Linguistic Items语言项目.ppt

Linguistic Items Linguistic Items: —vocabulary (“lexical items, or “lexemes) —sound-pattern (“sound”) —larger syntactic patterns (“constructions) Different linguistic items in ‘the same language’ can have quite different social distribution (in terms of speakers and circumstances). Varieties of language The flexibility of the term “variety”: 1. French, German, and Italian in Swiss or Chinese, Malaysian, Tamil, and English in Singapore 2. Ebonics (African) in the USA; Cockney (cockney rhyming slang London slang dictionary) in Britain; Geordie (Newcastle English (Geordie)) in Britain Speech Community A speech community is a group of people who speak a common dialect. However, the linguists know that there is really no such thing as a pure dialect spoken by a particular ethnic group or by people from just one perfectly definable region. Example: your handout(Untitled Document) Language: ‘Language’ and ‘dialect’ The delimitation of language and dialect: 1. Size: 2. Prestige: 3. Mutual intelligibility: In terms of the second criterion (prestige), only a ‘standard language’ can be called a ‘language’. (the right and wrong views in your handoutUntitled Document) The family tree model The family tree model clarifies the historical relations among the varieties concerned, and in particular that it gives a clear idea of the relative chronology of the historical changes by which the varieties concerned have diverged.Lynch, Indo-European Language Family Tree The family tree model The disadvantage of the family tree model: 1. Showing only vertical descendant (subclassification) but not horizontal influence (cross-classification) 2. only represents a gross simplification of the relations between varieties The family tree model Disadvantage 3. Regional dialects and Isoglosses Regional dialects: 1. Taiwan: I-Lang—滷蛋 2. German dialect variety: /lf/germana.php?/lingvo=en Isogloss: a boundary line between places or regions that differs a particular linguistic item. Example: Map 2.1