今日阅读笔记整理内容：

Chapter 1 Invitations to Linguistics

    1.1  Why Study Language?

    1.2  What Is Language?

    1.3  Design Features of Language

        1.3.1  Arbitrariness

        1.3.2  Duality

        1.3.3  Creativity

        1.3.4  Displacement

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1.1  Why Study Language?

Language is such a dispensable part of human's'  life and humanity that too much about it has been taken for granted. For some people, language may not even be considered a worthy subject for academic study. They take it as a tool for access to other fields of knowledge rather than as a subject in and of itself. Even though language is everywhere in you life, have you ever given a ounce of thought to how much you really understand about the nature of language and its role in you life? I don't think so. However, if we do reconsider this question, we may be surprised to realize that some of our damaging racial, ethnic, and socio-economic prejudices are based on our linguistic ignorance and wrong ideas about language. There're some myths about the 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.  Black English is not a standard and should be reformed.

    ...

Let us mention here the broader educational concerns. We can all note that language plays a central role in our lives as individuals and social beings. If we are not fully aware of the nature and mechanism of our language, we will be ignorant of what constitutes our essential humanity. The understanding of language should not be confined to linguists, as language is a vital human resource that all us share.

*If you do realize that language is everything (actually, we can easily draw this conclusion from the story about the Tower of Babel), then it is not a hard thing to the insight to the reason why the idiom know the language of sth could mean what it means.

1.2  What Is Language?

Several most frequently used senses of the word "language", namely,

[1] (a) human speech; (b) the ability to communicate by this means; (c) a system of vocal sounds and combinations of such sounds to which meaning is attributed, used for the expression or communication of thoughts and feelings: (d) the written representation of such a system;

[2] (a) any means of expressing or communicating, as gestures, signs, or animal sounds: (b) a special set of symbols, letters, numerals, rules etc. used for the transmission of information, as in a computer; Suffice it to say here that though we use the word in its various sense, we focus here on its primary sense; namely, [1] (a) (b) (c) (d).

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. It is social and conventional in that language is a social semiotic and communication can only take place effectively if all the users share a broad understanding of human interaction including such associated factors as nonverbal cues, motivation, and socio-cultural roles. 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.

1.3  Design Features of Language

The well-known philosopher Bertrand Russell once observed something to the effect - "No matter how eloquently a dog may bark, he cannot tell you that his parents were poor but honest." So what makes human 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 is the features that define our human languages which can be called DESIGN FEATURES. The following are the frequently discussed ones:

    1.3.1 Arbitrariness 

The widely accepted meaning of this feature which was discussed by Saussaure first refers to the fact that the forms of linguistic signs bear no natural relationship to their meaning. However there seems to be different levels of ARBITRARINESS.

(1) Arbitrary relationship between the sound of a morpheme and its meaning. Eg. the dog barks bowwow in English but 汪汪汪 in Chinese.

some misunderstanding about the onomatopoeic effect. As a matter of fact, arbitrariness and onomatopoeic effect may work at the same time.

Ex. 1-1

      The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves.

"It is only when you know the meaning that you infer that the form is appropriate." This applies to many cases of the so-called onomatopoeic words.

(2) Language is not arbitrary at the syntactic level. Syntax is less arbitrary than words. The functionalists hold that the most strictly arbitrary level of language exists in the distinctive units of sounds by which we distinguish pairs of words like pin and bin, or fish and dish.

(3) Arbitrariness and convention. The link between a linguistic sign and its meaning is a matter of CONVENTION which is the other side of the coin of arbitrariness. Arbitrariness of language makes it potentially creative, and conventionality of language makes learning a language laborious ( as learners of English we are often told "this is an idiom" -  meaning it is conventional to say thins this way and you cannot change the expression any other way even if you think it does not look or sound logical).

    1.3.2  Duality

"By DUALITY is meant the property of having two levels of structure 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."

Roughly speaking, the elements of the spoken language are sounds which do not convey meaning in themselves. The only function of sounds is to combine with one another to form units that have meaning, such as words. We call sounds the secondary units as opposed to such primary units have distinct and identifiable meaning. The property of duality then only exists in such a system, namely, with both elements and units. Many animals communicate with special calls, which have corresponding meanings. That is ,the primary units have meanings but cannot have this design feature of human language - the property of duality. Consequently, the communicative power of animal language is highly limited, to speak from a human-centered perspective.

To talk about duality we must notice that language is hierarchical. To conveny discrete meanings there have to be discrete units, and the first task in decoding a new language is finding out these discrete units: (the lowest level consists of dozens of bits of meaningless sounds which occur in chumps that we call) syllables - the smallest unit that is normally spoken by itself → (scores of syllables become the carriers of hundreds of meaningful segments of words that are called) morphemes - such as the prefix trans- or suffix -ism → (with thousands of words we associate millions of meanings, and on top of these millions - astronomical number of possible) sentences/utterances and texts/discourses.

As Bolinger and Sears put it, "Stratification - this organization of levels on levels - is the physical manifestation of the 'infinite use of finite means', the trait that most distinguishes human communication and that provides its tremendous resourcefulness."

    1.3.3  Creativity

By CREATIVITY we mean language is resourceful because of its duality and its recursiveness. The creativity of language partly originates from its duality - for speaker to be able to combine the basic linguistic units to form an infinite set of sentences, most of which are never before produced or heard.

Language is creative in another sense, that is, its potential to create endless sentences. The recursive nature of language provides a theoretical basis for this possibility. For instance, we can write a sentence like the following and go on endlessly:

    EX. 1-3

    He bought a book which was written by a teacher who taught in a school which was known for its graduates who...

    1.3.4  Displacement

DISPLACEMENT means that human languages enable their users to symbolize objects, events and concepts which are not present (in time and space) at the moment of communication, whereas most animals respond communicatively as soon as they are stimulated by some occurrence of communal interest, aks act under "immediate stimulus control". Human language is, unlike animal communication systems, stimulus-free. Our language enables us to communicate about things that do not exist or do not exist yet.

Displacement benefits human beings by giving them the power to handle generalizations and abstractions. The intellectual benefits of displacement to us is that it makes it possible for us to talk and think in a abstract terms.

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词汇整理：

myth N-VAR If you describe a belief or explanation as a myth, you mean that many people believe it but it is actually untrue. 谬见

form-meaning correspondence 形意一致性

instinctively 本能地

Ensuing events happen immediately after other events. 随后发生的：The ensuing argument had been bitter. 随后的争论是激烈的。

Ensuing hours, months, or years follow the time you are talking about. 随后的 (时间)：The two companies grew tenfold in the ensuing ten years. 这两家公司在随后10年里增长了10倍。

lexico grammar & usage: Lexicogrammar is a term peculiar to systemic functional linguistics. It was coined by Michael Halliday, the father of systemic functional linguistics, to describe the continuity between grammar and lexis. For many linguists, these phenomena are discrete. But Halliday brings them together with this term. As with other dimensions of Halliday's theory, he describes the relation of grammar to lexis as one of a 'cline', and therefore, one of 'delicacy'. In 1961, he wrote 'The grammarian's dream is...to turn the whole of linguistic form into grammar, hoping to show that lexis can be defined as "most delicate grammar". In 1987, Ruqaiya Hasan wrote an article titled 'The grammarian's dream: lexis as delicate grammar', in which she laid out a methodology for mapping lexis in Halliday's terms.

Usage is the manner in which written and spoken language is used, the "points of grammar, syntax, style, and the choice of words". And "the way in which a word or phrase is normally and correctly used". Usage can mean the way people actually use language or prescriptively the way one group feels that people ought to use it.

The Chicago Manual of Style says "the great mass of linguistic issues that writers and editors wrestle with don't really concern grammar at all—they concern usage: the collective habits of a language's native speakers", and "the standards of good usage change, however slowly." 

Dictionaries are not always accurate guides to "good usage." "Despite occasional usage notes, lexicographers generally disclaim any intent to guide writers and editors on the thorny points of English usage."

Semantics is the branch of linguistics that deals with the meanings of words and sentences. 语义学

Semiotic relates to signs and symbols, esp spoken or written signs 符号学的

dialect [Linguistics] a variety of language that is distinguished from other varieties of the same language by features of phonology, grammar and vocabulary and by its use by a group of speakers who are set off from others geographically or socially.

intimately 熟悉地；亲切地；私下地

A derivative is something which has been developed or obtained from something else. 衍生物

If you describe something as intriguing, you mean that it is interesting or strange. 新奇的

Your perception of something is the way that you think about it or the impression you have of it. 理解; 看法：He is interested in how our perceptions of death affect the way we live. 他对我们的死亡观如何影响我们的生活方式感兴趣。

Someone who has perception realizes or notices things that are not obvious. 洞察力：It did not require a lot of perception to realize the interview was over. 不需要很强的洞察力就可以意识到面试结束了。

Perception is the recognition of things using your senses, especially the sense of sight. (尤指通过视觉的) 感知

Suffice it to say used at the beginning of a statement to indicate that what you are saying is obvious, or that you will only give a short explanation. 不必多言

the study of multimodal discourse which resorts to such symbolic resources as images and sounds. The term multimodal refers to at least five modes of meaning-making, linguistic, visual, gestural, spatial and audio, working together to create texts.

numerals are written symbols used to represent numbers. 数字

Someone or something that is instrumental in a process or event helps to make it happen. 起作用的

*know the language of sth means someone is familiar with some else's or something's traits, personalities, cultures, habits and interests etc.

Onomatopoeic words sound like the noise they refer to. "Hiss," "buzz," and "rat-a-tat-tat" are examples of onomatopoeic words. 拟声的

Syntactic means relating to syntax. 句法

Syntax is the ways that words can be put together, or are put together, in order to make sentences. 句法规则; 句法

Discrete ideas or things are separate and distinct from each other. 分立的

chumps 块

A syllable is a part of a word that contains a single vowel sound and that is pronounced as a unit. So, for example, "book" has one syllable, and "reading" has two syllables. 音节

A prefix is a letter or group of letters, for example, "un-" or "multi-," that is added to the beginning of a word in order to form a different word. For example, the prefix "un-" is added to "happy" to form "unhappy." Compare and . 前缀

A suffix is a letter or group of letters, for example "-ly" or "-ness," which is added to the end of a word in order to form a different word, often of a different word class. For example, the suffix "-ly" is added to "quick" to form "quickly." Compare and . 后缀

Deference is a polite and respectful attitude toward someone, especially because they have an important position. 敬重

If you describe an amount, especially the cost of something as astronomical, you are emphasizing that it is very large. 天文数字般的 (数量，尤指花费)强调