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1、A BRIEF INTRODUCTION TO LANGUAGE,Language,INTRODUCTION,Language, the principal means used by human beings to communicate with one another. Language is primarily spoken, although it can be transferred to other media, such as writing. If the spoken means of communication is unavailable, as may be the
2、case among the deaf, visual means such as sign language can be used.,LINGUISTICS,Linguistics is the scientific study of language. Several of the subfields of linguistics that will be discussed here: Phonetics is concerned with the sounds of languages, phonology with the way sounds are used in indivi
3、dual languages, morphology with the structure of words, syntax with the structure of phrases and sentences, and semantics with the study of meaning.,Sounds of Language,Because most languages are primarily spoken, an important part of the overall understanding of language involves the study of sounds
4、 of language. Most sounds in the worlds languages are produced by expelling air from the lungs and modifying the vocal tract between the larynx and the lips. For instance, the sound p requires complete closure of the lips, so that air coming from the lungs builds up pressure in the mouth, giving ris
5、e to the characteristic popping sound when the lip closure is released.,Units of Meaning,While many people, influenced by writing, tend to think of words as the basic units of grammatical structure, linguists recognize a smaller unit, the morpheme. The word cats, for instance, consists of two elemen
6、ts, or morphemes: cat, the meaning of which can be roughly characterized as “feline animal,” and -s, the meaning of which can be roughly characterized as “more than one.” Antimicrobial, meaning “capable of destroying microorganisms,” can be divided into the morphemes anti- (against), microbe (microo
7、rganism), and -ial, a suffix that makes the word an adjective. The study of these smallest grammatical units, and the ways in which they combine into words, is called morphology.,Word Order and Sentence Structure,Syntax is the study of how words combine to make sentences. The order of words in sente
8、nces varies from language to language. English-language syntax, for instance, generally follows a subject-verb-object order, as in the sentence “The dog (subject) bit (verb) the man (object).” In contrast, Japanese has a basic word order of subject-object-verb, as in “watakushi-wa hon-o kau,” which
9、literally translates to “I book buy.” Hixkaryana, spoken by about 400 people on a tributary of the Amazon River in Brazil, has a basic word order of object-verb-subject. The sentence “toto yahosye kamara,” which literally translates to “Man grabbed jaguar,” actually means that the jaguar grabbed the
10、 man, not that the man grabbed the jaguar.,Meaning in Language,While the fields of language study mentioned above deal primarily with the form of linguistic elements, semantics is the field of study that deals with the meaning of these elements. A prominent part of semantics deals with the meaning o
11、f individual morphemes. Semantics also involves studying the meaning of the constructions that link morphemes to form phrases and sentences. For instance, the sentences “The dog bit the man” and “The man bit the dog” contain exactly the same morphemes, but they have different meanings. This is becau
12、se the morphemes enter into different constructions in each sentence, reflected in the different word orders of the two sentences.,LANGUAGE ACQUISITION,Language acquisition, the process by which children and adults learn a language or languages, is a major field of linguistic study.,First-Language A
13、cquisition,First-language acquisition is a complex process that linguists only partially understand. Young children have certain innate characteristics to learn language. These characteristics include the structure of the vocal tract, which enables children to make the sounds used in language, and t
14、he ability to understand a number of general grammatical principles. These characteristics, however, do not predispose children to learn only one particular language. Children acquire whatever language is spoken around them, even if their parents speak a different language.,Second-Language Acquisiti
15、on,Although second-language acquisition literally refers to learning a language after having acquired a first language, the term is frequently used to refer to the acquisition of a second language after a person has reached puberty. Whereas children experience little difficulty in acquiring more tha
16、n one language, after puberty people generally must expend greater effort to learn a second language and they often achieve lower levels of competence in that language. People learn second languages more successfully when they become immersed in the cultures of the communities that speak those langu
17、ages.,Bilingualism and Multilingualism,Bilingualism is the ability to master the use of two languages, and multilingualism is the ability to master the use of more than two languages. Although bilingualism is relatively rare among native speakers of English, in many parts of the world it is the stan
18、dard. Bilingualism and multilingualism often involve different degrees of competence in the languages involved. A person may control one language better than another, or a person might have mastered the different languages better for different purposes, using one language for speaking, for example, and another for writing.,
