语言学概论翻译.docx

CHAPTER IV第四章Linguistic Value语言价值I. The language as thought organised in sound第一节.以思想组织的语言In order to realise that the language itself can be nothing other thana system of pure values, one need only consider the two elementswhich are involved in the way it functions: ideas and sounds为了意识到语言它本身无外乎就是一个纯粹的价值系统，我们只需要考虑到关于语言发挥它作用的方式的两种元素：声音和思想。Psychologically, setting aside its expression in words, our thoughtis simplya vague, shapeless mass. Philosophers and linguists havealways agreed that were it not for signs, we should be incapable ofdifferentiating any two ideas in a clear and constant way. In itself,thought is like a swirling cloud, where no shape is intrinsically deter-minate. No ideas are established in advance, and nothing is distinct,before the introduction oflinguistic structure.心理学上，不理会它语言表面上的表达，我们的思想就是简单的一个模糊不清的，不成样子的，没有形状的团块。哲学家和语言学家一直认同要不是由于符号标志，我们将会没有能力用一种清楚明了和始终如一的方法区别任何两种思想。思想，它本身，就像一个乌云密布的漩涡，在那里，没有成形之物本质上是确切的。在语言构造学引用之前，没有概念是提前固定好，没有事物是清楚明显的。But do sounds, which lie outside this nebulous world of thought, inthemselves constitute entities established in advance? No more thanideas do. The substance of sound is no more fixed or rigid than that ofthought. It does not offer a ready-made mould, with shapes thatthought must inevitably conform to. It is a malleable material whichcan be fashioned into separate parts in order to supply the signalswhich thought has need of. So we can envisage the linguistic phenomenon in its entirety一the language, that is一as a series of adjoining subdivisions simultaneously imprinted both on the plane of vague,amorphous thought (A), and on the equally featureless plane of sound(H). This can be represented very approximately as in the followingsketch (top of p. 111。)但是，位于模糊的思想世界之外的声音，它本身会构成预先成立的实体吗？只不过是想法这样。声音的实质不再是思想的固定或僵化。它不提供现成的模具，思想必须不可避免地符合。这是一种可锻材料，为了提供思想所需要的信号可以制成不同的零件。我们可以设想语言本身即为一系列相邻分支同时印迹对模糊语言的平面，无定型的思想（A）和声音一样的平面（B）。这可以非常接近下面的示意图表示。（111页的顶端）The characteristic role of a language in relation to thought is not tosupply t