Chapter 1 Properties of Language　1 Introduction－Nature or Nurture?　2 The Nature of Language　　2.1 Creativity　　2.2 Arbitrariness of linguistic signs　　2.3 Duality　　2.4 Displacement　　2.5 Structure-dependence　3 Linguistic Competence and Linguistic Performance　4 Descriptive Grammar and Prescriptive Grammar　5 Summary　Exercises　ReferencesChapter 2 The Structures of Labguage　1 Introduction　　1.1 Levels of linguistic organization　　1.2 How many levels are there?　　1.3 Evidence of structures　2 Patterns of Speech Sounds: Phonology　3 The Words of Language: Morphology　　3.1 What is a morpheme?　　3.2 Derivational morphology　　3.3 Inflectional morphology　4 Sentence Structures:Syntax　 4.1 Word order 　4.2 Grammaticality judgment　 4.3 Ambiguity 　4.4 Recursiveness　5 Summary　Exercises　ReferencesChapter 3 Meaning of Language 　1 Meaning in the Objective World 　 1.1 Arbitrariness and iconicity 　1.2 Linguistic relativity and determinism　 1.3 The logical approach to language meaning　2 Meaning in the Language System　 2.1 The many meanings of a word 　2.2 Some well-known word relations　 2.3 Componential analysis 　2.4 Meaning beyond words　3 Summary　Exercises　ReferencesChapter 4 Origins of Language　1 Introduction 　2 Defining theTopic 　　2.1 The origin, the Origins or origins of language?　　2.2 Speech or written language?　　2.3 Origins of language in general or origins of specific languages?　　2.4 The meanings of the word origin　　2.5 Where do we look for evidence?……Chapter 5 Lagnuage in Use:The Pragmatic PerspectiveChapter 6 Language and PowerChapter 7 Language and GenderChapter 8 First Language AcquisitionChapter 9 Second Language AcquisitionChapter 10 Language and the BrainChapter 11 Language,Metaphor and Thought