语言学

标准日语课后练习翻译及答案1-18课

1.3 Design features of language 语言的结构特征

Design features------ refers to the defining properties of human language that distinguish it from any animal system of communication. They are arbitrariness, duality, creativity/ productivity, displacement, clutural transmission and interchangeability.

Design features----- are features that define our human languages,such as arbitrariness,duality,creativity,displacement,cultural transmission,etc.(指决定了人类语言性质的特征.例如任意性,二重性,创造性,移位性,文化转移性等.) The American linguist Charles Hockett specified twelve design features. What is arbitrariness?任意性 a. arbitrariness【 'ɑ?b?tr?r?n?s】---- arbitrariness(任意性): one design

feature of human language,which refers to the fact that the forms of linguistic signs bear no natural relationship to their meaning.(人类语言的本质特征之一,指语言符号的形式与意义之间没有自然的联系.)

It was discussed by Saussure first.The link between them is a matter of convention.

E.g. “house” uchi (Japanese) Mansion (French) 房子(Chinese)

(1) arbitrary between the sound of a morpheme and its meaning语言的音

和义之间的任意性

a. By “arbitrary”, we mean there is no logical connection between meanings and sounds. 语言的意义和语音之间没有逻辑关系。

A gog might be a pig if only the first person or group of persons had used it for a gig. Language therefore is largely arbitrary.

b. But language is not absolutely seem to be some sound-meaning association, if we think of echo words, like “bang ” ”crash” ”roar ” ” rumble ” ”cakle”, which are motivated in a certain sense.”

onomatopoeia拟声词---words that sound like the sounds they describe那些发音像它们的描写的声音的词

c. some compounds (words compounded to be one word ) are not entirely arbitary either. “type ” and ”write ”are opaque or unmotivated words, while “type -writer” is less so, or more transparent or motivated than the words that make it . so we can say “arbitrariness” is a matter of degree.

arbitrary and onometopoeic effect may work at the same time.任意性和拟声可以同时起作用。

Eg. The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves.夏日黄昏，群蝇嗡嗡地非。

(2) Arbitrary at the syntactic level 句法上的任意性

According to systematic-functionalists and American functionlists, language is not arbitrary at the syntactic level. 对于系统功能语言学家和美国功能语言学家来说，语言在句法上是非任意的。

Syntax-----it refers to the ways that sentences are constructed according to the grammar of arrangement.句法就是依据语法安排造句之法。 (3) Aribrtary and convention任意性和约定性

The link between a linguistic sign and its meaning is a matter of convention.语言学上的符号和它的意义之间是约定俗成的关系。

The other side of coin of arbitrariness , namely, conventionality.任意性的相反面，即约定性。

conventionality----It means that in any language there are certain sequences of sounds that have a conventionally accepted meaning. Those words are customarily used by all speakers with the same intended meaning and understood by all listeners in the same way.

Arbitrainess of langauge makes it potentially creative, and conventionality of language makes learning a language laborious.任意性赋予语言潜在的创造力，而语言的约定性又使学习语言变得费力。

There are two different schools of belief concerning arbitrariness. Most people, especially structural linguists believe that language is arbitrary by nature. Other people, however, hold that language is iconic, that is, there is a direct relation or correspondence between sound and meaning, such as onomatopoeia.(cuckoo; crash)

For the majority of animal signals, there does appear to be a clear connection between the conveyed message and the signal used to convey it, And for them, the sets of signals used in communication is finite. b. duality【dju?'?l?t?】 (二重性):--- one design feature of human language, which refers to the property of having two levels of structures , such as 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.(人类语言的本质特征之一,指拥有两层结构的这种特性,底层结构是上层结构的组成成分,每层都有自身的组合规则.)

duality----language is simultaneously organized at two levels or layers, namely,

the level of sounds and that of meaning. the higher level ----words which are meaningful

the lower or the basic level----sounds which are meaningless, but can be

grouped and regrouped into words. Dog: woof (but not “w-oo-f ” )

This duality of levels is, in fact, one of the most economical features of

human language, since with a limited set of distinct sounds we are capable of producing a very large number of sound combinations (e.g. words) which are distinct in meaning.

The principle of economy 经济原则

Linguists refer “duality” (of structure) to the fact that in all language so far

investigated, one finds two levels of structure or patterning. At the first, higher level, language is analyzed in terms of combinations of meaningful units (such as morphemes, words etc.). At the second, lower level, it is seen as a sequence of segments which lack any meaning in themselves, but which combine to form units of meaning.

According to HUZHUANGLIN, language is a system of two sets of structures or two levels, one of sound and the other of meaning. This is important for the workings of language.

A small number of semantic words /units, and these units of meaning can be arranged and rearranged into an infinite number of sentences.这些意义单位组成无数个句子。(Note that we have dictionaries of words, but no dictionary of sentences!).

Duality makes it possible for a person to talk about anything within his knowledge. No anmial communication system enjoys this duality.

To talk about duality we must notice that language is hierarchical.说到语言的二重性，我们必须注意语言的等级性。

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c. Creativity----language is resourceful. It makes possible the construction and interpretation of new signals by its users.(novel utterances are continually being created.) non-human signals ,on the other hand, appears to have little flexibility.

creativity(创造性): one design feature of human language ,by creativity we mean language is resourceful because of its duality and its recursiveness. (指语言的能产性,因为语言有二重性和递归性.)

productivity----productivity refers to the ability to construct and understand an indefinitely large number of sentences in one?s native language , including those that has never heard before , but that are appropriate to the speaking situation.人们能够利用语言中原有的规则来理解从未碰到过的语言符号的特征。 e.g. an experiment of bee communication:

The worker bee, normally able to communicate the location of a nectar

source , will fail to do so if the location is really ?new? .

In one experiment, a hive of bees was placed at the foot of a radio tower and

a food source at the top. Ten bees were taken to the top, shown the food source, and sent off to tell the rest of the hive about their find. The message was conveyed via a bee dance and the whole gang buzzed off to get the free food. They flow around in all directions, but couldn?t locate the food. The problem may be that bee communication regarding location has a fixed set of signals, all of which related to horizonta distance. The bee cannot create a ?new ? message indicating vertical distance.

No one has never said or heard “A red-eyed elephant is dancing on the

small hotel bed with an African gibbon”, but he can say it when necessary, and he can understand it in right register.

Different from artistic creativity, productivity never goes outside the language,

thus productivity is also called “rule-bound creativity” (by N. Chomsky)

Productivity is unique to human language. 创造性是人类语言的独一无二的

特征。

d. displacement(移位性): one design feature of human language, which

means human language enable their users to symbolize objects, events and concepts which are not present c in time and space, at the moment of communication.(指人类语言可以让使用者来表示在说话时(时间和处所)并不存在的物体,时间和观点.)

Bee communication:

When a worker bee finds a source of nectar and returns to the hive, it can

perform a complex dance routine to communicate to the other bees the location of this nectar. Depending on the type of dance (round dance for nearby and tail-wagging dance, with variable tempo, for further away and how far), The other bees can work put where this newly discovered feast can be found. Bee communication has displacement in an extremely limited form. However, it must be the most recent food source.

Displacement , as one of the design features of the human language, refers to

the fact that one can talk about things that are not present, as easily as he does things present. In other words, one can refer to real or unreal things, things of the past, of the present, of the future.人类语言可以被用来指不在当时当地发生的事情，这就使得人类能够谈论许多事情而不受时空限制。

Language can be used to refer to contexts removed from the immediate

situations of the speak, that means language has the feature of displacement.

Language itself can be talked about too. When a man , for example, is crying

to a woman, about something, it might be something that had occurred, or something that is occurring, or something that is to occur. When a dog is barking, however, you can decide it is barking for something or at someone that exists now and there. It couldn?t be bow-wowing sorrowfully for a bone to be lost. The bee?s system, nonetheless, has a small share of “displacement”, but it?s an unspeakable tiny share

e. Cultural transmission----genetic transmission

You acquire a language in a culture with other speakers and not from

parental genes.

The process whereby language is passed on from one generation to the