservative than the younger generation
③ Gender varieties
Female speakers tend to use more prestigious forms than male speakers with the same general social background:
