Chapter 1 Invitation to Linguistics

I. REVIEW OF LAST TIME’S MAJOR POINTS

Questions in the test:1. How many phonemes/sounds are there in English? 2. What is a word? 3. Is there a grammatical category of tense in Chinese? 4. How many types of lexical meaning does a word usually have? 5. At what age does a child acquire normal language ability? 6. What does sociolinguistics study? 7. What are the six maxims of the Politeness Principle? 8. How many English figures of speech can you name? 9. In which field does computer translation do the best job? 10. What do you know about the linguistic theory of Noam Chomsky?

II. TASK REPORTING

Explain items from the third-level titles in the contents (目录) for the Chapter—a mark of 95 shall be awarded to those who can provide correct explanations for 3 of the items.

III. MAJOR CONTENT TO STUDY1. Definition of language and its design features; 2. Functions of language; 3. Main branches of linguistics and interdisciplinary fields of linguistics; 4. Important distinctions in linguistics

IV. EXPLANATION OF KEY TERMS1. Language (语言) (p.2): A systematic system of meaningful symbols used for human communication, e.g. Chinese, English, Russian, etc.>>

2. Design features of language (语言的区别性 特征) (p.3): Features that distinguish human language from animal communication, incl. arbitrariness, duality, creativity and displacement.>> Arbitrariness of language (任意性):

Duality of language (二重性):

Creativity of language (创造性): 在学校里，你混的再屌，学生会职位再高，德 育分再多，名气再亮，出门公交车还是要收你 两块钱，瞧得起你的还是瞧得起，瞧不起的还 是继续瞧不起，土鳖依旧还是土鳖，土豪依然 还是土豪，没有人会多看你一两眼，……

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way--in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only. (A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens)

Displacement of language (移位性): 这个假期你在东北玩得怎么样？ Will your parents pay your tuition for postgraduate studies abroad after graduation from this university?

3. Branches of linguistics (语言学分支) (p.15): Different fields/areas of linguistic study, incl. phonetics, morphology, etc.>>

4. Interdisciplinary fields of linguistics (跨学科 语言

学) (p.18): Fields of linguistic studies that are related to other sciences, incl. psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics, etc.>> /pics?sogouexplorer=1&p =50040513&query=%E8%AF%AD%E8%A8 %80%E5%AD%A6

5. Major distinctions in linguistics (语言学中的 相对概念) (p.20): Contrastive pairs of linguistic concepts, e.g. prescriptive grammar vs. descriptive grammar, language competence vs. language performance, etc.>>

V. GROUP DISCUSSION: AT LEAST 2 QUESTIONS FROM EACH PERSON

Each group is to report the questions and their respective question-raisers after discussion.

Discussion topic: Your

questions about Chapter 1

VI. DISCUSSION OF DIFFICULT ISSUESDesign features of language: 1. Arbitrariness (任意性): 指鹿为马

Questions: 1.Why is it wrong to use the word/sound sybmbol “ma” (马) to refer to “lu” (鹿)? 2.Why did people use the words “ma” to refer to and “lu” to instead of vice versa?

The same thing/meaning is expressed with different symbols/sounds by people who speak different languages/dialects

春节祝福语：恭喜发财 /v_show/id_XMzQ5NzYxOTcy.h tml Questions: 1. Do the different sounds/pronunciations tell different meanings about 恭喜发财？ 2. What does it suggest about the feature/nature of language? Summary: The arbitrariness of language refers to the fact that the forms of linguistic signs generally bear no natural relationship to the meanings they carry (p.4).

2. Duality二重性: Sounds/sound combinations (声母, 韵母) in Chinese:

Does each sound/sound combination have a meaning?

Sounds in English:

Questions: Does each sound have a meaning?

When phonemes/sounds (secondary level of language) are combined, units of meaning (primary level of language) are produced (some happen to be represented by single phonemes), e.g. im- /im/, pre- /pri:/, -ly /li/, -ize /aiz/, ease /i:z/, ask /a:sk/, let /let/, eye /ai/, a /ei/

Summary: The duality of language refers to the fact that human language has two levels of structures: the primary meaningful level of morphemes, words, phrases, sentences and the secondary meaningless level of sounds. The 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. (p.5)