【正确答案】i. Language is a means of verbal communication. It is instrumental in that communicating by speaking or writing is a purposeful act. It is social and conventional in that language is a social semiotic and communication can only take place effectively if all the users share a broad understanding of human interaction including such associated factors as nonverbal cues, motivation, and socio-cultural roles. Language learning and use are determined by the intervention of biological, cognitive, psychosocial, and environmental factors. In short, language distinguishes us from animals because it is far more sophisticated than any animal communication system. as the well-known philosopher Bertrand Russell once observed: "No matter how eloquently a dog may bark, he cannot tell you that his parents were poor but honest. " Therefore, it is also agreed that there are fundamental differences between human language and other animals'ways of communicating.
ii. By comparing language with animal communication systems, we can find some defining properties of human language that distinguish it from any animal system of communication, which are called design features. The following are the frequently discussed ones:
1)Arbitrariness. It refers to the fact that the forms of linguistic signs bear no natural relationship to their meaning. For instance, we cannot explain why a book is called a/buk/and a pen a/pen/. However, there seems to be different levels of arbitrariness. Firstly, the relationship between the sound of a morpheme and its meaning is arbitrary. You may object to this when you think of words with different degrees of onomatopoeia, namely, words that sound like the sounds they describe. As a matter of fact, arbitrary and onomatopoeic effect may work at the same time. Secondly, language is arbitrary at syntactic level. As we know, the order of elements in a sentence follows certain rules, and there is a certain degree of correspondence between the sequence of clauses and the real happenings, we can reverse the order of the clauses. Thirdly, we have to look at the other side of the coin of arbitrariness, namely, conventionality. Arbitrariness of language makes it potentially creative, and conventionality of language makes learning a language laborious.
2)Duality. "By duality is meant the property of having two levels of structures, such as that units of the primary level are composed of elements of the secondary level and each of the two levels has its own principles of organization" (Lyons, 1982:20). Roughly speaking, the elements of the spoken language are sounds which do not convey meaning in themselves. The only function of sounds is to combine with one another to form units that have meaning, such as words. We call sounds here secondary units as opposed to such primary units as words, since the secondary units are meaningless and the primary units have distinct and identifiable meaning. The property of duality then only exists in such a system, namely, with both elements and units. Many animals communicate with special calls, which have corresponding meanings. That is, the primary units have meanings but cannot be further divided into elements. So we say animal language—the property of duality. Consequently, the communicative power of animal language is highly limited.
3)Creativity. By creativity we mean language is resourceful because of its duality and its recursiveness. One of the reasons why language is actually a far more complicated entity than traffic lights is that we can use it to create new meanings. There are numerous examples to illustrate that words can be used in new ways to mean new things, and can be instantly understood by people who have never come across that sets human language apart from the kinds of communication that goes on, for example, between birds, which can only convey a limited range of message. (Linda Thomas, 1998:7)If language is defined merely as a system of communication, then language is not unique to humans. As we know, birds, bees, crabs, spiders, and most other creatures communicate in some way, but the information imparted is severely limited and confined to a small set of messages. The creativity of language partly originates from its duality which we just discussed in the above section, namely, because of duality the speaker is able to combine the basic units to form an infinite set of sentences, most of which are never before produced or heard. Language is creative in another sense, that is, its potential to create endless sentences. The recursive nature of language provides a theoretical basis for this possibility.
4)Displacement. Displacement means that hulnan languages enable their users to symbolize objects events and concepts which are not present(in time and space)at the moment of communication. Thus, I can refer to Confucian, or the North Pole, even though the first has been dead for over 4000 years and the second is situated far away from us. Most animals respond communicatively as soon as they are stimulated by some occurrence of communal interest. For instance, a warning cry of a bird instantly announces danger. Such animals are under "immediate stimulus control". Human language is, unlike animal communication systems, stimulus free. What are we talking about need not be triggered by any external state. The honeybee's dance, exhibits displacement a little bit: he can refer to a source of food, which is remote in time and space when he reports on it. A dog cannot tell people that its master will be home in a few days. Our language enable us to communicate about thing that don't exist or don't yet exist. Displacement benefits human beings by giving them the power to handle generalization and abstractions.

【答案解析】[解析] 本题考查人类语言与动物“语言”的异同，以及语言的本质特征。同样作为交流的工具，参照动物“语言”，人类语言有其独特的本质特征。语言的任意性和约定性，二重性，创造性和移位性。说到二重性，我们必须注意语言的层级性。许多动物用特定的声音来交流，这种声音有相应的意义，也就是，底层单位有意义，但却无法再进一步分解为更小的元素。由于语言的二重性和递归性，使得语言具有创造性，而动物往往通过一定的途径交流，所传递的信息极其有限，往往限于很小一部分。动物主要是在直接刺激控制之下发出信号，而语言能使我们谈及不存在或者还未出现的事物。由此可见，人类语言具有其独特的本质特征。