Lecture 10Language Processing in MindIn this section, we shall start a new chapter discussing how our mind works when we use language. We shall learn about the people working in this field and their major studies.0.C lass activity: What is language processing? How does your mind work when you use language?1.T he study of “language and mind”—psycholinguistics2.W hy study psycholinguistics? 心理语言学1)to know about the psychological reality oflinguistic structures;2)to produce findings which lead to themodification of theoretical ideas.3.T he researchers and subjects of this study:1)The study attracts adherents from linguisticsand psychology, though they have different approaches with regard to methodology.2)The subjects are usually:a. Normal adults and children;b. Aphasics 失语症者—people with speechdisorders.4.C urrent issues1)whether human language system is likely tobe “modular” or not: is it co nstituted of a number of separate but interacting components?2)the relationship between structure andprocess; the mind likely contains certain linguistic structures which are utilized in the course of processes (such as comprehending and producing).3)the three major strands: a. comprehension;b. production; andc. acquisition of language.How do people use language and understand what they hear and read? How do they produce messages with language? How is language represented in mind and how is it acquired?5.L anguage Comprehension1)Word recognition processAn initial step in understanding any message is the recognition of words. The meaning of a sentence is determined in part from the meanings of the words forming the sentence.Also, the recognition of a word providesinformation that determines the syntactic structure of the rest of the sentence.2)Recognize lexical ambiguityTwo main theories on recognizing lexical ambiguity: 1) all the meanings associated with the word are accessed; 2) only one meaning is accessed initially (more reasonable).3)Syntactic processingAs with lexical ambiguity, in sentence processing, there are also two alternatives about how people recognize syntactic ambiguity: 1) people either consider all possibilities and decide which is the best; or 2) they use some strategy to decide which structure to consider first. If that structure does not work, they may reconsider. Eg. the “GARDEN PATH” sentence and the comprehension of it. “The horse raced past the barn fell.”4)Basic processes in readinga. Eye movement;b. Perception and the perceptual span;c. Immediacy assumption.6.D iscourse/text interpretationNot exactly the same as sentence comprehension.Context effects occur all the time. What’s more, we often notice that even though we can read every sentence of a passage, we may not understand the passage or make sense of the whole passage.1)Schemata and inference drawing2)Story structuringVan Dijk and Kintsch (1983) proposed “Macrostructure” of a story7.L anguage Production1)Speech productionGarrett (1976) argued that speech production is a much more complex matter than it might appear. According to his model, there are five levels of representation involved in speaking a sentence. Yet his study is not thorough.2)Production of written languageWritten language is different from spoken language in a number of ways and is produced differently. Hayes [heiz] and Flower (1986): writing consists of three inter-related processes: planning, the sentence generation, and revision.8.L anguage acquisitionHot research topic today. Many researches havebeen done. In Chomsky, we have an abstract innate grammar system in mind, and so possess the ability to acquire language. Yet, in acquiring language, social, cultural, personal factors are also observed to be affecting, esp. in SLA. Also people fell to answer why SLA is different from the acquisition of the mother tongue.9.H omework: Exs 2, 4, and 7 (pp 220-221, to be handed in next time).Lecture 11Language, Culture and SocietyThis lecture focuses on the relation between language, culture and society. The teacher will start the class by asking questions related to the topic. From the study, the students will get to know the relations, the theories related to the study, the people contributed to it, and also many examples they can find around them to support what they learn.0.1) Ask the students to hand in their homework. 2) Class activity: What’s the relation betweenlanguage and culture, language and society?Why do we need to study culture andsociety when we study a language?1.T he relation between language and culture There exists a close relationship between language and culture. This is evidenced by the findings of anthropologists such as Malinowski, Firth, Baos,包阿斯Sapir萨皮尔and Whorf 沃尔夫. The study of the relation between language and the context in which it is used is the cultural study of language.1) The study by British scholarsa. Malinowshi, and his findings in Africa--themeaning of a word greatly depends on itsoccurrence in a given context; paved theway for a cultural, or rather a contextualstudy of language use.b. Firth tried to set up a model for illustrating the relation between language use and speaking situation.c. Halliday and his functional approach togrammar. The British study is mainly contextual and functional.2) The study by North American scholarsa. Boas, Sapir, and Whorf. They studiedAmerican Indian languages and realized thesignificance of culture in the study of language use.b. Whorf: A very influential but also extremelycontroversial theory proposed based on the study of the relation between language and culture—the Sapir-Whorf Hypotheses, which is alternatively referred to as Linguistic Determinism (语言决定论) and LinguisticRelativity(语言相对论).（1）Linguistic Determinism: Language may determine our thinking patterns.（2）Linguistic Relativity: a. Similarity between language is relative; b. thegreater their structural differentiation is,the diverse their conceptualization of theworld will be. Some people thought thatsuch view reflects racial discrimination.After all, this is a view first expounded bythe German [e] eth'nologist (人种学家)Wilhelm von Humboldt （冯堡特）.3) Translator’s view of cultureEugene Nida（尤金·奈达）, based on the experience of many years devotion to Bible translation across different languages claimed five types of sub-culture that one should be aware of: 1) ecological culture (eg. the geographical situation for the Bible was different from that of today, and in translation it should be noticed); 2) linguistic culture (eg. the language was not the same as the one we use today, therefore we should not use today’s language to translate ancient writings; 3) religious culture (How do you translate “真主”into English from Arabic language?); 4) material culture (How do you translate our food names into English and English food names into our language?); 5) social culture (the social pattern is different). I shall add one more—political culture. Otherwis e how do you translate our “五讲四美三热爱”、“三个代表”，etc.4) Case studies of the cultural relationKaplan开普兰(1966) studied the relation between structural organization of text anddifferent culture. Eg. Eastern writing pattern is circular, Western pattern is straight-forward, etc.Studies of the idioms and metaphorical uses show that words are “idiomatically-governed” and “culturally-specific”. More and more common expressions become idiomatic or metaphoric.2.T he relation between language and societyThe relationship between language and society became a focus of study in the 1960s, along with the development of socio-linguistics as an opposition to the dominant theory of Chomskyan linguistics which is monistic (一元的) or autonomous（自足的）.1) Situational variations in languagea. Egs of variations in Javaneseb. Lakoff (1991) “You are what you say.” Histhree books on metaphor are “MetaphorsWe Live By” 我们赖以生存的隐喻(1980)with Johnson, “Women, Fire, andDangerous Thing s” (1987), and “Philosophyin the Flesh” Lakoff & Johnson (1999). Ourway of thinking is metaphorical.c. Labov’s study concerns the relation betweenpeople’s social status and their phonologicalvariations/differences.d. The study of gender effects upon one’slinguistic behavior by Lakoff (1973)suggests that there exists a women registerin the language that takes its own features.Linguistic sexism refers to language usesthat indicate status of different sex insociety.2) Types of socio-linguistic studiesSocio-linguistic study of societySocio-linguistic study of language3.H omework: Ex 2 (page 244)Lecture 12The Study of Language in UseThis lecture will focus on the study of language in use. The teacher will start the class by asking questions related to the topic. From the study, the students will get to know what pragmatics is, the related theories, the people contributed to the study, and also many examples that can help them understand what pragmaticuses are.0. Class activities:1) A brief review of the previous lesson.2) Questions: What does language in use mean?Is there any language not in use? What is the study of pragmatics about? Why do we need to study pragmatics?1. The study of language in use--pragmaticsIf we divide meanings into two types, the type of meaning more closely related to the words used, the more constant inherent type of meaning is semantic meaning, which is the concern of semantics while the type of meaning more closely related to context, the more indeterminate type is pragmatic meaning, which is the concern of pragmatic study.Pragmatics is “meaning ” minus “semantics”. 2. The first pragmatic theory--Speech Act Theory Originated with the Oxford philosopher John Austin. His famous book How to Do Things with Words was published in 1962 based on the lectures delivered by him.1) Performatives and constatives—Austin’sclassification of two types of sentences.The former does not describe things andcannot be tested true or false.Egs. Come in. I declare the conference open.2) Illocutionary act—there are three senses inwhich saying something means doingsomething. This is also first discussed inAustin’s book How to Do Things withWords.3. The second pragmatic theory—Conversational ImplicatureThis was proposed by another Oxford philosopher H. P. Grice in the lectures he delivered in 1967 and published in 1975 under the title of “Logic and Conversation”.1) The cooperative principle (CP)—“Makeyour conversational contribution such asis required at the stage at which it occursbyt the accepted purpose or direction ofthe talk exchange in which you areengaged”. There are four maxims toobserve under this principle: Maxims ofQuantity, of Quality, of Relation, and ofManner.2) Violation of the maxims—This is what thes econd half of Grice’s “Logic andConversation” discussed. It was found byGrice that in many cases people do notobserve the four maxims and you wouldhear lies or some deeply impliedmeanings.3) The generation of implicatureObserving CP while underlyingly violate the four maxims4) The characteristics of implicaturea.calculability;b.cancellability (also known as“defeasibility”);c.non-detachability;d.non-conventionability.3. Post-Gricean developments1) Relevance theory—proposed by Sperberand Wilson in their book Relevance:Communication and Cognition in 1986. Itwas argued that all Gricean maxims,including the CP itself, should be reducedto a single principle of relevance, whichcan be defined as: Every act of ostensivecommunication communicates thepresumption of its own optimal relevance.2) The Q- and R-principles—proposed byLaurence Horn in 1984 and elaborated in1988. The Q-principle is intended toinvoke the first maxim of Grice’s, and theR-principle the Relation maxim, but thenew principles are more extensive thanthe Gricean maxims.3) The Q-, I- and M-principles—suggested byStephen Levinson mainly in his paper“Pragmatics and the Grammar ofAnaphor: A Partial Pragmatic Reductionof Binding and Control Phenomena”. Inessence, the principles arere-interpretation of Grice’s two maxims,Quantity and Manner.4.H omework: Exs 1, 2, and 3 (page 280)Lecture 13The Relation between Language and Literature In this lecture, the teacher will start the class by asking related questions. From the study, the students will learn about the relation, the theories established in the study, the features of literary language in general, of language in poetry, fiction and drama.0.C lass activities:1) Examine students’ homework orally in class.2) Is linguistics related to literature?1. The study of language in literature—(literary) stylistics (文体学).1) The developmentThe 1960s witnessed the establishment of modern stylistics and since then the discipline has been developing at a enormous speed. If the 1960s was a decade of formalism in stylistics, the 1970s a decade of functionalism and the 1980s a decade of discourse stylistics, the 1990s the decade in which socio-historical and socio-cultural stylistic studies are very popular.2) Features of the literary language—phonological, grammatical and semantic features.a. Foregrounding and unusual grammaticalform. In literary texts, the grammaticalsystem of the language is often exploited,experimented with, or made to “deviatefrom other more everyday forms oflanguage, and as a result createsinteresting new patterns in form andmeaning”.b. Figurative language. Literal meaning refersto the meaning that is defined or given in adictionary. Figurative meaning refers to themeaning not found in dictionary butimplied in and obtained from the context.c. Words used in literary text and the wordorder can be unusual.2. The features of language in poetry1) Sound patterning—rhyme in poetry is what defines poetry. End rhyme is very common in poems.2) Different forms of sound patterning—a.rhyme; b. alliteration; c. assonance; d.consonance; e. reverse rhyme; f. para-rhyme;g. repetition.3) Stress and metrical patterning—a. stress of word is in syllable;b. stress of sentence is with the words in thesentence;The former is determinate and can’t bechanged while the latter is dependent on thespeaker’s intention. It can be changed.c. stress of words in poem is called meter—when stress is organized to form regularrhythms.4) Conventional forms of meter and sound—atdifferent times, different patterns of meterand sound have been developed.* Some conventional forms are: a. couplets; b.quatrains; c. blank verse; d. sonnet, free verse, and limericks.3. The features of the language in fiction1) The point of view in fictional prosea. I-narrators—the person who tells the story isalso a character in the fictional world ofthe story. The other term is first-personnarrator.b. Third-person narrator—the narrator is not acharacter in the story.c. Schema-oriented language—viewpoint is schema-oriented.d. Given and New information—narration usually goes from new to old information.e. Deixis—abundantly used in conversation in fiction.2) Speech and thought presentationa. Speech presentation—a. direct speech;b.indirect speech; c. narrator’srepresentation of speech acts; d. narrator’srepresentation of speech..b. Thought presentation—a. Narrator’srepresentation of thought; b. Narrator’srepresentation of thought acts; c. Directthought; d. Indirect thought; e. Freeindirect thought; f. stream ofconsciousness writing.3) Prose stylea.authorial (著作人的) style—refers to the“world view” kind of authorial style, a wayof writing which recognizably belongs to aparticular writer.b.text style—looks closely at how linguisticchoices help to construct textual meaning.c. patterns of vocabulary; of grammatical organization; of textual organization, etc.4. The language used in drama1) The analysis of the form—a. drama as poetry;b. drama as fiction;c. drama asconversation.2) The analysis of the language—a. turnquantity and length; b. exchange sequence;c. production errors;d. the cooperativeprinciple; e. status marked throughlanguage; f. register; g. speech and silence(which can distinguish female characters inplays)3) The analysis of the text5. Homework: Exs 2 &3 (page 318, to be handed in next time)Lecture 14Language, Computer and Corpus Linguistics In this lecture, we shall start our discussion of computational linguistics. The teacher will start the class by asking questions. From the study, the students will grasp concepts such as CAL, CAI, CALL, machine translation, corpus linguistics, and the researches done and can be done in this field of application.0.C lass activities:1) Ask the students’ to han d their homework. Brief review of the previous lesson.2) Questions: What is the relation betweenlanguage and computer? What can acomputer do for communication? What iscorpus linguistics?1.T he definitionThe study of computational linguistics is seen as a branch of applied linguistics, dealing with computer processing of human language.2. The applications1) Computer-assisted language learning (CALL).a. CAL/CAI vs. CALL—CAI refers tocomputer-assisted instruction, which isthe use of a computer in a teachingprogram. CAL refers tocomputer-assisted learning. CAL andCAI deal with teaching and learning ingeneral. CALL deals with languageteaching and learning in particular,referring to the use of a computer in theteaching or learning of a second orforeign language.b. Phases of CALL development—there aremainly 4 phases.c.Technology—(1). customizing template,and authoring programs; (2). computernetworks; (3). compact disk technology; (4).digitized sound.2)Machine Translation (MT)a. The definition: it refers to the use ofmachine (computer) to translate textsfrom one language to another, which hasalways been a chief concern incomputational linguistics. It was startedin the 1950s and very little change andprogress has been made since then.b. The history of the development—a. theindependent work by MT researchers (inthe early 1950s); b. towards a goodquality output (around 1960); c. thedevelopment of translation tool (sincethe 1970s).c. Research methods—MT methods can berepresented from two perspectives. Oneis from the application of linguistictheories, the other from what has beenactually practiced by MT researchers.i.linguistic approach;ii.the practical approaches—it can be further divided into 3 strands: (a) thetransfer approach; (b) the inter-lingualapproach; (c). knowledge-basedapproach3)Spoken language translation: still at the preliminary and experimental stage.4)MT and human translation: no success hasbeen gained.3. Corpus 语料1) Definition: the plural form is corpora. It is acollection of linguistic data, either compiled as written texts or as a transcription of recorded speech. The main purpose of a corpus is to verify a hypothesis about language, for example to determine how the use of a particular sound, word, or syntactic construction varies.The other term is that corpus linguistics deals with the principles and practice of using corpora in language study. A computer corpus is a large body of machine-readable texts.2) Criticism and the revival of it—Chomsky’s criticism3) Concordance (一致)4) Text encoding and annotation (注解、评注)5)The roles of corpus dataa. speech researchb. lexical studiesc. semanticsd. socio-linguisticse. psycholinguistics4. Information retrieval信息提取It is the term conventionally applied to the type of activity to retrieve information automatically as opposed to manual research, information as opposed to data or fact. There are distinct differences between data retrieval (DR) and information retrieval (IR).1)An information retrieval systemA typical retrieval system usually has threecomponents: input, processor, and output.2)Three main areas of researchi. content analysisii. information structureiii. evaluation5.M ail and news on computer6.H omework: Exs. 1, 4, and 5 (page 350)Lecture 15Linguistics and Foreign Language Teaching In this lecture, we shall discuss the relation between linguistics and language teaching. The teacher will start the class by asking questions.From the study, the students will get to know the relationship, the studies and practices in applied linguistics, including how to design syllabus, how to apply linguistic theory to teaching, how to design test paper, and how to evaluate a test.0.Class activities:1) Brief review of the previous class2) Class activity: What is the relation betweenlinguistics and foreign language teaching? 1. The relationThe bridge over the gap between the theories of linguistics and the practice of foreign language teaching is applied linguistics, which serves as a mediating area that interprets the results of linguistic theories and makes them user-friendly to language teachers and learners. Applied linguistics is conductive to foreign language teaching in two major aspects:1) It extends theoretical linguistics in the direction of language learning and teaching.2) It states the insights and implications thatlinguistic theories have on language teachingmethodology.2. Linguistic views and the significance in language teaching & learning1)Traditional grammar and the significance2)Structural linguistics3)Transformational-Generative linguistics4)Functional linguistics5)The theory of communicative competence 3. Syllabus designSyllabus is the planning of a course of instruction. It is a description of the course content, teaching procedures and learning process. The word is often used interchangeably with “curriculum”.1)Major factors in syllabus designa.s electing participantsb.processc.evaluation2)Types of syllabusa.s tructural syllabusb.situational syllabusc.notional-functional syllabusmunicative syllabus, including: a) fullycommunicative syllabus; and b)communicative grammatical approach4. Language teaching, learning, and testing1) Language learning:a. grammar and language learningb. input and language learningc. inter-language in language learning2) Error analysis--attitudes to errorsa. The structuralist view: dominant in the fieldof applied linguistics until the end of 1960;follow the behaviouristic view that tolearn is to change old habits and buildnew habits; errors occur because thefeatures of the second language differfrom those of the native language and thelearner tends to carry over features of thenative language into the second language;fail to change old habits so as to acquirenew habits of the second language.b. Post-structuralist view: with thedevelopment ofTransformational-Generative grammarand other linguistic theories, changes ofattitudes have taken place; errors areregarded as evidence of the learningprocess; by making hypothesis about thetarget language, the learner arrives at aparticular interlanguage, then hemodifiers his hypothesis and goes towardsthe target language. Obviously, errors areinevitable at the stage of interlanguage.3) Testinga. Two different approaches to testing:(1)psycholinguistic structuralist approach(2)psycholinguistic sociolinguisticapproachb. Types of test:(1)A ptitude test—attempts to measure thelearner’s aptitude or natural ability tolearn language(2)P roficiency test—to discover what thetestee already knows about the targetlanguage.(3)A chievement test—assesses how mucha learner has mastered the contents of aparticular course.(4)Diagnostic test—to discover mainlywhat the testee does not know about alanguage.c. Requirements of a good testd. Test content and test forme. Test marking and interpretation of scores5. Homework: Exs. 5, 6 and 8 (page 389)Lecture 16Summary1. General review of the linguistic studies lectured.2. Invite students’ questions3. What the final exam will cover and the main parts that will be included in the test.4. Highlight some topics discussed during the term.。