2009语言学教案2009语言学教案.doc

Chapter 1 Invitations to Linguistics Teaching aims: let the students have the general idea about language and linguistics. Teaching difficulties: design features of language ; some important distinctions in linguistics Teaching procedures language Why study language? A tool for communication An integral part of our life and humanity If we are not fully aware of the nature and mechanism of our language, we will be ignorant of what constitutes our essential humanity. What is language? different senses of language what a person says( concrete act of speech) a person’s consistent way of speaking or writing a particular level of speaking or writing e.g. colloquial language an abstract system definitions Language is a means of verbal communication. It is instrumental in that communicating by speaking or writing is a purposeful act. It is social and conventional in that language is a social semiotic and communication can only take place effectively if all the users share a broad understanding of human interaction including such associated factors as nonverbal cues, motivation, and socio-cultural roles. What is communication? -- A process in which information is transmitted from a source (sender or speaker) to a goal (receiver or listener). 1.3 Design features of language 语言的结构特征 Design features refers to the defining properties of human language that distinguish it from any animal system of communication. arbitrariness----the form of linguistic signs bear no natural relationship to their meaning. The link between them is a matter of convention. Arbitrary relationship between the sound of a morpheme and its meaning, even with onomatopoeic words: E.g. “house” uchi (Japanese) Mansion (French) 房子(Chinese) Arbitrariness at the syntactic level: language is not arbitrary at the syntactic level. e. g. He came in and sat down. He sat down and came in. He sat down after he came in. conventionality----It means that in any language there are certa