2. Language and Thought
2.1 What is language?
Modern linguists have proposed various definitions of language, and some of them are quoted below:
“Language is a purely human and non-instinctive method of communicating ideas, emotions and desires by means of voluntarily produced symbols.”(Sapir, 1921) [2]
Language is “the institution whereby humans communicate and interact with each other by means of habitually used oral-auditory arbitrary symbols.”(Hall, 1968) [3]
“From now on I will consider language to be a set (finite or infinite) of sentences, each finite in length and constructed out of a finite set of elements.”(Chomsky, 1957) [4]
Each of these definitions has its own special emphasis, and is not a totally free from limitations.
However, there are some important characteristics of human language linguists have agreed on; the most commonly accepted definition of language is:
“Language is a system of arbitrary vocal symbols used for human communication”.[5]
So language is a special tool for human beings to communicate. It is possessed by human beings and allows people to say things to one another and to express thoughts and needs. In short, language is a unique system of communication and it is the cornerstone of society.
2.2 What is thought?
“Thought is a function of human brain, and is a cognitive activity for human to understand the objective world. Thought is a process that uses the conceptions, judgment and reasoning to reflect the objective world. Thought can process all kinds of information that enters the human’s brain, therefore we can reflect the nature of things and can solve problems
when we think.” [6] “Thought is a power or process of thinking.”（Oxford Advanced Learner’s English-Chinese Dictionary,2002,P1588）
Thought is a process that information enters the brain and is analyzed, synthesized, judged and inferred on the basis of presentation and concept. After the spoken and written language come into being the information which enters the human’s brain comes most from language either by heard or by seen thus what we could think is mostly based on the two styles of language and sometimes led by what we are told. That is to say, without the information entering human’s brain there is no thought or thinking comes into being.
2.3 The Relationship between Language and Thought
2.3.1 Humboldt’s Views
Whilhelm von Humblodt, a famous German diplomat and scholar, states the relationship between language and thought as the following views:
“The spiritual traits and the structure of the language of a people are so intimately blended that, given either of the two, one should be able to derive the other from it to the fullest extent... Language is the outward manifestation of the spirit of people; their language is their spirit, and their spirit is their language; it is difficult to imagine any two things more identical”. [7]
转贴于 酷文网-论文下载中心 http://www.coolwen.net
共15页: 上一页 [1] 2 [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12] [13] [14] [15] 下一页
网摘收藏:
当前位置:
载入中...
-> 在百度中搜索：
-> 在Google中搜索：