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陈新仁《英语语言学实用教程》笔记和课后习题详解试读：
第1章 导 言
1.1 复习笔记
本章要点：
1．The functions of language 语言的功能
2．The defining features of language 语言的区别性特征
3．The origin of language 语言的起源
4．The acquisition of language 语言的习得
本章考点：
语言的功能，语言的起源，语言的区别性特征及语言习得等。
本章内容索引：
I. The languages of the world
II. The functions of language
1．Phatic
2．Directive
3．Informative
4．Interrogative
5．Expressive
6．Evocative
7．Performative
III. The defining features of language
1．Arbitrariness
2．Duality
3．Creativity
4．Displacement
5．Cultural Transmission
IV. The origin of language
1．The bow-wow theory
2．The pooh-pooh theory
3．The ding-dong theory
4．The yo-he-ho theory
5．The ta-ta theory
6．The ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay theory
V. The acquisition of language
1．Features of language acquisition
2．Stages of language acquisition
I. The languages of the world（世界上的语言）
There are some 6, 800 known languages spoken in 200 countries of the world.
世界上共有6, 800 多种语言，被200多个国家的人们所使用。
There are over 100 language families in the world.
世界上共有一百多个语系。
II. The functions of language（语言的功能）
1．Phatic: Hello
寒暄功能。例：你好。
2．Directive: Get out of my way
指令功能。例：滚开！
3．Informative: The earth revolves around the sun.
信息功能。例：地球围着太阳转。
4．Interrogative: Do you know his hobby?
询问功能。例：你知道他的爱好吗？
5．Expressive: I hate her.
表达功能。例：我讨厌她。
6．Evocative: How do you like Jack?
感情功能。例：你觉得杰克怎么样？
7．Performative: I hereby declare the meeting open.
施为功能。例：我特此宣布会议开始。
III. The defining features of language（语言的区别性特征）
1．Arbitrariness（任意性）
As a symbolic unit, a word has both form and meaning. As a rule, the relation between the form and the meaning, however, is arbitrary. In other words, there is no inherent connection between the form and the meaning.
作为象征性符号，单词拥有形式和意义。然而二者之间的关系是任意的，换言之，二者之间没有内在联系。
2．Duality（二重性）
Language operates at two levels: at the lower level, language consists of a bunch of meaningless elements; at the higher level, the meaningless elements combine to form meaningful units like words.
二重性是指语言拥有两层结构的属性，在底层结构，语言含有一系列无意义的音素；在上层结构，这些无意义的符号组成有意义的单位，如单词等。
3．Creativity（创造性）
“Creativity”, sometimes also called “productivity”, means the property which makes possible the construction and interpretation of new symbols, i.e. of signals that have not been previously encountered.
创造性指语言的能产性，它能够使人造出和理解许多新符号，其中很多是以前从未听过的。
4．Displacement（移位性）
Language can be used to talk about what happened in the past, what is happening at present, or what will happen in the future. Also, we can use language to refer to things no matter how far away they are or whether they are present or absent.
移位性是指人类语言可以让使用者在交际时用语言符号代表时间上和空间上并不可及的物体、事件和观点，超越过去、现在和将来。
5．Cultural transmission（文化传递性）
Language is not genetically inherited. Passed from generation to generation, it requires some learning.
语言不是靠遗传，而是通过学习代代相传的。
IV. The origin of language（语言的起源）
1．The bow-wow theory（“汪汪”理论）
Primitive words were imitative of sounds; for example, from the barking of dogs, we created a word which meant “dog” or “bark”.
语言是模仿自然的声音，例如动物的叫声，狗叫声等。
2．The pooh-pooh theory（“噗噗”理论）
Language is derived from instinctive cries called forth by intense emotions.
语言来源于人本能的情感声音，表达疼痛等。
3．The ding-dong theory（“叮咚”理论）
Every substance has a natural resonance when struck. Possibly, when man was struck by an impression (for example, the sight of a sheep), he would emit the appropriate vocal response, that is, the word “sheep”.
每个物体在敲击时都有自己的回音。例，当人们听到某种音而印象深刻时（如sheep的声音），便会发出适当的口头回复，这就成了单词“sheep”。
4．The yo-he-ho theory（“哟-嘿-吼”理论）
Under heavy external loads, man would emit noises from his vocal tract; these noises became language, so the first words might mean “heave” or “haul”.
在受到外来压力时，人们会从声道处发出哟嘿的声音，这些声音便成了语言，因此第一个单词一般表示“举”或“拖”等。
5．The ta-ta theory（模仿理论）
Man-made gestures appropriate to certain situations, for example, waving when taking leave; the tongue might duplicate the manual gesture and utter the sound ta-ta.
人们在特定情景会做出特定的动作，如送别时会挥手。舌头可能会重复手的动作，发出声音“回头见”。
6．The ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay theory（“塔拉啦布德瑞”理论）
Language might have arisen from ritual dance and incantation.
在舞会及咒语中也会产生语言。
V. The acquisition of language（语言的习得）
1．Features of language acquisition（语言习得的特征）
(1) universally successful普遍成功
(2) no explicit instruction无明确指导
(3) rapid迅速的
(4) conditional有条件的
2．Stages of language acquisition（语言习得的阶段）
(1) babbling period: birth- around 6 months, some sounds produced;
呀呀学语阶段：从出生到6个月，能发一些音；
(2) syllabic speech period: around 8 months, syllables like [mama] replace babbled sounds;
音节发音阶段：8个月左右，能够发出“mama”代替含糊不清的音；
(3) single-word stage: around 1 year old, first words, no grammar; carry out simple commands;
单音节阶段：1岁左右，单音节无语法，能执行简单的命令；
(4) onset of speech: 18 months, more words (3-50 words);
语言初步习得：18个月，学会3—50个单词；
(5) two-word utterances stage: 2 years old; begin one’s own creation of two-word phrases (early stage of grammar);
双音节阶段：2岁，能自己造词（开始习得语法）；
(6) full-understanding stage: 2. 5 years old;
完全理解阶段：2—5岁；
(7) near adult-speech: 3 years old; overgeneralization of inflections;
接近成年阶段：3岁，屈折变化的高度概括；
(8) adult speech: 4 years old.
成年阶段：4岁。
1.2 课后习题详解
Check your understanding
State whether each of the following statements is True or False.
(1) There is universal agreement about the origin of language.【答案】F
(2) Pet dogs can speak human language.【答案】F
(3) All human infants can speak some language.【答案】F
(4) By creativity we mean the creative use of language as often practiced by poets.【答案】F
(5) With different cultures there will be different languages.【答案】F
(6) Not all uses of language are meant to convey new information.【答案】T
In-Class Activities
1．“Language”, like “yuyan” in Chinese, is used for different meanings in different contexts, as shown below:
a. Chinese is a language.
b. Linguistics is the systematic study of language.
e. Both Jane and John like Shakespeare’s language.
d. the language of bees
Ask
(1) What does “language” mean in each of the contexts?
Key: a. a natural language; language in particular.
b. a human-specific tool for communication; language in general.
c. individual style of language use.
d. a metaphorical way of referring to bees’ system of communication.
(2) Is there any other context in which the use of the word means something else?+
Key: Yes. Example: language for the computer like C.
2．There is a well-known story in the Bible that reflects the importance of language in human society. According to the Old Testament, mankind spoke only one language until Nimrod began to build a tower that was to reach heaven. The Lord said, “Behold, they are one people, and they have all one language, and nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. Come, let us go down, and there confuse their language, that they may not understand each other’s speech.”
Ask
(1) What if there were no language?
Key: If there were no language, human beings could not communicate with each other, the experience of great persons and the process of history could not be documented. All in all, without language, the society cannot move forward.
(2) What if there were only one language the world over?
Key: It would be much more convenient for human beings to communicate with each other; however, on the other hand, there could not be such a prosperous development of different cultures.
(3) What can we learn from this Bible story?
Key: Language is powerful as a tool of human communication.
3．The course of linguistics is aimed at bringing our conscious attention to language, something with which we are very familiar and which, paradoxically, we find strange. For instance, language is said to be creative. Consider the following two statements:
a. I learned a new word yesterday.
b. I learned a new sentence yesterday.
Ask
(1) Do you think the two statements are equally probable, and if not, why not?
Key: (a) is more likely than (b), since as the basic unit of meaning, the word can occur independently in language is finite in number, whereas as composed of words, the sentence, though is almost infinite in number, is made possible by our knowledge of vocabulary and grammar. We can always produce and understand sentences that we never come across before. In that sense, no sentence is absolutely new.
(2) In what context do we make the second statement?
Key: When we focus our attention on the meaning of a sentence or when we are concerned with the form of a sentence as found in a language class.
4．The following English words are what we call onomatopoeic words, words that are characterized by a natural correspondence between their physical property (like sound or form) and their content or meaning:
bang; bark; crash; hiss
Ask
(1) Are there onomatopoeic words in Chinese?
Key: Yes. e.g.“哗啦”、“扑通”、“喀嚓”.
(2) Does the existence of onomatopoeic words overthrow the claim that language is arbitrary?
Key: No. Onomatopoeic words account for a very limited percentage in the vocabulary of a language
5．The arbitrary nature of language does not suggest that individuals can use a language arbitrarily. In fact, once the members of a community agree on the meaning of words, they are supposed to abide by the convention. Look at the following cartoon:
Ask
(1) Can one really invent a language of one’s own?
Key: No.
(2) If not, why?
Key: A language comes into being and is used by convention or agreement among its speakers.
6．Before the middle of the eighteenth century, theories of the beginning of language were widely discussed. According to these early theories, man was created almost instantaneously and speech was provided to him as a divine gift at the moment of creation. So goes the story of the Garden of Eden. God created Adam and speech simultaneously. God spoke with Adam and Adam answered him. The language they used was Hebrew.
Andreas Kemke, a Swedish philologist, asserted that in the garden of Eden, God spoke Swedish, Adam spoke Danish, and the serpent spoke French. Goropius Becanus, a Dutch theorist, asserted that the language of the Garden was Dutch. The Egyptians considered themselves the oldest civilization, and therefore the original language was Egyptian.
On the assumption that babies, if left alone, will grow up speaking “the original” language, Psammetichus (6 B. C.) had two babies taken at random from an ordinary family and given to a servant to raise. He ordered the servant not to speak a word to the babies. When they were two years old, the children one day abruptly greeted the servant with “Bekos!” The servant immediately reported this to Psammetichus. The king checked with his counselors, who informed him that “bekos” meant “bread” in Phrygian. So in true “scientific” spirit, Psammetichus announced that Phrygian was the original language.
Ask
(1) Is there any basic flaw in this experiment?
Key: The process is not strictly controlled. There may have been some coincidence. The sample size is too small for the experiment to be valid.
(2) Do you think we really can answer the question about the beginning of language?
Key: No, at least in the present condition where/when we cannot perform experiments on the human brain, the key organ of speech.
7．Below are samples of speech from children at three different stages in their acquisition process.
Child A: You want to eat?
I can’t see my book.
Why you wake me up?
Child B: Where those dogs goed?
You didn’t eat supper.
Does lions walk?
Child C: No picture in there.
Where momma boot?
Have some?
Ask
(1) Can you identify the most likely order (from least to most advanced) of these samples?
Key: C→B→A
(2) What features in each child’s utterances can you use as evidence to support your ordering?
Key:Child A: good syntax except for improper question form.
Child B: visible development of syntax; overgeneralization
Child C: Not much syntax; two-word utterances; telegraphic sentences (sentences that contain only content words but lack function words)
8．The following data (from Fromkin and Rodman 1983) might give some hints about first language acquisition:
Episode 1
Adult: He’s going out.
Child: He go out.
Adult: That’s an old-time train.
Child: Old-time train.
Adult: Adam, say what I say: Where can I put them ?
Child: Where I can put them ?
Episode 2
Child: My teacher holded the baby rabbits and we patted them.
Adult: Did you say your teacher held the baby rabbits?
Child: Yes.
Adult: What did you say she did?
Child: She holded the baby rabbits and we patted them.
Adult: Did you say she held them tightly?
Child: No, she holded them loosely.
Ask
(1) It is often assumed that children imitate adults in the course of language acquisition. Can imitation account for the above production on the part of the child?
Key: It can account for some, but cannot account for all. There is counter evidence against the assumption, like the overgeneralization “go-ed” for “went”.
(2) What distinguishes the child’s production from that of the adult?
Key: Overgeneralization of “-ed” for the past tense as shown by “holded”.
9．Another theory of child language acquisition argues that children learn to produce "correct" sentences because they are positively reinforced when they say something right and negatively reinforced when they say something wrong. Observe the following data (ibid.) and answer the questions that follow:
Child: Nobody don’t like me.
Mother: No, say “Nobody likes me”.
Child: Nobody don’t like me.
(dialogue repeated eight times)
Mother: Now, listen carefully; say “Nobody likes me”.
Child: Oh, nobody don’t likes me.
Ask
(1) How do adults reinforce the process of children’s acquisition as exemplified here?
Key: They use explicit correction.
(2) Do children know what they are doing wrongly?
Key: Not exactly.
(3) Do adults succeed in their reinforcement?
Key: Not always, at least.
(4) How should we treat the "mistakes" that children make while acquiring their mother tongue?
Key: We may ignore them sometimes, although some amount of reinforcement may turn out to be helpful.
10．Some scholars suggest that children are able to learn language because adults speak to them in a special “simplified” language sometimes called motherese, care-takerese, or child directed speech (CDS) (more informally, baby talk). In our culture adults do typically talk to young children in a special way. We tend to speak more slowly and more clearly, we exaggerate our intonation, and sentences are generally short and simple.
Ask
(1) Do children learn through structured or simplified input, as suggested?
Key: Not always. There is evidence for both sides.
(2) Can you offer some examples representing the way adults talk to infants?
Key: Motherese is characterized by shorter sentences, higher pitch, exaggerated intonation, higher proportion of content words to function words, simple syntax, more interrogatives and imperatives, more repetitions. Yet it is not syntactically simpler. Rather, it may include syntactically complex sentences such as questions: Do you want your juice now? Negatives with tag questions: We don’t want to hurt him, do we? Indeed, it is fortunate that motherese is not syntactically restricted. If it were, children might not have sufficient information to extract the rules of their language.
11．Not only are many languages dying today, many dialects are also disappearing from the planet. For example, according to a report once circulated on the Internet, many parents discourage their children from speaking their local dialect. They would rather their children took hold of every chance to learn English, because the latter will give them an edge in future competition.
Ask
(1) What measures do you suggest for protecting dialects as well as languages?
Key: I think the most important measure is that government should put forward some policies to improve the status of dialects; then the area should pay more attention to economic development, if the economy there is advanced, the dialect there is also popular, like Cantonese and so on.
(2) Do you think that someday people all over the world will speak only one language, or someday dialect will cease to exist?
Key: I don’t think so. Because language is a very important symbol of one nation, every country pay much attention to spread the influence of their language in the world, they are unwilling to give up their own language.
12．Natural languages have a lot in common. The common properties that all natural languages share are termed “universals”. Here are some of them:
(1) Wherever humans exist, language exists.
(2) The vocabulary of any language can be expanded to include new words for new concepts.
(3) All languages change through time.
(4) All grammars contain rules for the formation of words and sentences of a similar kind.
(5) Similar grammatical categories (for example, nouns, verbs) are found in all languages.
Ask
Are there any universals that you think all languages share but are not mentioned here?
Key: E.g. All languages have internal structures. All languages have numerical.
Exercise
Task 1 Reference Search
Find in the library or online some information about the following themes:
(1) Esperanto
(2) phatic communion
(3) Ferdinand de Saussure
(4) language acquisition device (LAD)
(5) Innate Hypothesis
Key:
(1) Esperanto is the most widely spoken constructed international auxiliary language. Its name derives from Doktoro Esperanto which tanslates as “one who hopes”.
(2) phatic communion is one only function is to perform a social task, as opposed to conveying information.
(3) Ferdinand de Saussure was s Swiss linguist and semiotician whose ideas laid a foundation for many significant developemnts both in linguistics and semiology in the 20th century. He is widely considered one of the father of 20th-century linguistics and one of two major fathers of semiotics’semiology.
(4) language acquisition device (LAD)
(5) Innate Hypothesis is a linguistic theory of language acquisition which holds that at least some linguistic knowledge exists in humans at birth. Facts about the complexity of human language systems, the universality of language acquisition, and the facility that children demonstrate in acquiring these systems and the comparative performance of adults in attempting the same task are all commonly invoked in support. The idea that there may be an age by which this learning must be accomplished is known as the critical period hypothesis.
Task 2 Term Definition
Different linguists may offer different definitions, as cited below. How are the definitions different? Search for at least two more definitions.
Edward Sapir: Language is a purely human and non-instinctive method of communicating ideas, emotions and desires by means of voluntarily produced symbols.
Noam Chomsky: From now on I will consider a language to be a set (finite or infinite) of sentences, each finite in length and constructed out of a finite set of elements.
Key: The above different versions of definitions which are combined will help me to understand the terms more clearly, since the different versions of definitions give me a lot of information from different aspects, which make me to know even details of the terms
Task 3 Study Questions
1．What do you think is essential to the emergence of language?
Key: The existence of social activities; the need to express diverse ideas, emotions, etc.; the need to communicate ideas to distant places; etc.
2．Can our pets learn human languages? Why or why not?
Key: No. They are genetically not endowed with the capacity.
3．What role does body language play in language communication?
Key: It plays a very important role in language communication. Sometimes it is much easier and convenient to use body language than use spoken language. Sometimes it can express meanings that vocal language cannot express. It can also express intimacy between close friends.
4．Naturally occurring “experiments” with so-called “wolf-children”, “Mowgli”, “bear-children” or “monkey-children” and other such feral youngsters have been widely reported for hundreds of years. None of these children could speak or understand speech and, indeed, most efforts to teach them language ended in failure. How would you account for the failure?
Key: The language acquisition device has to be triggered before a certain age (that of puberty). Sufficient expose to a language environment at the right time is essential to language acquisition.
5．The following are some instances of using English for communication. What specific function does each use of English serve in the following pictures?
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