语言学流派

一、 术语解释

1. 经验主义（empiricism）it is an approach to psychology which states that the development of

theory must be related to observable facts and experiments, or which states that all human knowledge comes from experience. Empiricism contrasts with the view that many forms human knowledge are in-born or innate. 2. 理性主义

3. 行为主义（Behaviorism）it is a theory of psychology which states that human and animal

behavior can and should be studied only in terms of physical processes, without reference to

mind. It led to theories of learning which explained how an external event (a stimulus) caused a change in the behavior of an individual (a response), based on a history of reinforcement. It was used by some psychologists like Skinner to explain first language learning, but these explanations were rejected by adherents of generative grammar and many others.

4. 词素（Morpheme）it is a form that has no phonological commonness with other forms. For

example, “poor John ran away” has 5 morphemes (4 words) “poor” “John” “run” “a ” “way”, which are the ultimate constituents. It is the smallest meaningful unit in a language. A morpheme can’t be divided without altering or desovying its meaning. But it can have grammatical functions. For example, in English the-s in she talks is a grammatical morpheme which shows that the verb is the third person singular present-tense form. 5. 归纳和演绎（Deduction and induction）

Deduction: an idea that you reach about the truth of sth by using information that you already know is true, or the process of reaching that idea.

Induction: a way of reasoning in which you arrive at general ideas by considering particular examples.

In composition, two ways of presenting an argument are sometimes contrasted: reasoning by deduction and by induction. Reasoning by deduction proceeds from a generation to particular facts which support it, where as reasoning by induction involves moving from particular facts to generations about them.

6. 语言相对论（linguistic relativity）It is that the categories and distinctions encoded in one

language system are unique to that system and incommensurable with these of others. And linguistic relativity was strongly put forward by the American linguists Sapir and Whorf that the way people view the world is determined partially by the structure of their native language as Whorf said that the linguistic system is part of the background knowledge of mankind.

7. 语言决定论（linguistic determinism）The point of Sapir-Whorf’s linguistic determinism is that

one’s thinking is completely determined by his native language because one can only perceive

the world in terms of the categories and distinctions encoded in the language. That is to say, the way people view the world is determined wholly by the structure of their native language. Human beings are greatly influenced by the particular language servicing as medium of

expression their society.

8. 话语分析（discourse analysis ）it is the study of how sentence is in spoken and written

language from larger meaningful units such as paragraphs conversations interviews etc. for example, discourse analysis deals with: how the choice of article pronounce and tenses affects the structure of the discourse; the relationship between utterance in discourse; the

moves made by speakers to introduce a new topic, change the topic, or assert a higher Role Relationship to the other participants. It is sometimes called Conversational analysis. 9. 符号学（siminology）it is the theory of science the analysis of system using signs or signals for

the propose of communication(semiotic systems). The most important semiotic system is

human language, but there are other systems, e.g, sign language, traffic signals.

10. 描写语言学（descriptive linguistics）it describes how a language is actually spoken and /or

written, and doesn’t state or prescribe how it ought to be spoken or written. Saussure’s separation of descriptive linguistics and historical linguistic into two defined spheres of interest, earned him the reputation of one of the founders of the structural linguists. 11. 心智主义（mentalism）it is the theory that a human being processes a mind which has

consciousness, ideas etc., and that the mind can influence the behavior of the body. 12. 现实主义（positivism）it is a philosophic movement that began in the early 19 century,

characterized by an emphasis on the scientific method of the only source of knowledge and designs to rebuild society on the bases of “positive knowledge” as a variation of empiricism,

among the basis ideas of positivism are the idea that the world is orderly that all nature phenomenon of nature causes and that nothing is self-evident, but the laws of nature can be discovered through experimentation. Although few people nowadays subscribe to all of these beliefs, some depel of positivism characterizes most “scientific” approaches to understanding all phenomenon, including language learning, logical positivism as a scientific type of positivism that rejects as meaningless all statements that cannot be empirically verified.

二 简答

1. 刺激与反应理论

It is a learning theory associated with B. F. Skinner, which describes learning as the formation of associations between responses. A stimulus is that which produces a change or reaction in

an individual or organism. A response is the behavior which produced as a reaction to stimulus. Reinforcement is a stimulus which follows the occurrence of a response and affects the proporbility of that response occurring or not occurring again. Reinforcement which increases the likelihood of a response is known as positive reinforcement otherwise is called negative reinforcement. If no reinforcement is associated with a response the response may eventually disappear. This is known as extinction. If a response is produced to similar stimuli with which it was not original associated this is known as “stimulus generalization”.

Bloomfield used an example to explicate the S-R theory. Suppose a boy and his girlfriend are taking a walk. The girl is hungry and sees apples on the tree, she makes some sounds and the boy jumps over the fence, climbs up the tree, picks an apple and gives it to the girl, the girl eats it. And the story can be divided into 3 parts: 1. The practical event prior to the act of speech; 2. Speech; 3. The practical event after the act of speech. In 1, the sight of apples on the tree, and her relationship with the boy constitute the speaker’s stimulus. In 3, the boy’s

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practical acts are called the nearer’s reaction. The result of the girl’s act of speech is that she got an apple without having to get it from the tree herself.

2. 天赋假说（The innateness Hypothesis）it is a theory held by some philosophers and linguists

which says that language is somewhat innate and that children are born with what they calls a language acquisition device(LAD),which is a unique kind of knowledge that fits them for

language learning. That is to say, human knowledge develops from structures, processes, and “ideas” which are in the mind at birth (i.e., innate), rather than from the environment, and that there are responsible for the basic structure of language and how it is learned. This hypothesis has been used to explain how children are able to learn language. The innate hypothesis approach to language is a reaction against behaviorism in psychology and empiricism in philosophy, making linguistics a branch of psychology.

According to this view, Chomsky believes children are born with knowledge of the basic grammatical relations and categories, and this knowledge is universal. 1, children learn their native language very fast and with little effort. 2nd, there are other facts that are puzzling if language is not innate. 3rd, the child learns the total grammar of the language during a limited period of time, from limited exposure to speech.

All these suggest that the ability to speak and understand spoken language seems to be a natural human activity.

3. 福斯的系统与结构（J. R. Firth’s System and structure）Firth inherited the tradition by taking

up some of Saussure’s and Malinovski’s views, he carried forward their theories and put forth his own original points of view. Firth regarded language as a social process, as a means of social life, rather than simply as a set of agreed –upon semiotics and signals.

Following Saussure, Firth held that language consists of two elements; system and structure. While structure is the syntagmatic ordering of elements, system is a set of paradigmatic units, each of which can be substituted by others in certain places. Thus, structure is horizontal and system is longitudinal.

On the grammatical level, some sentences are the same, for example:

John helped Mary; John met Mary. All these sentences have the “S+V+O” structure, where “helped”, “met” are elements of a system of verbs. Thus Firth pointed out that the system prescribes the position where linguistic elements can occur, i.e. the rules for collection. The structure is not simply a matter of ordering, for these are relations of mutual expectancy between elements.

4. 共时与历时（Synchrony and Diachrony）The distinction between the synchronic study of

language and diachronic study of language is one of the important contribution of Saussure.

Synchronic approach which is the study of a language system at one particular point in time, while diachronic approach which studies how a language changes over a period of time. For example, we can cut a tree trunk in two ways: the longitudinal cut can stand for the process of evolution for language, while a horizontal cut can symbolize the state of language at a certain time.

Synchronic linguistic deals with the language system proper (itself), and it is more important than diachronic linguistic, which can be studied outside the language system. Without synchronic studies, there can be no diachronic studies. The only method for synchronic linguistic is to collect quantities of data from speakers of a language, and to analyzed the linguistic phenomena in order to determine their reality.

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However, Saussure’s distinction of diachronic linguistic from synchronic linguistics is not largely accepted, because it is not easy to draw a sharp line between these two aspects of language studies. 1. Languages are in a constant state of changing, 2. The language of any speech community is never uniform; 3. When a language changes, it is not the case that one set of features are suddenly replaced by another set of features.

5. 功能主义语境观（functionalist context of situation）Malinovski believed that utterance and

situation are bound up inextricably with each other and the context of situation is

indispensable for the understanding of the words. The meaning of spoken utterance could always be determined by the context of situation. (The meanings are simply the human activities of specific time and place, and meanings come from the activities in which language is used). He distinguished 3 types of context of situation: 1. Situations in which speech interrelates with bodily activity, it means that the meaning of a word is not given by the physical properties of its referent, but by its functions. 2. Narrative situation he believed that narration can change the hearer’s social attitudes and emotions; 3. Situations in which speech is used to fill a speech vacuum-phatic communion, which refers to cases of language used in free, aimless social intercourse.

In Firth’s view, meaning doesn’t simply cover lexical and grammatical meanings, but is a large concept covering the meaning in the context of language use. Firth’s study focus on the context of situation as Malinovski did. He defined the context of situation as including the entire culture setting of speech and the personal history of the participants rather than as simply the context of human activity going on at the moment, Recognizing that sentences are infinitely various, he used the notion of typical context of situation, it means that social situations determine that social rules participants are obliged to play. By context of situation, Firth met a theory of context of situation, each smaller one being embedded into a larger one, to the extent that, all the context of situation play essential parts in the whole of the context of culture.

According to Halidy, “context of situation consists of 3 parts: “field”, “tenor”, and “mode” ”, i.e. field determines the selection of experiential meanings, the tenor determines the selection of interpersonal meanings, and the mode determines the selection of texual meanings. So, Semiotic structure situation Field(type of social action) Tenor(role relationship) Mode(symbolic orgnization)

of Associated with Of semantics Associated with Associated with Associated with experiential interpersonal textual Function component 6. T-G grammar

Transformational generative grammar is also known as TG grammar. It is a theory of grammar

which was proposed by the American linguist Chomsky in 1957. It has since been developed by him and many other linguists. Chomsky attempted to provide a model for the description of all languages. A TG grammar tries to show, with a system of rules, the knowledge which a native speaker of a language uses informing grammatical sentences.

Chomsky has changed his theory over the years. The most well know version was published

in his book Aspects of the Theory of Syntax in 1965. It is often refered to as the aspects model or standard theory. This model consists of 4 main parts:

1. The base component, which produces or generates basic syntactic structures called

deep structures;

2. The transformational component, which changes or transforms these basic structures into sentences called surface structures;

3. The phonological component, which gives sentences a phonetic representation so that they can be pronounced;

4. The semantic component, which deals with the meaning of sentences.