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1、Introduction to Contemporary LinguisticsChapter1l Human superiority lies in his unique endowment-the ability to talk, or rather, to communicate by means of language.l Talmud: god created the world by a word, instantaneously, without toil or pains.l Widdowson: the primacy of language in the way human
2、 beings conceive of the world.l Language is a vehicle of power, for control, for creation, and for change.l The study of human language is called linguistics.Linguistics deals with human language as a whole or as particular languages.1. As a whole: the system of human communication which consists of
3、 the structured arrangement of sounds (or their written representation) into larger units, e.g. morphemes, words, sentences, utterances.2. As particular language: like French language, they are particular systems of human communication used by people living in different parts of the world.l There is
4、 a continuum from one language to another.l Varieties of language: Any particular language is in essence a set of varieties. 1. local varieties区域变体dialects and accents(the former differ from each other in pronunciation, vocabulary, and even grammar; the latter only in pronunciation )2. social variet
5、iessociolects社会方言(=social dialects , used by people of different classes, ages, or sexes ),3. historical varietiestemporal variety.(e.g. the 17th century English)4. stylistic or occupational varieties-registers语域(e.g. formal English, scientific English)5. individual varietiesidiolects个人语言. 6. Usuall
6、y a language has an officially declared or generally considered standard dialect(e.g. Putonghua in China, General American in the US)From Prescriptivism to Descriptivisml Prescriptivism is the view that one variety of language has an inherently higher value than others.(try to impose rules from some
7、 high prestige language to some lower prestige language, like Latin and English)l Descriptivism is the policy of describing languages as they are bound to exist. Usages of different varieties should be observed and recorded instead of being judged with some imposed norms.Endowed or conventional?l Pl
8、atos problem: How can every human being develop a rich system of linguistic knowledge on the basis of limited and fragmentary empirical evidence? l Side of endowment: nativists(天生论) or mentalists（心智说）Plato:1. Mans knowledge came from universal truths.2. There was a universally correct and acceptable
9、 logic of language for man to follow in expressing his ideas.3. Knowledge of language was not learned but recalled.Chomsky:There is a biological, physiological entity inside our brain which decides what we speak.Chomsky has given a name to this entity-UG, or universal grammar. His epistemology of th
10、e knowledge of language foes as follows:1. Every human being has the language competence能力, because he has the inborn UG which other species lack.2. UG is the initial state of the human language faculty语言器官/机制 which alone cannot enable a human baby to speak. A baby needs to be exposed to the linguis
11、tic environment of a certain language and accumulate experience.3. Due to the effect of later experience, the babys mind develops from the initial state into the steady state, which corresponds to the competence of speaking a specific human language.l Side of convention: behaviorist or empiricistsAr
12、istotle: knowledge of language was arrived at by convention and agreement of the speakers of a given language.Xun zi: a name was accepted through public agreement, and the appropriateness of naming a thing lay in convention.The power of language exists in its countless varieties, not relying on any
13、universal standard.l Connectionism l Diachronic(历经时间的): focus on the comparison between languages and the exploration of the historical change and variation of some ancient languages./ of, relating to, or dealing with phenomena (as of language or culture) as they occur or change over a period of tim
14、el Synchronic（共时的）: research of the facts of language agreed upon or shared by his members of language community at a given point in time./ concerned with events existing in a limited time period and ignoring historical antecedentsGlossary l Endowments: (天赋) the natural quality that a person is made
15、 rich of from the birth.l Register: (语域) the words, style, and grammar used by speakers and writers in particular conditions, namely a socially defined variety of language. l Idiolect: (个人语言) the linguistic system of an individual speaker.l Sociolect: (社会方言) also social dialect. Variety of a languag
16、e defined by social factors such as age, religion, ethnicity, or socioeconomic status. Sociolects may be classed as high or low (in status).l Prescriptivism :(规定主义) the imposition of arbitrary norms upon a language, often in defiance of normal usage.l Descriptivism ：（描写主义）the policy of describing languages as they are bound to exist.l Nativism: (天生论) philosophical and
