一.  Terms

1. The definition of language

    Language involves three activities: the neural, the muscular and social activity. From the naturalistic point of view, language is an organism in the natural world. For mentalists, language is the capacity of one individual to alter the mental organization of another individual through structured sound or gesture or visual immission.

    Language is a means of verbal communication. It is rule-governed, instrumental purposefully, and it is social (sicial semiotic)and conventional.

    Generally speaking, language is a system of arbitary vocal symbols for human communication.

    First, it is a system in that every sign is meaningful only in relation or in contrast   with other linguistic signs. Second, language is arbitary because the signifier and signified have no intrinsic relationship with each other. Third, language is first of all vocal. Oral language runs first and written language emerged far behind spoken language. The fact that many language still have no written ones proves the point in question. Fourth, language is human speific for no other animals has language in the sense that it has the design features of duality, creativity, displacement etc. The last but not the least, it is a means of communication, which has been regarded as the motivation of language.

    Yet, opinions vary among linguists. For Chomsky, he regards language as " a finite means to generate infinite sentences.

     2. referential function

    The referential function of language concerns what are the objects and events called and how to describe the events.

    To Halliday, it is also called ideational function. which is about the function to express both the externer and inner experience of human beings together with logical relations.

    The foremost function of language is to refer to the entities or events in the real world. For Saussure, the sign of language does not directly refer to the entities or events in the world, but refer to the concept of the objects or events. Ogden's semantic triangle demonstrates this theorization clearly, in which the sign or reference denotes the referenced via thougt or concepts.

    3. design features of language

    There are different sets of design features for different linguists, but the disign feature of abitariness, duality, creativity and displacement are the set of design features most agree with.

    Above all, the linguistic signs bear no intrinsic resemblance with the entities or events they refer to. Forms of linguistic signs bear no natural relationship to their meaning. According to Saussure, the onometopoeia words are only some exceptions. However, some scholars point out that iconicity is also important. In my opinion, this is not in contradiction with saussure's thoerization, which is mainly confined to the scope of words. The iconicity principle is mainly reflected in the sentential and textual level.  

    1)Arbitary relationship between the sound of a morpheme and its meaning.

    2)Arbitary at the syntactic level (the ways that sentences are ocnstructed according to the grammar of arrangement)

    3)Division of reality is arbitary. we divide up the world into arbitary concepts to which we assign arbitary labels.Signs depend for their value on other signs in the language system.

    4)abitariness and convention. Arbitrariness makes convention.

    5)Arbitrariness and iconicity.

      Language structure to a considerable degree has an iconic motivation. Rougly this embodies the idea that the form length complexity or interrelationship of elements in a linguistic representation reflects the form length complexity or interrelationship of elements in the concepts, experience or communicative strategy taht that representation encodes.

    Second, duality is another important design feature which is closely connected with arbitary nature of linguistic signs. There are two levels for language. The first is meaningless level, for example, a finite set of phonics and letters. The second is the meanful level -- infinte number of words and sentences which are combined by the meaningless phonics and letters. 

    Third, creativity is largely due to the arbitrary nature and the duality nature of language in that arbitrariness contribute to the creation of new words and duality account for new conbinations of words. Another motivation of creativity is recursiveness, meaning that the sentence can be added to theoretically to limited length.

    Fourth, we can use language to refer to the entities or events in the past or not in the place where the talk take place.    

    4. Jacobson's functions of language

    Jacobson first points out six factors in the six functions of language, namely, the addresser, the adressee, the signs.

    The reference function; the phatic function; the poetic function; the contextual function;

    5. Actual and potential linguistic choice

    When we have meaning or concept in mind to express. There are numerous competing choices both at the choice axis (or paradigmatic axis) and chain axis (syntagmatic axis). But at last only the ones the interlocuter regards the most appropriate are choosen to form the actual linguistic choice both at the paradigmatic and syntagmatic axis.

    6. data of linguistics

    There are three kinds of data for linguistic study. No.1, the introspection of the linguists themselves. The first dictionaries and grammar books in the seventeenth or eighteenth centuries are the products of this line of linguistic data. Today, many linguists still formulate their theories with the help of personal introspection. No.2, the elicitation of the informants. To get the actual utterances of the inteneded speakers, linguists elicit certain reacations in the form linguistic data. But this kind of data may be sometimes artificial because the way they elicit the langauge performance is not natural. No. 3, the corpus, corpus help psycholinguistics, neurolinguistics and other applied linguistics in many ways. First, it helps make syllabus and update dictionaries. Second, it helps detect the error patterns in the treatment of speakers with difficulty.   

二. 1. What are the metafunctions of Halliday's Systemic Functional Grammar?

    From his observation of children learning language, Halliday first put forward seven functions of language, namely, ideational, manipulatory, regulatory, personal, instrumental, heuristic, imaginative. As the children grow into adults, these functions turn into three matafunctions -- ideational function, interpersonal function and textual function.

    Ideational function is about our experience of the world and our inner experiences such as our thought and feelings. Ideational function includes the transitivity system,which in turns encompasses six processes: the material process, the behavioural process, the mental process, the verbal process, the relational process and the existential process.

    Interpersonal function is about the part of the language that helps to establish and maintain the relationships between the people. It includes the subject and the finite part which is called mood because this part can vary according to the function of sentence. The sentences mainly has two functions: demand and give. And the things exchanged are commodities, service and information. To demand commodity and service is request; to demand information is question; to give commodity and service is offer while to give information is statement. So request,question,offer and statement are the main interpersonal functions of the sentences. The mood varies according to the four interpersonal functions. Also modality helps to make the sentence a judgement or a prediction. For example: He is a doctor. He is probably a doctor.

    2. How many perspectives are there about language studies? Comment on them.

    Four perspectives: language as an innate human faculty, langauge as code, language as a system,langauge as interaction.

    First, to Chomsky, language is an innate human faculty. The language acquisition device helps one to acquire his mother tongue. The innate tranformational generative grammar is acitivated at the exposure of human language input, whichever language it is and however meagre it is. The task of the linguists for this line of linguists is to research the univeral grammar in human mind.

    Second, language as code. language signs are codes which are used to calculate according to certain mathematic rules and logical principles.

    Third, language as system. This view is shared by both Saussure and Halliday. To Saussure, the value of linguistic signs lie in their relations with other signs in the same system. For Halliday, language is composed of many systems. For example, semantic level, lexical-grammar level and phonological or graphic level. Every level is realised by another level.

    Fourth, for the functionalist linguists, language is interaction. For functionalists, their primary concern is the intention of the interlocutor represented in the utterance. Then comes the task to analysing the sentence into theme and rheme.

   3. What is the significance of the distinction between Synchronic and Diachronic studies of linguistics?

    The synchronic studies of language refers to studying language at a fixed period of time. For example, the comtemperary grammar of English, the Shakespear Dictionary.

    The diachrony studies of language refers to studying language through time. For example, historical linguistics.

    Saussure suggests that the linguists should study the language synchronically so that they can see the language as a system. Only in this way can what happens in relation to other occurencs at the same period, which is meaningful or logical. His opinion is opposed to the neogrammarians who studied language atomically disregarding the context they happened.

    4. What are the differences between formalism and functionalism?

    No.1, their view of language are different. The formalisem treat language segregately. They treat it as an autonous system, without taking the natural language into consideration. In contrast, the functionalsim treats language as a system, which integrates the context and linguistic elements together.

    No. 2, their views of language acquisition are different. For formalism language acquisition is the activation of the language acqisition device which contains the universal grammar by being exposed to the language. However, the functionlism believes that the children learn their mother tongue as functions.

    No.3, they use different linguistic data. The formalism only use the well-formed sentences and sometimes the sentences are made by themselves. In a word they use intropection to study language. The functionalism studies natural languages.

    5. Compare Saussure's langue and parole and Chomsky's competence and performance.

    According to Saussure, langue is the rules of the language system obeyed by the people in the society and parole is the concrete realisation of the these rules in people's life.

    In Chomsky's opinion, competence is the linguistic knowledge in the mind of an ideal speaker of a homogenous speech community and performance is what a speaker actually says.

    First, langue is soical while competence is psychological. Langue exists in the society as a book for the members to abide by whereas the competence is the knowledge in the mind of an ideal speaker.

    Second, langue is static while competence is dynamic. Langue are rules written. Competence is the generative power for a speaker to produce numerous utterances.

    6. What does linguistics study encompass?

    First, phonetics studies the sounds themslves, their properties, their articulation, and categorization accordingly. Phonology studies the system of sounds. In the same system, they may in different relations - complementary distribution, opposition, etc.

    Second, morphology studies the inflection , derivation etc. as the changes of the lexical items.

    Third syntax studies the relations between the components of the sentences.

    Fourth, semantics studies the meaning of the words, sentences and texts.

    Fifthe, pragmatics studies language in use or the relationship bwteen language and its user.

    Sixthe, soiciolinguistics studies language in society.

    Seventh, psycholinguistics studies language comprehension, production, acquisition and attrition.

    Eighth, stylistics studies how language conveys its messages in an effective way.

    Ninth, language in comparison studies language changes in history and language typology.

    Tenth, computational linguistics studies how we can use computers to study language.

    Eleventh, second langauge acquisition studies the mechanism for a person to acquire a second language.

    Twelfth, language teaching studies the scientific and effective way of teaching a second language.