01li和nguistics.pptVIP

Chapter One Invitations to Linguistics 学习目的： 初步了解语言和语言学； 基本概念 本章重点： 语言的本质特征（1.3）； 语言的功能（1.5）； 语言学中的几个重要的区分（1.9） 1. Why Study Language? Language is essential to human life. It plays a central role in our life as individuals and social beings. Are they so truthful? Language is only a means of communication. Language has a form-meaning correspondence. The function of language is to exchange information. English is more difficult to learn than Chinese. Black English is not standard and should be reformed. Some fundamental views about L Children learn their native language swiftly, efficiently and without instruction. Language operates by rules. All languages have three major components: a sound system, a system of lexicogrammar and a system of semantics. Everyone speaks a dialect. Language slowly changes. Languages are intimately related to the societies and individuals who uses them. 2. What is language? “Language is a means of verbal communication.” It is instrumental in that communicating by speaking or writing is a purposeful act. It is social and conventional in that language is a social semiotic and communication can only take place effectively if all the users share a broad understanding of human interaction including such associated factors as nonverbal cues, motivation, and socio-cultural roles. 3. Design Features of Language The features define our human languages can be called design features. Design features can distinguish human language from any animal system of communication. Arbitariness, duality, creativity, displacement 3.1 Arbitrariness Saussure: the forms of linguistic signs bear no natural relationship to their meaning Arbitrary relationship between the sound of a morpheme and its meaning, even with onomatopoeic words: The dog barks wow wow in English but “汪汪汪” in Chinese. Arbitrariness at the syntactic level: language is not arbitrary at the syntactic level. He came in and sat down. He sat down and came in. He sat down after he c