文档介绍：3) Creativity (productivity)
By creativity we mean language is productive because of its duality and its recursiveness(递归性).
It refers to the ability that we can construct and understand an indefinitely large number of sentences.
Because of duality the human speaker is able bine the basic linguistic units to form an infinite set of sentences, most of which are never before produced or heard.
4)Displacement
Human languages enable their users to symbolize objects, events and concepts which are not present (in time and space) at the moment munication.
It means that language can be used to refer to things which are present or not present, real or imagined, in past, present, or future, or in far-away places.
munication is normally under “immediate stimulus control”. For instance, a
warning cry of a bird instantly announces danger.
Human language is stimulus-free. What we are talking about need not be triggered by any external stimulus in the world or any internal state.
The honeybee's dance exhibits displacement a little bit: it can refer to a source of food, which is remote in time and space when it reports on it.
Displacement benefits human beings by giving us the power to handle generalizations and abstractions.
5) Cultural transmission
Language is passed on from one generation to the next by teaching and learning, rather than by instinct.
While human capacity for language has a ic basis, the details of any language system are not ically transmitted, but instead have to be taught and learned.
Animal call systems are ically transmitted.
3. Origin of language
1) The Divine-origin Theory
2) The Invention Theory
3) The Evolutionary Theory
4) First Language Theory
The Divine-origin Theory
Christians believe that it was God who created language for human beings. But linguists do
not attach much importance tothis theory.
“And the Lord said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do; an