把我电脑里的资料整理了一下，把这个好好看一下，相信你会理解的，我期末考也看这个。希望对你有帮助呵呵。
(i)Creativity\productivity
Creativity is the first and foremost striking feature of human language. It refers to the fact that language provides opportunities for sending messages that have never been sent before and for understanding novel messages. The grammatical rules and the words of a language are finite, but the sentences are infinite. Every speaker uses language creatively. Even a child acquiring his\her mother tongue can put speech sound and words into novel combinations to express meanings. This feature is not found in animal communication systems. Talking birds such as parrots can imitate human utterances, but they cannot segment the sounds and words in the phrases they imitate and put them in a different sequence.
（i）创造性
创造性是人类语言第一、最显著的特征。它涉及了语言为传送以前从来没有传送过的信息和理解新信息提供了机会。一种语言的语法规则和单词是有限的，但是句子是无限的。每个演说者创造性地使用语言。甚至一个学到他（她）母语的小孩也能把语音和单词放在一起，形成新的组合去表达意思。这个特征在动物交际系统里是找不到的。就拿鸟类来说，如鹦鹉能模仿人类的言语，但是它们不能分割它们所模仿的短语的语音部分和单词部分，然后把它们放进一个不同的次序里。
Results of experiments shows that even animals closet in kin to human beings cannot match children in learning and using language. In the 1930s, Winthrop and Luella Kellogg raised their infant son together with an infant chimpanzee named Gua. When the boy could understand I say what I mean and I mean what I say, Gua could understand neither, although it understood some words. Several decades later, another chimpanzee, named Nim Chimsky(after the famous American linguist Noam Chomsky, who states that language is unique to human beings)was taughtSign Language under careful experimentalcondition
实验的结果表明了尽管是和人类关系最亲密的动物，在学习和使用语言上，也赶不上小孩子。在十九世纪三十年代，Winthrop和Luella Kellogg把他们的男婴儿和一个叫Dua的幼儿猩猩一起抚养。当这个小男孩能够理解I say what I mean 和I mean what I say两个句子的含义时，而Gua却一个都不懂，尽管它知道一些单词。几十年后，又一个叫Nim Chimsky的大猩猩（在著名的美国语言学家Noam Chomsky叙述了“语言是人类特有的”论述后）在细心照顾的实验环境下，包括保持记录和录像，被传授美国标记语言。在分析Nim的语言录音后，研究者发现，在Nim的言语中，只有12%是自发的，在剩下的88%老师传授的标记中，一半Nim的反应是模仿老师的言语。随着小孩们长得越大，他们进行对话交流越来频繁。孩子们在对话中，几乎不模仿。孩子们在语言使用中变得更加创新。但是，在类似的实验里，Nim和其他猩猩表明了几乎没有这种创新的趋势。（Frokin 和Rodman，1998）这些事实似乎表明了创新性是区分人类语言和其他动物交际系统的一个特征。
(ii)Duality二元性
Language contains two subsystems, one of sounds and the other of meanings. If you are given the four English speech sounds,[p][l][i][d] and asked to combine them into sequences that sound like English words, you will find [plid][pild]are permissible ,while *[pdli]*[dpli]*[lipd]*[idlp], etc. are not. The permissible sequences sound like English words, and yet they are not, because they do not stand foe anything. On the other hand, meanings are conveyed by certain speech sounds or sequences of speech sounds. In English, [DEAD BODY OF A PERSON] is expressed by the word corpse. In this case, we say the concept or the meaning is lexicalized. In English there is no word to stand for the concept [DEAD PLANT]. When certain speech sounds correspond to a certain meaning, a unit of language arises. The same sounds can be recombined to mean something else. In some cases, the same sequence od sounds can mean different things (such ashomophones, and polysemes). This shows that meanings and sounds make up two subsystems of language. No systems of animal communication possess this feature. The barks of a dog are not analyzable.Animal communic ation systems cannot be cut into segments and then be reorganizes into meaningful sequences. In other words, human languages are discrete while animal communication systems are non-discrete.
（ii）二元性
语言包括两个子系统：一个是语音系统，一个是语义系统。假如给你四个语音[p]、[l]、[i]、[d]，并叫你把它们组合成听起来像英语单词的次序，你会发现[plid]和[pild]是行得通的，而其他的却行不通。行得通的次序听起来像英语，否则就不是，因为它们不代表任何东西。从另一方面来手，语义是通过一定的语音或者是语音的次序来传达的。在英语里，（DEAD BODY OF A PERSON）用来表达单词corpse（尸体），在这种情况下，我们说这个概念或语义被编进了词汇。在英语里，没有一个单词代表（DEAD PLANT）的概念。当特定的语音和特定的意思一致时，一个语言的单位产生了。相同的语音能够重组来表达其他的事物。在某些情况下，相同语音的次序能表达不同的事物（比如同音字和多音词），这表明了语音和语义构成了语言的两个子系统。动物交际系统里就没有这个特征，狗的犬叫声是不可被分析的。动物的交际系统不能被分割为几部分，也不能把它们重新组成有意义的次序。换句话来说，人类语言是离散的，而动物交际系统是连续的。
(iii)Arbitrariness
The relationship between speech sounds and the meanings they represent in the languages of the world is , for the most part, an arbitrary one, The Swiss linguist de Saussure regarded the linguistic sign as composed of signifier(sound image)and signified(referent). In his view, there is no inherent relation between the two. A building we live in with our family is called house in English, maison in French, dom in Russian, casa in Spanish. If the relationship between speech sounds and meanings were motivated (i.e. not arbitrary), the words in these languages that stand for the same thing would sound the same or similar, then people would not need to learn foreign languages. Admittedly, there are a few words in most languages that are onomatopoetic ---words od which the sounds supposedly imitate the sounds of nature. This seems to contradict arbitrariness. Nevertheless, when these words of different languages are compares, it is found that they still sound different. The English word tick tock is equivalent to Chinese word dida, buzz to wengweng. In English, cockadoodledoo represents the rooster’crow, but in Russian, kukareku, both are differert from the Chinese expression. Based on these observations, we can say that for example, rather directly represents its subject matter, because a direct connection exists between the number and direction of the gyrations and the sources of nectar.
（iii）任意性
在语言世界里，它们所代表的语音和语义之间的关系，从大部分来讲，是任意的。瑞士语言学家de Saussure认为语言是有所指部分（语音）和受指部分（上面提到的语义）组成。在他的观点里， 两者是没有固定关系的。我们和家人住的建筑物在英语被叫house，法语叫maison，俄罗斯叫dom，西班牙叫casa。如果语音和语义的关系被激发了，代表相同事物的这些语言将会发相同或相似的音，那么人们就没有必要学习外语了。
无可否认地，在大部分语言中，有些单词是声喻的——按推测，发音是模仿大自然声音的单词。这似乎和任意性矛盾。然而，当不同语言的单词被比较时，人们会发现它们发音是不同的。英语单词ticktock 等同于汉字dida，buzz 等同于wengweng。在英语里，cockadooledoo代表公鸡的叫声，但在俄罗斯语里，却是kukareku， 两者和中文表达不同。根据这些观察，我们可以说，所有人类语言都是传统的，大部分动物交际系统是图标性的。例如：蜜蜂飞舞，非常直接地表达了它的主要问题，因为一个直接的结合点存在于旋转的次数和方向和花蜜的来源之间。
(iv)Displacement
Language can be used to refer to things real or imagined, past, present, or future. When we listen to news broadcast, we know What can be spoken is not limited by time and space, while animals can merely communication about what happens here and now. The cleverest dog cannot bark to tell others how badly its parents were treated by their owner. This feature of language id due to the fact that the human brain is specially structures for language and that the brains of other species are not comparable in terms of the capacities of memory and abstraction.
（iv）超时空性/移位性
语言可以用于涉及真实的或者想象的、过去的、现在的或将来的失去。当我们听新闻广播的时候，我们知道这个世界上遥远地方发生了什么事。至于谈什么，则不受时间和空间的限制，而动物却只能交流这里及现在发生了什么。连最聪明的狗也不能犬叫告诉别人它的父母亲被主任虐待。语言的这个特征是因为从记忆力和信息提取量的角度来看，人脑是专门为语言组织的， 和其他物种头脑是无法比较的事实。
(V)Culture transmission
Language is not merely genetically transmitted from generation to generation. Children pick up their mother tongue in the process of socialization. Animal communication systems are genetically transmitted. Admittedly, the capacity for language has a genetic basis, but the particular language a person acquires or learns is a cultural fact, not a biological fact. As lang
uage is arbitrary and conventional , a child can only acquires his mother tongue through interacting with people around him.
（v）文化传递性
语言不仅仅是遗传地从一代传递给下一代。儿童在他们社会化的过程中学会了母语。动物交际系统是遗传传递的。无可否认，语言的容量有一个基因原理，但一个人掌握或学习是一个文化的事实，而不是生物事实。由于语言是任意的、传统的，所以一个小孩只能通过和他周围的人们相互作用学习母语。
