英语语言学总复习.doc

Terms of General Linguistics Language Language is a form of human communication by means of a system of symbols principally transmitted by vocal sounds 2. Arbitrariness of language It is one of the design features by which human language is distinguished from animal sounds. It refers to the fact that the forms of linguistic signs bear no natural relationship to their meaning. For example, we use different sounds to address the same entity in the world in different languages or different dialects of the same language. For instance, a book is called /buk/ in English, while ‘书’ in Chinese. This is the arbitrariness at the lexical level. At the syntactic level, the sequences of words occur in different orders in different languages. But the arbitrariness at this level is not so obvious as it at the lexical level. 3. Duality of language The property of having two levels of structures, such that units of the primary level are composed of elements of the secondary level and each of the two levels has its own principles of organization: Primary units ‘words’ (meaningful) consist of secondary units ‘sounds’ (meaningless). 4. Creativity of language Language is resourceful because of its duality and its recursiveness. We can use it to create new meanings. Words can be used in new ways to mean new things, and can be instantly understood by people who have never come across that usage before. 5. Displacement of language Displacement is the ability of language to refer to contexts removed from the speaker’s immediate situation. It means that human languages enable their users to symobize objects, events and concepts, which are not present (in time and space) at the moment of communication. 6. Informative function Language is the instrument of thought and people often feel need to speak their thoughts aloud. The use of language to record the facts is a prerequisite of social development. The informative function is indeed a crucial function of language. It is also called ideatio