Unit One English Literature and American LiteratureSection One English Literature1. The Renaissance is actually a movement stimulated by a series of historical events, such as the rediscovery of ancient Rome and Greek culture, new discovery in geography and astrology and the religious reformation and the economic expansion.2. The Pilgrim’s Progress（天路历程）is regarded as the most successful religious allegory in the English language.3. Among the representatives of the Enlightenment, Alexander Pope （蒲柏）was the first to introduce rationalism to England.4. Generally speaking, the Renaissance refers to the period between the 14th and mid-17th centuries, its essence is humanism.5. In “So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see, / So long lives this, and thi s gives life to thee.”(Shakespeare, Sonnets 18), “this” refers to poetry.6. About Renaissance, a) humanism is the essence; b) Attitudes and feelings which had been characteristic of the 14th and 15th centuries persisted well down into the era of Humanism and Reformation; c) The Elizabethan drama, in its totality, is the real stream of the English Renaissance.7. It is Geoffrey Chaucer （杰弗里﹒乔叟）alone who, for the first time in English Literature, presented to us a comprehensive realistic picture of the English society of his time and createda whole gallery of vivid characters from all walks of life.8. The sentence “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” is the beginning line of one of Shakespeare’s sonnets.9. The reasons for that Edmund Spenser （斯宾塞）is f amous for “the poets’poet” are Spenser’s idealism, his love of beauty and his exquisite melody.10. Marlowe （马洛）gave new vigor to blank verse with his “mighty lines”.11. In Shelly’s “To a Skylark”, （雪莱，《云雀颂》）the bird, suspended between reality and poetic image, pours forth an exultant song which suggests to the poet both celestial rapture and human limitation.12. “Do you think, because I am poor, obscure, plain, and little, I am soulless and heartless?…and if God had gifted me with some beauty, and much wealth, I should have made it As hard for you to leave, as it is now for me to leave you.”The above quoted passage is most probably taken from Jane Eyre.13. The sentences “and now he stared at her so earnestly that I thought the very intensity of his ga ze would bring tears into his eyes; but they burned with anguish, they did not melt” are found in Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte.14. The most eminent dramatists in the Renaissance England are Christopher Marlowe, William Shakespeare and Ben Jonson（琼森）.15. Descriptions about the Neoclassical Period: a) The Neoclassical Period is prior to the Romantic Period; b) Henry Fielding （菲尔丁）is one of the representatives of the Neoclassical period;c) The modern English novel came into being in the Neoclassical period.16. “O prince, O chief of my throned powers, / That led th’embattled separation to war / Under thy conduct, and in dreadful deeds / Fearless, endangered Heaven’s perpetual king’. In the third line of the above passage quoted from Milton’s Paradise Lost, the phrase “thy conduct’refers to Satan’s conduct.17. Comments on William Blake（布莱克）: a) Childhood is central to Blake’s concern in the Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience; b) Blake’s Marriage of Heaven and Hell marks his entryinto maturity; c) Symbolism in wide range is a distinctive feature of his poetry.18. It is generally regarded that Keat’s （济慈）most important and mature poems are in the form of ode.19. Daniel Defoe’s （笛福《鲁宾逊漂流记》）novels mainly focus on the struggle of the shipwrecked persons for security.20. In the Shepherds Calendar, Edmund Spenser tried to express his laments over the loss of Rosalind.21. In Beowulf, （《贝尔武甫》）Beowulf fought against the monster Grendel and a five breathing dragon.22. In Spenser’s masterpiece The Faerie Queen, （《仙后》）he speaks of 12 virtues of the private gentleman.23. Francis Bacon is best known for his essays which greatly influenced the development of this literary form.24. The literary form of The Faerie Queen is allegorical poem.25. The characteristics of Spenser’s poetry are a perfect melody, a rare sense of beauty anda splendid imagination.26. Most of Thomas Hardy’s novels are set in Wessex（威塞克斯）, a fictional primitive region.27. We can perhaps describe the west wind in Shelly’s poem Ode to the West Wind as swift, proud and wild.28. “Blindness”, “Partiality”, “Prejudice” and “Absurdity” in the novel Pride and Prejudice are most likely the characteristics of Elizabeth.29. The modern English novel came into being in the middle of the 18th century.30. In terms of Pride and Prejudice, a) it is the most popular of Jane Austen’s novel; b) it is originally drafted as “First Impressions’; c) In it, the author explores the relationship between great love and realistic benefits.31. Chronologically the Victorian Period refers to 1836-1901.32. Dickens’ first child hero is Oliver Twist.33. R. B. Sheridanh （谢里丹）was the only important English dramatist of the 18th century. His plays especially The Rivals（《情敌》）and The School for Scandal are generally regarded as important links between the masterpieces of Shakespeare and those of Bernald Shaw.34. Middlemarch（《弥德玛契》）is considered to the George Eliot’s （艾略特）greatest novel, owing to a) it vividly depicts English country life; b) it provides a panoramic view of life;c) it reveals women’s true feelings.35. As the most gifted of the “University Wits”, Marlowe composed six plays within his short life, and among which there are Tamburlaine（《帖木儿大帝》）, Dr. Faustus（《浮士德》）and The Jew of Malta.36. The Romantic Period is an age of poetry. Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelly and Keats are the major poets. They started a rebellion against the neoclassical literature, which was later regarded as the poetic revolution.37. The author of the writing The Return of the Native（《还乡》）is Thomas Hardy.38. The Major figures of modernist movement are Eliot, Joyce and Dickens.39. “At last she spoke to me. When she addressed the first words to me I was so confused thatI did not know what to answer. She asked me was I going to Araby. I forgot whether I answered yes or no. It would be a splendid bazaar, she said; she would love to go.” The passage is taken from James Joyce’s Dubliners.40. Tess of the D’Urbervilles, one of Thomas Hardy’s best known novels, portrays man as havingno control over his own fate.41. The author of the writing Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage（《恰尔德﹒哈罗德游记》）is Byron.42. Pilgrimage（《游记》）, Ulysses and Mrs. Dalloway are stream-of-consciousness novels.43. The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling brings Henry Feilding the name of the “Prose Homer”. Of all the 18th century novelists, he was the first to set out, both in theory and practice, to write specifically a “comic epic in prose”, and the first to give the modern novel its structure and style.44. In the Robert Browning’s works, The Ring and the Book established his position as one of the greatest English poets.45. The major concern of D. H. Law rence’s fiction lies in the tracing of the psychological development of his characters and in his energetic criticism of the dehumanizing effect of the capitalist industrialization on human nature.46. George Bernard Shaw is considered to be the best-known English dramatist since Shakespeare.47. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Robert Southy (骚塞)and William Wordsworth are r egarded as “Lake Poets’.48. Generally, English Romanticism refers to the period of 1836-1901.49. The protagonist of Thomas Hardy’s The Mayor of Casterbridge（《卡斯特桥市长》）is a man of self-sufficience.50. The Pilgrim’s Progress by John Bunyan is often said to be concerned with the search for spiritual salvation.51. The lines “Death, be not proud, though some have called thee / Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so;” are found in John Donne’s （多恩、邓恩）writings.52. Contrary to the traditional romance of aristocrats, the modern English novel gives a realistic presentation of life of the common English people.53. In Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard（《墓园挽歌》）, Thomas Gray reveals his sympathy for the poor and the unknown, but mocks the great ones who despite them and bring havoc on them.54. Although writing from different points of view and with different techniques, writers in the Victorian Period shared one thing in common, that is, they were all concerned about the fate of the common people.55. Thomas Hardy not only continued to expose and criticize all sorts of social iniquities, but finally came to question and attack the Victorian conventions and morals.56. The protagonist of the poem Love Song of T. Alfred Prufrock（《J﹒阿尔弗雷德﹒普鲁弗洛克的情歌》艾略特） is a kind of figure caught in a sense of deafened idealism and tortured by satisfied desires. He is neurotic, self-important and illogical.57. The sentence “Read not to contradict and confuse, nor to believe and take for granted, nor to find talk and discourse, but t o weigh and consider” is from the essay Of Study by Francis Bacon.58. Women in Love is considered to be a better-structured novel of D. H. Lawrence’s.It is regarded to be a more profoundly ordered novel than any other writing by him.59. In the first part of Gulliver’s Travels, Gulliver told his experience in Lilliput.60. In the theatrical world of the neoclassical period, Richard Brinsley Sheridan was the leading figure among the host of playwrights.61. Francis Bacon lays the foundation for modern science with his insistence on scientific way of thinking and fresh observation rather than authority as a basis for obtaining knowledge.62. Alexander Pope strongly advocated neoclassicism, emphasized that literary works should be judged by classical rules of order, reason, logic, restrained emotion, good taste and decorum.63. Dickens’ works are characterized by a mingling of humor and pathos.64. James Joyce is regarded as the most prominent stream-of-consciousness novel, and his novelA Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man（《一个青年艺术家的肖像》）is a naturalistic account of the hero’s bitter experiences and his final artistic and spiritual liberation. Ulysses has become a prime example of modernism in literature and it could hardly be termed as a traditional novel, because there is no story, no plot and no action inside65. Don Juan’s （《唐璜》拜伦）writings can be regarded as typically belonging to the school of Romantic literary.66. Byronic hero can be described as proud, mysterious and progressive.67. In Daniel Defoe’s novels, his sympathy for the downtrodden, unfortunate poor is shown. Robinson Crusoe is his first novel and is universally considered his masterpiece.68. In the history of literature, Romanticism is generally regarded as the thought that designatesa literary and philosophical theory which tends to see the individual as the very center of all life and all experience.69. After reading the first chapter of Pride and Prejudice, we may come to know that Mrs. Bennet is a woman of simple character and poor understanding.70. According to D. H. Lawrence, George Eliot was the first novelist that “started putting all the actions inside”.71. The poetic form which Browning attached to maturity and perfection is dramatic monologue.72. The term “metaphysical poetry”is commonly used to name the work of the 17th century writers who wrote under the influence of John Donne.73. “The Vanity Fair”（名利场） is a well-known part in The Pilgrim’s Progress.74. In The Songs and Sonnets（《歌与十四行诗》）, for which Donne is probably best known, love is the basic theme.75. Bitter Satire is a typical feature of Swift’s （斯威夫特）writings.76. The period of Old English literature refers to about the year 450-the year of 1066.77. The middle of the 18th century was predominated by a newly literary form, that is the modern English novel, which gives a realistic presentation of life of the common English people.78. The protagonist of Marlowe’s Tamburlaine is a man of cruelty and ambition.79. In Oliver Twist（《雾都孤儿》）, Charles criticizes dehumanizing of workhouse system.80. Henry IV by Shakespeare is history play.81. William Wordsworth is regarded as a “worshipper of nature”.82. Charles’ works include A Tale of Two Cities, Hard Times and Oliver Twist.83. Richard Brinsley Sheridan was the only important English dramatist of the eighteenth century. In his plays, morality is the constant theme. The School for Scandal is his masterpiece.84. The sentences, “This fair is no new-erected business, but a thing of ancient standing; I will show you the original of it”, are taken from The Vanity Fair.85. Charles Dickens’ serious intention is to expose and criticize all the poverty, injustice, hypocrisy and corruptness he sees all around him. The later works such as A Tale of Two Cities, show his development towards a highly conscious artist of the modern type.86. In his novel Robinson Crusoe, Defoe eulogizes the hero of the hard-working people.87. The 18th century England is known as the Enlightenment in the history.88. George Bernard Shaw’s career as a dramatist began in 1892, when his first play Widowers’Houses（《鳏夫的房产》）was put on by the Independent Theater Society. He began his literary career by writing novels soon after his settling down in London. His plays can be termed as problem plays.89. In Hardy’s “Wessex” novels, there is an apparent nostalgic touch in his description of the simple and beautiful though primitive rural life.90. In Leda and the Swan by William Butler Yeats we can find the allusion to Helen and the Trojan Way.91. The Waste Land（《荒原》）by T. S. Eliot （艾略特）is hailed as a landmark and a model of the 20th century English poetry.Section Two American Literature1. In American literature, the eighteenth century was the age of the Enlightenment. Rationalism was the dominant spirit.2. “God help them that help themselves” is found in Franklin’s work.3. Franklin was a scientist and a master of diplomacy. He instructed his countrymen as a printer.4. Declaration of Independence stirred the world and helped form the American republic.5. Common Sense, The American Crisis and The Rights of Man are connected with Thomas Paine.6. “These are the times that try men’s souls”, these words were once read to Washington’s troops and did much to spur excitement to further action with hope and confidence. Their author is Thomas Paine.7. Philip Freneau （弗雷诺）was a satirist, a pamphleteer and a poet. He wrote The Wild Honey Suckle（《野金银花》）. He was considered as the “Poet of American Revolution”.8. At the Reason and Revolution Period, Americans were influenced by the European movement called the Enlightenment Movement.9. Hawthorne （霍桑）is a great allegorist and a master of symbolism. One source of evil that he is concerned most is over-reaching intellect.10. In Walt Whitman’s There was a Child Went Forth（《有一个孩子向前走去》）, the child refers to the young America.11. In Moby-Dick（《白鲸》、《莫比敌》）, the voyage symbolizes a search for truth. The giant Moby Dick may symbolize mystery of the universe, power of the Great Nature and evil of the world. It is regarded as the first American prose epic. For Melville, as well as for the reader and Ishmael, the narrator, Moby Dick is still a mystery, an ultimate mystery of the Universe.12. Thoreau was often alone in the woods or by the pond, lost in spiritual communication with nature.13. The Transcendentalist （先验论、超验主义）group includes two of the most significant writers America has produced so far, Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. As a philosophical and literary movement, transcendentalism flourished in New England from the 1830s to the Civil War.14. The Scarlet Letter by Hawthorne tells a simple but very moving story in which four people living in a puritan community are involved in and affected by the sin of adultery in different ways. In this writing, “A” may stand for “Adultery”, “Angel” and “Amiable”.15. The Romantic Period of American literature started with the publication of Washington Irving （欧文）’s The Sketch Book（《见闻札记》）and ended with Whitman’s Leaves of Grass（《草叶集》）. And The Sketch Book signs the beginning of the American literature.16. Washington Irving’s social conservation and literary for the past is revealed, to some extent, in his famous story Rip Van Winkle（《瑞普﹒凡﹒温克尔》）. The convention of the desire for an escape from society and a return to nature in American literature is particularly evident in this writing. His fame mainly rested on his Tales about America.17. Poe’s （艾伦﹒坡）first collection of short stories is Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque （《怪诞奇异故事集》）.18. Characters which appear in the novel The Scarlet Letter include Hester Prynne, Atthur Dimmesdale, Roger Chillingworth and Pearl.19.Typee（《泰比》）was a romanticized account of Melville’s （麦尔维尔）stay among the Polynesians. The success of the book soon made Melville become known as the “man who lived among cannibals”.20. The period before the American Civil War is generally referred to as the Romantic Period.21. Works by Nathaniel Hawthorne include The House of the Seven Gables（《有七个尖角阁的房子》）, The Marble Faun （《玉石雕像》）and The Blithedale Romance（《福谷传奇》）.22. The main theme of Emily Dickinson is religion, love and marriage, and life and death. Emily Dickinson’s poetic idiom is noted for brevity, directness and plainest.thought “There is evil in every human heart, which may remain latent, perhaps, through the whole life; but circumstances may rouse it to activity” is reflected in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Young Goodman Brown（《小伙子布朗》、《好人布朗》、《古德曼》）. He is the most ambivalent writer in the American literary history.24. Washington Irving’s Rip Van Winkle is famous for Rip’s 20-year sleep.25. The publication of Nature established Emerson as the most eloquent spokesman of New England Transcendentalism.26. In the history of literature, Romanticism is regarded as the thought that designates a literary and philosophical theory which tends to see the individual as the very center of all life and all experience.27. Typee, Omoo（《奥穆》） and Mardi（《玛地》）drew from Melville’s adventures among the people of the South Pacific islands.28. In the poem Song of Myself, Whitman sets forth the principle beliefs of the theory of university and singularity and equality of all beings in value.29. Most of the poems in Whitman’s Leaves of Grass sing of the “en-mass” and the self as well.30. Emily Dickinson’s poems (441) “This is my letter to the World” expresses the poet’s anxiety about her communication with the outside world.31. Poems by Walt Whitman are characterized by free-flowing, simple and rather crude, conversational and casual.32. Writings finished by Ralph Waldo Emerson include Nature（《论自然》）, Essays（《散文集》）and The Over-Soul（《论超灵》）.33. In I heard a Fly buzz-when I died（《我在死时听到苍蝇的嗡嗡声》）, Emily Dickinson describes the moment of death peacefully.34. Books written by Emerson include Representative Men（《代表人物》）, English Traits（《英国人的特征》）and Nature.35. The Age of Realism in the literary history of the United States refers to the period from 1865 to 1914.36. Henry James, William Dean Howells and Mark Twain are the representativ e writers in the Age of Realism in the literary history of the United States.37. Innocents Abroad（《傻子出国记》）explores the scrupulous individualism in a world of fantastic speculation and unstable values, and gives its name to the get-rich-quick years of the post Civil War era.38. An American Tragedy is considered to be Theodore Dreiser’s greatest work.39. Daisy Miller is a novella about a young American girl who gets “killed” by the winter in Rome, and it brought Henry James international fame for the first.40. Stylistically. Henry James’ fiction is characterized by highly refined language.41. Huckleberry Finn（《哈克贝里芬历险记》）is described by Mark Twain as a boy with “a soundheart and a deformed conscience.”42.The Wings of the Dove, The Ambassadors and The Golden Bowl are novels by Henry James dealing with the international theme.43. Darwin exerts the single most important influence on literary naturalism, of which Theodore Dreiser and Jack London are among the best representative writers.44. Mark Twain, one of the greatest 19th century American writers, is well known for his local color.45. In Henry James’Daisy Miller, the author tries to portray the young woman as an embodiment of the free spirit of the New World.46. The literary characters of the American type in the early 19th century are generally characterized by the features that they speak local dialects, that they are simple and crude farmers, and that they are noble savages (red and white) untainted by society.47. With Howells, James, and Mark Twain active on the literary scene, realism became the major trend in American literature in the seventies and eighties of 19th century.48. Generally speaking, all those writers with a naturalistic approach to human reality tend to be pessimists.49. Henry James experimented with many different themes in his literary career, the most influential one being international theme.50. Theodore Dreiser is generally regarded as one of America’s naturalists.51. Dreiser’s Trilogy of Desire（《欲望三部曲》）includes three novels. They are T he Financier （《金融家》）, The Titan（《巨人》）and The Stoic（《斯多葛》）.52. The book from which “all modern American literature comes” refers to The Adventures of huckleberry Finn.53. The impact of Darwin’s evolutionary theory on the American thought and the influence of the nineteenth-century French literature on the American men of letters gave rise to yet another school of realism: American naturalism.54. Mark Twain had led an active life in the very center of the American experience. He had beena printer, pilot, soldier, silver-minor, gold-washer, lecturer, traveler, businessman, novelist and autobiographer.55. While embracing the socialism of Marx, London also believed in the triumph of the strongest individuals. This contradiction is most vividly projected in the patently autobiographical novel Martin Eden.56. In 1900, London published his first collection of short stories, named The Son of the Wolf （《狼孩》）.57. Stephen Crane’s best short stories include Open Boat（《小划子》）, An Experiment and The Blue Hotel, all reinforcing the basic Crane motif environment and heredity overwhelming man.58. Dreiser was left-oriented in his views. He visited Russia and wrote Dreiser Looks at Russia and Tragic America to express his new faith, and shortly before his death, he joined the Communist Party.59. In Death in the Afternoon, Hemingway presents his philosophy about life and death through the depiction of the bull-fight as a kind of microcosmic tragedy.60. F. Scott Fitzgerald （费兹杰拉特）is often acclaimed literary spokesman of the Jazz Age. His fictional world is the best embodiment of the spirit of the Jazz Period.61. The Sun Also Rises is Hemingway’s first true love novel in which he depicts a vivid portrait of “The Lost Generation”.62. Ezra Pound（庞德）, William Carlos Williams and Robert Frost belong to “The Lost Generation”.63. In a tragic sense, The Old Man and the Sea is a representation of life as a struggle against unconquerable forces in which only a partial victory is possible.64. Faulkner once said that The Sound and the Fury（《喧哗与骚动》）is a story of “lost innocence”, which proves itself to be an intensification of the theme of imprisonment in the past.65. Robert Frost combined traditional verse forms—the sonnets, rhyming couplets, blank verse—with a clear American local speech rhythm, the speech of New England farmers with its idiosyncratic diction and syntax.66. Ezra Pound, one of the most important poets in his time, is a leading spokesman of the“Imagist Movement”.67. Sinclair Lewis’Babbitt（《巴比特》）presents a documentary picture of the narrow and limited middle-class mind.68. Yank’s sense of belonging nowhere, hence homeless and rootless. The Hairy Ape（《毛猿》）is thus a play that concerns the problem of modern man’s identity.69. American fiction in the 1960s and 1970s proves to be different from its predecessors. It is always referred to as “new fiction”.70. As an autobiographical play, O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey into Night（《长夜漫漫路迢迢》）(1951) has gained its status as a world classic and simultaneously marks the climax of his literary career and the coming of age of American drama.71. Tender Is the Night is a novel by Fitzgerald.72. The leading playwright of the modern period in American literature, if not the most successful in all his experiments, is Eugene O’Neill.73. From Eugene O’Neill’s works, we can see he is a man of pessimism.74. Eugene O’Neill a dramatist who holds the central position in American drama of the modernistic period.75. Absalom, Absalom is said to be a “historical novel” by Faulkner.76. Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening（《雪夜林边小驻》）stems from the ambiguity of the speaker’s choice between safety and the unknown.77. Hemingway’s writing style, together with his theme and the hero, is greatly and permanetly influenced by his experiences in the war.78. William Faulkner, John Steinbeck and Ernest Hemingway were awarded Nobel Prize for literature.79. The Great God Brown（《大神布朗》）fuses symbolism, poetry, and the affirmation of a pagan idealism to show how materialistic civilization denies the life-giving impulses and destroys the genuine artist.80. Most of Eugene O’Neill’s plays are tragedies, dealing with human existence and predicament.81. F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway and William Faulkner are considered to be the masters in the field of American fiction in the modernistic period.82. “Two roads diverged in a yellow wood and sorry I could not travel both…” In the above two lines of Robert Frost’s The Road Not Taken, the poet, by implication, was referring to one’s course of life.83. The American “Thirties”, lasted from the Crash, thro ugh the ensuing Great Depression, until the outbreak of the Second World War 1939. This was a period of poverty, bleakness, important social movements and a new social consciousness.84. Ezra Pound showed great interest in Chinese literature and translated the poetry of Li Po into English, and was influenced by Confucian ideas.85. Ezra Pound’s long poem The Cantos（《诗章》）contained more than one hundred poems looselyconnected.86. Wallace Stevens’ poetry is primarily motivated by the belief that true ideas correspond with an innate order in nature. Many of his good poems derive their emotional power from reasoned revelation. This philosophical intention is supported by the titles Stevens gave to his volumes such as Harmonium（《风琴》）, Ideas of Order（《关于秩序的思想》）and Parts of a World.87. The Fitzgeralds lived so extravagantly that they frequently spent more money than Fitzgerald earned for parties, liquor, entertaining their friends and travelling. It was this living style that nicknamed the decade of the 1920s as The Roaring Twenties, The Jazz Age and The Dollar Decade.88. In 1954, Ernest Hemingway was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature for his “mastery of the art of modern narration”.89. Faulkner wrote about the society in the south by inventing families which represented different social forces: the old decaying upper class; the rising, ambitious, unscrupulous class of the “poor Whites”; and the Negroes who labored for both of them.90. In Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury, he used a technique called stream of consciousness in which the whole story was told through the thoughts of one character.91. Most of the writers in the modern period were able to probe into the inner world of human reality on the base of William James’“stream of consciousness”, Carl J ung’s “collective unconscious” and “archetypal symbol” and Sigmund Freud’s “interpretation of dreams”. 92. Writers of the first postwar era self-consciously acknowledged that they were a Lost Generation.93. John Steinbeck is the author of the work The Grapes of Wrath.94. In 1920 Sinclair Lewis published his memorable denunciation of American small-town provincialism in Main Stree（《大街》）t.Unit Two LinguisticsSection One The Nature of Language1. Language is a system. It is symbolic. It is arbitrary（任意性）.2. The design features of language （语言的普遍特征）are dual（双层性）, productive （多产性）and arbitrary.3. The dual structures （双层结构）of language are sounds and meaning.4. Displacement（移位性）, one of the unique properties of language, means that we can use language to refer to something not present.5. The most important function of language is informative.6. One of the core branches of linguistics is phonology（音位学）.7. Morphology（形态学）, one of the branches of linguistics, takes the inner structure of word as its main object of study.8. The prescriptive（规定性） mode of study emphasizes on the “standards” of language.9. Saussure put forward the distinction between Lange and Parole（《语言与言语》）.10. The distinction between competence （语言能力）and performance （语言运用）is proposed by Chomsky.11. According to Chomsky, competence is the ideal user’s internalized knowledge of his language.12. Displacement is a design feature of human language that enables speakers to talk about a wide range of things, free from barriers caused by separation in time and space.13. The function of the sentence “A nice day, isn’t it?” is phatic（寒暄）.14. General linguistics is the scientific study of human languages in general.。
