学习语言学的感想

We can study Linguistics from three parts: introduction to Linguistics, main branches of Linguistics, main theories about Linguistics.

The introduction to Linguistics is made up of design feature of language, language families, important distinctions in Linguistics and scope of Linguistics.

Design features refer to the defining properties of human language that distinguish it from any animal system of communication. The following are the most distinguished properties: creativity, arbitrariness, displacement, cultural transmission and duality.

Creativity, in other words, language can be used to create new meanings because of its duality.

Arbitrariness is the forms of human language demonstrate a property.

Displacement. Language can refer to contexts removed from the immediate situations of the language user. This property of human language is called displacement.

Cultural transmission is the process whereby language is passed on and on from one generation to the next.

Duality is the property of having two levels of structures, such that units of the primary level are composed of elements of the secondary level. For example: Sounds > syllables > words > phrases > clauses > sentences> texts/discourses

There are some important distinctions in Linguistics: descriptive & prescriptive, synchronic & diachronic, langue & parole, competence & performance.

Descriptive is describing how things are. Prescriptive is prescribing how things ought to be. For example: Don't say X. People don't say X. The first is a prescriptive command, while the second is a descriptive statement.

Synchronic is to take a fixed instant as its point of observation. Diachronic is the study of a language through the course of its history.

Langue refers to the abstract linguistic system shared by all members of a speech community. Parole refers to realization of language in actual use. It is one of the most important distinctions in linguistics introduced by Sassure (father of modern linguistics) in his Course in General Linguistics.

Competence is user's knowledge of rules about the linguistic system. Performance is the actual realization of this knowledge in concrete situations. It is introduced by Chomsky between general linguistic ability and individual language use, which is connected to de Sassure’s distinction langue vs. parole.

In terms of the number of individual speakers and individual languages, four language families are considered to be the most important, namely, the Indo-European Family, the Sino-Tibetan Family, the Austronesian Family, and the Afroasiatic Family.

There are several kinds of classifications of Linguistics.