胡壮麟语言学第四版第1章.pptVIP

* Invitations to Linguistics 1.1 Why Study Language? 1.2 What Is Language? 1.3 Design Features of Language 1.4 Origin of Language 1.5 Functions of Language 1.6 What Is Linguistics? 1.7 Main Branches of Linguistics 1.8 Macrolinguistics 1.9 Important Distinctions in Linguistics 1.1 Why Study Language? 1.Children learn their native language swiftly,efficiently and without instruction. 2.Language operates by rules. 3.All languages have three major components: a sound system, a system of lexicogrammar and a system of semantics. 4.Everyone speaks a dialect. 5.Language slowly changes. 6.Speakers of all languages employ a range of styles and a set of jargons. 7.Languages are intimately related to the societies and individuals who use them. 8.Writing is derivative of speech. 1.2 What Is Language? Language :is a system of arbitrary vocal symbols used for human communication. 1.3Design Features of Language Arbitrariness Duality Creativity Displacement 1.Arbitrary relationship between the sound of a morpheme and its meaning 2.Arbitrariness at the syntactic level 3.Arbitrariness and convention 1.3.1 Arbitrariness 1.3.2 Duality Duality (double articulation) Lower level----sounds (meaningless) Higher level----meaning (larger units of meaning) 1.3.3 Creativity Peculiar to human languages，users of language can understand and produce sentences they have never heard before, e.g. we can understand sentence like “ A red-eyed elephant is dancing on the hotel bed”, though it does not describe a common happening in the world. A gibbon call system is not productive for gibbon draw all their calls from a fixed repertoire which is rapidly exhausted, making any novelty impossible. The bee dance does have a limited productivity, as it is used to communicate about food sources in any direction. But food sources are the only kind of messages that can be sent through the bee dance; bees do not “talk” about themselves, the hives, or wind, let alone about people, animals, hopes