Chapter 6 Semantics
Semantics: it is generally defined as the study of inherence or intrinsic meaning, the meaning in isolation from the context.
The naming theory:命名论 it is one of the oldest notions concerning meaning proposed by Plato, which holds the view that the relationship between linguistic forms and what they stand for is one of naming. Its defaults: firstly, the theory seems applicable to nouns only. Secondly, even within the category of nouns, there are nouns which denote things that do not exist in the real world at all or things that do not refer to physical objects, but abstract notions. Finally, some words may have different meanings in different contexts while the same reference may have different names such as “the morning star” and “the evening star”
The conceptualist theory : 意念论C. K .Ogden Richard created the semantic triangle to show the indirect relationship between symbols and their supposed referents.
Symbol: it refers to the linguistic elements such as word or sentence.
Referent: it refers to the object in the world of experience.
Context: it refers to what comes before and after a word, phrase, statement, etc. helping to fix the meaning; or refers to circumstances in which an event occurs.
Contextualism : 情境论、语境论 John Firth
Situational context: it refers to the particular spatiotemporal situation in which an utterance occurs, the main components of which include, apart from the place and time of the utterance, the speaker and the hearer, the actions they are performing at the time, the various objects and events exists in the situation.
The linguistic context: sometimes known as context, it includes a word’s co-occurrence or collocation with another word, which forms part of the “meaning” of a word, and, also the part of text that precedes and follows a particular utterance. For example, the meaning of the word “paper” differs in the two collocations of “a piece of paper” and “a white paper”。Linguistic context also includes the part of text that precedes and follows a particular utterance.
Bloomfiled defined the meaning of a language form as the “situation in which the speaker utters it and the response it calls forth in the hearer”
Behaviorism :行为主义 it is a theory of animal and human learning that only focuses on objectively observable behavior and discount mental activities.
Sense :意义it is the inherent meaning of the linguistic form.
Reference : 所指it is what a linguistic form refers to in the real physical world.
Dialectal synonyms:方言同义词 they are the synonyms used in different
regional dialects such as lift in British English and elevator in American English .
Stylistic synonyms: 语体同义词they are the synonyms differing in style , or degree of formality , such as gentleman/guy. Affective synonyms: 情感同义词they are the synonyms that bear the same meaning but express different emotions of the user, indicating the attitudes or bias of
the
user
toward
what
he
is
talking
about
,such
as
like/love/admire/adore/worship. Collocational synonyms: 用于不同搭配的同义词they are the synonyms differing in their collocations, such as a dole to the unemployment /an offering to the church.
Semantically different synonyms: they are the synonyms differing slightly in what they mean, such as escape/flee.
Polysemy :多义关系 it is a term used in semantic analysis to refer to a lexical item which has more than one meaning.
Radiation :辐射性 it is the semantic process in which the primary meaning stands at the center and the secondary meaning radiates out of it.
Concatenation :连锁型 it is the semantic process in which the meaning of a word moves gradually away from its primary meaning in succession so that the
present meaning seems to have no connection to the primary meaning.
Homonymy:同音、同形异义词 the phenomenon that different words may be identical in sound or spelling or in both is called homonymy.
Homographs: 同形异义they are the words which happen to be the same in spelling, but differ both in sounds and meaning.
Homophones:同音异义 they are the words which happen to be identical in sound, but differ both in spelling and meaning.
Complete homonyms:同音、同形异义 they are the words which happen to be identical both in sound and spelling, but differ in meaning.
Hyponymy: it refers to the sense relation between a more general, more inclusive word and a more specific word. It is concerned with semantic inclusion.
Superordinate:上座标词 it refers to the word which is more general in meaning .
Hyponym : 下义词it refers to the more specific word.
Co-hyponym: it refers to hyponym of the same superordinate.
Gradable antonyms:可分等级反义词 they are the antonyms which differ in terms of degree.
Complementary antonyms：互补反义词 they are non-gradable antonyms which are semantically complementary to each other, therefore, they do not permit degrees of contrast.
Converse antonyms:逆反反义词 they are the antonyms which are interdependent, showing the reversal of a relationship between two entities.
4 Sentence meaning
Sentence meaning: A sentence meaning is abstract, context-independent in contrast to utterance meaning which is concrete and context-dependent.
Entailment(包含关系)：Entailment is basically a semantic relation (or logical implication ). It refers to something that logically follows what is asserted in the utterance.
Presupposition（预设关系）: A presupposition in semantics refers to what is assumed by the speaker and \\or assumed by him to be known to the hearer before he makes the utterance. In a broader sense, presupposition can be defined in ordinary language as any kind of background assumption against which an action, theory, expression or utterance makes sense or is rational.
5 Analysis of Meaning
Componential analysis----a way to analyze lexical meaning
The word man can be analyzed in to a series of semantic features such as [+MAN, +ADULT, +MAN] (+means the presence of a feature while- means the absence of a feature).
Componential analysis（成分分析法）：It is a way proposed by structural semanticists to analyze word meaning, based on the belief that the meaning of a word can be analyzed I to a series of meaning components or semantic features. Contrasts are usually presented in terms of +or -. These feature symbols are usually written in capitalized letters.
Predication analysis (述谓结构分析法)----a way to analyze sentence meaning
Predication（述谓结构）: It is the abstraction of the meaning of a sentence.
Argument(论元\\变元):An argument is a logical participant in a predication, largely identical with the nominal element（s）in a sentence.
Predicate(谓词)：A predicate is something said about an argument or it states the logical relation linking the arguments in a sentence.
Chapter7
Pragmatics语用学
Pragmatics studies the meaning of words in context, analyzing the parts of
meaning that can be explained by knowledge of the physical and social world, and the socio-psychological factors influencing communication, as well as the knowledge of the time and place in which the words are uttered or written.
Context
Situational context(情景语境): It is what speakers know about what they can see around them.
Linguistic context: It is what has been said before in the conversation, the “history” of things said so far.
Social context(社会语境):It is the generally knowledge that most people carry with them in their minds, about areas of life and specific and possibility private knowledge about the history of the speakers themselves.
Entailment
Entailment: An entailment is something that logically follows from what is asserted in an utterance.
Presupposition
Presupposition: Presuppositions are implications that are often felt to be in the background—to be assumed by the speaker to be already known to the addressee.
1：言内行为Locutionary Act
It is the basic and physical act of utterance, or producing a meaningful linguistic expression. This act is concerned with the literal meaning.
2：.言外行为Illocutionary Act
This act involves the specific purpose or real intension that the speakers have in mind.
3：.言后行为 Perlocutionary Act
It is the act of an utterance on the hearer; it is the hearer reaction.
4：.会话含义Conversational implicatures
According to P.Grice, it refers to the extra meaning not contained in the utterance, understandable to the listener only when he shares the speaker’s knowledge or knows why and how he violates intentionally one of the four maxims of the CP.
5：礼貌原则 Politeness principle
It is series of maxims, proposed by Geoffrey Leech as a way of explaining how politeness op aerates in conversational exchanges. Leech defines politeness as
forms of behavior that establish and maintain comity. That is the ability of participants in a social interaction to engage in interaction in an atmosphere of relative harmony.
6::合作原则Cooperative Principle
It’s proposed and formulated by P.Grice, a pragmatic hypothesis, is about that the participants must first of all be willing to cooperate, otherwise, it would not be possible for them to carry on the talk.
合作原则的准则4Maxim of Cooperative Principle
数量 the maxim of Quantity你说的话应包含所需内容且不可超过内容要求
Make your contribution as informative as required;
Do not make your contribution more informative than is required
质量the maxim of Quality -----不要说你认为是假的话或你缺乏足够证据的话
Do not say what you believe to false.
Do not say for which you lack adequate evidence
关系 the maxim of relation-----使你的话与话题相关be relevant
方式 the maxim of manner-----避免模糊、歧义，应简明有序
Avoid obscurity of expression and ambiguity;
Be brief/be orderly.
Chapter8
:.言语社区Speech Community
It refers to a group of people who form a community and share at least one speech variety as well as similar linguistic norms.
Language varieties（语言变体）: Variety is a generic term for a particular coherent form of language in which specific extra linguistic criteria can be used to define it as a variety.
Register（语域）: it is the situational use of language, a variety used for a particular purpose or in a particular setting.
Dialect: it refers to any regional, social or ethnic variety of a language.
Regional dialect: it refers to the language variety used in a geographical region..
Received Pronunciation（标准发音）: Received Pronunciation is the supposed
acceptable standardized pronunciation of the middle 20th century .It is a non-localized accent, which enjoys high prestige and has become a marker of upper class.
Sociolect: it refers to the linguistic variety characteristic of a particular social class. It’s also called social dialect.
Genderlect: it is a variety of speech or conversational used by a particular gender.
Hedges: hedges are the words whose meaning implicitly involves fuzziness and whose job is to make things fuzzier or less fuzzy.
Fillers: fillers are those words or phrases that we put into speeches to fill the gaps when we’re nervous or when we are at a loss for words, like um, ya’know, or soooooo
Age dialect: the varieties of language according to age are called age dialect. Age dialect is not a distinct entity. In talking about age dialect, we are talking about the correlation between the use of certain linguistic forms and age groups. In that sense, age dialect is a matter of proportion.
Ethnic dialect: it is a dialect used by a racial or national group. It is mainly spoken by a less privileged population that has experience some form of social isolation such as racial to discrimination or segregation.
Standard dialect（标准方言）: it is a superimposed, socially prestigious dialect of a language that has been given either legal or quasi-legal status. It is the language employed by the government and used by the mass media, and taught in educational institutions, including school setting where the language is taught as a foreign or second language.
Register（语域）: it refers to varieties according to the use of language.
Field(语场): it refers to what is going on and to the area of operation of the language activity.
Tenor(语旨): it refers to the relations between the participants.
Mode: it refers to the means of communication.
Pidgin（洋泾浜语）: it refers to a contact language that arises in situations where speakers of different languages cannot understand each other’s first language or native language and, thus, need to develop a common means of communication.
Pidginization: it is a process which generally involves the simplification of a language in order to create a pidgin.
Creoles（克利奥尔
语）:Creoles are former pidgins whose functional and grammatical limitations and simplification have been eliminated and which now function as fully fledged, sta
ndardized native languages.
Creolization: The process whereby a pidgin turns into a Creole is called creolisation. It involves the expansion of linguistic system of a pidgin and the increase in the number of its functions in daily communication.
Lingua France（通用
语）: A lingua franca is defined as a language which is used habitually by people whose mother tongues are different in order to facilitate communication between them.
Chapter9
Discourse communities: The common ways in which members of a social group use language to meet their social needs.
linguistic determinism语言决定论：It posits that language determines the way we think, or in other words, we actually live in language instead of other way round
icon: image, picture or representation.
Sign: a linguistic unit; it unites a concept and a sound-image. Metaphor: a device for seeing something in terms of something else. Discourse: This term, with a capital D, coined by linguist James Gee, refers to ways of speaking, reading and writing, but also of behaving, interacting, thinking, valuing, that are characteristic of specific discourse communities.
discourse: The process of language use, whether it be spoken, written or printed, that includes writers, texts, and readers within a sociocultural context of meaning production and reception.
Charades：Charades is a fun game to play with your friends and family at home, at parties or on camping trips! Charades are basically words or phrases that are acted out in pantomime (without saying any words or making any sounds). Charades can also have subjects like the title of a book, movie or show that is acted out. Charades are usually played with two teams. Each team draws cards that have the word or phrase they are going to act out. The other team tries to guess what is being acted out.
Stereotype刻板印象: Conventionalized ways of talking and thinking about other people and cultures.
Chapter10
The father of Behaviorism: John B. Watson “give me a child, and I’ll make him anything you want him to be”
Behaviorism: It is described as a developmental theory that measures observable behaviors produced by a learner’s response to stimuli. Responses to stimuli can be reinforced with positive or negative feedback to condition desired behaviors. The behaviorist theory is a psychological model defining behavior as something that is conditioned or instilled. It states that humans are products of their environments and all behaviors are positively reinforced, negatively reinfrced,or published.
Innatism: It is a philosophical doctrine that holds that the mind is born with
ideas/knowledge, and that therefore the mind is not a“blank slate” at birth, as early empiricists such as John Locke claimed. It asserts therefore that not all knowledge is obtained from experience and the senses.
Interactionism(互动主义):It is micro-sociological and believes that meaning is produced through the interactions of individuals. The social interaction is a face-to-face process consisting of actions, reactions, and mutual adaptation between two or more individuals. The interaction includes all languages (including body language) and mannerism.
Interlanguage: It is the learner’s developing second language knowledge. It may have characteristics of the learner’s native language, characteristics of the second language, and some characteristics which seem to be very general and tend to occur in all or most interlanguage systems. Interlanguages are systematic, but they are also dynamic, continually evolving as learners receive more input and revise their hypotheses about the second language. L2 learners process through an interlanguage, which is an independent knowledge of L1 and L2 system.
Acquisition: It is the process of taking in information without making conscious effort.
Learning: It is the process of taking in information with conscious effort and attention to the task in hand.
Competence: It refers to a speaker’s knowledge of his language as manifest in his ability to produce and to understand a theoretically infinite number of
sentences most of which he may have never seen or heard before.
Performance: It refers to the specific utterances, including grammatical mistakes and non-linguistic features like hesitations, accompanying the use of language.
Universal grammar: Universal grammar is a theory of linguistics postulating principles of grammar shared by all languages, thought to be innate to humans. It attempts to explain language acquisition in general, not describe specific languages.
Language transfer(语言迁移): It refers to speakers or writers applying knowledge from their native language to a second language. It is most commonly discussed in the context of English language learning and teaching, but it can occur in any situation when someone does not have a native-level command of a language, as when translating into a second language.
Comprehensible input(可理解性输入): It means that students should be able to understand the essence of what is being said or presented to them.
Critical Period Hypothesis(关键期假设): The critical period hypothesis claims that there is an ideal “window” of time to acquire language in a linguistically rich environment, after which this is no longer possible. It is generally assumed that there are different critical periods for different parts of language, e.g. phonology and syntax and that not for all parts of language there is a critical period.
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