Outline of General Linguistics: 21st Century Series Textbooks for Higher Normal University Liberal Arts

Author: Wang Dachang
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2004-09-01
Features: "Introduction to Linguistics" is a compulsory course for Chinese Language and Literature majors in higher education institutions and also an important foundational course in linguistics for related disciplines. The teaching focus of this course is to introduce students to the basic concepts, methods, theories of linguistic science, and some fundamental universal patterns in human language. The book "Outline of General Linguistics" is divided into parts from "Introduction" to "Writing." The "Introduction" section introduces the basics of linguistics, its relationship with other disciplines, and its classification, as well as a brief overview of linguistic research, providing students with a fundamental understanding of linguistics. The chapter "Nature of Language" introduces the basic structure and essential attributes of language, aiming to help students establish a fundamental perspective on human language. From the second chapter "Phonetics" to the fifth chapter "Grammar," the book introduces the structure of language from aspects such as phonetics, semantics, vocabulary, and grammar, which is the key focus of the book and also the key and difficult points of the "Introduction to Linguistics" course. "Pragmatics" is a new field of study that began in the 1970s in foreign countries, representing an important aspect of shifting from static linguistic structure research to dynamic language use research. The book provides an effective introduction to this in its sixth chapter. The seventh chapter "Language Development" is another key and difficult point. The previous chapters focus on synchronic phenomena of language, while this chapter specifically introduces the laws of language evolution and development, which has a substantial amount of content. The last chapter "Writing" introduces the universal principles of various writing systems and provides an overview of the basic situations of major writing systems currently used in the world.