Chapter I Invitations to Linguistics
1.1 Why study language?
Ø Language is an integral part of our life and humanity.
Ø Yet we know little or even have even wrong ideas about language.
. ·Where does language come from? How? When?
·Why is language human-specific?
·Why can a child learn his/her mother tongue in a short period of time?
·How can we say one thing but mean another?
Ø The subject of language is intriguing and useful for many practical reasons.
Language can be used as a way of finding out:
·How the brain works.
·How children learn language.
·Why people use different varieties of language.
·What the role of language is in different cultures, etc.
1.2 Language
1.2.1 Origin (of speech)
Ø The divine theory: endowed by God (The Tower of Babel)
Ø The bow-wow theory: imitative of sounds (onomatopoeic words)
Ø The pooh-pooh theory: instinctive cries out of intense emotions (interjections)
Ø The ding-dong theory: natural resonance when struck (ding-dong)
Ø The yo-he-yo theory: rhythmic grunts when working together (heave, haul)
Questions for discussion:
1. Will the day come when all languages become one?
2. What is possibly the first language?
3. Where do you think language came from?
1.2.2 Design features
Ø Arbitrariness: no natural relationship between meaning and form.
“A rose by any other name would smell as sweet”
Ø Duality: two hierarchical structures of sounds and words
Sounds are secondary; words are primary.
Ø Creativity: productivity, infinite use of finite means
This feature answers why we can understand sentences never heard before.
Ø Displacement: stimulus free (genereralization and abstraction)
It benefits human with the power for generalization and abstraction.
Two more features:
Ø Cultural transmission: more cultural than genetic
Ø Interchangeability: both a producer and a receiver
1.2.3 Definition
Ø Different senses of “language”:
·Bad language: expressions
·Shakespeare’s language: idiolect
·Business language: variety
·The English language: abstract system
·A student of language: universal properties of all speech/writing systems
Ø Definition of language as a research subject:
Language is a system of arbitrary vocal symbols used for human communication.
Whatever the definition of language, it must include directly, or by close implication, some main attributes of language as follows:
·Language is systematic. (Elements are combined according to rules.)
·Language is arbitrary. (A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.)
·Language is basically vocal—the primary medium is sound for all languages.
·Language is human specific—bird songs and bee dances
Questions for discussion:
1. Give more senses of “language”
(Computer language, body language, sign language)
1.2.4 Functions
Linguists talk about the FUNCTIONS of language in an abstract sense. They summarize practical functions and attempt some broad classifications.
Ø Some broad classifications:
·.Jakobson (1960): referential (context), emotive (addresser), poetic (message), conative (addressee), phatic (contact), meta-lingual (code)
·Halliday early: instrumental, regulatory, representational, interactional, personal, heuristic and imaginative.
·Halliday (1994): ideational (logical), interpersonal (social) and textual (relevant)
Ø Sub-classification with reference to Halliday (1994)
·Informative (ideational): to express the speaker’s experience of the external and internal world.
·Interpersonal: to establish and maintain social rules
Performative: to perform actions (directive)
Emotive (expressive): overlapped with expression of the inner experience
Phatic: purely social/interpersonal
·Textual Recreational: to recreate/play with words
Metalingual: to talk about language itself
Questions for discussion:
1. What do we do with the following expressions?
Hello! (Phatic)
Get out of my way! (Directive)
The earth revolves around the sun. (Informative)
Do you know his hobby? (Interrogative)
I hate her. (Expressive)
How do you like Jack? (Evocative)
I hereby declare the meeting open. (Performative)
Tommy, Dear Friend (Interpersonal)
Humor; rhyming; puns (Recreational)
What I mean is; in other words (Metalinguistic)
1.3 Linguistics
1.3.1 Definition
Linguistics is generally defined as the scientific study of language. As a science, it now has its own set of established theories, methods and sub-branches.
1.3.2 Scope
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Division
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Sub-division
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Subject
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Linguistics: the scientific study of language
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Micro-linguistics:
the study of language in itself
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Phonetics
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Individual sounds
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Phonology
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Sound system
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Morphology
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Word formation
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Syntax
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Sentence structure
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Semantics
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Textual meaning
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Pragmatics
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Contextual meaning
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Macro-linguistics:
the study of language in relation to other disciplines
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Psycholinguistics
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Mind
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Sociolinguistics
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Society
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Anthropological linguistics
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Human history
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Computational linguistics
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Computer
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Applied linguistics
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Education
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Comparative linguistics
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Languages
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Neurolinguistics
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Brain
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Cognitive linguistics
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Cognition
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Table 1 the Scope of General Linguistics
Questions for discussion:
1. In what ways can foreign language learners benefit from linguistics?
2. What other fields have close relations with the science of language?
1.3.3 Important distinctions
Ø Descriptive vs. prescriptive:
This distinction lies in prescribing how things ought to be and describing how things are.
Ø Synchronic vs. diachronic:
The former takes a fixed instant, usually the present, as its point of observation; the latter studies a language through the course of its history.
Ø Etic vs. emic: outsider/observer and insider/ participant
The two terms originate from Pike’s distinction of phonetics and phonemics.
Ø Speech vs. writing: Speech is primary over writing, which in turn gives language new scope and uses.
Ø Langue vs. parole: abstract/social rules and concrete/personal use
Saussure distinguished the linguistic competence of the speaker and the actual phenomena or data of linguistics (utterances) as langue and parole.
Ø Competence vs. performance:
A language user’s underlying knowledge about the system of rules is called his linguistic competence. And performance refers to the actual use of language in concrete situations (Chomsky)
NOTE that the first three distinctions are concerned with the ways of studying language, and the other three are related to research subjects of linguistics.
(张Andy整理编辑)
(张Andy整理编辑)
老师的课教得很好！ 
