语言学概论第一章.pptVIP

Differences: Saussure took a sociological view of language and his notion of langue is a matter of social conventions Chomsky looks at language from a psychological point of view and to him competence is a property of the mind of each individual. 1.4 Functions of Language What language is What language does Function: organic or constitutive functions of linguistic units. (1) It has been very cold recently. (2) It has been very cold this month. (3) It has been very cold during the past two weeks. “Function” is generally used in linguistics to refer to the roles language plays in our life or in society: specific roles or general roles. Specific roles: fulfilling an individual’s purpose of communication. (speech function) General roles: capable of describing innumerable specific functions. (metafunctions) Specific functions: Informative (信息功能) Interpersonal function (人际功能) Performative (施为功能) Emotive Function (情感功能) Phatic Communication (寒暄交谈) Recreational Function (娱乐功能) Metalingual Function (元语言功能) Three main morphological types: Analytic (isolating) 分析型：Chinese, Vietnamese Synthetic (inflecting) 综合型：Latin, Greek, Arabics Agglutinating 粘着型：Turkish, Japanese, Swahili Syntactically, language can also be classified by oberving their word order in the sentence, that is whether the word order is fixed or free and what kind of order is favored: Subject, Predicate (Verb), Object — SVO, SOV, VSO, VOS,OVS, OSV. 1.6 Language Origin The ‘Divine’ origin: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” (John 1:1) “And the Lord said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do; and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do.” (Genesis, 11:6) The Bow-wow theory sees primitive language as an imitation of natural sounds, such as the cries of animals, like quack,