语言学笔记

四、句法学
句子的构成
句子的类型
句子的线性排列与层次结构
词类
词组类
短语结构规则
短语结构 规则的循环性
X标杆理论
名词词组移位与WH移位
其他类型的移位
深层结构与表层结构
移动a规则
普遍语法原则
普遍语法参数
Syntax is a subfield of linguistics that studies the sentence structure of language.
As a major component of grammar, syntax consists of a set of abstract rules that allow words to be combined with other words to form grammatical sentences.
句法是一个由一套数量有限的抽象规则组成的系统。
Normally a sentence consists of at least a subject and its predicate which contains a finite verb or a verb phrase.
句子通常由主语和谓语两大部分构成。 谓语通常由限定动词或动词词组构成。
The referring expression is grammatically called subject. 主语是指句子中所被指称的对象。

Types of sentences句子的类型
The simple sentence: consists of a single clause which contains a subject and a predicate and stands alone as its own sentence.简单句含一个主语和一个谓语的独立句子
The coordinate sentence: contains two clauses joined by a linking word called coordinating conjunction.并列句含由连接词串联起来的两个句子成分
The complex sentence: contains two, or more, clauses, one of which is incorporated into the other.
The two clauses in a complex sentence hold unequal status, one subordinating the other.复合句由两个或两个以上的子句组成， 其中之一为主要子句， 其余为从属子句。

The liner and hierarchical structure of sentences 句子的线性排列与层次结构
The liner word order of a sentence: when a sentence is uttered or written down, the words of the sentence are produced one after another in sequence.句子的线性排列， 句子无论就其口头或书面表现形式看， 所含的次都按线性次序排列。(表面上的排列)

The hierarchical structure of a sentence：sentences are organized with words of the same syntactic category, such as noun phrase(NP),or verb phrase (VP), grouped together.
句子的结构是一种由名词词组和动词词组等句法成分单位构成的层次性结构。



Tree diagrams of sentence structure
S


NP VP


V S


NP VP


V NP


John suggested (that)Mary take the linguistics class.

The points at which the tree branches at various levels are called branching nodes.（分节点）

Syntactic categories 句法类型
Words and phrases are organized according to the syntactic categories they belong to.

Lexical categories 词类
Major Lexical Categories主要词类
Noun(N)\ Verb(V)\Adjective(Adj)\Adverb(Adv) 名词、动词、形容词、副词
Minor Lexical Categories
Determiner(Det)\Auxiliary(Aux)\Preposition(Prep)\Pronoun(Pron)\Conjunction(Conj)\Interjection(Int)限定词、助动词、介词、代名词、连接词、感叹词

Phrasal categories词组类
Noun phrase (NP)\Verb phrase (VP)\Prepositional phrase(PP)\Adjective phrase(AP)
名词短语、动词短语、介词短语、形容词短语

Grammatical relations 语法关系
Our linguistic knowledge includes an awareness of a distinction between the structural and logical functional relations of constituents called grammatical relations.
语法关系是指句子中名词词组与动词的关系， 其中涉及到主语和宾语的结构性和逻辑性。
The structural subject and the structural object结构主语与结构宾语
The logic subject (the doer of the action) and the logical object (the recipient of the action)
逻辑主语（行动的执行者）与逻辑宾语（行动的接受者）

Combinational rules 组合规则
Phrase structure rules（rewrite rule）短语结构规则
短语结构规则是一组句法重写规则。
NP?Det N (a/the man)
NP---Det Adj N PP S(the tall man with glasses that I met)
The recursiveness of Phrase structure rules 短语结构规则的循环性
These rules can generate an infinite number of sentences, and sentence with infinite length, due to their recursive properties.根据短语结构规则， 短语和句子可以无限循环地组合起来。

1.1. What is language?

“Language is system of arbitrary vocal symbols used for human communication. It is a system, since linguistic elements are arranged systematically, rather than randomly. Arbitrary, in the sense that there is usually no intrinsic connection between a work (like “book”) and the object it refers to. This explains and is explained by the fact that different languages have different “books”: “book” in English, “livre” in French, in Japanese, in Chinese, “check” in Korean. It is symbolic, because words are associated with objects, actions, ideas etc. by nothing but convention. Namely, people use the sounds or vocal forms to symbolize what they wish to refer to. It is vocal, because sound or speech is the primary medium for all human languages, developed or “new”. Writing systems came much later than the spoken forms. The fact that small children learn and can only learn to speak (and listen) before they write (and read) also indicates that language is primarily vocal, rather than written. The term “human” in the definition is meant to specify that language is human specific.

1.2. What are design features of language?

“Design features” here refer to the defining properties of human language that tell the difference between human language and any system of animal communication. They are arbitrariness, duality, productivity, displacement, cultural transmission and interchangeability

1.3. What is arbitrariness?

By “arbitrariness”, we mean there is no logical connection between meanings and sounds (see I .1). A dog might be a pig if only the first person or group of persons had used it for a pig. Language is therefore largely arbitrary. But language is not absolutely seem to be some sound-meaning association, if we think of echo words, like “bang”, “crash”, “roar”, which are motivated in a certain sense. Secondly, some compounds (words compounded to be one word ) are not entirely arbitrary either. “Type” and “write” are opaque or unmotivated words, while “type-writer” is less so, or more transparent or motivated than the words that make it. So we can say “arbitrariness” is a matter of degree.

1.4.What is duality?

Linguists refer “duality” (of structure) to the fact that in all languages so far investigated, one finds two levels of structure or patterning. At the first, higher level, language is analyzed in terms of combinations of meaningful units (such as morphemes, words etc.) ; at the second, lower level, it is seen as a sequence of segments which lack any meaning in themselves, but which combine to form units of meaning. According to Hu Zhanglin et al. (p.6) , language is a system of two sets of structures, one of sounds and the other of meaning. This is important for the workings of language. A small number of semantic units (words), and these units of meaning can be arranged and rearranged into an infinite number of sentences (note that we have dictionaries of words, but no dictionary of sentences!). Duality makes it possible for a person to talk about anything within his knowledge. No animal communication system enjoys this duality, or even approaches this honour.

1.5.What is productivity?

Productivity refers to the ability to the ability to construct and understand an indefinitely large number of sentences in one’s native language, including those that has never heard before, but that are appropriate to the speaking situation. No one has ever said or heard “A red-eyed elephant is dancing on the small hotel bed with an African gibbon”, but he can say it when necessary, and he can understand it in right register. Different from artistic creativity, though, productivity never goes outside the language, thus also called “rule-bound creativity” (by N.Chomsky).

1.6.What is displacement?

“Displacement”, as one of the design features of the human language, refers to the fact that one can talk about things that are not present, as easily as he does things present. In other words, one can refer to real and unreal things, things of the past, of the present, of the future. Language itself can be talked about too. When a man, for example, is crying to a woman, about something, it might be something that had occurred, or something that is occurring, or something that is to occur. When a dog is barking, however, you can decide it is barking for something or at someone that exists now and there. It couldn’t be bow-wowing sorrowfully for dome lost love or a bone to be lost. The bee’s system, nonetheless, has a small share of “displacement”, but it is an unspeakable tiny share.

1.7.What is cultural transmission?

This means that language is not biologically transmitted from generation to generation, but that the details of the linguistic system must be learned anew by each speaker. It is true that the capacity for language in human beings(N. Chomsky called it “language acquisition device”, or LAD) has a genetic basis, but the particular language a person learns to speak is a cultural one other than a genetic one like the dog’s barking system. If a human being is brought up in isolation he cannot acquire language. The Wolf Child reared by the pack of wolves turned out to speak the wolf’s roaring “tongue” when he was saved. He learned thereafter, with no small difficulty, the ABC of a certain human language.

1.8.What is interchangeability?

Interchangeability means that any human being can be both a producer and a receiver of messages. We can say, and on other occasions can receive and understand, for example, “Please do something to make me happy.” Though some people (including me) suggest that there is sex differentiation in the actual language use, in other words, men and women may say different things, yet in principle there is no sound, or word or sentence that a man can utter and a woman cannot, or vice versa. On the other hand, a person can be the speaker while the other person is the listener and as the turn moves on to the listener, he can be the speaker and the first speaker is to listen. It is turn-taking that makes social communication possible and acceptable.

Some male birds, however, utter some calls which females do not (or cannot?) , and certain kinds of fish have similar haps mentionable. When a dog barks, all the neighbouring dogs bark. Then people around can hardly tell which dog (dogs) is (are0 “speaking” and which listening.

1.9.Why do linguists say language is human specific?

First of all, human language has six “design features” which animal communication systems do not have, at least not in the true sense of them(see I .2-8). Let’s borrow C. F. Hocket’s Chart that compares human language with some animals’ systems, from Wang Gang(1998,p.8).

Secondly, linguists have done a lot trying to teach animals such as chimpanzees to speak a human language but have achieved nothing inspiring. Washoe, a female chimpanzee, was brought up like a human child by Beatnice and Alan Gardner. She was taught “American sign Language”, and learned a little that made the teachers happy but did mot make the linguistics circle happy, for few believed in teaching chimpanzees.

Thirdly, a human child reared among animals cannot speak a human language, not even when he is taken back and taught to lo to so (see the “Wolf Child”in I.7)

1.10.What functions does language have?

Language has at least seven functions: phatic, directive, Informative, interrogative, expressive, evocative and performative. According to Wang Gang (1988,p.11), language has three main functions: a tool of communication, a tool whereby people learn about the world, and a tool by which people learn about the world, and a tool by which people create art . M .A. K.Halliday, representative of the London school, recognizes three “Macro-Functions”: ideational, interpersonal and textual(see !.11-17;see HU Zhuanglin et al.,pp10-13,pp394-396).

1.11What is the phatic function?

The “phatic function” refers to language being used for setting up a certain atmosphere or maintaining social contacts(rather than for exchanging information or ideas). Greetings, farewells, and comments on the weather in English and on clothing in Chinese all serve this function. Much of the phatic language (e.g. “How are you?” “Fine, thanks.”) is insincere if taken literally, but it is important. If you don't say “Hello” to a friend you meet, or if you don’t answer his “Hi”, you ruin your friendship.

1.12. What is the directive function?

The “directive function” means that language may be used to get the hearer to do something. Most imperative sentences perform this function, e. g., “Tell me the result when you finish.” Other syntactic structures or sentences of other sorts can, according to J.Austin and J.Searle’s “indrect speech act theory”(see Hu Zhuanglin et al.,pp271-278) at least, serve the purpose of direction too, e.g., “If I were you, I would have blushed to the bottom of my ears!”

1.13.What is the informative function?

Language serves an “informational function” when used to tell something, characterized by the use of declarative sentences. Informative statements are often labelled as true(truth) or false(falsehood). According to P.Grice’s “Cooperative Principle”(see Hu Zhuanglin et al., pp282-283), one ought not to violate the “Maxim of Quality”, when he is informing at all.

1.14.What is the interrogative function?

When language is used to obtain information, it serves an “interrogative function”. This includes all questions that expect replies, statements, imperatives etc., according to the “indirect speech act theory”, may have this function as well, e.g., “I’d like to know you better.” This may bring forth a lot of personal information. Note that rhetorical questions make an exception, since they demand no answer, at least not the reader’s/listener’s answer.

1.15.What is the expressive function?

The “expressive function” is the use of language to reveal something about the feelings or attitudes of the speaker. Subconscious emotional ejaculations are good examples, like “Good heavens!” “My God!” Sentences like “I’m sorry about the delay” can serve as good examples too, though in a subtle way. While language is used for the informative function to pass judgement on the truth or falsehood of statements, language used for the expressive function evaluates, appraises or asserts the speaker’s own attitudes.

1.16.What is the evocative function?

The “evocative function” is the use of language to create certain feelings in the hearer. Its aim is , for example, to amuse, startle, antagonize, soothe, worry or please. Jokes(not practical jokes, though) are supposed to amuse or entertain the listener; advertising to urge customers to purchase certain commodities; propaganda to influence public opinion. Obviously, the expressive and the evocative functions often go together, i.e., you may express, for example, your personal feelings about a political issue but end up by evoking the same feeling in, or imposing it on, your listener. That’s also the case with the other way round.

1.17.What is the performative function?

This means people speak to “do things” or perform actions. On certain occasions the utterance itself as an action is more important than what words or sounds constitute the uttered sentence. When asked if a third Yangtze bridge ought to be built in Wuhan, the mayor may say “OK”, which means more than speech, and more than an average social individual may do for the construction. The judge’s imprisonment sentence, the president’s war or independence declaration, etc., are performatives as well(see J.Austin’s speech Act Theory, Hu Zhuanglin, ecal.,pp271-278).

1.18.What is linguistics?

“Linguistics” is the scientific study of language. It studies not just one language of any one society, but the language of all human beings. A linguist, though, does not have to know and use a large number of languages, but to investigate how each language is constructed. He is also concerned with how a language varies from dialect to dialect, from class to class, how it changes from century to century, how children acquire their mother tongue, and perhaps how a person learns or should learn a foreign language. In short, linguistics studies the general principles whereupon all human languages are constructed and operate as systems of communication in their societies or communities (see Hu Zhuanglin et al.,pp20-22)

1.19.What makes linguistics a science?

Since linguistics is the scientific study of language, it ought to base itself upon the systematic, investigation of language data which aims at discovering the true nature of language and its underlying system. To make sense of the data, a linguist usually has conceived some hypotheses about the language structure, to be checked against the observed or observable facts. In order to make his analysis scientific, a linguist is usually guided by four principles: exhaustiveness, consistency, and objectivity. Exhaustiveness means he should gather all the materials relevant to the study and give them an adequate explanation, in spite of the complicatedness. He is to leave no linguistic “stone” unturned. Consistency means there should be no contradiction between different parts of the total statement. Economy means a linguist should pursue brevity in the analysis when it is possible. Objectivity implies that since some people may be subjective in the study, a linguist should be (or sound at least) objective, matter-of-face, faithful to reality, so that his work constitutes part of the linguistics research.

1.20.What are the major branches of linguistics?

The study of language as a whole is often called general linguistics (e.g.Hu Zhuanglin et al.,1988;Wang Gang,1988).But a linguist sometimes is able to deal with only one aspect of language at a time, thus the arise of various branches : phonetics ,phonology ,morphology, syntax, semantics, sociolinguistics, applied linguistics, pragmatics, psycholinguistics, lexicology, lexicography, etymology, etc.

1.21.What are synchronic and diachronic studies?

The description of a language at some point of time (as if it stopped developing) is a synchrony study (synchrony). The description of a language as it changes through time is a diachronic study (diachronic). An essay entitled “On the Use of THE”, for example, may be synchronic, if the author does not recall the past of THE, and it may also be diachronic if he claims to cover a large range or period of time wherein THE has undergone tremendous alteration (see Hu Zhuanglin et al.,pp25-27).

1.22.What is speech and what is writing?

No one needs the repetition of the general principle of linguistic analysis, namely, the primacy of speech over writing. Speech is primary, because it existed long long before writing systems came into being. Genetically children learn to speak before learning to write. Secondly, written forms just represent in this way or that the speech sounds : individual sounds, as in English and French as in Japanese.

In contrast to speech, spoken form of language, writing as written codes, gives language new scope and use that speech does not have. Firstly, messages can be carried through space so that people can write to each other. Secondly, messages can be carried through time thereby, so that people of our time can be carried through time thereby, so that people of our time can read Beowulf, Samuel Johnson, and Edgar A. Poe. Thirdly, oral messages are readily subject to distortion, either intentional or unintentional (causing misunderstanding or malentendu), while written messages allow and encourage repeated unalterable reading.

Most modern linguistic analysis is focused on speech, different from grammarians of the last century and theretofore.

1.23.What are the differences between the descriptive and the prescriptive approaches?

A linguistic study is “descriptive” if it only describes and analyses the facts of language, and “prescriptive” if it tries to lay down rules for “correct” language behavior. Linguistic studies before this century were largely prescriptive because many early grammars were largely prescriptive because many early grammars were based on “high” (literary or religious) written records. Modern linguistics is mostly descriptive, however. It (the latter) believes that whatever occurs in natural speech (hesitation, incomplete utterance, misunderstanding, etc.) should be described in the analysis, and not be marked as incorrect, abnormal, corrupt, or lousy. These, with changes in vocabulary and structures, need to be explained also.

1.24.What is the difference between langue and parole?

F. de Saussure refers “langue”to the abstract linguistic system shared by all the members of a speech community and refers “parole” to the actual or actualized language, or the realization of langue. Langue is abstract, parole specific to the speaking situation; langue not actually spoken by an individual, parole always a naturally occurring event; langue relatively stable and systematic, parole is a mass of confused facts, thus not suitable for systematic investigation. What a linguist ought to do, according to Saussure, is to abstract langue from instances of parole, i. e. to discover the regularities governing all instances of parole and make than the subject of linguistics. The langue-parole distinction is of great importance, which casts great influence on later linguists.

1.25.What is the difference between competence and performance?

According to N. Chomsky, “competence” is the ideal language user’s knowledge of the rules of his language, and “performance” is the actual realization of this knowledge in utterances. The former enables a speaker to produce and understand an indefinite number of sentences and to recognize grammatical mistakes and ambiguities. A speaker’s competence is stable while his performance is often influenced by psychological and social factors. So a speaker’s performance does not always match or equal his supposed competence.

Chomsky believes that linguists ought to study competence, rather than performance. In other words, they should discover what an ideal speaker knows of his native language.

Chomsky’s competence-performance distinction is not exactly the same as , though similar to , F. de Saussure’s langue-parole distinction. Langue is a social product, and a set of conventions for a community, while competence is deemed as a property of the mind of each individual. Sussure looks at language more from a sociological or sociolinguistic point of view than N. Chomsky since the latter deals with his issues psychologically or psycholinguistically.

1.26.What is linguistic potential? What is actual linguistic behaviour?

These two terms, or the potential-behavior distinction, were made by M. A. K. Halliday in the 1960s, from a functional point of view. There is a wide range of things a speaker can do in his culture, and similarly there are many things he can say, for example, to many people, on many topics. What he actually says (i.e. his “actual linguistic behavior”) on a certain occasion to a certain person is what he has chosen from many possible injustice items, each of which he could have said (linguistic potential).

1.27.In what way do language, competence and linguistic potential agree? In what way do they differ? And their counterparts?

Langue, competence and linguistic potential have some similar features, but they are innately different (see 1.25). Langue is a social product, and a set of speaking conventions; competence is a property or attribute of each ideal speaker’s mind; linguistic potential is all the linguistic corpus or repertoire available from which the speaker chooses items for the actual utterance situation. In other words, langue is invisible but reliable abstract system. Competence means “knowing”, and linguistic potential a set of possibilities for “doing” or “performing actions”. They are similar in that they all refer to the constant underlying the utterances that constitute what Saussure, Chomsky and Halliday respectively called parole, performance and actual linguistic behavior. Paole, performance and actual linguistic behavior enjoy more similarities than differences.

1.28.What is phonetics?

“Phonetics” is the science which studies the characteristics of human sound-making, especially those sounds used in speech, and provides methods for their description, classification and transcription (see Hu Zhuanglin et al., pp39-40), speech sounds may be studied in different ways, thus by three different branches of phonetics. (1)Articulatory phonetics; the branch of phonetics that examines the way in which a speech sound is produced to discover which vocal organs are involved and how they coordinate in the process. (2)Auditory phonetics, the branch of phonetic research from the hearer’s point of view, looking into the impression which a speech sound makes on the hearer as mediated by the ear , the auditory nerve and the brain. (3)Acoustic phonetics: the study of the physical properties of speech sounds, as transmitted between mouth and ear.

Most phoneticians, however, are interested in articulatory phonetics.

1.29.How are the vocal organs formed?

The vocal organs (see Figure1, Hu Zhuanglin et al.,p41), or speech organs, are organs of the human body whose secondary use is in the production of speech sounds. The vocal organs can be considered as consisting of three parts; the initiator of the air-stream, the producer of voice and the resonating cavities.

1.30.What is place of articulation?

It refers to the place in the mouth where, for example, the obstruction occurs, resulting in the utterance of a consonant. Whatever sound is pronounced, at least some vocal organs will get involved,e. g. lips, hard palate etc., so a consonant may be one of the following (1 )bilabial:[p,b,m]; (2) labiodental:[f,v]; (3) dental:[,]; (4) alveolar:[t,d,l,n.s,z]; (5) retroflex; (6) palato-alveolar:[,]; (7) palatal:[j]; (8) velar[k,g,]; (9) uvular; (10)glottal:[h].

Some sounds involve the simultaneous use of two places of articulation. For example, the English [w]has both an approximation of the two lips and that two lips and that of the tongue and the soft palate, and may be termed “labial-velar”.

1.31.What is the manner of articulation?

The “manner of articulation” literally means the way a sound is articulated. At a given place of articulation, the airstream may be obstructed in various ways, resulting in various manners of articulation, are the following : (1) plosive:[p,b,t,d,k,g]; (2) nasal:[m,n,]; (3) trill; (4) tap or flap; (5) lateral:[l]; (6) fricative:[f,v,s,z]; (7) approximant:[w,j]; (8) affricate:[].

1.32.How do phoneticians classify vowels?

Phoneticians, in spite of the difficulty, group vowels in 5 types: (1) long and short vowels, e.g.,[i:,]; (4) rounded and unround vowels,e.g.[,i]; (5) pure and gliding vowels, e.g.[I,].

1.33.What is IPA? When did it come into being ?

The IPA, abbreviation of “International Phonetic Alphabet”, is a compromise system making use of symbols of all sources, including diacritics indicating length, stress and intonation, indicating phonetic variation. Ever since it was developed in 1888, IPA has undergone a number of revisions.

1.34.What is narrow transcription and what is broad transcription?

In handbook of phonetics, Henry Sweet made a distinction between “narrow” and “broad” transcriptions, which he called “Narrow Romic”. The former was meant to symbolize all the possible speech sounds, including even the most minute shades of pronunciation while Broad Romic or transcription was intended to indicate only those sounds capable of distinguishing one word from another in a given language.

1.35.What is phonology? What is difference between phonetics and phonology?

(1)“Phonology” is the study of sound systems- the invention of distinctive speech sounds that occur in a language and the patterns wherein they fall. Minimal pair, phonemes, allophones, free variation, complementary distribution, etc., are all to be investigated by a phonologist.

(2)Phonetics, as discussed in I.28, is the branch of linguistics studying the characteristics of speech sounds and provides methods for their description, classification and transcription. A phonetist is mainly interested in the physical properties of the speech sounds, whereas a phonologist studies what he believes are meaningful sounds related with their semantic features, morphological features, and the way they are conceived and printed in the depth of the mind phonological knowledge permits a speaker to produce sounds which from meaningful utterances, to recognize a foreign “accent”, to make up new words, to add the appropriate phonetic segments to from plurals and past tenses, to know what is and what is not a sound in one’s language.

1.36.What is a phone? What is a phoneme? What is an allophone?

A “phone” is a phonetic unit or segment. The speech sounds we hear and produce during linguistic communication are all phones. When we hear the following words pronounced:[pit], [tip], [spit], etc., the similar phones we have heard are [p] for one thing, and three different[p]’s, readily making possible the “narrow transcription or diacritics”. Phones may and may not distinguish meaning. A “phoneme” is a phonological unit; it is a unit that is of distinctive value. As an abstract unit, a phoneme is not any particular sound, but rather it is represented or realized by a certain phone in a certain phonetic context. For example, the phoneme[p] is represented differently in [pit], [tip] and [spit].

The phones representing a phoneme are called its “allophones”, i. e., the different (i.e., phones) but do not make one word so phonetically different as to create a new word or a new meaning thereof. So the different[p]’s in the above words are the allophones of the same phoneme[p]. How a phoneme is represented by a phone, or which allophone is to be used, is determined by the phonetic context in which it occurs. But the choice of an allophone is not random. In most cases it is rule-governed; these rules are to be found out by a phonologist.

1.37.What are minimal pairs?

When two different phonetic forms are identical in every way except for one sound segment which occurs in the same place in the string , the two forms(i. e., word) are supposed to form a “minimal pair”, e.g., “pill” and “bill”, “pill” and “till”, “till” and “dill”, “till” and “kill”, etc. All these words together constitute a minimal set. They are identical in form except for the initial consonants. There are many minimal pairs in English, which makes it relatively easy to know what are English phonemes. It is of great importance to find the minimal pairs when a phonologist is dealing with the sound system of an unknown language(see Hu Zhuanglin et al., pp65-66).

1.38.What is free variation?

If two sounds occurring in the same environment do not contrast; namely, if the substitution of one for the other does not generate a new word form but merely a different pronunciation of the same word, the two sounds then are said to be in “free variation”. The plosives, for example, may not be exploded when they occur before another plosive or a nasal (e. g., act, apt, good morning). The minute distinctions may, if necessary, be transcribed in diacritics. These unexploded and exploded plosives are in free variation. Sounds in free variation should be assigned to the same phoneme.

1.39.What is complementary distribution?

When two sounds never occur in the same environment, they are in “complementary distribution”. For example, the aspirated English plosives never occur after[s], and the unsaturated ones never occur initially. Sounds in complementary distribution may be assigned to the same phoneme. The allophones of[l], for example, are also in complementary distribution. The clear[l] occurs only before a vowel, the voiceless equivalent of[l] occurs only after a voiceless consonant, such as in the words “please”, “butler”, “clear”, etc., and the dark[l] occurs only after a vowel or as a syllabic sound after a consonant, such as in the words “feel”, “help”, “middle”, etc.

1.40.What is the assimilation rule? What is the deletion rule?

(1) The “assimilation rule” assimilates one segment to another by “copying” a feature of a sequential phoneme, thus making the two phones more similar. This rule accounts for the raring pronunciation of the nasal[n] that occurs within a word. The rule is that within a word the nasal consonant[n] assumes the same place of articulation as the following consonant. The negative prefix “in-“ serves as a good example. It may be pronounced as [in], [i] or [im] when occurring in different phonetic contexts: e. g., indiscrete-[ ](alveolar)

inconceivable-[ ](velar)

input-[‘imput](bilabial)

The “deletion rule” tells us when a sound is to be deleted although is orthographically represented. While the letter “g” is mute in “sign”, “design” and “paradigm”, it is pronounced in their corresponding derivatives: “signature”, “designation” and “paradigmatic”. The rule then can be stated as: delete a [g] when it occurs before a final nasal consonant. This accounts for some of the seeming irregularities of the English spelling (see Dai Weidong ,pp22-23).

1.41.What is suprasegmental phonology? What are suprasegmental features?

“Suprasegmental phonology” refers to the study of phonological properties of linguistic units larger than the segment called phoneme, such as syllable, word and sentence.

Hu Zhuanglin et al.,(p,73) includes stress, length and pitch as what they suppose to be “principal suprasegmental features”, calling the concurrent patterning of three “intonation”. Dai Weidong(pp23-25) lists three also, but they are stress, tone and intonation.

1.42.What is morphology?

“Morphology” is the branch of grammar that studies the internal structure of words, and the rules by which words are formed. It is generally divided into two fields: inflectional morphology and lexical/derivational morphology.

1.43.What is inflection/inflexion?

“Inflection” is the manifestation of grammatical relationships through the addition of inflectional affixes, such as number, person, finiteness, aspect, and case, which does not change the grammatical class of the items to which they are attached.

1.44.What is a morpheme? What is an allomorph?

The “morpheme” is the smallest unit in terms of relationship between expression and content, a unit which cannot be divided without destroying or drastically altering the meaning, whether it is lexical or grammatical. The word “boxes”, for example, has two morphemes: “box” and “-es”, neither of which permits further division or analysis if we don’t wish to sacrifice meaning. Therefore a morpheme is considered the minimal unit of meaning.

Allomorphs, like allophones vs. phones, are the alternate shapes (and thus phonetic forms) of the same morphemes. Some morphemes, though, have no more than one invariable form in all contexts, such as “dog”, “cat”, etc. The variants of the plurality “-s” make the allomorphs thereof in the following examples: map-maps, mouse-mice, sheep-sheep etc.

1.45.What is a free morpheme? What is a bound morpheme?

A “free morpheme” is a morpheme that constitutes a word by itself, such as ‘bed”, “tree” ,etc. A “bound morpheme” is one that appears with at least another morpheme, such as “-s” in “beds” , “-al” in “national” and so on. All monomorphemic words are free morphemes. Those polymorphemic words are either compounds (combination of two or more free morphemes )or derivatives (word derived from free morphemes).

1.46.What is a root ? What is a stem? What is an affix?

A “root” is the base form of a word that cannot be further analyzed without total loss of identity. In other words, a “root” is that part of the word left when all the affixes are removed. “Internationalism” is a four-morpheme derivative which keeps its free morpheme “nation” as its root when “ inter-”, “-al” and “-ism” are taken away.

A “stem” is any morpheme or combination of morphemes to which an affix can be added. It may be the same as , and in other cases, different from, a root. For example, in the word “friends” , “friend” is both the root and the stem, but in the word “friendships”, “friendships” is its stem, “friend” is its root. Some words (i. e., compounds ) have more than one root ,e. g., “mailman” , “girlfriend” ,ect.

An “affix” is the collective term for the type of formative that can be used, only when added to another morpheme(the root or stem). Affixes are limited in number in a language, and are generally classified into three subtypes: prefix, suffix and infix, e. g. , “mini-”, “un-”, ect.(prefix); “-ise”, “-tion”, ect.(suffix).

1.47.What are open classes? What are closed classes?

In English, nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs make up the largest part of the vocabulary. They are “open -class words”, since we can regularly add new lexical entries to these classes. The other syntactic categories are, for the most part, closed classes, or closed-class words. The number of them is hardly alterable, if they are changeable at all.

1.48.What is lexicon? What is word? What is lexeme? What is vocabulary? Lexicon? Word? Lexeme? Vocabulary?

“Lexicon”, in its most general sense, is synonymous with vocabulary. In its technical sense, however, lexicon deals with the analysis and creation of words, idioms and collocations. “Word” is a unit of expression which has universal intuitive recognition by native-speakers, whether it is expressed in spoken or written form. This definition is perhaps a little vague as there are different criteria with regard to its identification and definition. It seems that it is hard , even impossible, to define “word” linguistically. Nonetheless it is universally agreed that the following three senses are involved in the definition of “word”, none of which, though, is expected to cope with all the situations: (1)a physically definable unit ,e. g.,[it iz ‘w ](phonological), “It is wonder” (orthographic); (2) the common factor underlying a set of forms (see what is the common factor of “checks”, “checked”, “checking ”, etc.); (3) a grammatical unit(look at (1) again; every word plays a grammatical part in the sentence).

According to Leonard Bloomfield, a word is a minimum free form (compare: a sentence is a maximum free form, according to Bloomfield ). There are other factors that may help us identify words: (1) stability (no great change of orthographic features); (2)relative uninterruptibility (we can hardly insert anything between two parts of a word or between the letters). To make the category clearer we can subclassify words into a few types: (1) variable and invariable words(e. g.,-mats, seldom-?); (2) grammatical and lexical words(e. g. to, in ,etc., and table, chair, ect. By “lexical words” we mean the words that carry a semantic content, e.g., nouns, verbs, adjectives and many adverbs; (3) closed-class and open-class words(see I.47).

In order to reduce the ambiguity of the term “word” ,the term “lexeme” is postulated as the abtract unit which refers to the smallest unit in the meaning system of a language that can be distinguished from other smaller units. A lexeme can occur in many different forms in actual spoken or written texts. For example, “write” is the lexeme of the following words: “write”, “write”, “wrote”, “writing”, and “written.”

“Vocabulary” usually refers to all words or lexical items a person has acquired about technical or/and untechnical things. So we encourage our students to enlarge their vocabulary. “vocabulary” is also used to mean word list or glossary.

1.49.What is collocation?

“Collocation” is a term used in lexicology by some linguists to refer to the habitual co-occurrences of individual lexical items. For example, we can “read” a “book”; “correct” can narrowly occur with “book” which is supposed to have faults, but no one can “read” a “mistake” because with regard to co-occurrence these two words are not collocates.

1.50.What is syntax?

“Syntax” is the study of the rules governing the ways in which words, word groups and phrases are combined to form sentences in a language, or the study of the interrelationships between sentential elements.

1.51.What is a sentence?

L. Bloomfield defines “sentence” as an independent linguistic form not included by some grammatical marks in any other linguistic from, i. e., it is not subordinated to a larger linguistic form, it is a structurally independent linguistic form. It is also called a maximum free form.

1.52.What are syntactic relations?

“Syntactic relations” refer to the ways in which words, word groups or phrases form sentences; hence three kinds of syntactic relations: positional relations, relations of substitutability and relations of co-occurrence.

“Positional relation”, or “word order”, refers to the sequential arrangement to words in a language. It is a manifestation of a certain aspect of what F. de Saussure called “syntagmatic relations”, or of what other linguists call “horizontal relations” or “chain relations”.

“Relations of substitutability” refer to classes or sets of words substitutable for each other grammatically in same sentence structures. Saussure called them “associative relations”. Other people call them “paradigmatic/vertical/choice relations”.

By “relations of co-occurrence”, one means that words of different sets of clauses may permit or require the occurrence of a word of another set or class to form a sentence or a particular part of a sentence. Thus relations of co-occurrence partly belong to syntagmatic relations and partly to paradigmatic relations.

1.53.What is IC analysis? What are immediate constituents(and ultimate constituents)?

“IC analysis” is a new approach of sentence study that cuts a sentence into two(or more) segments. This kind of pure segmentation is simply dividing a sentence into its constituent elements without even knowing what they really are . What remain of the first cut are called “immediate constituents”, and what are left at the final cut are called “ultimate constituents”. For example, “John left yesterday” can be thus segmented: “John| left | | yesterday”. We get two immediate constituents for the first cut (|), and they are “John” and “left yesterday”. Further split(||) this sentence generates three “ultimate constituents”: “John”, “left ” and “yesterday”.

1.54.What are endocentric and exocentric constructons?

“Endocentric construction” is one whose distribution is functionally equivalent to that of one or more of its constituents, i. e., a word or a group of words, which serves as a definable “centre” or “head”. Usually noun phrases, verb phrases and adjective phrases belong to endocentric types because the constituent items are subordinate to the head. “Exocentric construction”, opposite of endocentric construction, refers to a group of syntactically related words where none of the words is functionally equivalent to the group as whole ;that is to say ,there is no definable centre or head inside the group. Exocentric construction usually includes basic sentence, prepositional phrase, predicate(verb+object) construction, and connective(be+complement) construction.

1.55.What is a subject? A predicate? An object?

In some language, an “subject” refers to one of the nouns in the nominative case, such as “pater” in the following example: “pater filium amat” (put literally in English: the father the son loves). In English, a “grammatical subject” refers to a noun which can establish correspondence with the verb and which can be checked by a tag-question test, e.g., “He is a good cook(, isn’t he?).”

A “predicate” refers to a major constituent of sentence structure in a binary analysis in which all obligatory constituents other than the subject are considered together. e.g., in the sentence “The monkey is jumping ”, “is jumping ” is the predicate.

Traditionally “object” refers to the receiver or goal of an action, and it is further classified into two kinds: direct object and indirect object. In some inflecting languages, an object is marked by case labels: the “accusative case” for direct object, and the “dative case ” for direct object, and the “dative case” for indirect to word order(after the verb and preposition) and by inflections(of pronouns). E .g., in the sentence “John kissed me”, “me” is the object. Modern linguists suggest that an object refers to such an item that it can become a subject in passive transformation.

1.56.What is category?

The term “category” in some approaches refers to classes and functions in its narrow sense, e.g., noun, verb, subject, predicate, noun phrase, verb phrase, etc. More specifically it refers to the defining properties of these general units: the categories of the noun, for example, include number, gender, case and countability ;and of the verb, for example, tense, aspect, voice, etc.

1.57.What is number? What is gender? What is case?

“Number” is a grammatical category used for the analysis of word classes displaying such contrasts as singular, dual, plural, etc. In English, number is mainly observed in nouns, and there are only two forms: singular and plural. Number is also reflected in the inflections of pronouns and verbs.

“Gender” displays such contrasts as “masculine”, “feminine”, “neuter”, or “animate” and “inanimate”, etc., for the analysis of word classes. When word items refer to the sex of the real-world entities, we natural gender(the opposite is grammatical gender).

“Case” identifies the syntactic relationship between words in a sentence. In Latin grammar, cases are based on variations in the morphological forms of the word, and are given the terms “accusative”, “nominative”, “dative”,etc. In English, the case category is realized in three ways: by following a preposition and by word order.

1.58.What is concord? What is government?

“Concord ” may be defined as requirement that the forms of two or more words of specific word classes that stand in specific syntactic relationship with one another shall be characterized by the same paradigmatically marked category or categories, e.g., “man runs”, “men run”. “Government” requires that one word of a particular class in a given syntactic class shall exhibit the form of a specific category. In English, government applies only to pronouns among the variable words ,that is , prepositions and verbs govern particular forms of the paradigms of pronouns according to their syntactic relation with them, e.g. , “I helped him; he helped me.”

1.59.What is a phrase? What is a clause?

A “phrase” is a single element of structure containing more than one word, and lacking the subject-predicate structure typical of “clauses”. Traditionally, it is seen as part of a structural hierachy, falling between a clause and word, e.g., “the three tallest girls” (nominal phrase). There is now a tendency to make a distinction between word groups and phrases. A “word group” is an extension of a word of a particular class by way of modification with its main features of the class unchanged. Thus we have nominal group, verbal group, adverbial group, conjunction group and preposition group.

A “clause” is group of words with its own subject and predicate included in a larger subject-verb construction, namely, in a sentence. Clauses can also be classified into two kinds: finite and non-finite clauses, the latter referring to what are traditionally called infinitive phrase, participle phrase and gerundial phrase. (For “sentence”, see I.51.)

1.60.What is conjoining? What is embedding? What is recursiveness?

“Conjoining” refers to a construction where one clause is co-ordinated or conjoined with another, e. g., “John bought a cat and his wife killed her.” “Embedding” refers to the process of construction where one clause is included in the sentence (or main clause) in syntactic subordination, e.g., “I saw the man who had killed a chimpanzee.” By “recursiveness” we mean that there is theoretically no limit to the number of the embedded clauses in a complex sentence. This is true also with nominal and adverbial clauses, e.g., “I saw the man who killed a cat who…a rat which…that…”

1.61.What is hypotactic relation? What is paratactic relation?

“Hypotactic relation” refers to a construction where constituents are linked by means of conjunction, e.g. “He bought eggs and milk.” “Paratactic relation” refers to constructions which are connected by juxtaposition, punctuation or intonation, e. g., “He bought tea, coffee, eggs and milk” (pay attention to the first three nouns connected without “and”).

1.62.What is semantics?

“Semantics” refers to the study of the communication of meaning through language. Or simply, it is the study of meaning.

1.63.What is meaning?

Though it is difficult to define, “meaning” has the following meaning: (1) an intrinsic property; (2) the connotation of a word; (3) the words put after a dictionary entry; (4) the position an object occupies in a system; (5) what the symbol user actually refers to; (6) what the symbol user should refer to; (7) what the symbol user believes he is referring to; (8) what the symbol interpreter refers to; (9) what the symbol interpreter believes it refers to; (10) what the symbol interpreter believes the user refers to… linguists argued about “meaning of meaning” fiercely in the result of “realism”, “conceptualism/mentalism”, “mechanism”, “contextualism”, “behaviorism”, “functionalism”, etc. (see Hu Zhuanglin et al., pp140-142). Mention ought to be made of the “Semantic Triangle Theory” of Ogden & Richards. We use a word and the listener knows what it refers to because, according to the theory, they have acquired the same concept/reference of the word used and of the object/referent.

1.64.What is the difference­­­­­­­ between meaning, concept, connotation, sense, implication, denotation, notation, reference, implicature and signification?

“Meaning” refers to the association of language symbols with the real word. (2) “Concept” or “notion” is the impression of objects in people’s mind. (3) “connotation” is the implied meaning ,similar to “implication” and “implicature”. (4) “Sense” is the lexical position in which a word finds itself. (5) “Denotation”, like “sense”, is not directly related with objects, but makes the abstract assumption of the real world. (6) “Reference” is the word-object relationship. (7) “Implicature”, in its narrow sense, refers to conversational implicature achieved by intentionally violating one of the four CP maxims (see I.122-123). (8) “Signification”, in contrast with “value”, mean the meaning of situation may not have any communicative value, like “What’s this?”

1.65.What is the Semantic/Semiotic Triangle?

Ogden and Richards presented the classic “Semantic Triangle” as manifested in the following diagram, in which the “symbol” or “form” refers to the linguistic elements (word, sentence, etc.), the “referent” refers to the object in the world of experience, and “thought” or “reference” refers to concept or notion. Thus, the symbol a word signifies “things” by virtue of the “concept”, associated with the form of the word in the mind of the speaker of the language. The “concept” thus considered is meaning of the word.

1.66.What is contextualism?

“Contextualism” is based on the presumption that one can derive meaning from, or reduce it to, observable context: the “situational context” and the “linguistic context”. Every utterance occurs in a particular spatio-temporal situation, as the following factors are related to the situational context: (1) the speaker and the hearer; (2) the actions they are performing at the time; (3) various external objects and events; (4) deictic features.

The “linguistic context” is another aspect of contextualism. It considers the probability of one word’s co-occurrence or collocation with another, which forms part of the meaning, and an important factor in communication.

1.67.How many kinds of meaning did linguists find and study?

C.C.Fries(1952) makes a traditional distinction between lexical meaning and structural meaning. The former is expressed by those “meaningful” parts of speech, such as nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs, and is given in the dictionary associated with grammar. The latter expresses the distinction between the subject and the object of a sentence, oppositions of definiteness, tense the number, and the difference between statements, questions and requests. In a word, “the total linguistic meaning of any utterance consists of the lexical meaning of the separate words plus such structural meaning…”

G. Leech(1981) categorizes seven kinds of meaning, five of which are brought under the “associative meaning” (see the following chart).

Different from the traditional and the functional approach, F.R.Palmer(1981) and J.Lyons(1977) suggest we draw a distinction between sentence meaning and utterance meaning, the former being directly predictable from the grammatical and lexical features of the sentence, while the latter includes all the various types of meaning not necessarily associated thereto.

1.68.What is synonymy?

“Synonymy” is used to mean sameness or close similarity of meaning. Dictionary makers (lexicographers) rely on the existence of synonymy for their definitions. Some semanticians maintain, however, that there are no real synonyms, because two or more words named synonyms are expected without exception to differ from one another in one of the following aspects:

(1) In shades of meaning (e.g., finish, complete, close, conclude, terminate, finalize, end, etc.);

(2) In stylistic meaning (see 1.67);

(3) In emotive meaning (or affective meaning, see 1.67);

(4) In range of use (or collocative meaning, see 1.67);

(5) In British and American English usages [e.g., autumn (BrE), fall (AmE)].

Simeon Potter said,“ Language is like dress. We vary our dress to suit the occasion. We do not appear at a friend’s silver-wedding anniversary in gardening clothes, nor do we go punting on the river in a dinner-jacket.” This means the learning lf synonyms is important to anyone that wishes to use his language freely and well.

1.69.What is Antonymy? How many kinds of antonyms are there?

The term “antonymy” is used for oppositions of meaning; words that stand opposite in meaning are called “antonyms”, or opposites, which fall in there categories:(1)gradable antonyms(e.g, good-bad); (2)complementary antonyms(e.g., single-mar-ried); (3)relational antonyms(e.g., buy-sell).

1.70.What is hyponymy? What is a hyponym? What is superordinate?

“Hyponymy” involves us in the notion of meaning inclusion. It is a matter of class membership. That is to say, when X id a kind of Y, the lower term X is the “hyponym”, and the upper term Y is the “superordinate”. Two or more hyponyms sharing the same one superordinate are called “co-hyponyms”. For example, “flower” is the superordinate of “tulip”, “violet” and “rose”, which are the co-hyponyms of “flower”.

1.71.What is polysemy? What is homonymy?

“Polysemy” refers to the semantic phenomenon that a word may have than one meaning. For example, “negative”, means(1)a statement saying or meaning “no”, (2)a refusal or denial, (3)one of the following words and expressions: no, not, nothing, never, not at all, etc. ,(4) a negative photograph or film. But we can sometimes hardly tell if a form has several meanings or it is a different word taking this form; hence the difference between polysemy and homonymy.

1.72.What is entailment?

“Entailment” can be illustrated by the following two sentences, with Sentence A entailing Sentence B:

A: He married a blonde heiress.

B: He married a blonde.

In terms of truth value, the following relationships exist between these two sentences:(1) When A is true, B is necessarily true;(2) When B is false, too;(3) when A is false, B may be true or false ;(4) When B is true, A may be true or false. Entailment is basically a semantic relation or logical implication, but we have to assume co-reference of “He” in sentence A and sentence B, before we have A entail B.

1.73.What is presupposition?

Similar to entailment, “presupposition” is a semantic relationship or logical connection. The above-mentioned “When phrase No.1”is also true with presupposition. For example:

A: The girl he married was an heiress.

B: He married a girl.

But there is an important difference: Presupposition is not subject to negation, i.e., when A is false, B is still true. Other statements about the truth value in presupposition are:(1) When B is true, A can either be true or false;(2) When B is false, A has no truth value at all. Presupposition does not have to be found between two propositions. An example in point is :“ When did you stop beating your wife?” This presupposes that he has been beating his wife.

1.74.What is componential analysis?

“Componential analysis” defines the meaning of a lexical element in terms of semantic components. For example, we may “clip” the following words “Man”, “Woman”, “Boy” and “Girl” so that we have only separate parts of them.

Man: +Human+Adult+Male

Woman:+Human+Adult-Male

Boy:+Human-Adult+Male

Girl:+Huamn-Adult-Male

1.75.What is predication analysis? What is a one-place predicate? What is a two-place predicate? What is a no-place predicate? What are down-graded predications?

“Predication analysis” is a new approach for sentential meaning analysis. “Predication” is usually considered an important common category shared by propositions, questions, commands, etc. Predication is to break down the sentence into their smaller constituents: argument (logical participant) and predicate (relation element). The “predicate” is the major or pivotal element governing the argument. We may now distinguish a “two-place predicate” (which governs two arguments, e.g., subject and object), a “one-place predicate” (which governs one argument, i.e., subject) and a “no-place predicate” that has simply no argument(no real subject or object).

1.76.What is a logical operator?

(1)“Logical operator ” make only one kind of the “logical factors” or “logical means”, others being “definiteness”, “ coreference ”, “tense” and “time”, since predication is not the whole of a sentence or proposition. All these factors play a part in prepositional actualization of the predication ---the pining of a predication down a claim about reality.

(2)Example of logical operators are “not”, “and”, “or”, “some”, “if”, “false”, etc. The term “logical operation” reflects the fact that these meaning elements are often thought of as performing operations, controlling elements of the semantic system, so to speak.

1.77.Why is writing important? Why is speech considered prior to writing?

(1)Language can take the form of speech or writing, the former using sound as medium and the latter employing visual symbols. No one could tell when mankind first spoke; nor could people tell when mankind developed the first writing. A writing system consists of a graphemes plus characteristic features of their use, resulting in the diversion of the writing forms; word writing, syllabic writing and sound writing.

(2)It is widely considered that speech is the primary medium, and writing the secondary medium. But this comparative diminution does not mean that writing is unimportant. With the shot-lived memory and the finite capacity of information storing, writing is used, partly for compensation and partly for better communication. We cannot trust the negotiation counterpart so we turn to the writing and signing of an agreement. Writing leads people to the acme of science, study and research, and to the ultimate joy of literature

1.78.What is a pictogram? What is an ideogram?

(1)A “pictogram” refers to an inscription representing the features of a physical object. The Hebrew and the Chinese orthography still reflects traces of their pictorial origin. For instance, the letter “a” (aleph) imitates the head of an ox and the letter “b” (beth) imitates a horse. And “niú”, “mǎ”, “hǔ”and hundreds more of Chinese words derived from, and still keep the pictorial resemblance to, the shapes of the things or objects.

(2)The advantage of pictograms is that they can be easily understood by anyone. That explains why international road signs and public-toilet signs make a wide use of them.

An “ideogram” means an idea picture or idea writing. In order to express the attribute of an object or concepts associated with it, the pictogram’s meaning had to be extended. For instance, a picture of the sun does not necessarily represent the object itself, but connotes “warmth”, “heat”, “light”, “daytime”, etc. In spite of its disadvantages, the later form of ideograms turned out to be linguistic symbols, symbols for the sounds of these objects. The process is called the “Rebus Principle” indicating that writing is like a riddle composed of words or syllables depicted by symbols or pictures that suggest the sound of the words or syllables they represent.

1.79.What is word writing? What is sound writing? What is syllabic writing?

(1)Word writing refers to the writing system based on ideograms and/or pictograms, like Chinese (see 1.78). “Sound writing ” or “alphabetic writing”, which dominates the world, derived form the Latin alphabet with mild adjustments. Most of the European alphabets belong to the sound writing system, e.g., Spanish, German, French, English, etc.

(2)“Syllabic writing” is a word-syllabus writing, developed by the Egyptians. Japanese is a typical syllabic-writing language, though derived from Chinese, a Sino-Tibetan language. The Japanese modified the Chinese characters they had borrowed from ancient China so that the Japanese syllables(to the number of fifty) were each represented, either by what is called “hiragana” or by what is name “katakana”.

1.80.What is an alphabet? What is a syllabary?

An “alphabet” refers to the letters or signs representing speech sounds used in writing a language , arranged in a conventional order. A “syllabary” refers to a set or table or system of written characters representing syllables rather than individual sounds.

1.81.What is a grapheme? What is orthography?

(1)A “grapheme” is the minimal constructive unit in the writing system of a language. The English grapheme A is represented by A,α,a etc.

(2)Orthography means correct spelling, spelling rules or attempts to improve spelling.

1.82.What is reference?

“Reference”, as far as writing is concerned, means that in a sound writing system the graphemes and the phonemes are expected to build up and to keep up co-reference. For instance, the Reference of the English grapheme B generally is “b” and that of the grapheme X is “ks”. The problem with reference is that more than one phoneme can be represented by one single letter or grapheme. The grapheme O, for example, can represent its its different corresponding phonemes as in: so [], money [], together [], sob [].

For reference used in the sense of “sense” or “meaning”, place refer back to 1.64.

1.83.What is affixation, conversion and compounding?

(1)”Affixation” is the morphological process whereby grammatical of lexical information is added to the base (root or stem). It has been the oldest and the most productive word-formation method in the English language and some other European languages. “Prefixation” means addition of a prefix to make a new word, while “suffixation” means adding a suffix to a word. The word “unfaithful” is result of both prefixation and suffixation.

(2)“Conversion” (called sometimes “full conversion”) is a word-formation process by which a word is altered from one part of speech into another without the addition (or deletion) of any morpheme. “Partial conversion” is also alteration when a word of one word-class appears in a function which is characteristic of another word-class, e.g., “ the wealthy” (=wealthy people).

(3)”Compounding” is so complex a word-formation process as far as English is concerned that there is no formal criterion that can be used for the definition of it, though it may mean simply that two words or more come together used as one lexical item, like “dustbin”.

1.84.What is blending, abbreviation and back formation?

(1)”Blending” is a relatively complex form of compounding in which two roots are blended by joining the initial part of the first root and the final part of the second root, or by joining the initial parts of the two roots, e.g., smog→smoke+fog, boatel→boat+hotel, etc.

(2)”Abbreviation”, also called in some cases “clipping”, means that a word that seems unnecessarily long is shortened, usually by clipping either the front or the back part of it, e.g., telephone→phone, professor→prof., etc.

Broadly speaking, abbreviation includes acronyms that are made up from the first letters of the long name of an organization, e.g., World Bank→WB, European Economic Community→EEC, etc. Other examples of acronyms can be found with terminologies, to be read like one word, e.g., radio detecting and ranging→radar []. Test of English as a Foreign Language→TOEFL [], etc.

(3)“Back-formation” refers to an abnormal type of word-formation where a shorter word is derived by detecting an imagined affix from a longer form already present in the language. It is a special kind of metanalyais, combined with analogical creation (see 1.85), e.g., editor→edit, enthusiasm→enthuse, etc.

1.85.What is analogical creation? What is borrowing?

The process of “analogical creation”, as one of the English tendencies in English word-formation, refers to the phenomenon that a new word or a new phrase is coined by analogy between a newly created one and an existing one. For example, “marathon” appeared at the First Olympic Games and by analogy modern English created such words as “telethon”, “talkthon”, etc. Analogy may create single words(e.g., sunrise-moonrise, earthrise, etc.; earthquake-starquake, youthquake, etc.) and phrases( e.g., environmental pollution-sound pollution, air pollution, cultural pollution,etc.).

“Borrowing” means the English language borrowed words from foreign languages, which fall in four categories: aliens, denizens, translation-loans and semantic borrowings.

“Aliens” are foreign loans that still keep their alien shapes, i. e., morphological and phonological features, e.g., “elite”, “coup détat”, “coupé”, etc.(from French). “Deniens” , also foreign words, have transformed their foreign appearance, i.e., they have been Angolcized (or Americanized), e. g., “get” (a Scandinavian borrowing), “theater” (a French loan), etc. “Hybrids” are also denizens, because they are words made up of two parts both from foreign soil, such as “sociology” (“socio-” from French and -logy from Greek).

“Translation-loans” are words imported by way of translation, e. g., “black humor” from French(“humor noir”), “found object” form French ,too (“object trouve”), etc. Finally, semantic borrowings have acquired new meaning under the influence of language or languages other than the source tongue. For example, “gift” mean “the price of a wife ” in Old English (450-1150AD), and after the semantic borrowing of the meaning of “gift or present” of the Scandinavian term “gipt”, it meant and still means “gift” in the modern sense of it.

1.86.What is assimilation, dissimilation and metathesis?

“Assimilation” refers to change of a sound as the result of the influence of an adjacent sound, which is called “contact” or “contiguous” assimilation. The assimitative processes at word in language could be explained by the “theory of least effort” ,i.e., in speaking we tend to exert as little effort as possible so that we do not want to vary too often places of articulation in uttering a sequence of sounds. Assimilation takes place in quick speech very often. In expressions such as “immobile” , “illegal”, etc., the negative prefixes should be or have been “in-” etymologically.

“Dissimilation”, opposite of assimilation, is the influence exercised by one sound segment upon the articulation of another sound, so that the sounds become less alike than expected. As there are two[r] sounds in the Latin word “peregrines”, for instance, the first segment had to dissimilate into[l], hence the English word “pilgrim”.

“Metathesis” is a process involving an alteration in the sequence of sounds. Metathesis had originally been a performance error, which was overlooked and accepted by the speech community. For instance, the word “bird” was “bird” in Old English. The word “ask” used to be pronounced [ask] in Old English, as still occurs in some English dialects.