The development and trend of linguistics.
Abstract: The globalization of the world determines the importance of language communication. Learning linguistics is becoming more and more important for foreign language teaching, especially for foreign language teaching with English as the target language. Starting with the basic development of linguistics, this paper focuses on its development trend and tries to grasp its research hotspots.
1 the development of linguistics
The predecessor of linguistics should be historical comparative linguistics, and the earlier it is called China ancient literature stage. Modern linguistics began with Saussure, who initiated a new era of structuralism. During this period, Saussure wrote A Course in General Linguistics. Among structuralism, American structuralism has the greatest influence. Boas, Sapir and bloomfield are more famous. They founded a new structuralist school, American descriptive linguistics, which is more famous, so American linguistics is also called? Bloomfield doctrine? .
1. 1 American structuralism
The research methods of American structuralism are mainly divided into four types: replacement analysis, comparative analysis, distribution analysis and composition analysis. The main contents are as follows:
(1) substitution analysis, that is, whether a new fact is obtained by replacing another language unit by one language unit.
(2) Contrastive analysis is to compare two or more linguistic units to find out their similarities or differences, so as to determine the nature of these units.
(3) Distribution analysis is to study the position where word positions appear and the position where parts of speech (real part and imaginary part) are distributed.
(4) Composition analysis (4) A sentence can be cut into two parts until the morpheme.
(5) String analysis refers to whether the basic unit, structural component or basic unit and modifying component of a sentence are modified or not.
(6) Transformation Analysis In order to regard any structure as the transformation of a core sentence, the so-called core sentence is a basic sentence pattern (SVO, SV, etc. ), others are extensions of or transformed from core sentences.
1.2 Systemic Functional Linguistics
M.A.K. Halliday, the founder of systemic functional linguistics, studied under J.R.Firth of London School. Later, two China scholars, Luo Changpei and Wang Li, broke the foundation of traditional language or structuralism and systematically and organically linked grammatical form, meaning and language usage.
1.3 transformation generation syntax
In 1950s, Chomsky challenged American structural language and founded transformational generative morphology or formal linguistics, and put forward that the focus of research is how to create infinite pragmatic sentence patterns from limited language units. The development of this period has gone through five stages: classical theory period, standard theory period, extended standard theory period, revised extended standard theory period and simplest explanation theory period. Chomsky put forward two very important concepts in this period: deep structure and surface structure. Are these two concepts right? Homomorphism, homomorphism synonymous? Ambiguity can be explained scientifically.
2 the dynamic study of linguistics
Pragmatics is the pragmatics of language, and its main research problems include: deixis includes person deixis, time deixis, discourse deixis and undertaking deixis; Presupposition, pragmatic reasoning, based on language, deduces the preconditions of language through logical reasoning; Pragmatic meaning (implicit discourse meaning) provides an important functional explanation for grammatical facts.
2. 1 Textual Research
Textology is developed on the basis of syntax, which is also called text grammar or text analysis. Since 1970s, linguistics has turned from static to dynamic, from structural research to functional research. Text grammar mainly solves the study of text structure; Text semantics mainly solves the coherence of text meaning and studies the level of text. The pragmatic study of discourse focuses on the conversation structure, turn (speaking order) adjacent pairing (the former's speaking response), as well as the factors that affect the conversation (psychological factors and culture), the theoretical study of discourse and the generation of discourse.
2.2 Sociolinguistics
The science of the relationship between society and language is an interdisciplinary science. The change of language is studied from the change and development of society, and the law of society is studied from the change of language. It can be divided into micro sociolinguistics and macro sociolinguistics. Microscopy is to study the specific relationship between language and society, such as language and gender, language and nation, and also to study the details of language, such as language world and language. Macroscopically, it mainly studies the status of language and society and the choice of language by society, such as which languages are used in international cultural exchanges, which languages are promoted in China, language promotion and text reform.
3. The focus of China's linguistic research.
3. 1 Systemic Functional Linguistics
There are more than 30 articles on systemic functional linguistics published in the core publication Foreign Languages alone. Foreign Language Education Research has published many articles 10. Hu Zhuanglin's Concept of Systemic Functional Grammar was published in Hunan Education Press 1989. Discourse Cohesion; Shanghai Foreign Language Education Press; Introduction to Cheng Qilong's Systemic Functional Grammar. Collection of Language System and Function, Hunan Education Press. Tsinghua University Publishing House's exposition? Context; Ren Shaolu's language? System? Structure and so on. The basic concept of system function began in the late 1980s and was put forward by Hu Zhuanglin. The grammatical study of systemic function is mainly reflected in two aspects: the linguistic view of systemic functional grammar is based on methodology; Practice and supplement the theory of systemic functional discourse research.
3.2 Pragmatic research
In recent years, Foreign Languages has published more than 30 articles on pragmatics. Foreign language teaching and research books 10. The published monographs mainly include: An Introduction to Pragmatics by He Ziran; He Zhaoxiong's New Theory of Pragmatics. Pragmatics became the hottest subject in 1990s, and its research has three characteristics:
(1) While continuing to guide foreign methods, how to supplement them by proposing amendments to specific language facts. For example, He Ziran's A Study of Foreign Linguistics.
(2) The connotation of pragmatics is discussed. A pragmatic analysis of pragmatic vagueness and modal verbs from the pragmatic meaning of Guo Wei's present perfect tense.
(3) From doubling to special research. Linking Chinese with foreign language learning. For example, Liu's? Qing? A comparison of vocabulary usage between Chinese and English.
3.3 Sociolinguistics Research
Research on Foreign Languages and Foreign Language Teaching 10. The research features of sociolinguistics are: (65,438+0) from macroscopic methods to microscopic analysis of specific language phenomena, such as sociolinguistic research of euphemism and social factors of language change.
(2) Explain the social psychological mechanism of psychological language operation from a sociological perspective. For example, the research object of social psycholinguistics and the study of euphemism by Su.
3.4 Discourse Analysis Research
There are nearly 20 articles in foreign languages. Foreign language teaching and research books 10. Since the mid-1980s, the basic concepts and theories of western discourse analysis have been systematically introduced. A contrastive analysis of English and Chinese in 1990s. From spoken discourse to discourse research. In recent years, discourse analysis tends to overlap and overlap.
4 the trend of linguistic research in China
(1) As far as the research object is concerned, from micro to macro, language itself has systematically turned to interdisciplinary research, and interdisciplinary subjects have emerged, such as cross-cultural communication and ethnolinguistics. From structure research to function and application research, from static to dynamic, such as describing the syntactic rules of word formation to the different functions of syntactic structure; The meaning of a single word to the meaning of a word in a specific environment; From monolingual research to multilingual comparative research, such as contrastive linguistics, including bilingual comparison and multilingual comparison, including the comparison of the same language and different languages, that is, the comparison of languages themselves and the comparison of languages and cultures, such as cross-cultural communication.
(2) In terms of research methods, from single-level and single-angle static research to multi-level, multi-angle and dynamic research.
(3) for the purpose of research, the goal is constantly from narrow to wide, from shallow to deep; From description to explanation, Chomsky tried to explain the facts of language from the genes of the brain; From theoretical discussion to application value analysis, such as the development of computer can not be separated from linguistics, pragmatic analysis applied to court trials and so on.
(4) Looking at the development trend, there are three kinds of linguistic research: ① focusing on macro linguistics, the relationship between language and psychology, language and society, language and culture; ② Pay attention to cognitive language and the relationship between language and brain; (3) Encourage the use of scientific and technological research, such as the study of individual differences of scholars.
refer to
Hu Zhuanglin. Linguistics course [M]. Beijing: Peking University Publishing House, 20 1 1.
[2] He Ziran. Introduction to pragmatics [M]. Peking University Publishing House, 2009.
Linguistics Paper 2: Contrastive Linguistics
Abstract: Contrast is the most commonly used method for human beings to know, understand and study things, and it is also the basic method for linguistic research. As an important branch of linguistic research, contrastive linguistics developed in 1950s. This paper briefly summarizes the definition, classification, historical development, principles and procedures of contrastive linguistics.
Keywords: comparison; Contrastive linguistics; Definition; Classification; Historical development; Principles and methods
Firstly, the definition and classification of contrastive linguistics.
Contrastive linguistics is a branch of linguistics, whose task is to make a comparative study of two or more languages, describe their similarities and differences, especially their differences, and apply this research to other related fields (Xu Yulong 1992/2008). For this definition, we can understand it as follows: First, contrastive linguistics is a branch of linguistics, which is closely related to other branches, complementing each other and promoting each other. Secondly, contrastive linguistics is a comparative description of two or more languages, while general linguistics is a general description of a certain language. Thirdly, contrastive linguistics is developed under the framework of * * * theory, that is, its research object is the development state of language, not the evolution of language. Finally, although contrastive linguistics studies the similarities and differences between descriptive languages, it focuses on different aspects.
Contrastive linguistics can be divided into theoretical contrastive linguistics and applied contrastive linguistics. Theoretical contrastive linguistics includes general theoretical contrastive linguistics and specific theoretical contrastive linguistics. General contrastive linguistics is a branch of general linguistics, which aims to study the theories and methods of comparative linguistics. Concrete contrastive linguistics is a branch of concrete linguistics, which aims to make a concrete comparative description of two or more languages by using the principles of contrastive linguistics and related knowledge of other linguistics. Applied contrastive linguistics belongs to the category of applied linguistics, which can be divided into two categories, namely, general applied contrastive linguistics, aiming at studying how to apply the theoretical achievements of comparative linguistics to foreign language teaching activities. The other is concrete applied contrastive linguistics, whose task is to make a concrete comparative description of the two languages in order to serve specific application activities.
Second, the origin and historical development of contrastive linguistics
Since the appearance of languages, the comparison and research between languages have flourished. As a branch of modern linguistics, contrastive linguistics has two origins, one from Europe and the other from the United States. The discipline of comparative linguistics in Europe began at the end of 19 and developed at the beginning of the 20th century. Its theoretical framework is contrastive theoretical temporal linguistic analysis, which was later inherited and developed by linguists of Prague School. Contrastive linguistics in the United States developed during the Second World War. The English name of contrastive linguistics was first put forward by the linguist Whorf in his book Language and Logic in 194 1. However, unlike the characteristics of traditional European contrastive linguistics, the study of American contrastive linguistics is mainly applied. It is manifested in the theoretical exploration of language contact and bilingualism by using the method of language contrast, and it is also used to serve foreign language teaching. However, after the 1960s, the two theoretical bases of comparative analysis-behavioral psychology and structuralist linguistics-were severely criticized, and comparative linguistics began to decline and never recovered. At the same time, contrastive linguistics continues to develop in Europe, and most linguists adopt transformational generative grammar as the linguistic framework of contrastive description. In the following 30 years, theoretical contrastive linguistics has attracted more and more attention in Europe and America, and its disciplinary status has been improved, and academic circles have gradually explored some theoretical and methodological problems of comparative linguistics itself. In China, scholars of comparative studies include Yan Fu, Ma Jianzhong, li jinxi, Zhao Yuanren, Wang Li and Lv Shuxiang, all of whom have made important contributions to comparative studies between China and foreign countries.
Thirdly, the principles and research procedures of contrastive linguistics.
(1) The general principles of contrastive linguistics are * * * temporal contrast principle and isomorphic contrast principle.
* * * Comparison principle: Comparative research is a kind of * * * comparison. When we compare and describe two or more language states, we can't compare language phenomena in different times.
Principle of stylistic contrast: As a communication tool, language has different functional styles, and different languages have different norms and rules in selecting, using and organizing language units. Contrast written language with written language and spoken language with spoken language, that is, contrast the same style.
(2) The procedure of comparative study:
1, determine the comparison range. First, determine the range of contrast, that is, what the described contrast is. For example, choose a level for comparison in phonetics, words, sentences, texts and pragmatics. Secondly, it is necessary to further determine what the specific contrast description object is, that is, the language unit of contrast. For example, at the grammatical level, units such as phrases or sentence structures can be selected as the objects of comparison. Finally, compare the language content.
2. Literature collection and research. First of all, we should collect the existing comparative studies within a certain comparative range, so as to avoid repeating the work done by others. Secondly, it is necessary to collect the analysis and research on the two languages within the scope of this study.
3. Determine the theoretical framework. The theoretical framework of contrastive study refers to a contrastive description method based on a certain linguistic analysis theory or model. Choosing a unified theoretical framework is mainly to ensure the comparability of language description. The commonly used comparative description methods are head word analysis and analytic hierarchy process. In recent years, transformational generative grammar and case grammar have also been adopted by many researchers. The choice of theoretical framework of comparative study depends on the purpose and scope of comparative study.
4. Collect language materials. Corpus can be divided into example corpus and introspection corpus. Reflective corpus can be divided into self-reflective corpus and experimental reflective corpus. When choosing a corpus, we need to consider the nature and purpose, theoretical framework and description content of comparative research.
5. Analysis and comparison. Contrastive analysis refers to the analysis and comparison of collected language materials within a certain theoretical framework on the basis of existing research.
6. summary. After the analysis and comparison, we should summarize the results of this comparison and discuss its significance and value. At the same time, we can also find out its limitations and put forward our own ideas and suggestions.
Fourth, summary.
Contrastive linguistics, as an important branch of modern linguistics, aims to achieve the same goal through different ways, to compare the similarities and differences between the two languages, and thus to solve teaching or translation problems. Contrastive research can be carried out at the phonetic, grammatical, lexical, semantic and pragmatic levels, as well as from the cultural, psychological and ethnic perspectives of language. With the development of globalization, contrastive linguistics has attracted more and more attention and favor from experts and scholars.
References:
1, Xu Yulong. Contrastive Linguistics (Second Edition) [M]. Shanghai: Shanghai Foreign Language Teaching Press, 20 10.
2. Wang Lizhong. An Overview of Comparative Linguistics [J]. Journal of Heilongjiang Institute of Education, 2006