1.Descriptive linguistics
Descriptive linguistics describes how a language is actually spoken and/or written, and does not state or prescribe how it ought to be spoken or written.
2.Behaviorism
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. Behaviorism was used by psychologists like Skinner, Osgood, and Staats to explain first language learning, but these explanations were rejected by adherents of generative grammar and many others.
3..Deduction and induction (演绎和归纳)
In composition, two ways of presenting an argument are sometimes contrasted: reasoning by deduction and by induction. Reasoning by deduction proceeds from a generalization to particular facts which support it, whereas reasoning by induction involves moving from particular facts to generalizations about them.
4. Linguistic relativity
A belief which was held by some scholars that the way people view the world is determined wholly or partially by the structure of their native language. As this hypothesis was strongly put forward by the American anthropological linguists Sapir and Whorf, it has othen been called the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis or Whorfian Hypothesis. In recent years, study of the relationships
between cognition and linguistic expression has been revived in a more subtle form within cognitive linguistics.
The point of Sapir-Whorf’s linguistic relativity is that the categories and distinctions encoded in one language system are unique to that system and incommensurable (不相容) with those of others. Whorf said that the linguistic system(grammar) is part of the background knowledge of mankind. This background is something that people take for granted and therefore are not conscious of. Only when something abnormal happens can we become aware of the background phenomena. The background linguistic system is not merely a reproducing instrument for voicing ideas but rather is itself the shaper of the ideas, the program and guide for the individual’s mental activity (心理活动). The process in which ideas are formed is not an independent one, but is part of a particular grammar and differs between different grammars to varying degrees. Instead of using languages to represent what is already given in nature, everyone dissects (切分) the natural world and organizes events according to the framework provided by his native language. Only a common agreement (共同认可) enables speakers of a language to dissect and organize the natural world in a particular way. Without this kind of agreement, human beings cannot talk and understand each other. Linguistic relativity derives from Saussure’s theory of the arbitrary nature of the sign, meaning that a signifier bears no logical or intrinsic relationship to its signified, and that the signifieds themselves are arbitrary. But the general fact about human languages is that not only is a language free to choose signifiers, it can also make arbitrary selections of signifieds.
Whorf claimed that the perceptual events (感知事件) that
people experience can be very different from those experienced by speakers of other languages standing beside us. For example, when people look at the rainbow, most English speakers see red, orange, yellow, green, blue and purple. But Whorf said that the color people perceive comes from the color naming influence of the language. Some languages do not divide the colors into the same number of basic categories. One language may not distinguish between
green and blue, and the speakers of that language will not describe the rainbow in the same way the English speakers do.
5.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. Sapir said that human beings do not live in the objective world alone, nor do they live alone in the world of social activity as ordinarily understood. Instead, they are greatly influenced by the particular language serving as the medium of expression for their society. The “real world” is to a large extent unconsciously built up on the language habits of the group (群体的语言习惯). No two languages are so similar as to represent the same social reality. The worlds in which different societies live are distinct worlds, not merely the same world with different labels attached. Language not only refers to experience acquired independently of language. It actually defines our experience.
Whorf presented his evidence mainly from his comparisons between the Hopi language and English. He argued that in English and other European languages words are divided into two major categories: nouns and verbs. This distinction may lead
speakers of English to assume that the world is also divided into two categories: actions and objects. For example, time is a continuum, but speakers of English regard it as something divisible and countable. Thus they have the concepts of “two days”or “three months”. But in Hopi, words are not divided the same way as in English. Instead of saying “four days”. They say “dayness (白昼) the fourth time or “the fourth dayness”. And instead of saying “Ten days is greater than nine days, they say “The tenth day is later than the ninth”.
6.Positivism (实证主义)
a philosophical movement that began in the early 19th century, characterized by an emphasis on the scientific method as the only source of knowledge and a desire to rebuild society on the basis of “positive” knowledge. As a variation of empiricism, among the basic ideas of positivism ar e the idea that the world is orderly, that all natural phenomena have natural 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 d egree of positivism characterizes most “scientific” approaches to understanding all phenomena, including language learning. Logical positivism is a specific type of positivism that rejects as meaningless all statements that cannot be empirically verified.
7.Morpheme (语素)
the smallest meaningful unit in a language. A morpheme cannot be divided without altering or destroying its meaning. For example, the English word “kind” is a morpheme. If the d is removed, it changes to kin which has a different meaning. Some words consist of one morpheme, e.g. kind, others of more than one. For example, the English word “unkindness” consists of
three morphemes: the stem kind, the negative prefix un-, and the noun-forming suffix–ness. Morpheme 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.
8.Discourse analysis (话语分析)
the study of how sentences in spoken and written language form larger meaningful units such as
paragraphs, conversations, interviews, etc. For example, discourse analysis deals with:
How the choice of articles, pronouns, and tenses affects the structure of the discourse;
The relationship between utterances in a discourse;
The Moves made by speakers to introduce a new topic, change the topic, or assert a higher Role Relationship to the other participants.
Analysis of spoken discourse is sometimes called Coversational Analysis. Some linguists use the term Text Linguistics for the study of written discourse.
9.Mentalism
the theory that a human being possesses a mind which has consciousness, ideas, etc., and that the mind can influence the behavior of the body.
10.Semiology/Semiotics
1) the theory of signs. 2) the analysis of systems using signs or signals for the purpose of communication (semiotic systems). The most important semiotic system is human language, but there are other systems, e.g. sign language, traffic signals.
(Saussure’s Legacy: Semiology (符号学)
Saussure is also the father of semiology. Semiology is based
on the assumptions that insofar as (就……而言) human actions convey meaning, insofar as they function as signs, there must be an underlyingg system of conventions and distinctions which make this meaning possible. Where there are signs there are systems. This is what various signifying activities have in common, and if one is to determine their essential nature, one must treat them not in isolation but as examples of semiological systems. In this way, aspects which are often hidden or neglected will become apparent, especially when non-linguistic signifying practices are considered as “language”.
Linguistics may serve as a model for semiology because in the case of language the arbitrary and conventional nature of the sign is especially clear. Non-linguistic signs may often seem natural to those who use them, and it mey require some effort to see that the politeness or impoliteness of an action is not a necessary and intrinsic property of that action but a conventional meaning.
Saussure’s theory of semiology had profound influences, for he not only opened up a new discipline, but also founded a methodology (方法论) applicable to many social sciences. A young science as semiology is, it has proved that the relation between the signifier and the signified exist in numerous phenomena, and that the underlying system that gives special values to social semiotics (符号学/论) is worth studying. It is now realized that many daily happenings that have been taken for granted are governed by underlying customs, institutions, and social values. )
11.Empiricism
an approach to psychology which states that the development of theory must be related to observable facts and
expeiments (see Behaviorism), or which states that all human knowledge comes from experience. Empiricism contrasts with the view that many forms of human knowledge are in-born or innate (see Innatist hypothesis).
12.
(The structuralists follow empiricism in philosophy and behaviorism in psychology.Chomsky follows rationalism in philosophy and mentalism in psychology.)
1.Synchronic and diachronic linguistics
Diachronic linguistics is an approach to linguistics which studies how a language changes over a period of time, for exmple the change in the sound system of English from Early English to Modern English. Diachronic linguistics has been contrasted with synchronic linguistics which is the study of a language system at one particular point in time, for example the sound system of Modern British English.
The need for diachronic and synchronic descriptions to be kept apart was emphasized by the swiss linguist Saussure.
2.Innateness hypothesis (天赋假说)
Also innatist position, innatist hypothesis, nativist position, innateness position, rationalist position
a theory held by some philosophers and linguists which says that human knowledge develops from structures, processes, and “ideas” which are in the mind at birth (i.e. are 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 innatist hypothesis contrasts with the belief that all human knowledge comes from experience.
3.Transformational-generative Grammar
Also transformational grammar, TG grammar, generative-transformational grammar, generative transformational theory
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 transformational generative grammar tries to show, with a system of rules, the knowledge which a native speaker of a language uses in forming grammatical sentences.
Chomsky has changed his theory over the years. The most well-known version was published in his book Aspects of the Theory of Syntax in 1965. It is often referred to as the Aspects Model or Standard Theory. This model consists of four 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.
4.Firth’s system and structure
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.
S Y S
STRUC TURE
T E M
On the grammatical level, some sentences are the same. For example:
John helped Mary. John met Mary. John greeted Mary. John liked Mary.
All these sentences have the “Subject + Verb + Object” structure, where “helped”, “met”, “greeted”, and “liked” are elements of a system of verbs. On the phonological level, for example, the ordering of “pit”, “bed”, “file”, and “vase” are C1 V C2(consonant/vowel), which is structure, and there are three different systems at the same time: (1)/p/, /b/, /f/, /v/; (2) /i/. /e/, /ai/; (3) /t/, /d/, /l/, /s/. Thus Firth pointed out that the system prescribes the position where linguistic elements can occur, i.e. the rules for collocation. The structure is not simply a matter of ordering（词序）, for there are relations of mutual expectancy (预期) between elements.
5.Stimulus—Response theory Also S—R theory
A learning theory associated particularly with the American psychologist B. F. Skinner (1904-1990),
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 is produced as a reaction to a stimulus. Reinforcement is a stimulus which follows the occurrence of a response and affects the probability of that response occurring
or not occurring again. Reinforcement which increases the likelihood of a response is known as positive reinforcement. Reinforcement which decreases the likelihood of a response is known as 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 originally associated this is known as “stimulus generalization”.Learning to distinguish different kinds of stimulus is known as discrimination.
There are several S—R theories which contain these general principles or variations of them, and they have been used in studies of verbal learning and language learning.
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