LBvii 晟維

Preface

(paragraph 2)

My intention was to write a theoretical treatise, not a textbook or a survey. I have made no attempt at exhaustive coverage of any of the many fields touched upon. For instance, in the field of physiology much outstanding work has been done on voice and speech mechanisms and on auditory perception. This material is clearly relevant to a general biology of language and certainly ought to be included in any course on this topic. I have omitted this and other similar material because it would not have added much to the main line of the argument, because it is readily available to the English-speaking reader, and because the technical detailed is difficult to follow if one does not possess prior knowledge of the subject. On the other hand, I did add some detailed discussions of modern biological experiments and theory on the assumption that the student of language is today more likely to come with a background in the social sciences than in biology, and he would, therefore, be unwilling to accept some of the claims made in this book unless they were presented together with the substrate from which they originated.

我的目的原是寫一個理論性論述，而非教科書或查證報告。我從未企圖完成接觸到的眾多領域裡任何一個領域的詳盡報導。例如，在生理學的領域裡，已有許多關於發音和言語機制與聽覺接收的傑出研究。由於這並不會對所討論的主軸多加著墨，我略去了這個部分及其他相似的資料，因為這個部分對英語讀者來說很容易取得，也因為如果讀者尚未取得進一步的相關知識，則一些技術上的細節會變得難以理解。另一方面，我附加了有關現代生物學實驗和理論的討論細節，由於我猜想現今研究語言的學生比較可能擁有社會科學的背景，而非生物學的背景，因此他們也許很難接受本書中的論說，除非他們見到這些論說起源的基礎。