阅读教程第二版 蒋静仪 Unit 8
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• God, viewing the audacity of His people, confounded their language, creating chaos and confusion. Unable to understand each other, the people scattered throughout the Earth, prevented from building another tower to Heaven.
Reading 1
• What did people originally think was the solution to miscommunication between people of different native languages?
• Why is English important to people who need to use the computer at work and to study?
Universal Grammar
• There is a biological, physiological entity inside our brain which decides what we speak.
Reading 2
• Information: Babbling • Psychological studies have demonstrated that babies
at the age of four months can already distinguish between the vowels [a] and [i]. Researchers show the mouths of two adult faces to an infant, one with the shape when saying [a], the other with the shape when saying [i]. Simultaneously, a tape-recorder plays either [a] or [i]. When the baby subjects hear an [a], they tend to look at the face saying [a]; when they hear an [i], they tend to look at the face saying [i]. These findings suggest that infants of about four months of age can already distinguish different vowel qualities and use visual cues to determine the kind of articulation involved in producing them.
Unit 8
About Language
Pre-reading discussion
What do you think are the basic functions of human language?
The origin of language
• The people of Earth, tired of pleasing a demanding God, decided to build a tall tower as an easy way to Heaven. Begun on the plains of Babel, the tower soon rose to great heights.
A story from the Old Testament
The power of language
• The power of language has been duly noted since the remote antiquity. Ancient Jew, for example, credited their belief language in the Talmud: “God created the world by a word, instantaneously, without toil or pains”. Mystical as it i piece of scripture points to “the primacy of language in t way human beings conceive of the world” (Widdowson, 1996). In almost all ancient cultures we can find a mytholo concerning the role of language: it facilitates gods to exe their will; it satisfies the mortal desire to praise the Al it also empowers earthlings to challenge the heaven (e.g. myth of the Tower of Babel). Indeed, language is a vehicle o power, for control, for creation, and for change.
• Here are two famous cases frequently cited to support the hypothesis.
• 1. A girl called Genie was found in 1970 when she was nearly fourteen years old. She had been abused and isolated since the age of twenty months. When first discovered, Geni was completely silent. Thereafter her language developmen was extremely slow, and although she did learn to speak, he speech was quite abnormal. Below are some wh-questions made by the girl.
• The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language uses the following description to highlight how central language is human lives:
• We look around us, and are awed by the variety of several thousand languages and dialects, expressing a multiplicit world views, literatures, and ways of life. We look back at the thoughts of our predecessors, and find we can see only a far as language lets us see. We look forward in time, and fi we can plan only through language. We look outward in space, and send symbols of communication along with our spacecraft, to explain who we are, in case there is anyone there who wants to know.
• At the age of four to six months or so, babies begin to babble, producing sequences of vowels and consonants, which may not belong to the speech sounds of their prospective mother tongue. According to Roman Jacobson’s Discontinuity Hypothesis, once a child produces meaningful words and starts pairing sounds with meaning, he will abruptly stop producing all kinds of non-native speech sounds. It is postulated that children babble because they must go through a process of biological maturation during language development.
• Why were English words such as Walkman banned in France?
• What function does English have in the entertainment world?
• What is the author’s attitude cal period
• This hypothesis was first proposed by Eric Lenneberg. He said that the ability to learn a native language develops within a fixed period, from birth to puberty. During this period, language acquisition proceeds easily, swiftly, and without external intervention. After this period, the acquisition of grammar is difficult and for some individuals never fully achieved.
• Where is tomorrow Mrs L.?
• Where is May I have ten pennies?
• When is stop spitting?
• 2. Isabelle was discovered in 1937 at the age of six and a half. Her mother, who was deaf and could not speak, had kept her isolated but had not otherwise mistreated her. Isabelle then began training lesson at the Ohio State University, and although her progress was at first slow, it soon accelerated. Two years later her intelligence and her language use were completely normal for a child of her age. Obviously, Isabelle was luckier than Genie because her exposure to a language started still within the critical period for language acquisition.
Reading 1
• What did people originally think was the solution to miscommunication between people of different native languages?
• Why is English important to people who need to use the computer at work and to study?
Universal Grammar
• There is a biological, physiological entity inside our brain which decides what we speak.
Reading 2
• Information: Babbling • Psychological studies have demonstrated that babies
at the age of four months can already distinguish between the vowels [a] and [i]. Researchers show the mouths of two adult faces to an infant, one with the shape when saying [a], the other with the shape when saying [i]. Simultaneously, a tape-recorder plays either [a] or [i]. When the baby subjects hear an [a], they tend to look at the face saying [a]; when they hear an [i], they tend to look at the face saying [i]. These findings suggest that infants of about four months of age can already distinguish different vowel qualities and use visual cues to determine the kind of articulation involved in producing them.
Unit 8
About Language
Pre-reading discussion
What do you think are the basic functions of human language?
The origin of language
• The people of Earth, tired of pleasing a demanding God, decided to build a tall tower as an easy way to Heaven. Begun on the plains of Babel, the tower soon rose to great heights.
A story from the Old Testament
The power of language
• The power of language has been duly noted since the remote antiquity. Ancient Jew, for example, credited their belief language in the Talmud: “God created the world by a word, instantaneously, without toil or pains”. Mystical as it i piece of scripture points to “the primacy of language in t way human beings conceive of the world” (Widdowson, 1996). In almost all ancient cultures we can find a mytholo concerning the role of language: it facilitates gods to exe their will; it satisfies the mortal desire to praise the Al it also empowers earthlings to challenge the heaven (e.g. myth of the Tower of Babel). Indeed, language is a vehicle o power, for control, for creation, and for change.
• Here are two famous cases frequently cited to support the hypothesis.
• 1. A girl called Genie was found in 1970 when she was nearly fourteen years old. She had been abused and isolated since the age of twenty months. When first discovered, Geni was completely silent. Thereafter her language developmen was extremely slow, and although she did learn to speak, he speech was quite abnormal. Below are some wh-questions made by the girl.
• The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language uses the following description to highlight how central language is human lives:
• We look around us, and are awed by the variety of several thousand languages and dialects, expressing a multiplicit world views, literatures, and ways of life. We look back at the thoughts of our predecessors, and find we can see only a far as language lets us see. We look forward in time, and fi we can plan only through language. We look outward in space, and send symbols of communication along with our spacecraft, to explain who we are, in case there is anyone there who wants to know.
• At the age of four to six months or so, babies begin to babble, producing sequences of vowels and consonants, which may not belong to the speech sounds of their prospective mother tongue. According to Roman Jacobson’s Discontinuity Hypothesis, once a child produces meaningful words and starts pairing sounds with meaning, he will abruptly stop producing all kinds of non-native speech sounds. It is postulated that children babble because they must go through a process of biological maturation during language development.
• Why were English words such as Walkman banned in France?
• What function does English have in the entertainment world?
• What is the author’s attitude cal period
• This hypothesis was first proposed by Eric Lenneberg. He said that the ability to learn a native language develops within a fixed period, from birth to puberty. During this period, language acquisition proceeds easily, swiftly, and without external intervention. After this period, the acquisition of grammar is difficult and for some individuals never fully achieved.
• Where is tomorrow Mrs L.?
• Where is May I have ten pennies?
• When is stop spitting?
• 2. Isabelle was discovered in 1937 at the age of six and a half. Her mother, who was deaf and could not speak, had kept her isolated but had not otherwise mistreated her. Isabelle then began training lesson at the Ohio State University, and although her progress was at first slow, it soon accelerated. Two years later her intelligence and her language use were completely normal for a child of her age. Obviously, Isabelle was luckier than Genie because her exposure to a language started still within the critical period for language acquisition.