Unit 1 invitations to linguistics
1.Design features of language:
The design features: the distinctive features of human language that esntially make human language distinguishable from languages of animals
●Arbitrariness
汽车问答The abnce of any physical correspondence between linguistic signals and the entities to which they refer. / The forms of linguistic signs bear no natural relationship to their meaning.
✓Arbitrariness relationship between the sound of a morpheme and its meaning.
(e.g. murmurous / murderous)
✓Arbitrariness at the syntactic level
小学语文教师Functionalists hold that the most strictly arbitrary level of language existed in the distinctive units of sounds by which we distinguish pairs of words like pin and bin, or fish and dish.
(e.g. As the night fell, the wind ro.)
二年级绘画作品✓Arbitrariness and convention
Convention: it is an idiom------it is a convention to say things like this way.
(When in Rome, do as romans do.)
肌肉小腿●Duality:
The structural organization of language into two abstract levels: meaningful units (words and phra) and meaningless gments(sound and letters)
The condary units are meaningless and the primary units are meaningful.
✓Traffic light system does not have duality: it cannot be divided into meaningless units, so it only has primary level like animals.
A large number of meaningful units can be formed out of a small number of elements----productive power.
●Creativity
The speaker is able to combine the basic linguistic units to form an infinite t of ntences, most of which are never before produced or heard.
It’s potential to create endless ntences. (recursiveness)
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●Displacement
The ability of language enable their urs symbolize objects, events an d concepts which are not prent (in time and space) at the moment of communication.
2.Origin of language
●The “bow-bow” theory: imitating of animal calls in wild environment
●The “pooh-pooh” theory: they utter instinctive sounds of pain, anger and joy.
●The “yo-he-yo” theory: as primitive people worked together, they produced some rhythmic grunts which gradually developed into chants and then into language.
3.Functions of language：
●Informative function: to tell and to give something out
好惬意●Interpersonal function: (人际功能) by which people establish and maintain their status in a society.
For example, the way in which people address others and refer to themlves.
Dear Sir……
●Performative function: the performative function of language is primarily to change the s
ocial status of persons, such as in marriage ceremonies, the ntencing of criminals and cursing of enemies
●Emotive function: (also called expressive function) uttered without any purpo of communicating to others, but esntially a verbal respon to a person’s own feeling.
●Phatic communion:
It refers to social interaction of language.
Broadly speaking it refers to expressions that help define and maintain interpersonal relations, such as slangs, jokes, jargon…….
●Recreational function: The u of language for hearty joy of using it.
●Metalingual function:
形容好朋友的成语
Our language can be ud to talk about itlf. (lf-reflexive) we human beings can talk about talking and can think about thinking.
For example: To be honest, to make a long story short, in a word.
4.Main branches of linguistics:
●Phonetics
It studies speech sound, including the production of speech, the description and classification of speech sounds, words and connected speech……
●Phonology
It is the study of a subt of tho sounds that constitute language and meaning.
It studies the rules governing the structure, distribution, and quencing of speech sounds and shape of syllables.
●Morphology
It is concerned with the internal organization of words.
梅洋村
For example: The dog es the rabbit. In English, different order gives different meaning. However, in Latin and also in Russian, dog and rabbit take on some morphological endings depending on whether they are subject or object. So, different ntence order did not change its meaning.
●Syntax
It is about principles of forming and understanding correct English ntences.
For example:
✓The children watched [the firework from the hill].
✓The children watched [the firework] [from the hill].
●Semantics
Examine how meaning is encoded in a language.
It is not only concerned with meanings of words as lexical items, but also with levels of language below words and above it, such as meaning of morphemes and ntences.
●Pragmatics
The study of meaning in context.
