Differentfrom

2023年1月25日发(作者：抚顺婚纱) is modern linguistics different from traditional grammar?

Traditional gram-mar is prescriptive; it is bad on "high "(religious, literary) written lan-guage . It ts grammatical rules and impos the rules on language urs. But Modern linguistics is descriptive; It collects authentic, and mainly spoken language data and then it studies and describes the data in an objective and scientific way.

《现代语言学》串讲笔记（3）

中华考试网() 【大 中 小】 [ 2010年9月3日 ]

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4. What makes modern linguistics different from traditional grammar? (现代语言学与传统语法有什么区别？)

Traditional grammar is prescriptive（规定性）; it is bad on "high "(religious, literary) written language. It ts models for language urs to follow. But Modern linguistics is descriptive（描述性）; its investigations are bad on authentic and mainly spoken language data. It is suppod to be scientific and objective and the task of linguists is suppod to describe the language people actually u, whether it is "correct" or not.

5. Is modern linguistics mainly synchronic（共时性） or diachronic（历时性）? Why?

(The description of language at some point in time is a synchronic study; the description of a language as it changes through time is a diachronic study.)

Modern linguistics is mainly synchronic, focusing on the prent-day language. Unless the various states of a language are successfully studied, it will not be possible to describe language from a diachronic point of view.

6. Which enjoys priority in modern linguistics, speech or writing? Why?

Modern linguistics gives priority to the spoken language for the following reasons:

First, speech precedes writing. The writing system is always a later invention ud to record the speech. There are still some languages that only have the spoken form.

Then, a larger amount of communication is carried out in speech than in writing.

Third, speech is the form in which infants acquire their native language.

7. Saussure 是如何区分语言langue和言语parole的？

(The distinction between langue and parole was made by the famous Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure early this century. Langue and parole are French words.)

Langue refers to the abstract linguistic system shared by all the members of a speech community, and parole refers to the realization of langue in actual u. Langue is the t of conventions and rules which language urs all have to follow while parole is the concrete u of the conventions and the application of the rules. Langue is abstract; it is not the language people actually u, but parole is concrete; it refers to the naturally occurring language events. Langue is relatively stable, it does not change frequently; while parole varies from person to person, and from situation to situation.

8. Chomsky的语言能力competence和语言使用performance

各指什么？

(American linguist N. Chomsky in the late 1950’s propod the distinction between competence and performance.)

Chomsky defines competence as the ideal ur’s knowledge of the rules of his language. This internalized t of rules enables the language ur to produce and understand an infinitely large number of ntences and recognize ntences that are ungrammatical and ambiguous. According to Chomsky, performance is the actual realization of this knowledge in linguistic communication. Although the speaker’s knowledge of his mother tongue is perfect, his performances may have mistakes becau of social and psychological factors such as stress, embarrassment, etc… Chomsky believes that what linguists should study is the competence, which is systematic, not the performance, which is too haphazard (偶然的).

9. How is Saussure’s distinction between langue and parole similar to Chomsky’s distinction between competence and performance? And what is their difference?

Both Saussure and Chomsky make the distinction between the abstract language system and the actual u of language. Their purpo is to single out one aspect of language for rious study.

They differ in that Saussure takes a sociological view of language and his notion of langue is a matter of social conventions, and Chomsky looks at language from a psychological point of view and to him competence is a property of the mind of each individual.