当代语言学导论 课文重点 重点词汇 考试内容 课后习题答案

当代语言学导论课文重点重点词汇考试内容课后习题

答案

1. Human superiority lies in his unique endowment天赋—the ability to talk, or rather, to

communicate by means of language.

2. Language is a vehicle of power, for control, for creation. And

for change.

3. The study of human language is called linguistics.

4. Language is the system of human communication which consists of the structured

arrangement of sounds(or their written representation) into larger units, e.g. morphemes,

words, sentences, utterances.

5. Varieties of language: Any particular language is in essence a set of varieties. There are local

varieties 区域变体–dialects and accents(the former differ from each other in pronunciation,

social varieties—sociolects vocabulary, and even grammar; the

latter only in pronunciation ),

社会方言(=social dialects , used by people of different classes, ages, or sexes ), historical

varieties—registers语域(e.g. formal English, scientific English), and even individual

varieties—idiolects个人语言. Usually a language has an officially declared or generally

considered standard dialect(e.g. Putonghua in China, General American in the US)

6. Prescriptivism is the view that one variety of language has an inherently higher value than

others.

7. Descriptivism is the policy of describing languages as they are bound to exist. Usages of

different varieties should be observed and recorded instead of being judged with some

imposed norms.

8. Plato’s problem: How can every human being develop a rich system of linguistic knowledge

on the basis of limited and fragmentary empirical evidence?

9. Plato held that there was a universally correct and acceptable logic of language for man to

follow in expressing his ideas.

10. Aristotle argued that knowledge of language was arrived at by convention and agreement of

the speakers of a given language.

11. In ancient China, Xun Zi reasoned that a name was accepted through public agreement, and

the appropriateness of naming a thing lay in convention.

12. According to Chomsky, knowledge of language is the result of interaction of UG and later

experience.

13. (Ferdinand de) Saussure advocated the diversion of the focus of linguistic study from

diachronic to synchronic.

14. Chomsky’s epistemology of the knowledge of language foes as follows:

1) Every human being has the language competence能力, because he has the inborn UG

which other species lack.

2) UG is the initial state of the human language faculty语言器官/机制 which alone cannot

enable a human baby to speak. A baby needs to be exposed to the linguistic

environment of a certain language and accumulate experience.

3) Due to the effect of later experience, the baby’s mind develops from the initial state into

the steady state, which corresponds to the competence of speaking a specific human

language.

15. Beha viorists’ or empiricists’ opinions are identical 统一的，

同一的with Aristotle’s.