翻译L104 王荻10L1301124 Chapter 12 Pragmatics
Pragmatics is the study of meanning in context. It deals with paticular utterances in particular situations and is especially concered with the various ways in which many social contexts of language proformance can influence interpretation. In other words, pragmatics is concerned with the way language is used to communicate rather than the way language is internally structured.
It regards speech proformance as primarily a social act ruled by various socia l conventions. Some key concepts such as reference,force,effect , and cooperative prnciples may appear commonsensical , yet pragmatics is just about one of the most promising fields of lingustic studies . Take converssation for example ,since language is transmitted primarily via the speech mord, pragmatics rules govern a number of conversation interactions , such as sequential orgnization , repair of errors , role and speech acts . Organization of conversations includs taking turns, opening, maintaining and ciosing a conversation , establishing and maintaining a topic etc.
Origin of Pragmatics: Although pragmatics is a relatively new branch of linguistics , research on it can be dated back to ancient Greece and Rome where the term ―pragmaticus‖is found in late Latin and ―pragmaticos‖in greek , both meaning of being practical.
Two schools of Pragmatics: Anglo-American school The (European) Continental school
Branches of pragmatics:1.pragma linguistics
3.societal pragmatics
cooperative4.developmental pragmatics
5.interlanguage pragmatics
Methodology:1.introspective approach
3.pseudo-natural approach
4.natural interacyive approach
Big events: 1977, journal of pragmatics the inital volumn
1983, S.C. Levinson’s ,the first book on pragmatics
G.N.Leech Principle of pragmatics
1988, The first Chinese pragmatics course book
1989, the first international pragmatics conference held in China.
Chapter 13 Discourse Analysis
1.Discourse-analytic principle
We don’t go behind the text to look for a prior real ity-events in the world or internal cognitions.
Discourse is situated and must be viewed in its own context.
Language is always observed within a social context of some kind; the concept of an unobserved, uncontaminated speech style is in fact an idealization (Lee& Peck,1995)
2.The significance of context
Context has meanings at two levels, namely, the linguistic level and the non-linguistic level.
At the linguistic level, context refers to any linguistic items or contents that occur before and/or after a word, a phrase, or even an utterance or text.
At the non-linguistic level, context refers to the surrounding situation in which an utterance or a discourse occurs. It is the broader social situation in which a linguistic item is used.
Now, if we apply the verbal phrase 吃饭in the two following different non-linguistic contexts, what will happen?
(1)(Wang Lan meets his classmate Li Ming at the gate of the school.) WL: 你吃饭了吗？LM: 我吃了。
(2)（Li Ming goes to Wang Lan’ s home to invite her to g o for a walk. At that time, Wang Lan’s family are having supper.）WL ：你吃饭了吗？LM: 我吃了。
3.Laboratory studies Conventional interviews
In conventional laboratory studies, this problem is discounted (situational independence) because of
the assumption that researchers are gaining access to internal, stable characteristics of persons(cognitions,traits) that transcend situations.
Conventional interviews have treated interviewing activity as data collection. Interviewees are asked to provide reports or descriptions about interior states or external events in the world outside the interview. This methodology often presupposes that some reality — knowledge, beliefs, stories, perspectives — preexists the interview. Selected elements of the interviewee’s answers count as the data, and these elements are lifted out of the immediate context of their production. They are, in effect, decontextualised.
4.Conclusion
Most of the time, researchers will be interested in discourse as it occurs outside the laboratory or fiction_and therefore should be looking for discourse that is not produced through the instigation of the researcher and that is not explicitly fictional.
5.Ethical and practical concerns
Require the modification of ideal practices.
Technical difficulties in recording , outdoor conversations)
Ethical constrains on recording without informing participants
6.Solutions
Try our best to overcome these difficulties
Nonetheless, certain topics may be impossible unless we are willing to examine nonnaturally occurring talk or naturally occruing talk of a different kind.For example, child sexual abuse.
One must rely on interviews,policy documents, courtroom proceedings ,and so on and
frame one’s questions accordingly.
Still, we recommend that in the first instance, researchers make their best effort to obtain naturally occurring discourse.
Chapter 16 First language acquistion Defination: The process of acquiring a native language is called first language acquisition, or simply language acquisition.
Traditional behaviorists view language as behavior and believe that language learning is simply a matter of imitation and habit formation. 3. four steps for a child to acquire his/her L1: imitation→reinforcement→repetition→habit uation 模仿强化重复成形positive negative good habit bad habit  So imitation and practice are preliminary, discrimination and generalization are key to language development in this theory.
The chief exponent of the behaviourist view is B. F. Skinners. This view was prevalent before the 1960s, after that it was under challenge and criticism.  The inadequacy of behaviorist view lies in the fact that children do not imitate adults language in much the same way as parrots do.
They imitate words selectively and according to their own understanding of the sounds or patterns, which is based on what the children have already known instead of what is ―available‖ in the environment. Drawbacks of the behaviorist theory  The behaviorist theory of child languageacquisition offers a reasonable account of how children acquire some of the regular and simple aspects of the language, but it can not explain how children acquire complex grammatical structures.
An innatist view of language acquisition  Owing to some puzzlin g evidence, the linguist Noam Chom
sky claims that the human beings are biologically programmed for language and that the language develops in the child just as other biological functions. Some puzzling evidence.
1.shorter utterances than speech to other adults
2. grammatically simple utterances
3. few abstract or difficult words, with a lot of repetition.
4. clearer pronunciation, sometimes with exaggerated Intonation patterns
1）a. I read that novel but I remember nothing about it.
b. I have read that novel, but I remember nothing about it. As children conceptual development leads to their languagedevelopment, it is likely that their language development also helps in the formation and enhancement of the concept.  As cognitive development may influence language acquisition, the emergence of linguistic skills or language development seems to provide the users with an enhanced capacity for complex concepts and reasoning, and it may help draw children�6�8s attention to certain conceptual distinctions that would otherwise develop slowly.
2）The cognitive factors determine how the child makes sense of the linguistic system himself instead of what meanings the child perceives and expresses.  Many careful studies of children�6�8s acquisition sequences and errors in various languages have revealed that children have some ―operating principles‖ for making sense of language data.
Chapter 17 second language acquistion 1.The acquisition-learning distinction
The American SLA scholar Stephen Krashen makes the distinction between acquisition and learning. Krashen holds that language acquisition is a subconscious process to acquire a language in natural settings, while language learning is a conscious process to obtain a language in school settings.
Children obtain their mother tongue not through conscious learning, but the second language, though it can be acquired in appropriate linguistic context, is usually obtained in non-natural environment through formal instruction and conscious learning.
2.The input hypothesis
The input hypothesis makes the following claim: a necessary (but not sufficient) condition to move from stage i to stage i + 1 is that the acquirer understand input that contains i + 1, where "understand" means that the acquirer is focussed on the meaning and not the form of the message.
We acquire, in other words, only when we understand language that contains structure that is "a little beyond" where we are now.
How can we understand language that contains structures that we have not yet acquired?The answer to this apparent paradox is that we use more than our linguistic competence to help us understand. We also use context, our knowledge of the world, our extra-linguistic information to help us understand language directed at us.
3.The monitor hypothesis
Conscious learning is available only as a "Monitor", which can alter the output of the acquired system before or after the utterance is actually spoken or written. It is the acquired system which initiates normal, fluent speech utterances.
"Monitor" can alter the output of the acquired system before or after the utterance is actually spoken or written. It is the acquired system which initiates normal, fluent speech utterances.The Monitor hypothesis implies that formal rules, or conscious learning, p lay only a limited role in second language performance. Second language performers can use conscious rules only when three conditions are met.
4.The affective Filter hypothesis
The Affective Filter hypothesis states how affective factors relate to the second language acquisition process. Research over the last decade has confirmed that a variety of affective variables relate to success in second language acquisition:(1) Motivation.(2) Self-confidence.(3) Anxiety.
The filter hypothesis explains why it is possible for an acquirer to obtain a great deal of comprehensible input, and yet stop short (and sometimes well short) of the native speaker level or "fossilize". When this occurs, it is due to the affective filter.
5.The natural order hypothesis
Acquirers of a given language tend to acquire certain grammatical structures early, and others later. In other words, the acquisition of grammatical structures proceeds in a predictable order.English is perhaps the most studied language as far as the natural order hypothesis is concerned, and of all structures of English, morphology is the most
studied.Brown reported that children acquiring English as a first language tended to acquire certain grammatical morphemes, or functions words, earlier than others. Chapter 19 Language history and c
hange Abstract：Everylanguagehasahistory；Languageschangemainlyinfourdifferentaspects:（1）pronunciation；（2）vocabulary；（3）grammar；（4）meaning （semanticchanges）.Inthispaper，dif-ferenttypesoflanguagechangearediscussed，andthenthecausesofthechangeareanalyzed.
Different aspects of language change
（1）Change in pronunciation The pronunciation of words has been undergoing great changes during the past centuries. And the most notable change in pronunci-ation should be the Grea t V owel Shift occurred in the fifteent h to eighteenth centuries，which was amassiv e sound change affecting the long vowels of English during the fifteenth to eighteenth cen-turies .Basically，the long vowels shifted upwards；that is ，a vowel that used to be pronounced in one place in the mouth would be pro-nounced in a different place，higher up in the mouth.
（2）Change in V ocabulary Factors of language Change Introduction Generally it is believed that most of the languages of Europe and India are the descendents of an ancient parent language which existed 4000 years ago. The name, traces, or the historical record of that languageis no more available now. Modern Researchers identify it with the name of the ―Indo-European language‖.
（3）Change in meaning The aim of the work is to prepare a mini catalogue of the achievements attained until now. Hypothesis: Depending on my background knowledge of linguistics and its Method of Research I expect that ?Even the subtlest change in language can gauged.
Factors in language change
（1）The transmission of speech from on egeneratio to another Language Evolution and change Corresponding author. Morten H. Christiansen, Department of Psychology, 240 Uris Hall Cornell University Ithaca, NY 14853 USA. Email Phone Fax mhc27 rticles authored/co-authored by MHC:Connectionist models of speech processing; Constituency and recursion in language; Language evolution and change.
(2) historical cause The similarity of them could be some obstacle to readers.
V ariable is the cluster of linguistic features, such as sounds or grammatical forms, which speakers choose according to circumstances. It refers to the concrete linguistic items in one of the language forms for choice. V ariation refers to the systematic changes of pronunciation.
(3) Progress of science and technology Different linguistic schools have different explanations about l
anguage and they make continuous efforts to describe and explore it from their own points of view. It is known that language is studied from different perspectives and defined differently by different linguistic schools. First it is needed to give language a clear direction for the convenience of the following discussion.

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