语言学教程最经典笔记(胡壮麟版)..docxVIP

Week 1.The Nature of Human LangFerdinand de Saussure (1857,11 – 1913,2 ), a Swiss linguist whose ideas laid a foundation for many significant developments in linguistics in the 20th century and widely considered to be one of the fathers of 20th-century linguistics, said in 1916: “Language is a system of signs that express ideas, and is therefore comparable to a system of writing…”Edward Sapir (1884, 1-1939, 2), a German-born American anthropologist- linguist, said in 1921: “Language is a purely human and non-instinctive method of communicating ideas, emotion and desires by means of voluntarily produced symbols.”BernardBloch (1907–1965) and George Trager(1906–1992), American linguists, said in 1942:A language is a system of arbitrary vocal symbols by means of which a social group cooperates.Noam Chomsky (1928- ) an American linguist, said in 1957: “A set (finite or infinite) of sentences, each finite in length and constructed out of a finite set of elements.”R.A. Hall (1911–1997), an American linguist and specialist in the Romance languages, said in 1968:“The institution whereby humans communicate and interact with each other by means of habitually used oral- auditory arbitrary symbols.”A language is the system of symbols with the most generalmeanings of any used by humans. The perceptible portions of linguistic symbols are articulatory gestures, transmitted one after another usually as sounds. They are used to communicate or store information, or even to design and think.★The definition that most linguists agree: Language is a system of arbitrary vocal symbols used for human communication.In the sense of our linguistic study, it is generally held that:Language is a system—It is made up of units, functions, and relations.Language is a set of symbols—It involves signs, which are sequences of sounds, those can be transferred into vocal signs.Language is vocal—In linguistics, language is first of all speech, meaningful vocal sounds