one can refer to real and unreal things, things of the past, of the present, of the future. Language itself can be talked about too. People can use language’ to describe something that had occurred, is occurring, or is to occur. But a dog could not bark for a bone to be lost. The bee’s System has a small share of “displacement”, but it is an unspeakable tiny share.
6) Language is not biologically transmitted from generation to generation, but the details of the linguistic system must be learned anew by each speaker. It is true that the capacity for language in human beings (N. Chomsky called it “language acquisition device”, or LAD) has a geneticbasis, but the particular language a person learns to speak is a cultural one rather than a genetic one like the dog’s barking system. If a human being is brought up in isolation he cannot acquire language. The wolf-child reared by the wolves turned out to speak the wolf’s roaring “tongue” when he was saved. And it was difficult for him to acquire human language.
7) The imaginative function refers to language used to create imaginary system, whether these are literary works, philosophical systems or utopian visions on the one hand, or daydreams and idle musings on the other hand. It is also language used for sheer joy of using language, such as a baby’s babbling, a chanter’s chanting, a poet’s pleasuring.
8) The personal function refers to language used to express the individual’s feelings, emotions and personality.
9) The heuristic function of language refers to language used in order to acquire knowledge and understanding the world. The heuristic functioning provides a basis for the structure of knowledge in the different disciplines. Language allows people to ask questions about the nature of the world they live in and to construct possible answers.
10) Language is a system of arbitrary vocal symbols used for human communication. 2. Multiple Choice
1) – 5): A C C C B 6) – 10): A C C B B 3. Word Completion.
1) defining 2) Descreteness 3）productivity or creativity 4) metalingual 5) culturally, instinct or inheritance 6) speech 7) representational 8) interactional; 9) vocal;10) gramatically meaningful, sound meaningless; 11) system; 12) regulatory 13) arbitrariness, duality, productivity, cultural transmission, interchangeability, discreteness, displacement. 14) sound; 15) exhaustiveness, economy, objectivity, consistency 4. True or False Questions
1 – 5: FFTFF 6 – 10: FFTFT 11 – 15: FFTFT 5. Glossary Translation
1) personal function: 人际功能 2) heauristic function： 启发功能 3) ideational function： 概念功能 4) interchangeability： 互换性 5) 控制功能： regulatory function 6) 表现功能: representational functin 7) 文化传递性: cultural transmisssion 8) 分离性: discreteness
9) 区别性特征: design features
10) 不受时空限制的属性: displacement 11) Interactional function: 互动功能
12) instrumentational function： 工具功能 13) imaginative function： 想象功能 14) 寒暄功能： phatic function
15) 元语言功能: metalingual function or metafunction of language 16) personal function: 自指性功能 17) performative function: 表达功能 18) 娱乐功能: recreational function 19) 信息功能: informative function 20) 人际功能: interpersonal function 6. Short Essay Questions
1) What are the functions of language? Exemplify each function.
According to Wang Gang (1988: 11), the functions of language can be mainly embodied in three aspects. i) Language is a tool of human communication; ii) Language is a tool whereby people learn about the world; iii) Language is a tool by which people create art.
As a matter of fact, different linguists have different terms for the various functions of language. The British linguist M. A. K. Halliday uses the following terms to refer to the initial functions of children’s language:
(1) Instrumental
The instrumental function of language refers to the fact that language allows speakers to get things done. It allows them to control things in the environment. People can cause things to be done and to happen through the use of words alone. An immediate contrast here is with the animal world in which sounds are hardly used in this way, and, when they are, they are used in an extremely limited degree. The instrumental function can be primitive too in human interaction. Performative utterances such as the words which name a ship at a launching ceremony clearly have instrumental functions if the right circumstances exist；they are acts, e.g. I name this ship Liberty Bell.
(2) Regulatory
The regulatory function refers to language used in an attempt to control events once they happen. Those events may involve the self as well as others. People do try to control themselves through language, e.g. Why did I say that? / Steady! / And Let me think about that again. Language helps to regulate encounters among people. Language provides devices for regulating specific kinds of encounters and contains words for approving or disapproving and for controlling or disrupting the behavior of others. It allows us to establish complex patterns of organization in order to try to regulate behavior, from game playing to political organization, from answering the telephone to addressing in foreign affairs. It is the regulatory function of language that allows people some measure of control over events that occur in their lives.
(3)Representational
The representational function refers to the use of language to communicate knowledge about the world, to report events, to make statements, to give accounts, to explain relationships, to relay messages and so on. This function of language is represented by all kinds of record-keeping, such as historical records, geographical surveys, business accounts, scientific reports, government acts, and public data banks. It is an essential domain of language use, for the availability of this material guarantees the knowledge-base of subsequent generations, which is a prerequisite of social development.
(4) Interactional
The interactional function refers to language used to ensure social maintenance. Phatic communion is part of it. The term phatic communion introduced by the anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski refers to language used for establishing an atmosphere or maintaining social contact rather than for exchanging facts. A greeting such as how are you? is relatively empty of content, and answers like fine or very well, thank you are equally empty, because the speaker is not interested in the hearer’s health, but rather to demonstrate his politeness and general attitude toward the other person when he gives a conversational greeting.
(5) Personal
The personal function refers to language used to express the individual’s feelings, emotions and personality. A person’s individuality is usually characterized by his or her use of personal function of communication. Each individual has a “voice” in what happens to him. He is free to speak or not to speak, to say, as much or as little as he pleases, and to choose how to say what he says. The use of language can tell the listener or reader a great deal about the speaker or writer — in particular, about his regional origin, social background, level of education, occupation, age, sex, and personality.
Language also provides the individual with a means to express feelings, whether outright in the form of exclamations, endorsements, or curse, or much more subtly through a careful choice of words. Many social situations display language used to foster a sense of identity: the shouting of a crowd at a football match, the shouting of names or slogans at public meetings, the reactions of the audience to television game shows, the shouts of affirmation at some religious meetings. For example, the crowds attending President Regan’s pre-election meetings in 1984 repeatedly shouted “Four more years!” which united among those who shared the same political views.
(6) Heuristic
The heuristic function refers to language used in order to acquire knowledge and understanding the world. The heuristic functioning provides a basis for the structure of knowledge in the different disciplines. Insofar as the inquiry into language itself, a necessary result is the creation of a metalanguage, i.e. a language used to refer to language, containing terms such as sound, syllable, word, structure, sentence, meaning and so on.
(7) Imaginative
The imaginative function refers to language used to create imaginary system, whether these are literary works, philosophical systems or utopian visions on the one hand, or daydreams and idle musings on the other hand. The imaginative function also allows people to consider not just the real world but all possible worlds — and many impossible ones. Much literature is the most obvious example to serve this function as an account of Robinson Crusoe in the deserted island. The imaginative function enables life to be lived vicariously and helps satisfy numerous deep artistic urges.
2) Explain what the term duality means as it is used to describe a property of human
language.
Language is organized at two levels or layers-- sounds and meaning-- simultaneously. This property is called duality, or “double articulation”. In terms of speech production, we have the physical level at which we can produce individual sounds, like n, b, and i. As individual sound, none of these discrete forms has any intrinsic meaning. When we produce those sounds in a particular combination, as in bin, we have another level producing a meaning, which is different
from the meaning of the combination in nib. So, at one level, we have distinct sounds, and at another level, we have distinct meanings. This duality of levels is, in fact,: one of the most economical features of human language, since with a limited set of distinct sounds we are capable of producing a very large number of sound combinations (relatively finite words and infinite number of sentences) which are distinct in meaning. No animal communication system has duality, or ever comes near to possessing it.
3) Is language productive or not? Why?
(1) Language is productive or creative. (233) This means that users can understand and produce sentences they have never heard before. Every day we send messages that have never been sent before, and we understand novel messages. Much of them we say and hear for the first time; yet there seems no problem of understanding. For example, the sentence” A red-eyed elephant is dancing on the hotel bed” must be new to you and it does not describe a common happening in the world. Nevertheless, nobody has any difficulty in understanding it.
(2) Productivity is unique to human language. Most animal communication systems appear to be highly restricted with respect to the number of different signals that their users can send and receive. For example, gibbon calls are not productive, for they draw all their calls from a limited repertoire, which is rapidly exhausted, making any novelty impossible. Bee dancing is used only to indicate food sources, which is the only message that can be sent through the dancing.
(3) The productivity or creativity of language partially. originates from its duality, because of which the speaker is able to combine the basic linguistic units to form an infinite set of sentences, most of which are never before produced or heard. The productivity of language also means its potential to create endless sentences. It is the recursive nature of language that provides a theoretical basis for this possibility.
4) What is language?
(1) It is very difficult to give this question a satisfactory definition. However, most linguists would accept a tentative definition like this: language is a system of arbitrary vocal symbols used for human communication. (2) Language must be a system, since elements in it are arranged according to certain rules; they cannot be combined at will. If language were not systematic, it could not be learned or used consistently. (3) Language is arbitrary in the sense that there is no intrinsic connection between the word pen and the thing we use to write with. The fact that different languages have different words for it (钢笔 in Chinese for instance) speaks strongly for the arbitrary nature of language. (4) This also explains the symbolic nature of language: words are associated with objects, actions, ideas by convention. (5) We say language is vocal because the primary medium is sound for all languages, no matter how well developed are their writing systems. All evidence shows that writing systems came much later than the spoken forms and that they are only attempts to capture sounds and meaning on paper (6) The term “human” in the definition is meant to specify that language is human.specific; that is, it is very different from the communication systems other forms of life possess.
5) What are the major design features of language? Please explain three of them
with examples.
(1) Displacement is one of the defining properties of human language, which refers to the fact that human language can be used to talk about things that are present or not present, real or not real, and about matters in the past, present or future, or in far-away places. In other words, language can be used to refer to contexts removed from the immediate situations of its users.
This phenomenon is thought of as “displacement”, which can provide its users with an opportunity to communicate about a wide range of subjects, free from any barriers caused by separation in time and space. That is, the feature of displacement can enable us to talk about things and places whose existence we cannot even be sure of. We can refer to mythical creatures, demons, fairies, angels, Santa Claus, and recently invented characters such as superman. This feature is unique to human language. No animal communication system possesses it. Some animal calls are often uttered in response to immediate changes of situation. For instance, during the mating season, in the present of danger or pain, animals will make calls. Once the danger or pain is missing, their calls stop.
(2) Discreteness The sounds used in language are meaningfully distinct. For example, the difference between the sounds b andp is actually not very great, but when these sounds are part of a language like English, they are used in such a way that the occurrence of one rather than the other is meaningful. The fact that the pronunciation of the forms pack and back leads to a distinction in meaning can only be due to the difference between the sounds p and b in English. This property of language is described as discreteness. Each sound in the language is treated as discrete. It is possible; in fact, to produce a range of sounds in a continuous stream which are all generally like the p and b sounds. However, that continuous stream will only be interpreted as being either a p sound, or a b sound (or, possibly, as a non-sound) in the language. We have a very discrete view of the sounds of our language and wherever a pronunciation falls within the physically possible range of sounds, it will be interpreted as a linguistically specific and meaningfully distinct sound
(3) Language is a system. It is organized into two levels simultaneously. We have distinct sounds at the lower level (sound level), which is seen as a sequence of segments which have no meaning in themselves. At the higher level, we have distinct meanings (meaningful level). Language is analyzed in terms of combination of meaningful units. Then the meaningful units (such as morphemes, words, etc.) at the higher level can be arranged and rearranged into an infinite number of sentences. The organization of language into levels, one of sounds, the other of meaning, is known as duality or double articulation. This unique feature of language enables its users to talk about anything within their knowledge. No animal communication system possesses the feature of duality.