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The Summary of Invitations to Linguistics

Language is such an integral part of our life and humanity that too much about it has been taken it fir granted. For some people,language may not even be considered a worthy subject for academic study. And you may be surprised to realize that some of our most damaging racial,ethic,and social-economic prejudices are based on our linguistic ignorance and wrong ideas about language.

Myth 1.language is only a means of communication. Myth 2.language has a form-meaning correspondence. Myth 3.the function of language is to exchange information. Myth 4.English is more difficult to learn than Chinese. Myth 5.black English is not standard and should be reformed. ........

Webster¡¯s new world dictionary offers several most frequently used senses of the word ¡°language¡±,namely,1,human speech;2,the ability to communicate by this means;3,a system of vocal sounds and combinations of such sounds to which meaning is attributed,used for the expression for communication of thoughts and feelings;4,the written Representation of such a system. To give the barest of definition,language is a means of verbal communication. It is instrumental in that communicating by speaking or writing is a purposeful act. Language learning and use are determined by the intervention of biological,cognitive,psycho-social,and

environmental factors. In short,language distinguishes us from animals because it is far more sophisticated than any animal communication system.

We would all agree that language is essential to human beings but we may find it hard to specify what makes our language advantageous over animal ¡°language¡±. So what makes language so complicated and flexible,so unrestrained by the immediate context and so capable of creating new meanings,in a word,so distinctive from languages used by other species? The feature that define our human languages can be called design features. The followings are the frequently discussed ones: 1,arbitrariness.

a.arbitrariness relationship between the sound of a morpheme and its meaning.

b,arbitrariness at the syntactic level c,arbitrariness and 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. 3,displacement

Displacement means that human languages enable their users to symbolize objects,events and concepts which are not present at the

moment of communication. 4,creativity

By creativity we mean language is resourceful because of its duality and its excursiveness.

There are some well-known theories about the origin of language though some of them have now been discredited. The following are some of them:

1,the ¡°bow-bow¡± theory. 2,the ¡°pooh-pooh¡± theory 3,the ¡°yo-he-ho¡± theory

And one thing we can say for certain is that language evolves within specific historical,social and cultural contexts.

Linguistics talk about the functions of language in an abstract sense,that is,not in terms of using language to chat,to think,to buy and sell,to read and write,to greet,praise and condemn people. For Jakobson,language is above all,as many semiotic system,for communication. Jakobson defined the six primary factors of any speech event,namely:speaker,addressee,context,message,code,contact. Jakobson established a well-known frame-work of language functions based on the six key elements of communication:referential,poetic,emotive,phatic,and conative,metalingual function. Halliday proposes a theory of metafunctions of language,that is,language has Ideational,Interpersonal and Textual functions. In his earlier works,Halliday proposed seven

categories of language functions by observing child language development,that is,instrumental,regulatory,representational,interactional, personal,heuristic and imaginative.

1,informative 2,performative 3,emotive function 4,emotive function 5,phatic communion 6,recreational function 7,metalingual function It is generally agreed that linguistics should include at least five parameters,namely,phonological,syntactic,semantic and pragmatic. The following are these main branches of linguistics. 1,phonetics

2,phonology

3,morphology

4,syntax

5,semantics

6,pragmatics Macro linguistics:

1,psycholinguistics 2,sociolingyuistics 3,anthropological linguistics 4,computational linguistics

Important distinctions in linguistics:

1,descriptive vs prescriptive 2,synchronic vs diachronic 3,language and parole 4,competence and performance ÎÄܽÈØ 1215102016