It refers to the minimal units of meaning.

1. Prefixes and suffixes 前缀和后缀

  Morphemes which occur before other morphemes are called prefixes.

  Morphemes which occur after other morphemes are called suffixes.

2. Bound morphemes and free morphemes 粘着语素

  Morphemes which can be used on its own are called free morphemes.

  Morphemes which is never used alone but must be used with other morphemes are called bound morphemes.

4. Derivational and inflectional morphemes 派生词素和屈折词素

1. Inflectional morphemes

  Inflectional morphemes manifest various grammatical relations such as number, degree, and case. They are attached to words or morphemes, but they never change their syntactic categories.

2. Derivational morphemes

  Derivational morphemes are affixes which are added to other morphemes (or words) to create a new word.

5. Morphological rules of word formation 词素音位规则

The ways words are formed are called morphological rules. These rules determine how morphemes combine to form words.

   Some of the morphological rules can be used quite freely to form new words. We call them productive morphological rules.

6. Compounds 复合词

Compounding can be viewed as the combination of two or more words to create new words.

The following points are noteworthy:

1. When the two words are in the same grammatical category, the compound will be in this category.
2. In many cases, when two words fall into different categories, the class of the second word will be the grammatical category.
3. It is often the case that compounds have different stress patterns from the noncompounded word sequence.
4. The meaning of a compound is not always the sum of the meanings of its parts.

   Morphological rules thus reveal the means for forming new words. It is these rules that enable us to coin new words. Compounding is then a very common and frequent process for enlarging the vocabulary.

Exercises

1. Match each of the following terms in column A with one of the appropriate definitions in column B:

      Column A                       Column B

1. morpheme                   A. Morphemes occur before other morphemes.
2. free morpheme                B. The rules determine how morphemes combine to form words.
3. bound morpheme              C. It refers to the minimal units of meaning
4. prefixes                      D. It refers to the morphological rules which can be used quite

                                 freely to form new words.

5. Suffix                       E. Morphemes occur after other morphemes.
6. morphological rules            F. It refers to the morpheme which is never used alone but must

                                 be used with other morphemes.

7. productive morphological rules   G. It refers to the morpheme which can be used on its own.

2.  Explain Define the following terms

open and close classes       morphology         morphemes

free and bound morphemes   prefixes and suffixes  derivational morphemes

inflectional morphemes      morphological rules   productive morphological rules

compounds

III. Develop the following topic into a 200-word essay:

When we form compounds, what points are noteworthy?

IV. Syntax 句法

本章学习目的要求

本章学习的中心内容是句法。全章含规则系统、句子结构、语法关系、组合规则、移位规则和普遍语法等七部分，目的是让学生深刻认识到语言的句法体系是一套高度抽象的自律性规则系统。本章要求学生通过对句法的学习，理解并能够描述句子的语法性，明确句子的基本成分和类型，弄清句子的线性与层次性、形式性与逻辑、深层与表层等关系，初步了解普遍语法这一当代句法研究的中心课题。

句法学基本知识点

1. Syntax 句法
   1. What is syntax? 什么是句法？

   Syntax is the study of how sentences are constructed or in other words, it tries to state what words can be combined with others to form sentences and in what order.

1. Sentence 句子

   Traditionally, scholars depended on the use of punctuation or a semantic criterion (the expression of a complete thought) to define it.

Bloomfield, a famous structural linguist, defined sentence as an independent linguistic form not included by some grammatical marks in any other linguistic form.

2. Structural approach 结构法

Bloomfield and his followers established some fixed methods and principles in the investigation of languages, which are now called discovering procedures. It was claimed that by following these procedures, one could arrive at an appropriate phonological and grammatical description of the language under investigation.

1. Form Classes 形式类

Bloomfield’s theory of syntax has two central ideas: form classes and constituent structure. He defined form classes in terms of some common ‘recognizable phonetic or grammatical features’ shared by all the members.

1. phonetic features 语音特征

    Members of one form class all have the same pitch, pauses, etc.

2. grammatical features 语法特征

Members of one form class all have the same grammatical function in a sentence.

1. Constituent Structure 成分结构

Traditionally, sentences are assumed to be made of individual words in a linear direction with these words in a certain order.

To structural linguists, sentences are not composed of sequences of words in a simple linear, additive fashion. Instead, they are composed of hierarchies of constructions. That is to say, sentences have an additional dimension to their obvious linear dimension.

1. Immediate Constituent Analysis 直接成分分析

    Structural linguists view ‘sentence’ as the largest independent grammatical unit which is composed of a sequence of smaller linguistic forms. To find out what these linguistic forms are and how they are combined in a sentence, they propose to do a kind of pure segmentation. The principle is that we take a sentence and cut it into two and then cut these parts into two and continue with these segmentation until we reach the smallest grammatical unit, the morphemes.

1. Constituent 成分

  This refers to any linguistic form or group of linguistic forms after segmentation.

2. Immediate constituent 直接成分

This refers to the two parts that are yielded after each cut. An immediate constituent can be further segmented until we obtain the smallest grammatical unit.

3. Ultimate constituent 最终成分

This refers to the smallest grammatical unit obtained through segmentation.

4. Construction 结构

This refers to any linguistic form which is composed of constituents and is able to be segmented. In other words, a construction is a relationship between constituents. A sentence can be a construction and an immediate constituent can also be a construction.

1. Endocentric and Exocentric Constructions 向心结构与离心结构

Construction are generally divided into the following two:

1. endocentric constructions向心结构

   Endocentric constructions refer to any construction that belongs to the same form class as all or at least one of its immediate constituents. It can further be divided into two types: subordinating and coordinating. The former refers to those in which only one immediate constituent is of the same form class as the whole construction, whereas the latter means those in which both constituents are of the same form class as the whole construction.

2. exocentric constructions离心结构

   Exocentric constructions refer to any construction that does not belong to the same form class as any one of its immediate constituents.

1. Advantage of IC Analysis  直接成分分析的优点

The advantage of IC analysis is that it helps to account for the ambiguity of certain constructions. This is because IC analysis not only shows linear relationship, but also hierarchical one. However, dividing a sentence into ICs itself does not always provide much information. IC analysis at this stage has only a restricted function.

1. Discontinuous Constituents 非连续成分

     Not every string of linguistic forms can readily be cut into two. We shall find either ultimate or immediate constituents whose component parts are separated. These constituents are called discontinuous constituents.

3. Transformational-generative grammar 转换生成语法

TG grammar was introduced by Chomsky (1957), who is much interested in the study of the similarities between languages and the finding of language universal.

He holds the view that linguists should first attempt to find a grammatical framework which will suitable for all languages. Secondly, within this framework they should concentrate on finding elements and constructions that are available to all languages. Thirdly, there likely to be universal constraints on the way in which linguistic elements can be combined. And it is the task of linguists to discover these constraints.

 Chomsky proposes that the grammars of all human languages share a common framework, which he calls a transformational grammar.

1. Competence and Performance 语言能力与语言运用

1. competence 语言能力

It refers to the ideal language user’s knowledge of the rules of his language or a person’s internalized grammar of his language.

2. performance语言运用

It is the actual realization of this knowledge in utterance, or a person’s actual use of his language.

1. Criteria for Judging Grammars 判断语法的标准

1. observational adequacy 观察合适性

    A grammar must account for all and only the permitted sentences of a language. This is called observational adequacy.

2. descriptive adequacy 描写合适性

    There might be several models which can account for the permitted sequences in English. So we should choose the one which coincides with the intuitions of native speakers. This requirement is called descriptive adequacy.

1. Generative Aspect 生成方面

This means that a grammar must ‘generate all and only the grammatical sentences of a language’. To generate is thus to predict what could be sentences of the language or to specify precisely what are the possible sentences of the language.

 A generative grammar is not concerned with any actual set of sentences of the language, but with the possible set of sentences. It has a finite number of rules which allow us to generate an infinite number of sentences.

3.4 Transformational aspect 转换方面

    Transformation, the more fundamental and revolutionary aspect of TG, refers actually to a kind of process that transforms one sentence into another. It is concerned largely with the analysis of sentences and the relationship between them.

1. Deep and Surface Structures 底层结构与表层结构

According to Chomsky, every sentence has two levels of structure, one which is obvious on the surface, and the other which is deep and abstract. In other words, one structure is that of the sentence as it is pronounced or written and the other structure contains all the units and relationships that are necessary for interpreting the meaning of the sentence.

4. the Standard Theory 标准理论
   1. Components of a TG 转换生成语法的成分

A transformational grammar has three major components: a syntactic component (dealing with syntax), a phonological component (dealing with sounds) and a semantic component (dealing with meaning).

1. The syntactic Component 句法成分

   The syntactic component is formed by two parts: the base, and the transformational rules.

4.2.1The Base 基础部分

   This part is concerned with the generation of deep structures. It contains, on the one hand, a set of phrase structure rules (PS-rules), which set up the basic sentence patterns of the language, and on the other hand, a lexicon---a full list of vocabulary items which are slotted into the tree diagram set up by the PS-rule.

1. PS-rules 短语结构规则

They are also called rewrite rules. We can use these PS-rules to generate the deep structure of sentences.

2. The lexicon 词符

It is a list of vocabulary items. Attached to each item is information about its word class (eg. N, V, etc.), and the syntactic ‘slot’ into which it can be placed.

    Lexicon should contain restrictions on the type of noun that can be selected with each verb. This is now commonly referred to as selectional restrictions.

4.2.2 Transformations 转换规则

According to the Standard Theory, transformation cannot change meaning. However, they can do four things: they can delete, copy, add and reorder.

4.2.3The form of T-rules 转换规则形式

Each T-rule has two parts to it. They are Structural Analysis and Structural Change.

1. Structural Analysis 结构分析

It is also called an applicability check, which states the structure to which the rule can be applied.

2. Structural Change 结构变化

It refers to the instructions which will bring about changes in the structure.

1. The phonological Component 语音成分

The task of the phonological component is to convert each surface structure into a phonetic representation.

1. The Semantic Component 语义成分

Deep structures contain all the information necessary for the semantic interpretation of sentences, and the sole input to the semantic component. Therefore, after the deep structure is set up, it will be fed straight into the semantic component. The semantic component will then interpret the meaning of each sentence.