【正文】 study. They take it as a tool for access to some other fields rather than study it as a subject in and of itself. However, if you pause and think of the following myths about language, it is indeed necessary to reconsider how much we really understand the nature of language and its role in our life. And you may be surprised to realize that some of our most damaging racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic prejudices are based on our linguistic ignorance and wrong ideas about language. Myth 1. Language is a means of munication. Myth 2. Language has a formmeaning correspondence. Myth 3. The function of language is to exchange information. Myth 4. English is more difficult to learn than Chinese. Myth 5. Black English is not standard and should be reformed. The list of myths may go on and by the end of this course if you look back on them, we hope you may find these widely established views not so truthful after all. The following are some fundamental views about LANGUAGE, which you may instinctively agree without having thought about the reasons, or you may not agree at the moment. Follow this course and you will find they are discussed in more detail in the ensuing chapters.1．Children learn their native language swiftly, efficiently and without instruction.2．Language operates by rules.3 All languages have three major ponents。 a sound system, a system of lexicogrammar and a system of semantics.4．Everyone speaks a dialect.5．Language slowly changes.6．Speakers of all languages employ a range of styles and a set of jargons.7．Languages are intimately related to the societies and individuals that use them.8．Writing is derivative of speech. Some people find the subject of language intriguing and useful for many different reasons. Language can be used as a way of finding out more about how the brain works, or how damage to the brain results in certain kind of language disorders, how children learn language, how people learn and teach 《英語語言學(xué)》教案 Cui Jianbin: Course Design of English Linguistics Studies 18different languages, what the relationship between meaning and perception is, what the role of language is different cultures, why people use different varieties of language, why there are linguistic differences between different groups, and how scientists make the puter work in a more humanlike manner. This course book will serve as a starting point from which you may go on researching in one of the above and other languagerelated fields. Let us mention here the more general and more broadly educational concerns. We can all note that language plays 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 it is a vital human resource that all of us share.What is language? Webster’s New World Dictionary offers several most frequently used senses of the word “l(fā)anguage”, namely, [1] (a) Human speech。 (b) The ability to municate by this means。 (c) a system of vocal sounds and binations of such sounds to which meaning is attributed, used for the expression or munication of thoughts and feelings。 (d) The written representation of such a system。 [2] (a) Any means of expressing or municating, 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 puter?！?(p. 759) Suffice it to say here that though we use the word in its various senses, 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 munication. It is instrumental in that municating by speaking or writing is a purposeful act. It is social and conventional in that language is a social semiotic and munication 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 sociocultural roles. Language learning and use are determined by the intervention of biological, cognitive, psychosocial, and environmental factors. In short, language distinguishes us from animals because it is far more sophisticated that any animal munication system.《英語語言學(xué)》教案 Cui Jianbin: Course Design of English Linguistics Studies 19Design features of language We would all agree that language is essential to human beings but we may find it hard to specify what makes our language advantageous over animal “l(fā)anguages”. In order to mate, propagate and cooperate in their colonies, species like birds and bees also municate by singing or dancing, following a very elaborate routine too. Are they using language too? Not really. As Bertrand Russell once observed: “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 plicated 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? The features that define our human languages can by called DFESIGN FEATURES. The following are the frequently discussed ones. Arbitrariness The widely accepted meaning of this feature, which was discussed by Saussure, first refers to the fact that the forms of linguistic signs bear no natural relationship to their meaning. For instance, we cannot explain why a book is called a / buk / and a pen a / pen /. However there seems to be different levels of ARBITRARINESS.Arbitrary relationship between the sound of a morpheme and its meaning You may object to this when you think of words with different degrees of onomatopoeia, namely, words that sound like the