Assumptions and Approaches of Linguistics.doc

Assumptions and Approaches of Linguistics By Shaozhong Liu Guangxi Normal University, China 2.1 What is it: Featuring language 2.1.1 Design features of human language We human beings are different from other animals. This is crystal-clear, theoretically speaking. But how can we justify and report our differences from them? In what simple, concise and lucid terms can we account for such differences? In fact, this commonsensical question kept linguists thinking for two thousand years. And the somewhat satisfactory answer did not come up until the 20th century, when linguists became more conscious of the need in or focused on locating the features that help to set human languages off from other animal languages, for instance the language of dogs, or birds, or bees, etc., in more uniformed terms or scientific language. This well-coded and accurate term or scientific language, for the present purpose of discussion, is often mentioned as “design feature”. In other words, it is a term and concept that helps to edge-cut the features that remain at the gray-area between human and animal languages, a term that helps to spell out those features that are present to the former while absent in the latter, or unique or specific to only human languages. So to put it simple way, a design feature is one that helps to specify the humanistic nature or attributes of language or elevate human languages from systems of non-human communication. After much search and elaboration, linguists come to conclude that at least 6 properties that attributive to human languages can be referred to as design features, which are discussed one by one in the following: 2.1.2 Arbitrariness (任意性) By ‘language is arbitrary’, we mean that there is no logical connection between meanings and sounds. E.g.: / dog / for dog; while / pig / for pig; gou (狗) and zhu (猪) respectively to indicate them in Chinese. However language is not entirely arbitrary. E.g.: 1) certain sounds in every language which are motiva