Open Access

Randy J. LaPolla, Dory Poa

• 提要 本文通过对信息传达的性质和语言的本质的探讨，来了解语言的发展。Ostension "显 示信息传达意嚣的动作"(以下简称"动作")和inference" 推测/推论"是信息传达过程中的两 个主重要环节。在信息传达的时候，信息传达者总希望信息接受者能又快又准确地对自己所传 达的信息做出"推论/推测因此，信息传达者会尽量地做出最适宜、最不费力、最能帮助对方 进行推论/推测的"动作动作"越具体，对"推论/推测"过程的制约程度就越高。语言在信 息传达过程中的作用只是作为一种制约听话者进行"推论/推测"的工具，因此，语言是因为说 话者要制约听话者的"推论/推测"过程而发展的。不同语言的说话者对不同语义领域进行相 同或不阔的制约，制约程度和手段亦有相同与不同之处。因此，每种语窑有它的独特性，但不 同语言之间也有共岗位。
• This paper presents a view of the development of languages by explicating the nature and process of communication and the role of language in that process. It is shown that communication involves ostention (doing an action, possibly including but not limited to speech, that shows the intention to communicate) on the part of the communicator and abductive inference (inferring the communicator's reason for making the ostensive act). The addressee does this by creating a context of interpretation in which the communicator's ostensive act "makes sense". The communicator attempts to tailor the ostensive act to make it easy for the addressee to infer the communicator's intention, and this is where language comes in: communication can and often does happen without communication, but language helps to constrain the creation of the context of interpretation to make it easier for the addressee to infer the communicator's intention. Linguistic forms that are repeated over and over again become conventionalised into what we think of as language. As each group of speakers will constrain the interpretation of different aspects of the meaning, and to different degrees and with different means, each language is unique.