胡壮麟第四版语言学教程第一章大题总结-推荐下载

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2024年4月25日发(作者：)

study language?

is language? Explain it in details.

makes language unique to human beings?

Chapter1 Invitation to Linguistics

are the design features of language? List out at least three of them.

what sense we say linguistic is a science?

n the different levels of the arbitrariness.

is the function of language?

you understand the distinction between

introduced by Saussure?

ptive vs. Prescriptive

onic vs. Diachronic

ence vs. Performance

the langue and parole

study language?

First, language is such an integral part of our life and humanity that too much about it

has been taken for granted. For some people, language may not even be considered a

worthy job for academic study. They take it as a tool for access to other fields of knowledge

rather than as a subject in and of itself. However, it is indeed necessary to reconsider how

much we really the nature of language and its role in our life. And you may be surprised to

realize that some of our most damaging racial, ethnic, and socio-economic prejudices are

based on our linguistic ignorance and wrong ideas about language.

Second, for a student learning language, some knowledge of language is of both

interest and important. To know the general properties of language can help the student

have an overview of its. No necessary question to ask for human language, they can

understand the details of its different features thereof.

Third, let us mention the broader educational concerns. We can note that language

plans a central role in our lives as individuals and social beings. If we are not fully aware of

the nature and mechanism of our language, we will be ignorant of what constitutes our

essential humanity. The understanding of language should not be confined to linguistics, as

language is a vital human resource that of us share.

is language? Explain it in details.

Language is a means of verbal communication. It is a system of arbitrary vocal

symbols used for human communication. Language is a system of arbitrary vocal symbols

used for human communication. This definition has captured the main features of language,

i.e. systematic, arbitrary, vocal, symbolic, human-specific.

It is system, since linguistic elements are arranged systematically, rather than randomly.

Arbitrary, in the sense(从某种意义上说) that there is usually no intrinsic connection

between a word and the object it refers to. This explains and explained by the fact that

different language have different “books” : “book” in English, 书in Chinese, “check” in

Korean.

It is symbolic, because words are associated with objects, actions, ideas etc. Namely,

people use the sounds or vocal forms to symbolize what they wish to refer to.

It is vocal, because sound or speech is the primary medium for all human language,

developed or “new”. The term” human” in the definition is meant to specify that language is

human specific.

n the different levels of the arbitrariness

Arbitrariness is the core feature of language. Saussure holds the idea that the forms of

linguistics signs bear no natural relationship to their meaning. There seems to be different

levels of arbitrariness:

1)Arbitrary relationship between the sound of a morpheme and its means. You may

object

to this when you think of words with different degrees of onomatopoeia, namely, words that

8-12 important distinctions in linguistics

ptive vs. prescriptive

To say that linguistics is a descriptive science is to say that the linguist tries to discover

and record the rules to which the members of a language-community actually conform and

does not seek to impose upon them other rules, or norms, of correctness.

Prescriptive linguistics aims to lay down rules for the correct use of language and settle

the disputes over usage once and for all.

For example, “Don’t say X.” is a prescriptive command; “People don’t say X.” is a

descriptive statement. The distinction lies in prescribing how things ought to be and

describing how things are. In the 18

th

century, all the main European languages were

studied prescriptively. However, modern linguistics is mostly descriptive because the nature

of linguistics as a science determines its preoccupation with description instead of

prescription.

onic vs. diachronic

sound like the sounds they describe. e. g. in Chinese 叮咚,轰隆,叽里咕噜. These linguistic

forms seem to have a natural basis. But in English, totally different words are used to be

describe the sound. For example, the dog barks bowwow in English but汪汪 in Chinese.

But there are some misunderstandings about the onomatopoeia effect. As a matter of fact,

arbitrariness and onomatopoeia effect may work at the same time.

2)Arbitrariness at the syntactic level

By syntax we refer to the ways that sentences are

constructed according to the grammar of arrangement. As we know, the order of elements in

a sentence follows certain rules, and there is a certain degree of correspondence between the

sequence clauses and the rule happenings. In other words, syntax is less arbitrary than

words, especially in so far as in this kind of order is concerned. Compared:

a)He came in and set down.

b)He set down and came in.

c)He set down after he came in.

Sentence (a) means the man came in first and then set down, but (b) means the opposite

perhaps he got into his wheelchair and propelled(推进去) himself into the room. In (c), with

the word “after” help, we can reverse the order of the clauses.

3)Arbitrariness and convention

In fact, the link between a linguistic sign and its meaning is a matter of convention.

Here we have to look at the other side of arbitrariness, namely, conventionality.

Arbitrariness of language makes it potentially creative, and conventionality of language

makes learning a language laborious. For learners of foreign language, it is conventionality

of language that is more worth noticing than its arbitrariness. That may be why when we are

burying ourselves memorizing idioms, we feel nothing of the arbitrariness of the language

but are somewhat tortured (折磨) by its conventionality.

A synchronic study takes a fixed instant (usually at present) as its point of observation.

Saussure’s diachronic description is the study of a language through the course of its history.

E.g. a study of the features of the English used in Shakespeare’s time would be synchronic,

and a study of the changes English has undergone since then would be a diachronic study.

In modern linguistics, synchronic study seems to enjoy priority over diachronic study. The

reason is that unless the various state of a language is successfully studied it would be

difficult to describe the changes that have taken place in its historical development.

& parole

Saussure distinguished the linguistic competence of the speaker and the actual

phenomena or data of linguistics as langue and parole. Langue is relative stable and

systematic, parole is subject to personal and situational constraints; langue is not spoken by

an individual, parole is always a naturally occurring event. What a linguist should do,

according to Saussure, is to draw rules from a mass of confused facts, i.e. to discover the

regularities governing all instances of parole and make them the subject of linguistics.

ence and performance

According to Chomsky, a language user’s underlying knowledge about the system of

rules is called the linguistic competence, and the actual use of language in concrete

situations is called performance. Competence enables a speaker to produce and understand

and indefinite number of sentences and to recognize grammatical mistakes and ambiguities.

A speaker’s competence is stable while his performance is often influenced by

psychological and social factors. So a speaker’s performance does not always match his

supposed competence. Chomsky believes that linguists ought to study competence, rather

than performance. Chomsky’s competence-performance distinction is not exactly the same

as, though similar to, Saussure’s langue-parole distinction. Langue is a social product and a

set of conventions of a community, while competence is deemed as a property of mind of

each individual. Saussure looks at language more from a sociological or sociolinguistic

point of view than Chomsky since the latter deals with his issues psychologically or

psycholinguistically.

vs. emic

Being etic means researchers

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