语言学流派

语言学流派

一、术语解释

1.经验主义（empiricism）it is an approach to psychology which states that the development of

theory must be related to observable facts and experiments, or which states that all human knowledge comes from experience. Empiricism contrasts with the view that many forms human knowledge are in-born or innate.

2.理性主义

3.行为主义（Behaviorism）it is a theory of psychology which states that human and animal

behavior can and should be studied only in terms of physical processes, without reference to mind. It led to theories of learning which explained how an external event (a stimulus) caused

a change in the behavior of an individual (a response), based on a history of reinforcement. It

was used by some psychologists like Skinner to explain first language learning, but these explanations were rejected by adherents of generative grammar and many others.

4.词素（Morpheme）it is a form that has no phonological commonness with other forms. For

example, “poor John ran away” has 5 morphemes (4 words) “poor”“John”“run”“a ”“way”, which are the ultimate constituents. It is the smallest meaningful unit in a language. A morpheme can’t be divided without altering or desovying its meaning. But it can have grammatical functions. For example, in English the-s in she talks is a grammatical morpheme which shows that the verb is the third person singular present-tense form.

5.归纳和演绎（Deduction and induction）

Deduction: an idea that you reach about the truth of sth by using information that you already know is true, or the process of reaching that idea.

Induction: a way of reasoning in which you arrive at general ideas by considering particular examples.

In composition, two ways of presenting an argument are sometimes contrasted: reasoning by deduction and by induction. Reasoning by deduction proceeds from a generation to particular facts which support it, where as reasoning by induction involves moving from particular facts to generations about them.

6.语言相对论（linguistic relativity）It is that the categories and distinctions encoded in one

language system are unique to that system and incommensurable with these of others. And linguistic relativity was strongly put forward by the American linguists Sapir and Whorf that the way people view the world is determined partially by the structure of their native language as Whorf said that the linguistic system is part of the background knowledge of mankind.

7.语言决定论（linguistic determinism）The point of Sapir-Whorf’s linguistic determinism is that

one’s thinking is completely determined by his native language because one can only perceive the world in terms of the categories and distinctions encoded in the language. That is to say, the way people view the world is determined wholly by the structure of their native language.

Human beings are greatly influenced by the particular language servicing as medium of