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1、英语考研语言学重难点提示1. Whatislanguage?“Languageissystemofarbitraryvocalsymbolsusedforhumancommunication.Itisasystem,sincelinguisticelementsarearrangedsystematically,ratherthanrandomly.Arbitrary,inthesensethatthereisusuallynointrinsicconnectionbetweenawork(like“book”)andtheobjectit
2、refersto.Thisexplainsandisexplainedbythefactthatdifferentlanguageshavedifferent“books”:“book”inEnglish,“livre”inFrench,“shu”inChinese.Itissymbolic,becausewordsareassociatedwithobjects,actions,ideasetc.bynothingbutconvention.Namely,peopleusethesoundsorvocalformstosymbolizewhatth
3、eywishtoreferto.Itisvocal,becausesoundorspeechistheprimarymediumforallhumanlanguages.Writingsystemscamemuchlaterthanthespokenforms.Thefactthatsmallchildrenlearnandcanonlylearntospeak(andlisten)beforetheywrite(andread)alsoindicatesthatlanguageisprimarilyvocal,ratherthanwritten.T
4、heterm“human”inthedefinitionismeanttospecifythatlanguageishumanspecific.2. Whataredesignfeaturesoflanguage?“Designfeatures”hererefertothedefiningpropertiesofhumanlanguagethattellthedifferencebetweenhumanlanguageandanysystemofanimalcommunication.Theyarearbitrariness,duality
5、,productivity,displacement,culturaltransmissionandinterchangeability3. Whatisarbitrariness?By“arbitrariness”,wemeanthereisnologicalconnectionbetweenmeaningsandsounds.Adogmightbeapigifonlythefirstpersonorgroupofpersonshaduseditforapig.Languageisthereforelargelyarbitrary.But
6、languageisnotabsolutelyseemtobesomesound-meaningassociation,ifwethinkofechowords,like“bang”,“crash”,“roar”,whicharemotivatedinacertainsense.Secondly,somecompounds(wordscompoundedtobeoneword)arenotentirelyarbitraryeither.“Type”and“write”areopaqueorunmotivatedwords,while“type-wri
7、ter”islessso,ormoretransparentormotivatedthanthewordsthatmakeit.Sowecansay“arbitrariness”isamatterofdegree.4. Whatisduality?Linguistsrefer“duality”(ofstructure)tothefactthatinalllanguagessofarinvestigated,onefindstwolevelsofstructureorpatterning.Atthefirst,higherlevel,lang
8、uageisanalyzedintermsofcombinationsofmeaningfulunits(s
