2024年3月16日发(作者：小米应用商店app官方)

语言学概论

研究生课程

使用教材：语言学入门（英语版） An Introduction to Linguistics by Stuart C. Poole

外语教学与研究出版社 Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press

麦克米伦出版社 Macmillan Publishers Ltd

参考资料：

[1] Halliday, M. A. K. (1994[1985]) An Introduction to Functional Grammar. 2nd edn. London:

Edward Arnold.

[2] Labov, William 1966. The Social Stratification of English in York City. Washington, DC:

Center for Applied Linguistics.

[3] Ladefoged, Peter. 1993. A Course in Phonetics . 3rd ed. Fort Worth,TX: Harcourt Brace.

[4] Lakoff, George & M. J. Johnson 1980. Metaphors We Live By. Chicago: University of Chicago

Press.

[5] Leech, G. 1969. A Linguistic Guide to English Poetry. Longman.

[6] Leech, G. and M. Short. 1981. Style in Fiction. Longman.

[7] Radford, Andrew et all. 1999. Linguistics: An Introduction. Cambridge University Press.

[8] Roach, Peter. 1991. English Phonetics and Phonology. 2nd ed. Cambridge University Press.

[9] Yule, George. 1996. The Study of Language, 2nd edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press.

[10] 胡壮麟. 2001.《语言学教程》 北京： 北京大学出版社.

第一章 What Is Language?

本章的教学目的、要求与内容：

掌握语言的意义和定义、语言的功能和结构特征。

1.1 The Significance of Language

1.2 What Is Language?

1.3 The Functions of Language

1.4 What Is a Language?

1.5 The Elements of Language

1.1The Significance of Language

The human race dominates life on Earth. How comes it that human beings rather than other

animals dominates the world?

Not because they can use tools. Chimpanzees can use tools, too. They strip twigs and use them to

extract termites from their nest.

Not because they have a complex social structure with its hierarchies and its division of labor. The

chimpanzees and termites both live in social groups. Chimpanzee females live on individual home

ranges within a territory that is defended by a group of related males. Termites live in a colony

with three castes: reproductives, workers and soldiers.

Not because they have the ability to conceptualize, to learn, to solve problems. Chimpanzees can

be trained to respond in accordance with different symbolic gestures.

But because they can speak.

Why can’t chimpanzees or bees build power stations as humans do?

Chimpanzees can learn to respond in accordance with different symbolic gestures, but they can

not speak.

Honey-bees have a remarkable way of letting others know the direction in which a source of

nectar lies and how far away it is by means of a “dance”, but they could not speak in the real sense

of the word.

Human language is infinitely versatile and powerful. One frequently-quoted illustration comes

from the Bible: The Tower of Babel.

Babel n.

a.【圣】(古巴比伦人建筑未成的)通天塔(上帝因他们狂妄,

彼此不相了解, 结果该塔无法完成。见旧约创世纪。)

b. [babel ][喻]摩天楼; 难以实现的计划

责罚他们各操不同的语言,

The Tower of Babylon

And the Lord said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they

begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do.

(From this textbook)

11 At first, the people of the whole world had only one language and used the same words.

As they wandered about in the East, they came to a plain in Babylonia and settled there. They said

to one another, “Come on! Let’s make bricks and bake them hard.” So they had bricks to build

with and tar to hold them together. They said, “Now let’s build a city with a tower that reaches the

sky, so that we can make a name for ourselves and not be scattered all over the earth.”

Then the LORD came down to see the city and the tower which those men had built, and he

said, “Now then, these are all one people and they speak one language; this is just the beginning of

what they are going to do. Soon they will be able to do anything they want! Let us go down and

mix up their language so that they will not understand each other.” So the LORD scattered them

all over the earth, and they stopped building the city. The city was called Babylon, because there

the LORD mixed up the language of all the people, and from there he scattered them all over the

earth. (From Good News Bible, pp11-12, Genesis)

(Babylon: This name sounds like the Hebrew for “mixed up”. Babylon n.巴比伦, 奢华淫靡

的城市, 任何大的富庶的或罪恶的城市 )

Extra Material about the Tower of Babel:

The Tower of Babel