语言学名词解释_理学_高等教育_教育专区 - 语言学名词解释

Chapter 1: Introduction

1. Linguistics: Linguistics is generally defined as the scientific study of language.

8. langue: Lange refers to the abstract linguistic system shared by all the members of

a speech community.

9. parole :Parole refers to the realization of langue in actual use.

10. competence : The ideal user’s knowledge of the rules of his language.

: The actual realization of this knowledge in linguistic communication.

12. language : Language is a system of arbitrary vocal symbols used for human

communication.

features : Design features refer to the defining properties of human language that

distinguish it from any animal system of communication.

14. arbitrariness: Arbitrariness refers to no logical connection between meaning and

sound.

15. productivity: Users can understand and produce sentences that they have never

heard before.

16. duality: Language consists of two sets of structure, with lower lever of sound,

which is meaningless, and the higher lever of meaning.

17. displacement: Language can be used to refer to the contexts removed from the

immediate situation of the speaker no matter how far away from the topic of

conversation in time or space.

18. cultural transmission: Language is culturally transmitted. It is taught and learned

from one generation to the next, rather than by instinct.

Chapter 2: Phonology

1. phonic medium : The meaningful speech sound in human communication.

2. phonetics : The study of phonic medium of language and it is concerned with all

sounds in the world’s languages.

3. articulatory phonetics : It studies sounds from the speaker’s point of view, . how a

speaker uses his speech organs to articulate the sounds.

4. auditory phonetics: The studies sounds from the hearer’s point of view, . how the

sounds are perceived by the hearer.

5. acoustic phonetics: It studies the way sounds travel by looking at the sound waves,

the physical means by which sounds are transmitted through the air from one person

to another.

6. voicing: the way that sounds are produced with the vibration of the vocal cords.

7. voiceless: the way that sounds are produced with no vibration of the vocal cords.

8. broad transcription: The use of letter symbols only to show the sounds or sounds

sequences in written form.

9. narrow transcription: The use of letter symbol, together with the diacritics to show

sounds in written form.

10. diacritics: The symbols used to show detailed articulatory features of sounds.

11. IPA: short for International Phonetic Alphabets, a system of symbols consists of

letters and diacritics, used to represent the pronunciation of words in any language.

12. aspiration: A little puff of air that sometimes follows a speech sound.

13. manner of articulation : The manner in which obstruction is created.

14. place of articulation : The place where obstruction is created.

15. consonant: a speech sound in which the air stream is obstructed in one way or

another.

16. vowel : a speech sound in which the air stream from the lung meets with no

obstruction.

17. monophthong : the individual vowel.

18. diphthong : The vowel which consists of two individual vowels, and functions as a

single one.

19. phone : The speech sound we use when speaking a language.

20. phoneme : The smallest unit of sound in a language which can distinguish two

sounds.

21. allophone : any different forms of the same phoneme in different phonetic

environments.

22. phonology : The description of sound systems of particular languages and how

sounds function to distinguish meaning.

23. phonemic contrast : two similar sounds occur in the same environment and

distinguish meaning.

24. complementary distribution : allophones of the same phoneme and they don’t

distinguish meaning but complement each other in distribution.

25. minimal pair: two different forms are identical in every way except one sound

and occurs in the same position. The two sounds are said to form a minimal pair.

26. sequential rules: The rules to govern the combination of sounds in a particular

language.

27. assimilation rule: The rule assimilates one sound to another by copying a feature

of a sequential phoneme, thus making the two phones similar.

28. deletion rule: The rule that a sound is to be deleted although it is

orthographically represented.

29. suprasegmental features: The phonemic features that occur above the level of

the segments----syllable, word, sentence.

30. tone: Tones are pitch variations, which are caused by the differing rates of

vibration of the vocal cords.

31. intonation: When pitch, stress and sound length are tied to the sentence rather

than the word in isolation, they are collectively known as intonation.

Chapter 3: Morphology

1. morphology: A branch of linguistics that studies the internal structure of words

and rules for word formation.

2. open class: A group of words, which contains an unlimited number of items, and

new words can be added to it.

3. closed class: A relatively few words, including conjunctions, prepositions and

pronouns, and new words are not usually added to them.

4. morpheme: The smallest unit of meaning of a language. It can not be divided

without altering or destroying its meaning.

5. affix: a letter or a group of letter, which is added to a word, and which changes the

meaning or function of the word, including prefix, infix and suffix.

6. suffix: The affix, which is added to the end of a word, and which usually changes

the part of speech of a word.

7. prefix: The affix, which is added to the beginning of a word, and which usually

changes the meaning of a word to its opposite.

8. bound morpheme: Morpheme that can not be used alone, and it must be

combined wit others. . –ment.

9. free morpheme: a morpheme that can stand alone as a word.

10. derivational morpheme: Bound morpheme, which can be added to a stem to

form a new word.

11. inflectional morpheme: A kind of morpheme, which are used to make

grammatical categories, such as number, tense and case.

12. morphological rules: The ways words are formed. These rules determine how

morphemes combine to form words.

13. compound words: A combination of two or more words, which functions as a

single words

14. inflection: the morphological process which adjusts words by grammatical

modification, . in The rains came, rain is inflected for plurality and came for past

tense.

Chapter 4: Syntax

1. syntax: A branch of linguistics that studies how words are combined to form

sentences and the rules that govern the formation of sentences.

2. category: It refers to a group of linguistic items which fulfill the same or similar

functions in a particular language such as a sentence, a noun phrase or a verb.

6. phrase: syntactic units that are built around a certain word category are called

phrase, the category of which is determined by the word category around which the

phrase is built.

8. head: The word round which phrase is formed is termed head.

9. specifier: The words on the left side of the heads are said to function as specifiers.

10. complement: The words on the right side of the heads are complements.

11. phrase structure rule: The special type of grammatical mechanism that regulates

the arrangement of elements that make up a phrase is called a phrase structure rule.

14. coordination: Some structures are formed by joining two or more elements of the

same type with the help of a conjunction such as and or or. Such phenomenon is

known as coordination.

15. subcategorization: The information about a word’s complement is included in the

head and termed suncategorization.

16. complementizer: Words which introduce the sentence complement are termed

complementizer.

17. complement clause: The sentence introduced by the complementizer is called a

complement clause.

18. complement phrase: the elements, including a complementizer and a

complement clause is called a complement phrase.

19. matrix clause: the contrusction in which the complement phrase is embedded is

called matrix clause.

20. modifier: the element, which specifies optionally expressible properties of heads

is called modifier.

21. transformation : a special type of rule that can move an element from one

position to another

22. inversion : the process of transformation that moves the auxiliary from the Infl

position to a position to the left of the subject, is called inversion.

23. Do insertion : In the process of forming yes-no question that does not contain an

overt Infl, interrogative do is inserted into an empty Infl positon to make

transformation work.

24. deep structure : A level of abstract syntactic representation formed by the XP

rule.

25. surface structure : A level of syntactic representation after applying the necessary

syntactic movement, ., transformation, to the deep structure. (05)

26. universal grammar: the innateness principles and properties that pertain to the

grammars of all human languages.

Chapter 5: Semantics

1. semantics: Semantics can be simply defined as the study of meaning.

3. sense : Sense is concerned with the inherent meaning of the linguistic form. It is

the collection of all the features of the linguistic form. It is abstract and

de-contexturalized. It is the aspect of meaning dictionary compilers are interested in.

4. reference : Reference means what a linguistic form refers to in the real, physical

world. It deals with the relationship between the linguistic element and the

non-linguistic world of experience.

5. synonymy: Synonymy refers to the sameness or close similarity of meaning. Words

that are close in meaning are called synonyms.

6. dialectal synonyms: synonyms that are used in different regional dialects.

7. stylistic synonyms: synonyms that differ in style, or degree of formality.

8. collocational synonyms: Synonyms that differ in their colllocation, ., in the words

they go together with.

9. polysemy : The same word has more than one meaning.

10. homonymy: Homonymy refers to the phenomenon that words having different

meanings have the same form, ., different words are identical in sound or spelling, or

in both.

11. homophones: When two words are identical in sound, they are homophones.

12. homographs: When two words are identical in spelling, they are homographs.

13. complete homonymy: When two words are identical in both sound and spelling,

they are complete homonyms.

14. hyponymy: Hyponymy refers to the sense relation between a more general, more

inclusive word and a more specific word.

15. superordinate: The word which is more general in meaning is called the

superordinate.

16. co-hyponyms: Hyponyms of the same superordinate are co-hyponyms.

17. antonymy: The term antonymy is used for oppositeness of meaning.

20. relational opposites: Pairs if words that exhibit the reversal of a relationship

between the two items are called relational opposites. For example, husband---wife,

father---son, buy---sell, let---rent, above---below.

21. entailment: the relationship between two sentences where the truth of one is

inferred from the truth of the other. . Cindy killed the dog entails the dog is dead.

22. presupposition: What a speaker or writer assumes that the receiver of the

massage already knows. . Some tea has already been taken is a presupposition of

Take some more tea.

Chapter 6: Pragmatics

1. pragmatics: The study of how speakers uses sentences to effect successful

communication.

2. context: The general knowledge shared by the speakers and the hearers.

3. sentence meaning: The meaning of a self-contained unit with abstract and

de-contextualized features.

4. utterance meaning: The meaning that a speaker conveys by using a particular

utterance in a particular context.

5. utterance: expression produced in a particular context with a particular intention.

6. Speech Act Theory: The theory proposed by John Austin and deepened by Searle,

which believes that we are performing actions when we are speaking.

7. constatives: Constatives are statements that either state or describe, and are thus

verifiable.

8. performatives: Performatives are sentences that don’t state a fact or describe a

state, and are not verifiable.

9. locutionary act: The act of conveying literal meaning by virtue of syntax, lexicon

and phonology.

10. illocutionary act: The act of expressing the speaker’s intention and performed in

saying something.

11. perlocutionary act: The act resulting from saying something and the consequence

or the change brought about by the utterance.

12. representatives: Stating or describing, saying what the speaker believes to be

true.

13. directives: Trying to get the hearer to do something.

17. cooperative Principle: The principle that the participants must first of all be

willing to cooperate in making conversation, otherwise, it would be impossible to

carry on the talk.

18. conversational implicature: The use of conversational maxims to imply meaning

during conversation.

Chapter 7: Language Change

8. acronyms: Acronyms are words derived from the initials of several words.

9. protolanguage: The original form of a language family, which has ceased to exist.

10. Language family: A group of historically related languages that have developed

from a common ancestral language.

Chapter 8: Language And Society

1. sociolinguistics: The subfield of linguistics that study language variation and

language use in social contexts.

2. speech community: A group of people who form a community and share at least

one speech variety as well as similar linguistic norms.

3. speech varieties: It refers to any distinguishable form of speech used by a speaker

or a group of speakers.

4. regional dialect: A variety of language used by people living in the same

geographical region.

5. sociolect: A variety of language used by people, who belong to a particular social

class.

6. registers : The type of language which is selected as appropriate to the type of

situation.

7. idiolect : A person’s dialect of an individual speaker that combines elements,

regarding regional, social, gender and age variations.

8. linguistic reportoire : The totality of linguistic varieties possessed by an individual

constitutes his linguistic repertoire.

9. register theory : A theory proposed by American linguist Halliday, who believed

that three social variables determine the register, namely, field of discourse, tenor of

discourse and mode of discourse.

10. field of discourse : the purpose and subject matter of the communicative

behavior..

11. tenor of discourse: It refers to the role of relationship in the situation in question:

who the participants in the communication groups are and in what relationship they

stand to each other.

12. mode of discourse: It refers to the means of communication and it is concerned

with how communication is carried out.

13. standard dialect: A superposed variety of language of a community or nation,

usually based on the speech and writing of educated native speakers of the language.

14. formality: It refers to the degree of formality in different occasions and reflects

the relationship and conversations. According to Martin Joos, there are five stages of

formality, namely, intimate, casual, consultative, formal and frozen.

15. Pidgin: A blending of several language, developing as a contact language of

people, who speak different languages, try to communication with one another on a

regular basis.

16. Creole : A pidgin language which has become the native language of a group of

speakers used in this daily life.

17. bilingualism : The use of two different languages side by side with each having a

different role to play, and language switching occurs when the situation

changes.(07C)

18. diaglossia : A sociolinguistic situation in which two different varieties of language

co-exist in a speech community, each having a definite role to play.

19. Lingua Franca : A variety of language that serves as a medium of communication

among groups of people, who speak different native languages or dialects

20. code-switching: the movement back and forth between two languages or dialects

within the same sentence or discourse.

Chapter 10: Language Acquisition

1. language acquisition: It refers to the child’s acquisition of his mother tongue, . how

the child comes to understand and speak the language of his community.

2. language acquisition device (LAD): A hypothetical innate mechanism every normal

human child is believed to be born with, which allow them to acquire language.

3. Universal Grammar: A theory which claims to account for the grammatical

competence of every adult no matter what language he or she speaks.

4. motherese: A special speech to children used by adults, which is characterized

with slow rate of speed, high pitch, rich intonation, shorter and simpler sentence

structures 又叫child directed speech，caretaker talk.

5. Critical Period Hypothesis: The hypothesis that the time span between early

childhood and puberty is the critical period for language acquisition, during which

children can acquire language without formal instruction successfully and

effortlessly.

6. under-extension: Use a word with less than its usual range of denotation.

7. over-extension: Extension of the meaning of a word beyond its usual domain of

application by young children.

8. telegraphic speech: Children’s early multiword speech that contains content words

and lacks function words and inflectional morphemes.

9. content word: Words referring to things, quality, state or action, which have lexical

meaning used alone.

10. function word: Words with little meaning on their own but show grammatical

relationships in and between sentences.

11. taboo: Words known to speakers but avoided in some contexts of speech for

reasons of religion, politeness etc.

12. atypical development: Some acquisition of language may be delayed but follow

the same rules of language development due to trauma or injury.

Chapter 11 : Second Language Acquisition

1. second language acquisition: It refers to the systematic study of how one person

acquires a second language subsequent to his native language.

2. target language: The language to be acquired by the second language learner.

3. second language: A second language is a language which is not a native language

in a country but which is widely used as a medium of communication and which is

usually used alongside another language or languages.

4. foreign language: A foreign language is a language which is taught as a school

subject but which is not used as a medium of instruction in schools nor as a language

of communication within a country.

5. interlanguage: A type of language produced by second and foreign language

learners, who are in the process of learning a language, and this type of language

usually contains wrong expressions.

6. fossilization: In second or foreign language learning, there is a process which

sometimes occurs in which incorrect linguistic features become a permanent part of

the way a person speaks or writes a language.

14. overgeneralization: The use of previously available strategies in new situations, in

which they are unacceptable.

15. cross-association: some words are similar in meaning as well as spelling and

pronunciation. This internal interference is called cross-association.

16. error: the production of incorrect forms in speech or writing by a non-native

speaker of a second language, due to his incomplete knowledge of the rules of that

target language.

17. mistake: mistakes, defined as either intentionally or unintentionally deviant forms

and self-corrigible, suggest failure in performance.

18. input: language which a learner hears or receives and from which he or she can

learn.

19. intake: the input which is actually helpful for the learner.

20. Input Hypothesis: A hypothesis proposed by Krashen , which states that in second

language learning, it’s necessary for the learner to understand input language which

contains linguistic items that are slightly beyond the learner’s present linguistic

competence. Eventually the ability to produce language is said to emerge naturally

without being taught directly.

21. acquisition: Acquisition is a process similar to the way children acquire their first

language. It is a subconscious process without minute learning of grammatical rules.

Learners are hardly aware of their learning but they are using language to

communicate. It is also called implicit learning, informal learning or natural learning.

23. comprehensible input: Input language which contains linguistic items that are

slightly beyond the learner’s present linguistic competence.

24. language aptitude: the natural ability to learn a language, not including

intelligence, motivation, interest, etc.

25. motivation: motivation is defined as the learner’s attitudes and affective state or

learning drive.

26. instrumental motivation: the motivation that people learn a foreign language for

instrumental goals such as passing exams, or furthering a career etc.

27. integrative motivation: the drive that people learn a foreign language because of

the wish to identify with the target culture.

28. resultative motivation: the drive that learners learn a second language for

external purposes.

29. intrinsic motivation: the drive that learners learn the second language for

enjoyment or pleasure from learning.

Chapter 12 : Language And Brain

1. neurolinguistics: It is the study of relationship between brain and language. It

includes research into how the structure of the brain influences language learning,

how and in which parts of the brain language is stored, and how damage to the brain

affects the ability to use language.

2. psycholinguistics: the study of language processing. It is concerned with the

processes of language acqisition, comprehension and production.

7. aphasia: It refers to a number of acquired language disorders due to the cerebral

lesions caused by a tumor, an accident and so on.

13. spoonerism: a slip of tongue in which the position of sounds, syllables, or words

is reversed, for example, Let’s have chish and fips instend of Let’s have fish and chips.

14. priming: the process that before the participants make a decision whether the

string of letters is a word or not, they are presented with an activated word.

15. frequency effect: Subjects take less time to make judgement on frequently used

words than to judge less commonly used words . This phenomenon is called

frequency effect.

16. lexical decision: an experiment that let participants judge whether a string of

letter is a word or not at a certain time.

18. priming effect: Since the mental representation is activated through the prime,

when the target is presented, response time is shorter that it otherwise would have

been. This is called the priming effect.