人們聚在一起,無論做什么總離不了說話。我們生活在語言的世界里。我們對家人說話,對親屬說話,對朋友說話,對同事說話，我們還對陌生人說話。我們面對面地說話,我們在電話里說話，我們回答問題時還要說話。電視機和收音機在言語的海洋里起著推波助瀾的作用。除了睡覺之外,我們很少有不說話的時候，我們甚至在睡夢中也會說話。有些人在睡眠中會大聲說話。我們還會自言自語,有時對寵物說話,有時則對自己說話。我們是這個星球上唯一能說話的動物。
擁有語言，確切說是擁有創(chuàng)造性的語言，較之任何其他屬性更能將人類同其他動物區(qū)別開來。要理解人就必須理解那種使我們成為人的語言。
Whatever else people do when they come together, they talk. We live in a world of language. We talk to our family members, our relatives, our friends, our colleagues and total strangers. We talk face to face and over the telephone, and respond with more talk. Television and radio further swell this torrent of words. Hardly a moment of our waking lives is free from words, and even in our dreams we talk. Some of us talk aloud in our sleep. We also talk when there is no one to answer. Sometimes we talk to our pets and sometimes to ourselves. We are the only animals on the planet of Earth that talk.
The possession of language, or rather, the language with a creative aspect, more than any other attribute, distinguishes humans from other animals. To understand our humanity we must understand the language that makes us human.
懂一種語言使你可以說這種語言,你說的話也可以被其他懂這種語言的人聽懂。這意昧著你能夠發(fā)出表示某種概念或意義的聲音，能夠聽懂或解釋其他人發(fā)出的聲音。因此，懂得一種語言不僅指了解這種語言包含了哪些語音，還指了解語音與意義的關系。
你如果不懂某種語言，別人用這種語言對你說話時發(fā)出的聲音你基本上無法理解，這是因為大部分語音與語義之間的關系是任意確定的。
When you know a language, you can speak and be understood by others who know that language. This means you have the capacity to produce sounds that signify certain concepts or meanings and to understand or interpret the sounds produced by others. Therefore, knowing a language does not only mean knowing what sounds are in that language, but also means knowing how to relate sounds and meanings.
If you do not know a certain language, the sounds spoken to you will be mainly incomprehensible, because the relationship between speech sounds and the meanings they represent is, for the most part, an arbitrary one.
懂得一種語言你就能遣詞造句。懂得一種語言意味著你能夠說出前人未說過的話,也能聽懂在此之前無人說過的話。語言學家稱這種能力為語言運用的創(chuàng)造屬性。
懂得一種語言包括懂得哪些句子在某種場合中使用是怡當的。這就是說,，語言的使用受到場合或上下文的約束。當一個人對另外一個人說話時，他或她會根據不同的對象使用不同的詞匯和語氣。當一個人說出一句話時，同樣這句話在不同的場合、對不同的聽眾可以包含不同的內容。
Knowing a language enables you to combine words to form phrases, and phrases to form sentences. Knowing a language means being able to produce new sentences never spoken before and to understand sentences never heard before. Linguists refer to this ability as the creative aspect of language use.
Knowing a language includes knowing what sentences are appropriate in a particular situation. That is to say, language use is situation-dependent or context-dependent. When one speaks to someone else, he or she may use different words and tones to different people. When one utters a sentence, this same sentence may mean different things in different situations and to different audiences.
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