Designfeaturesoflanguage论文

Design Features of LanguageQin Jialu School of Foreign LanguagesHarbin Institute of TechnologyAbstra

Design Features of Language Qin Jialu School of Foreign Languages Harbin Institute of Technology Abstract :It is generally believed that human beings are the sole species capable of developing language due to their intelligence and appropriate structure of the vocal tract. It is clear, however, that animals are also capable of communicating in their own way. Yet, there are certain obvious differences in human and animal ways of conveying messages. By comparing language with animal communication systems,we can have abetter understanding of the nature of language.The features that define our human languages can be called design features, which we will look at in the following paper. Key words :language, arbitrariness, duality, creativity, displacement Ⅰ.The definition of language What is language? This may seems like anative and simple question at first. Yet, it is difficult to give asatisfactory definition for the most common, and everyday item. Also, alot of linguistics proposed their definitions of language based on their own understandings. “To give the barest of definition, language is ameans of verbal communication.” [1]This is the definition given by our course book. Language is most importantly asystem for every human being learns from birth. It is asystem of by which we as humans communicate. We use this form of communication to express emotion, convey thoughts, and generally ‘think’ abstractly. We do so through asystem of signs, using speech, in aconventional manner as human beings. Ⅱ. Arbitrariness Saussure first refers to the fact that the forms of linguistic signs bear no natural relationship to their meaning.[1] That means. languages are said to be arbitrary because there is no necessary or natural relationship between the words of agiven language and the concepts that they represent. For example, there is nothing in the word "tree" that connects it to the concept of atree; which is why French can use a totally different sign for the same concept“arbre”, and so on with other languages. Also, there is no natural connection between the word or sound and the thing it denotes, which means we cannot tell what is the meaning of aword simply by looking at it.Onomatopoeias, namely, words which sound like the sounds they describe, are present in the majority of contemporary languages. However, nothing in the Chinese word ‘/miao/’ tells us that it means the same as the English word 喵 ‘mew/mju:/’ or French word ‘miaoler/mjole/’. Another reason for language is arbitrary because the convention. This is why every language has various “idioms”. Languages are arbitrary because different nations