Download Introduction to Linguistics and Applied Linguistics

Introduction to
Contemporary
Linguistics
For undergraduates
Lecture 1
Human
language
In the beginning was the
Word.
-- Bible
God created the world by a Word,
instantaneously, without toil or pains.
-- Talmud
Both these pieces
of scripture point to
the primacy of
language in the way
human beings
conceive of the world.
Language figures centrally in
our lives.

We discover our identity as individuals and
social beings when we acquire a language
during childhood
 Language serves as a means of cognition
and communication
 Language provides for present needs and
future plans, and at the same time carries
with it the impression of things past.
-- Widdowson
Other myths about language
Babel Tower
Functions of language
recognized by ancient people

To achieve something by giving order

To praise the Almighty

To challenge the heaven
What
exactly does a
human being physically
possess that embodies his
outstanding capability?
Muscle
Hands
Sensory organs
Ability to think
Ability to calculate
Ability to speak
Artificial intelligence
To liberate our brain
Language is uniquely human.

People talk. They communicate their
thoughts and experience, their hopes and
fears to others; they transmit their
accumulated knowledge and beliefs to their
children, by means of oral sounds. Others
listen and comprehend. These facts are true
of all communities of human beings, from
the most primitive to the most sophisticated.
Language is uniquely human.
We human beings can create new
meanings and shape our own reality
unconstrained by the immediate context.
Any other species’ communication lacks
such flexibility. As Bertrand Russell once
observed: “No matter how eloquently a dog
may bark, he cannot tell you that his parents
were poor but honest”.
Language is uniquely human.

Any human baby can learn at least one
language. The learning is spontaneous and
effortless.

However, no one knows how complex
the mind of man operates to organize his
experience and thoughts into communicable
form anytime he speaks.
Language as phenomena
LANGUAGE AND LANGUAGES

Language is the system of human
communication which consists of the
structured arrangement of sounds (or their
written representation) into larger units, e.g.
morphemes,words, sentences, utterances.
 Languages are particular systems of human
communication, e.g. the French language,
the Hindi language.
Languages and countries
 Sometimes
a language is spoken by
most people in a particular country,
for example, Japanese in Japan, but
sometimes a language is spoken by
only part of the population of a
country, for example, Tamil in
India, French in Canada.
 In
some cases, there is a continuum
from one language to another. Dialect
A of Language X on one side of the
border may be very similar to Dialect
B of Language Y on the other side of
the border if Language X and
Language Y are related. This is the
case between Sweden and Norway
and between Germany and the
Netherlands

The scientific study
of language or of
particular languages is
called
linguistics.
Varieties of language







dialect
accent
sociolect
temporal dialect
register
idiolect
standard dialect
 Two attitudes:
prescriptive
descriptive
Language as an entity
TIME-HONORED PROBLEMS
WHAT IS
KNOWLEDGE OF
LANGUAGE?
WHERE DOES IT
COME FROM?
TRADITIONAL THEORIES
OF

Linguistics
Plato (427?-347 B.C.)
 Aristotle (384-322 B.C.):
There is a
Language is
universally correct
arrived at by
and
acceptable
convention and
logic of language
agreement
of
the
for man to follow
speakers of a
in expressing his
given language.
ideas.
DISPUTES IN MODERN
LINGUISTICS

NATIVISM
 MENTALISM
There is a biological,
physiological
entity
inside our brain which
decides that we speak.

BEHAVIORISM
 EMPIRICISM
Our brain was
blank when we were
born. Language is a
social, empirical entity.
Chomsky’s epistemology of
the knowledge of language

Human beings are born with something that other
species are not born with, i.e. human language
faculty.
 The initial state of human language faculty is
called UG.
 Due to the effect of later experience, our
brain/mind develops from the initial state into the
steady state, which corresponds to the competence
of speaking a human language.
UG
universal grammar
Every speaker knows a set of
principles which apply to all
languages and also a set of
parameters that can vary
from one language to another,
but only within certain limits.
Example
People can accept:
in the classroom (in English)
きょうしつ
教室 に (in Japanese)
but can’t accept in any language:
the in classroom
A principle:
structural dependency
A knowledge of language
relies on knowing structural
relationships in a sentence
rather than looking at it as a
sequence of words.
PP
(prepositional phrase)
P
NP
DET
in
the
N
classroom
PP
(prepositional phrase)
P
DET
the
NP
N
in
classroom
PARAMETER:
HEAD RIGHT
PP
(postposition phrase)
NP
P
教室
に
PARAMETER:
HEAD LEFT
PP
(preposition phrase)
P
NP
DET
in
the
N
classroom
According to
Chomsky,
Knowledge of language is the result of the
interaction of UG and later experience.
The process for human language faculty to
grow inside human body along a geneticallypre-determined course resembles the way a
human being grows two arms instead of two
wings according to the magic of human genes.
DIFFERENT VOICES
CONNECTIONISM (EMERGENTISM)
 The
mental-neural mechanisms
responsible for both lexical and
grammatical processing are not
unique to language.
 The neural mechanisms that “do”
language also do a lot of other
things.
DIFFERENT VOICES
LEARNER’S VARIETY

DeSaussure, Chomsky, indeed all
researchers customarily take perfect
mastery of a language to be the crucial case,
and a perfect speaker’s linguistic knowledge
– a speaker who has mastered a “real
language” to perfection – to be the primary
object of linguist’s efforts.

-- Klein (1998)
The object of inquiry

Nature is a physical continuum. It does
not break itself into physics, chemistry,
psychology, linguistics, syntax, pragmatics,
phonetics…, which are not facts but our
decisions. They are different levels
(perspectives) from which we talk about the
world.
fields in linguistics






Phonology
Morphology
Syntax
Semantics
Pragmatics
…
Theory and discipline

Linguistics is not a theory. Syntax is not a
theory. Pragmatics is not a theory.
 They are all domains we circumscribe from
the nature for the convenience of our
understanding.
 Newton’s Gravity is a theory. Einstein’s
Relativity is a theory. Darwin’s Evolution is
a theory. Chomsky’s UG is a theory.
Textbook
Introduction to
Contemporary Linguistics
by Zheng Chao
to be published two weeks later
Course Website
A course website has been established
to provide informative, interactive, and
dynamic support to the textbook. The keys
to the exercises of each chapter are also
offered there. The website address is
www.lintroduction.com .
Reading Recommendation
 Longman Dictionary of Language Teaching
and Applied Linguistics.
by Richards, J. el al,1998.
外语教育与研究出版社& Cambridge Uni. Press
牛津语言学入门丛书
 Linguistics
by H.G. Widdowson

上海外语教育出版社 2001

More recommendations in the textbook (p. 13)
Teaching

Not all the content of each chapter will be
taught in class.
 Topics of each chapter will be dealt with
from rearranged perspectives in classroom
teaching .
 Students are encouraged to give their own
ppt-aided presentation in class from the
third lecture.
Suggestions

Preview and review each chapter;
 Dealing with all the exercises after class;
 Search the library for additional readings;
 Summarize what you have understood in a
notebook;
 Share your interest and achievements with
other students by discussion and
contributing to our website.
About final examination
An all-inclusive test
No term paper