Word Choice In Language Development

Language, as a basilic sign of expressing thought and communicating information in human being's life, has been evolving continuously for thousands of years and it seems to be endless in humanity's use. For thousands of years, innumerable scholars have been keen to talk about language naissance and its development. They try to seek what relations there are between linguistic sign's form and its concept.Tracing back to its historical research, language study is often entangled with the philosophy. Ancient Greek philosophers'arguments about language at large focused on whether language is natural or conventional. These two viewpoints are discussed for the most in Plato's Cratylus: According to Cratylus, the association between a word and its symbolization is non-arbitrary and non-voluntary, that is, the link between them is neither conventional nor personally defined; while Hemogenes, on the opposite, stated that the only principle in language is convention and agreement,"there is no name given to anything by nature; all is convention and habit of the users", and the lexis is chosen by personal will. From then on, scholars continue their argument on linguistic signs'association with their entities unceasingly through the disputes between nominalism and realism, rationalism and empiricism, to today's extremely fierce debate on arbitrariness and iconicity. Saussure, as the father of modern linguistics, proposed his arbitrariness principle, which would of course have its great influence. The principle has been widely approved as the basic principle of linguistic sign for a long time. However, since Peirce's iconicity in his semiotic theory has been applied to the linguistics, and owing to the further acknowledgement of linguistic motivatedness, researchers argue strongly in favour of iconicity in language. They have gone so far even to reject the existence of arbitrariness principle in linguosemiotics.After a survey of concerned theoretical development, this thesis depicts Saussure's arbitrariness principle together with later linguists'brief comments on it, and synthesized Peirce's iconicity theory to conclude that both principles coexist in language and exert their due influence on words'formation and their development. It is vexing a bottle of water with half-full or half-empty to bother on the issue ofwhether language is arbitrary or iconic for arbitrariness and iconicity are opposite and complementary to each other. They both affect lexical choice: arbitrariness does not exist in a powerful and unconstrained style, and language is not under arbitrariness principle'unidirectional control; motivatedness stipulates arbitrariness principle's operation, and without motivatedness, arbitrariness will count for nothing, or even say, the'sign'won't be linguistic sign any more. Meanwhile, motivatedness survives and develops from arbitrariness for it is arbitrariness that makes iconic choice being more alternative, and then makes language become richer and favor it on the way of development. As for this point, Saussure stated indistinctly in his Course:"There exists no language in which nothing at all is motivated. Even to conceive of such a language is an impossibility by definition. Between the two extremes– minimum of organization and minimum of atbitrariness– all possible varieties are found. Languages always exhibit features of both kinds– intrinsically atbitrary and relatively motivated– but in very varying proportions. This is an important characteristic, which may have to be taken into account in classifying languages."Shi Anshi also has the elaboration: both arbitrariness and motivatedness are proved to be existent universally. Each of them has its own content and range, and they do work compatibly. The acknowledgement of one does not exclude another. It is the interacted relation of the two that governs language's self-organizing process. It's inconsiderable to take any one-side position. Thus, instead of inquiring whether language is arbitrary or iconic, I would rather say that, in degrees, there exists differentia of linguistic arbitrariness and iconicity.On arbitrariness and iconicity, many researches are carried out at home and abroad. Saussure was"one of those thinkers for whom thinking is a constant process of intellectual renewal. His ideas developed in all kinds of ways."as it is stated in the preface. His abstruse thought and intensified linguistic theory resulted in a lot of different interpreters and disputes. Therefore, it might be unlikely to posit his idea in a hurry according to his certain words, and in this thesis, it is to re-examine lexical sign's arbitrariness and the relationship between arbitrariness and iconicity in the light of semiotics.