语言学考试要点复习.docVIP

What are the main features of human language The features that define our human languages can be called DESIGN FEATURES. The following are the frequently discussed ones: 1 Arbitrariness The widely accepted meaning of this feature first refers to the fact that the forms of linguistic signs bear no natural relationship to their meaning. For instance, we cannot explain why a book is called a/book/ and a pen a/pen/. However there seems to be different levels of ARBITRARINESS. Arbitrary relationship between the sound of a morpheme and its meaning Arbitrariness at the syntactic level Language is not arbitrary at the syntactic level. In other words, syntax is less arbitrary than words (3)Arbitrariness and convention What then is the link between a linguistic sign and its meaning? It is a matter of CONVENTION. 2.Duality “By DUALITY is meant 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” Roughly speaking, the elements of the spoken language are sounds which do not convey meaning in themselves. The only function of sounds is to combine with one another to form units that have meaning, such as words. We call sounds here secondary units as opposed to such primary units as words, since the secondary units are meaningless and the primary units have distinct and identifiable meaning. The property of duality then only exits in such system, namely, with both elements and units. Now we can perceive the advantage of duality, which lies in the great productive power our language is endowed with. 3 Creativity By creativity we mean language is resourceful because of its duality and its recursiveness. One of the reasons why language is actually a far more complicated entity than traffic lights is that we can use it to create new meanings. This ability is one of the things that sets human language apart from the kind of commun