《戴炜栋《简明语言学教程》配套笔记》由会员分享，可在线阅读，更多相关《戴炜栋《简明语言学教程》配套笔记（53页珍藏版）》请在金锄头文库上搜索。
1、Chapter 1 What is language?A The origins of languageSome speculations of the origins of language: The divine sourceThe basic hypothesis: if infants were allowed to grow up without hearing any language, then they would spontaneously begin using the original god-given language.Actually, children livin
2、g without access to human speech in their early years grow up with no language at all. The natural-sound sourceThe bow-wow theory: the suggestion is that primitive words could have been imitations of the natural sounds which early men and women heard around them.The “Yo-heave-ho” theory: the sounds
3、produced by humans when exerting physical effort, especially when co-operating with other humans, may be the origins of speech sounds.Onomatopoeic sounds The oral-gesture sourceIt is claimed that originally a set of physical gestures was developed as a means of communication.The patterns of movement
4、 in articulation would be the same as gestural movement; hence waving tongue would develop from waving hand. Glossogenetics（言语遗传学）This focuses mainly on the biological basis of the formation and development of human language.Physiological adaptationdevelop naming abilityinteractions and transactions
5、Physical adaptation:Human teeth are upright and roughly even in height.Human lips have intricate muscle interlacing, thus making them very flexible.The human mouth is small and contains a very flexible tongue.The human larynx is lowered, creating a longer cavity called the pharynx, and making it eas
6、ier for the human to choke on the pieces of food, but making the sound speech possible.The human brain is lateralized. Those analytic functions (tool-using and language) are largely confined to the left hemisphere of the brain for most humans.Two major functions of language:Interactional: a social f
7、unction of language.Transactional: a function involving the communication of knowledge and informationB The properties of languageLanguage is a system of arbitrary vocal symbols used for human communication.a) System: combined together according to rulesb) Arbitrary: no intrinsic connection between
8、the word “pen” and the thing in the world which it refers toc) Vocal: the primary medium is sound for all languagesd) Human: language is human-specific（交际性与信息性）Communicative vs. Informative:Communicative: intentionally using language to communicate somethingInformative: through/via a number of signa
9、ls that are not intentionally sentDesign features (unique properties): the defining properties of human language that distinguish it from any animal system of communication Displacement（跨时空性，移位性）Language can be used to refer to contexts removed from the immediate situations of the speaker (refer to
10、past and future time and to other locations) Arbitrariness（任意性）There is no logical or natural connection between a linguistic form (either sound or word) and its meaning.While language is arbitrary by nature, it is not entirely arbitrary.a) echo of the sounds of objects or activities: onomatopoeic w
11、ordsb) some compound words Productivity（能产性，创造性）Language is productive in that it makes possible the construction and interpretation of new signals by its users. (Creativity or open-endedness) Cultural transition（文化传递性）While human capacity for language has a genetic basis (everyone was born with the
12、 ability to acquire a language), the details of any language system are not genetically transmitted, but instead have to be taught and learnt. Discreteness（可分离性）Each sound in the language is treated as discrete. Duality（双重结构性，两重性或二元性）Language is organized at two levels or layers simultaneously. The
13、lower or basic level is a structure of sounds which are meaningless. The higher level is morpheme or word (double articulation)The above six properties may be taken as the core features of human language.Vocal-auditory channel, reciprocity, specialization, non-directionality, or rapid fade, these pr
14、operties are best treated as ways of describing human language, but not as a means of distinguishing it from other systems of communication.C The development of written language pictograms & ideograms（象形文字和表意文字）Pictogram: when some of the pictures came to represent particular images in a consistent
15、way, we can begin to describe the product as a form of picture-writing, or pictograms.Ideogram: the picture developed as more abstract and used other than its entity is considered to be part of a system of idea-writing, or ideogramHieroglyph: 古埃及象形文字 Logograms（语标书写法）When symbols come to be used to r
16、epresent words in a language, they are described as examples of word-writing, or logograms.“Arbitrariness”a writing system which was word-based had come into existence.Cuneiform-楔形文字the Sumerians (5000 and 6000 years ago)Chinese is one example of its modern writing system.Advantages: two different dialects can be based on the same writing syste
