Chapter One
Languages and Linguistics
There are some ideas about language, are they right or wrong?
1. Everyone speaks a dialect. Idiolect个人语型T
2. The function of language is to exchange information.    F
3. Black English is not standard and should be reformed.    F
EG:Omit the copula
Double negation
Past desk
Side
borrowed
He doesn’t know nothing.
4. Children learn their native language swiftly, efficiently and without instruction. T
5.Writing is a derivative派生物of speech. T
The meaning of learning language:
Linguistics can be used as a way of finding about how the brain works;
2.how children learn language;
3.how people learn and teach language;
4.why people use different variety of language;
5.why there are linguistic difference between different groups;
6.how scientists make the computer work in a more human-like manner ,etc.
Ⅰ.On language
1.What is language?
Language is a system of arbitrary vocal symbols used for human communication.The five important points in this definition are: system, arbitrary, vocal, symbols, human.
(1)System means elements in language are arranged according to certain rules. They can’t be combined at will.
< “bkim”He table a green.
(2) Arbitrary means that there is no logical connection between meaning and sounds.
(3) Symbols: words are the symbols for objects, actions, ideas and they are associated with them by convention.
“A rose by any other name would smell as sweet”
(4) vocal: the primary medium is sound for all languages no matter how well developed their writing systems are.
(5) Human means language is human-specific人特有的.
“No matter how eloquently善辩地；富于表现力地a dog may bark, he can’t tell you that his parents were poor but honest.
2.The Design features of language
Design features refer to the defining properties of human language that tell the difference between human language and any system of animal communication. They are:
(1) arbitrariness :Arbitrariness is the core核心feature of language , which means that there is no logical connection between meanings and sounds. Arbitrariness is a matter of degree.
a.arbitrary relationship between the sound of a morpheme词素and its meaning
b.arbitrariness at the syntactic level
Compare:
(a) He came in and sat down.
(b)He sat down and came in.
(c) He sat down after he came in.
According to functionalists,language is not arbitrary at the syntactic level. The most strictly arbitrary level of language exists in the distinctive units of sounds by which we distinguish pairs of words like pin and bin, or fish and dish.
c.arbitrariness and convention
The link between a linguistic sign and its meaning is a matter of convention.
Arbitrariness of language makes it potentially creative, and conventionality makes learning a language laborious困难的费力的.
(2)duality:Duality of structure refers to the fact that in all languages so far investigated, one finds two levels of structure. At higher level, language is analyzed in terms of combinations of meaningful units(such as morphemes, words, sentences, discourse etc.)At lower level, it is seen as a sequence of segments (sounds) which lack any meaning in themselves, but which combine to form units of meaning.
(3) productivity(creativity): Productivity refers to the ability to construct and understand an indefinitely large number of sentences in one’s native language, including those that one has never heard before. Language is productive because of its duality and recursiveness递归性.
1.
Short Essay Question：
1.What is language? The definition&the 5 elements &their explaination
2.What is duality? Two level &explanation&examples
2.True or False Question:
1.Language has a form-meaning correspondence.    F
2.The reason for French use cheval and for English to use horse to refer to the same animal is inexplicable无法解释的.    F
discourse
3.Most animal communication systems lack the primary level of articulation清晰度.
(4)displacement:Displacement refers to the fact that one can talk about things that are not present. In other words, one can refer to real and unreal things, things of past, of the present, of the future. The feature of displacement enables people to abstract抽象and generalize归纳their ideas.
(5) cultural transmission: language is not biologically transmitted from generation to generation. The details of the linguistic system must be learned by each speaker.
(6) interchangebility: Interchangebility means that any human being

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