Unit 1 invitations to linguistics
1.    Design features of language:
The design features: the distinctive features of human language that essentially make human language distinguishable from languages of animals
    Arbitrariness
    The absence of any physical correspondence between linguistic signals and the entities to which they refer. / The forms of linguistic signs bear no natural relationship to their meaning.
    Arbitrariness relationship between the sound of a morpheme and its meaning.
(e.g. murmurous / murderous)
    Arbitrariness at the syntactic level
Functionalists hold that the most strictly arbitrary level of language existed in the distinctive units of sounds by which we distinguish pairs of words like pin and bin, or fish and dish.
(e.g. As the night fell, the wind rose.)
    Arbitrariness and convention
Convention: it is an idiom------it is a convention to say things like this way.
(When in Rome, do as romans do.)
    Duality:
    The structural organization of language into two abstract levels: meaningful units (words and phrase) and meaningless segments(sound and letters)
    The secondary units are meaningless and the primary units are meaningful.
    Traffic light system does not have duality: it cannot be divided into meaningless units, so it only has primary level like animals.
    A large number of meaningful units can be formed out of a small number of elements----productive power.
    Creativity
    The speaker is able to combine the basic linguistic units to form an infinite set of sentences, most of which are never before produced or heard.
    It’s potential to create endless sentences. (recursiveness)
    Displacement
The ability of language enable their users symbolize objects, events an d concepts which are not present (in time and space) at the moment of communication.

2.    Origin of language
    The “bow-bow” theory: imitating of animal calls in wild environment
    The “pooh-pooh” theory: they utter instinctive sounds of pain, anger and joy.
    The “yo-he-yo” theory: as primitive people worked together, they produced some rhythmic grunts which gradually developed into chants and then into language.

3.    Functions of language：
    Informative function: to tell and to give something out
    Interpersonal function: (人际功能) by which people establish and maintain their status in a society.
    For example, the way in which people address others and refer to themselves.
Dear Sir……
    Performative function: the performative function of language is primarily to change the social status of persons, such as in marriage ceremonies, the sentencing of criminals and cursing of enemies
    Emotive function: (also called expressive function) uttered without any purpose of communicating to others, but essentially a verbal response to a person’s own feeling.
    Phatic communion:
    It refers to social interaction of language.
    Broadly speaking it refers to expressions that help define and maintain interpersonal relations, such as slangs, jokes, jargon…….
    Recreational function: The use of language for hearty joy of using it.
    Metalingual function:
    Our language can be used to talk about itself. (self-reflexive) we human beings can talk about talking and can think about thinking.
    For example: To be honest, to make a long story short, in a word.

4.    Main branches of linguistics:
    Phonetics
It studies speech sound, including the production of speech, the description and classification of speech sounds, words and connected speech……
    Phonology
    It is the study of a subset of those sounds that constitute language and meaning.
    It studies the rules governing the structure, distribution, and sequencing of speech sounds and shape of syllables.
    Morphology
    It is concerned with the internal organization of words.
    For example: The dog sees the rabbit. In English, different order gives different meaning. However, in Latin and also in Russian, dog and rabbit take on some morphological endings depending on whether they are subject or object. So, different sentence order did not change its meaning.
    Syntax
    It is about principles of forming and understanding correct English sentences.
    For example:
    The children watched [the firework from the hill].
    The children watched [the firework] [from the hill].
    Semantics
    Examine how meaning is encoded in a language.
    It is not only concerned with meanings of words as lexical items, but also with levels of language below words and above it, such as meaning of morphemes and sentences.
    Pragmatics
The study of meaning in context.

5.    Macrolinguistics
    Psycholinguistics (心理语言学)
It investigates the interrelation of language and mind, in processing and producing utterances and in language acquisition for example.
    Sociolinguistics （社会语言学）
It is the study of the characteristics of language varieties, the characteristics of their functions, and the characteristics of their speakers as these three constantly interact and change within a speech community.
    Anthropological linguistics （人类语言学）
Anthropological linguist are concerned with the emergence of language and also the divergence of language over thousands of years.
    Computational linguistics （计算机语言学）
The use of computers to process or produce human language.

6.    Important distinctions in linguistics
    Descriptive and descriptive
    The distinction lies in prescribing how things are and how things ought to be.
    Descriptive:
    To make an objective and systematic account of patterns and use of a language or variety.
    People don’t say X.
    Prescriptive:
    To make authoritarian statement about the correctness of a particular use of language.
    Don’t say X
    Synchronic and diachronic
    Synchronic (共时)
    Said of an approach that studies language at a theoretical “point” of time.
    For example: the structure of Shakespeare’s English.
    Diachronic （历时）
    Said of the study of development of language and languages over time.
    For example: Pejorative sense development in English
    Langue and parole
    Langue
    The language system shared by a “speech community”
    Parole
    The concrete utterances of a speaker.
    Competence and performance
    Competence
    Unconscious knowledge of the system of grammatical rules in a language.
    Performance
    The language actually used by people in speaking and writing.
 
Unit 2 phonetics and phonology
1.    The major branches of phonetics:
    Articulatory phonetics
The study of production of speech sounds
    Auditory phonetics
It studies the sounds from the hearer’s point of view, that is, the sound perceived by the hearer.
    Acoustic phonetics
It studies the physical properties of the sounds produced in speech.

2.    Speech organs
    Inside the throat: pharynx and larynx
    Inside the oral cavity: upper lip, upper teeth, the alveolar ridge, the hard palate and the soft palate, and the uvula.
    The bottom part of the mouth contains the lower lip, lower teeth, the tongue and the mandible(下颔).