语言学考试要点复习.docVIP

What are the main features of human language The features that define our human languages can be called DESIGN FEATURES. The following are the frequently discussed ones: 1 Arbitrariness The widely accepted meaning of this feature first refers to the fact that the forms of linguistic signs bear no natural relationship to their meaning. For instance, we cannot explain why a book is called a/book/ and a pen a/pen/. However there seems to be different levels of ARBITRARINESS. Arbitrary relationship between the sound of a morpheme and its meaning Arbitrariness at the syntactic level Language is