语言学重点总结

Chapter 6Cognition is the mental process or faculty of knowing, including aspects such as awareness, perception, reasoning, and judgment.There exist three approaches to the study of language and cognition: the formal approach, the psychological approach and the conceptual approach.The Formal approach basically addresses the structural patterns exhibited by the overt aspect of linguistic forms, largely abstracted away from or regarded as autonomous from any associated meaning.The Psychological approach looks at language from the perspective of relatively general cognitive systems ranging from perception, memory, and attention to reasoning.The conceptual approach is concerned with the patterns in which and the processes by which conceptual content is organized in language.Structure will be used to refer both to patterns and to process, the conceptual approach can more simply be said to address how language structures conceptual content.Psycholinguistics is the study of psychological aspects of language; it usually studies the psychological states and mental activities associated with the use of language.Six aspects of research within psycholinguistics: Acquisition Comprehension Production Disorders Language and thought NeurocognitionLanguage acquisition: Holophrastic stage Two-word stage Stage of three-word utterances Fluent grammatical conversation stageConnectionism in psycholinguistics claims that readers use the same system of links between spelling units and sound units to generate pronunciations of written words like tove and to access the pronunciations of familiar words like stove, or words that are exceptions to these patterns, like love. Language comprehension: word recognition comprehension of sentences comprehension of textCohort model: the first few phonemes of a spoken word activate a set or cohort of word candidates that are consistent with the input.Interactive model holds that higher processing levels have a direct, “top-down” influence on lower levels.The race model does not agree “top-down” effects, it has two routes that race each other-a pre-lexical route, which computes phonological information from the acoustic signal, and a lexical route, in which the phonological information associated with a word becomes available when the word itself is accessed.Serial models propose that the sentence comprehension system continually and sequentially follows the constraints of a languages grammar with remarkable speed.Parallel models emphasize that the comprehension system is sensitive to a vast range of information, including grammatical, lexical and contextual, as well as knowledge of the speaker/writer and of the world in general.In resonance model, information in long-term memory is automatically activated by the presence of material that apparently bears a rough semantic relation to it.Language production: Access to words Generation of sentences Written language productionFunctional planning process assigns grammatical functions such as subject, verb or direct object.Positional encoding uses the retrieved lexicon-grammar units and the functions they have been assigned to generate syntactic structures that capture the dependencies among constituents and their order.Cognitive linguistics is based on human experiences of the world and the way they perceive and conceptualize the world.Construal is the ability to conceive and portray the same situation in alternate ways through specificity, different mental scanning, directionality, vantage point, figure-ground segregation etc.Construal operations are the underlying psychological processed and resources employed in the interpretation of linguistic expressions. Attention/Salience Judgment/Comparison Perspective/SituatednessTrajector refers to a dynamic figure and landmark to the ground of a moving figure.Deixis involves linguistic forms that point at something from the speech situation.Categorization is the process of classifying our experiences into different categories based on commonalities and differences.There are three levels in categories: the basic level the superordinate level the subordinate levelThe categories at the basic level are those that are most culturally salient and are required to fulfill our cognitive needs the best.Superordinate categories are the most general ones. The members of a superordinate category do not have enough features in common to conjure up a common gestalt at this level.Image schema is a recurring, dynamic pattern of our perceptual interactions and motor programs that gives coherence and structure to our experience. A center-periphery schema: It involves a physical or metaphorical core and edge, and degrees of distance from the core A containment schema: It is an image schema that involves a physical pr metaphorical boundary, enclosed area or volume, or excluded area or volume. A cycle schema: It involves repetitious events and event series. A force schema: It involves physical or metaphorical causal interaction. A link schema: It consists of two or more entities, connected physically or metaphorically, and the bound between them. A part-whole schema: It involves physical or metaphorical wholes along with their parts and a configuration of the parts. A path schema: It involves physical or metaphorical movement from place to place, and consists of a starting point, a goal, and a series of intermediate points. A scale schema: It involves an increase or decrease of physical or metaphorical amount. A verticality schema: It involves “up” and “down” relations. Metaphor involves the comparison of two concepts in that one is construed in terms of the other.The target domain is the experience being described by the metaphor and the source domain is the means that we use in order to describe the experience.Three categories of conceptual metaphors: ontological metaphors, structural metaphors, and orientational metaphors.Ontological metaphor means that human experiences with physical objecets provide the basis for ways of viewing events, activities, emotions, ideas, etc., as entities and substances.Structural metaphor plays the important role because it allows us to go beyond orientation and referring and gives us the possibility to structure one concept according to another.Orientational metaphor gives a concept a spatial orientation. They are characterized not so much by structuring one concept in terms of another, but by a co-occurrence in our experience.Metonymy is defined as a cognitive process in which the vehicle provides mental process to the target within the same domain.We have three ICMs in ontological realms: Sign ICMs Reference ICMs Concept ICMsBlending theory or integration theory is a cognitive operation whereby elements of two or more “mental spaces” are integrated via projection into a new, blended space which has its unique structure.Chapter 7 Language, Culture and SocietyContext of situation:A. The relevant features of the participants: persons, personalities. The verbal action of the participants. The non-verbal action of the participants.B. The relevant objects.C. The effects of the verbal action.Ethnography of communication: an authoritative research framework of our time in a linguistic study of social and cultural factors. The essential elements suggested by this framework include speech community situation, event and act mnemonic speaking components.Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis: our language helps mould our way of thinking and, consequently, different languages may probably express our unique ways of understanding the world. Following this argument, two important points could be captured in this theory. On the one hand, language may determine our thinking patterns; on the other, similarity between languages is relative. Linguistic determinism: one of the two points in Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, i.e. language determines thought. Linguistic relativity: one of the two points in Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, i.e. theres no limit to the structural diversity of languages. During cross-cultural communication, there are five types of sub-culture we should be fully aware of: ecological culture linguistic culture religious culture material culture social cultureLinguistic universality is the similarities possessed by most languages, instead of their assumed differences.There are at least three objectives for us to teach culture in our language class:1. To get the students familiar with cultural differences2. To get the students transcend their own culture and see things as the members of the target culture will 3. To emphasize the inseparability of understanding language and understanding culture through various classroom practicesSocial factors of influencing our language behavior in a social context: a) class b) gender c) age d) ethnic identity e) education background f) occupation g)religious beliefWomen registers features:1) Women use more “fancy” color words such as “mauve” and “beige”2) Women use less powerful curse words3) Women use more intensifiers such as “terrible” and “awful” 4) Women use more tag questions5) Women use more statement questions like “Dinner will be ready at seven oclock?” (with a rising intonation at the end)6) Womens linguistic behavior is more indirect and, hence, more polite than mens.Linguistic sexism: many differences between men and women in language use are brought about by nothing less than womens place in society. Sociolinguistics of language: one of the two things in sociolinguistics, in which we want to look at structural things by paying attention to potential sociocultural factors in a social context. Sociolinguistics of society: one of the two things in sociolinguistics, in which we try to understand sociological things of society by examining linguistic phenomena of a speaking community.Communicative competence: a speakers knowledge of the total set of rules, conventions, etc. governing the skilled use of language in a society. Sociolinguistics has made some important contributions:1. Sociolinguistics has contributed to a change of emphasis in the content of language teaching2. It has also contributed to innovations in materials and activities for the classroom3. It has contributed to a fresh look at the nature of language development and use4. It has contributed to a more fruitful research in this fieldTripartite model for successful communication:1. try to look at things from other persons point of view2. try to sense their feeling to a given issue3. try to understanding their way of knowing the worldGender difference: a difference in a speech between men and women is “gender difference” Variationist linguistics: a branch of linguistics, which studies the relationship between speakers social starts and phonological variations.Chapter 8 Language in UsePerformative: an utterance by which a speaker does something does something, as apposed to a constative, by which makes a statement which may be true or false. Constative: an utterance by which a speaker expresses a proposition which may be true or false. Locutionary act: the act of saying something; its an act of conveying literal meaning by means of syntax, lexicon, and phonology. Namely, the utterance of a sentence with determinate sense and reference. Illocutionary act: the act performed in saying something; its force is identical with the speakers intention. Perlocutionary act: the act performed by or resulting from saying something, its the consequence of, or the change brought about by the utterance. Conversational implicature: the extra meaning not contained in the literal utterances, understandable to the listener only when he shares the speakers knowledge or knows why and how he violates intentionally one of the four maxims of the cooperative principle. Cooperative principle:Quantity1. Make your contribution as informative as is required (for the current purpose of the exchange).2. Do not make your contribution more informative than is required.QualityTry to make your contribution one that is true.1. Do not say what you believe to be false;2. Do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence. Relevance Be relevant. Manner Be perspicuous.1. Avoid obscurity of expression2. Avoid ambiguity 3. be brief (avoid prolixity)4. Be orderly.Entailment: relation between propositions one of which necessarily follows from the other: e.g. “Mary is running” entails, among other things, “Mary is not standing still”. Ostensive communication: a complete characterization of communication is that it is ostensive-inferential. Communicative principle of relevance: every act of ostensive communication communicates the presumption of its own optimal relevance. Relevance: a property that any utterance, or a proposition that it communicates, must, in the nature of communication, necessarily have. Q-principle: one of the two principles in Horns scale, i.e. Make your contribution sufficient (of quantity1); Say as much as you can (given R).R-principle: one of the two principles in Horns scale, i.e. Make your contribution necessary (Relation,Quantity2,Manner);Say no more than you must(given Q). Division of pragmatic labor: the use of a marked relatively complex and/or expression when a corresponding unmarked (simpler, less “effortful”) alternate expression is available tends to be interpreted as conveying a marked message (one which the unmarked alternative would not or could not have conveyed).Constraints on Horn scales: the hearer-based Q-Principle is a sufficiency condition in the sense that information provided is the most the speaker is able to.Chapter 12Schools of modern linguistics: The Prague School, The London School, American Structuralism, Transformational-Generative Grammar.Three points of Prague School:1. It was stressed that the synchronic study of language is fully justified as it can draw on complete and controllable material for investigation but no rigid theoretical barrier is erected to separate diachronic study.2. There was an emphasis on the systemic character of language.3. Language was looked on as functional in another sense, that is, as a tool performing a number of essential functions or tasks for the community using it.Trubetzkoys contributions to phonological theory:1. He showed distinctive functions of speech sounds and gave an accurate definition for the phoneme.2. By making distinctions between phonetics and phonology, and between stylistic phonology, he defined the sphere of phonological studies.3. By studying the syntagmatic and paradigmatic relations between phonemes, he revealed the interdependent relations between phonemes.4. He put forward a set of methodologies for phonological studies, such as the method of extracting phonemes and the method of studying phonological combinations.Functional Sentence Perspective is a theory of linguistic analysis which refers to an analysis of utterances in terms of the information they contain.