Linguistic Theories

Course Instructor: Professor LI Wenzhong

The course was designed to give an overview on various linguistic theories

that have come into evolution since early 20th century. Though following

a general line of theoretical linguistics, namely from phonetics, phonology,

morphology to syntax, semantics and pragmatics, I will try to stay focused

on knowledge development of language per se, lexis, structure and

meaning in the light of their application in computer processing of text.

The following topics will be covered:

1. Ontological and epistemological problems: defining language and

where linguists divide

Linguistics as a quasi-science; what is language; fuzziness of linguistic

terms: language vs dialect, native/first/mother language vs second,

foreign language; English as a lingua franca;

Design features of language; arbitrariness as the first principle;

dichotomy, monism and pluralism

2. The hard core of linguistics: phonetics and phonology

Articulatory phonetics; pulmonic egression stream mechanism; speech

organs and IPA; describing speech sounds; transcription of speech;

Annotation of prosody: segmental and non-segmentals; sound

assimilation; intonation; other related ideas

3. The central task of linguistics: studying meaning

Saussurean idea of meaning; meaning in paradigmatic relations;

Firthian idea of meaning: meaning in syntagmatic relations; collocation;

Sinclairian idea of meaning: Extended Unit of meaning

4. Extended Unit of Meaning continued

Lexis and grammar; lexical grammar; maximal approach, canonical

forms; EMU and its components; Theoretical Framework for Phrases;

local grammars

5. Morphology and lexicology: meaning by context

Word formation; lexical meaning; lexis as fillers; lexis as originators

6. Syntax: Chomskys early idea of language structure

Pre-Chomsky ideas of language structure; Phrase Structure and Re-

write Rules; Hierarchy and non-terminals; Chomskys other ideas:

language acquisition, language competence and performance

7. Pragmatics: evaluative language

Semantic prosody; Attitudinal preferences; language as evaluation;

8. Corpus Linguistics and NLP

9. Put it altogether: so many theories, so little

Course assessment:

Class participation (30%) + term papers (30%) + final exam (40%)

Course requirements:
The participants of the class are highly encouraged to reflect on various

problems in linguistic theories and explore on their own. Class interaction

is greatly welcome and appreciated! Ask good questions and counter-

argue anything. Learning linguistics is not a simple mim-mem process.

Course book and references: The course books by Hu Zhuanglin and Dai

Weidong are good. But I would recommend An Introduction to Language

(10th edition) by Fromkin et al. and Linguistics Made Easy (2012) by

Aitchison. They are very good books to get started in linguistics.