语言学概论复习资料

1. What are the categories of lexical meaning?

Lexical meaning includes: a) referential meaning (also denotative meaning). b) Associative meanings. Referential meaning is the central meaning and it is more stable and universal. Associative meanings are meanings are meanings that hinge on referential meaning, which are less stable and more culture-specific.

Types of associative meanings: connotative meaning, social meaning, affective meaning, reflected meaning, collective meaning

2. What are the components of metaphor?

There are two positions on the function of metaphors: a) the classical view sees metaphor a rhetorical device; b) another view holds metaphor a cognitive device. Metaphors 一s possible precisely because there are metaphors in a person’s concep tual systems.

All metaphors are composed of two domains: target domain (also tenor) and source domain (vehicle).

3. How does transformational grammar account for sentence- relatedness?

1) According to Chomsky, a grammar as the tacit shared knowledge of all speakers is a system of finite rules by which an infinite number of sentences can be generated. He attempts to account for this aspect of syntax by postulating that deep structures and surface structures.

2) Deep structures are the basic structures generated by phrase structure rules.

3) Surface structures are derived structures, the structures of sentences that we actually speak. Surface structures are derived from deep structures through transformational rules which include replacement, insertion, deletion and coping, etc.

4. On what basis do linguists regard human language as species-specific (unique to humans)?

Language is a system of arbitrary vocal symbols used for human communication. Many philosophers and linguists believe that language is unique to man. Language is a human trait that sets us apart from other living creatures. They spell out a number of features of language which are not found in animal communication systems. These features: creativity, duality, arbitrariness, displacement, cultural transmission, interchangeability and reflexivity. These are universal features possessed by all human languages. Although some animal communication systems possess, to a very limited degree, one or another of these features except creativity and duality, none is found to have all the features. On this basis linguists tend to conclude that human languages are qualitatively different

form animal communication systems.

5. What part of syntax can phrase structure rules account for and what they cannot?

Phrase structure rules are rules that specify the constituents of syntactic categories. These rules are part of speakers’ syntactic knowledge, which govern the construction of sentences.

There are a lot of part of syntactic knowledge, including structural ambiguity (which strings of words have more than one meaning), words order (different arrangements of the same words have different meanings), grammatical relations (what element relates to what other element directly or indirectly), recursion (the repeated use of the same rules to create infinite sentences), sentence relatedness (sentences may be structurally variant but semantically related), and syntactic categories (a class of words or phrases that can substitute for one another without loss of grammaticality) etc. Phrase structure rules can account for structural ambiguity, word order, grammatical relations, recursion, and syntactic categories; but they cannot account for sentence relatedness.

6. How do sociolinguists classify the varieties of English?

The term variety is the label given to the form of a language used by any group of speakers or used in a particular field. A variety is characterized by the basic lexicon, phonology, syntax shared by members of the group. Varieties of a language are of four types: the standard variety, regional dialects, sociolects and registers.

A regional dialect is a variety of a language spoken by people living in an area. The English language has many regional dialects. British English, American English, Australian English. Indian English, South African English, etc. are all regional varieties of the language. One dialect is distinctive from another phonologically, lexically and grammatically.

7. What are the functions of supra-segmental features?

The phonetic features, distinctive or non-distinctive, that we have discussed so far may be properties of single segments. In this section we will look at features that are found over a segment or sequence of two or more segments, which are called suprasegmental features. These features are also distinctive features. They are found in such units of syllables, words, phrases and sentences. The most widely found suprasegmental features are stress, intonation and tone.

Stress is defined as the perceived prominence (comparative loudness) of one or more syllable elements over others in a word. This definition implies that stress is a relative notion. Intonation: when we speak, we change the pitch of our voice to express ideas. The same sentence uttered

with different intonation may express different attitude of the speaker. In English, there are three basic intonation patterns: fall, rise and fall-rise. Tone is the variation of pitch at the word level to distinguish words. The same sequence of segments can be different words if uttered with different tones. English is not a tone language. Chinese is a typical tone language.

Intonation and stress generally occur simultaneously in utterance. When intonation contour falls on a syllable, the nucleus is stressed and the vowel is naturally lengthened a bit. In the meantime, there is a little pause after the syllable. This simultaneous functioning of the features serves to highlight the information focus, or to eliminate ambiguity (double interpretations of the same phrase or sentence).

8. What are aspects of syntactic knowledge?

Syntactic knowledge is the knowing of which strings of words are grammatical and which are not. In addition, it includes: 1) structural ambiguity 2) word order 3) grammatical relations 4) recursion 5) sentence relatedness 6) syntactic categories.

9. The advantages and disadvantages of componential analysis?

1st, it is a breakthrough in the formal representation of meaning. Once formally represented, meaning components can be seen. 2nd, it reveals the impreciseness of the terminology in the traditional approach to meaning analysis. Looking at the semantic formula of man and woman again you can see that it is not true that the total meaning of one word contrasts with that of the other. It is merely in one semantic feature that the two words contrast. When we look at the semantic formulae of man and father, we find that all the semantic features of man are included in the semantic formula of father. Then we reach a different conclusion from common sense in regard to the relation between man and father. Is this contradictory? The answer is No. The obvious fact that man includes father is derived from the perspective of reference. Componential analysis examines the components of sense. The more semantic features a word has, the narrower its reference it is.

The limitations of componential analysis are also apparent. It cannot be applied to the analysis of all lexicon, merely to words within the same semantic field. It is controversial whether semantic features are universal primes of word meanings in all language. Nevertheless, CA is so far a most influential approach in the structural analysis of lexical meaning.

10. How do sociolinguists classify the varieties of English?

A variety of a language are of 4 types, the standard variety, regional (geographical) dialects, sociolects(social dialects) and

registers( functional varieties). The standard variety is the form of a language used by the government and communication media, taught in schools and universities and is the main or only written form. The standard variety is used most widely in a community. It is more fixed than other varieties, allowing less variation in pronunciation, spelling/writing and grammar. A regional dialect is a variety of a language spoken by people living in an area. This kind of language variation is most noticeable. When we travel throughout a wide geographical area where the same language is spoken, we are sure to notice difference in pronunciation, in the choices and forms of words, and even in syntax. Sociolects are forms of a language that characterize the speech of different social classed. This correlation between language and socio-economic status is often referred to as social stratification of language. While some sociolinguists focus on socio-economic status as a correlate, others look at gender as a factor for social variation of language. Register is a term widely used in sociolinguistics to refer to varieties according to use, in contrast with regional dialects and sociolects, both of which are varieties according to user. Register as a variety of language in use, is analyzed on 3 dimensions: field, mode and tenor. Field is concerned with the purpose and subject-matter of communication. Mode refers to the means by which communication takes place, through speech or writing. Tenor depends on the relations between the participants.

11. Why is linguistics a vast field of study?

Linguistics is a broad field of study, because language is a complicated entity with many layers and facets. There are a number of divisions of linguistics, which can be put into two categories. 1) Intra-disciplinary divisions: the study of language in general is often termed general linguistics. It is based on the view that language as a system is composed of three aspects: sound, structure and meaning. 2) Inter-disciplinary divisions a) Sociology deals with language and culture. b) Psycholinguistics deals with the relation between language and mind c) applied linguistics is concerned with the application of linguistic theories and descriptions in other fields. All above three belong to sociolinguistics.

12. How is linguistics different from traditional grammar?

1) Traditional grammar is prescriptive and modern linguistics is descriptive.

2) Traditional grammatical categories are merely based on European language but linguistic studies all languages.

3) Traditional grammar lacks a theoretical framework, while modern linguistics is theoretically rather than pedagogically oriented.

13. How are speech sounds described?

The study of speech sounds is phonetics which includes 3 parts: 1) articulatory phonetics 2) acoustic phonetics 3) auditory phonetics. Articulatory phonetics is the primary concern in linguistics, in which speech sound is described within 3 sides:

The description of consonants: a) place of articulation b) manners of articulation c) voicing d) aspiration

The description of vowels: a) monophthongs b) diphthongs c) lip rounding d) tensity

14. Difference between linguistic competence and communicative competence

1) Linguists like Chomsky who are not concerned with language use propose the term linguistic competence to account for a speaker’s knowledge of his or her language.

2) Sociolinguists like Dell Hymes propose communicative competence as the most general term to account for both the tacit knowledge of language and the ability to use it. According to Hymes, there are 4 parameters that underlie a speaker’s communicative competence, namely the ability to judge: a) whether sth is possible. b) feasible c) appropriate 4) done.

15. How are words decomposed into their constituents

1) Words are composed of one or more than one morphemes.

2) Morphemes are the smallest meaningful unit of language.

3) Morphemes can be categorized into 2 kinds. a) free morphemes( they constitute words by themselves) b) bound morphemes( they are never used independently)

4) Bound morphemes include inflectional morphemes and derivational morphemes.

16. What are aspects of syntactic knowledge?

Syntactic knowledge is the knowing of which strings of words are grammatical and which are not. In addition, it includes: 1) structural ambiguity 2) word order 3) grammatical relations 4) recursion 5) sentence relatedness 6) syntactic categories.

17. What are the two classes of phonetic features? What is the fundamental difference?

The two classes of phonetic features are distinctive features and non-distinctive features. Features that distinguish meaning are called distinctive features, in other words, those distinguishing phonemes. Non-distinctive features do not distinguish meanings, i.e. the features belong to allophones. However, whether a phonetic feature is distinctive

or non-distinctive varies from one language to another language.

18. How do you account for the relation between phonetics and phonology?

Phonology and phonetics are both concerned with the study of speech sounds, but the two differ in perspectives. Phonetics, particularly articulatory phonetics, focuses on how speech sounds are produced, what phonetic features they have, and how to transcribe them. In phonetics, sound segments are assumed to be invariable; variations are overlooked. Phonology focuses on three fundamental questions. What sounds make up the list of sounds that can distinguish meaning in a particular language? What sounds vary in what ways in what context? What sounds can appear together in a sequence in a particular language?

19. What are the components of communicative competence？According to Hedge, there are mainly five components of communicative competence. They are linguistic competence, pragmatic competence, discourse competence, strategic competence, and fluency.

1. Analyze the sentence in terms of type of process, mood structure, and theme and rheme:

The academician will address the issue of the legitimacy of cloning at the conference.

It is the verbal process. In this sentence, the sayer is the academician, the receivers are the people at the conference though it is not mentioned but we can infer it from the sentence. The verbiage is the issue of the legitimacy of cloning.

This sentence is the realization of linguistic interaction, it is the giving of information. Its syntactic form is statement. The subject is the academician, the finite is the verbal operator “will”.

The constituent that stands for the starting-point for the message is termed theme; all the rest of the sentence is labeled rheme. In this sentence, the theme is the academician and “the issue of the legitimacy of cloning at the conference” is the rheme.

2. Analyze the two English sound segments【K】and 【Kh】in terms of distribution and the phonetic feature that distinguish them.

1) Both are in complementary distribution. They are the allophones of the phoneme【K】.

【K】: fricative, voiceless, alveolar.

【Kh】: elsewhere

2) the phonetic feature that distinguish them is aspiration

What are aspects of syntactic knowledge?

Syntactic knowledge is the knowing of which strings of words are grammatical and which are not. In addition, it includes: 1) structural ambiguity 2) word order 3) grammatical relations 4) recursion 5) sentence relatedness 6) syntactic categories.

3. Point out the semantic problem of the sentence "the orphan is staying with his parents

There are some sentences which sound grammatical but meaningless. The sentence "the orphan is staying with his parents” is just one example. This sentence is always false which is called contradiction. An orphan is a child whose parents are dead, or a child who has been deprived of parental care. The theme (the orphan) and the rheme (is staying with his parents) are incompatible.

4.Analyze the change of feature concerning the liquids and nasals in flight, snow, smart, pray and generalize the rule.

Liquids /l/ /r/ appear after a voiceless consonant /f/ and /p/ respectively, they are devoiced.

Nasals /n//m/ appear after a voiceless consonant /s/, they are devoiced. Rule: Devoice a voiced consonant after a voiceless consonant.

Or: When the English liquids, glides and the two anterior nasals appear after a voiceless consonant, it is devoiced. This rule can be expressed as follows: devoice a voiced consonant after a voiceless consonant，that is, [+voiced+consonantal] [-voiced] / [-voiced+consonantal]-. The phonology /l/ /r/ belong to liquids, and /m/ /n/ belong to anterior nasals. All these four are voiced consonant, but in these words, they change to the voiceless, for they appear after voiceless consonants.

5. Analyze the semantic properties of the given cooking terms, using the features<+/-LIQUID>,<+/-FAT>,<+/-OVEN>,<+/-SIEVE>,ect.

boil +liquid,-fat,-oven,-sieve

6. Analyze the cooking term stew as a verb by way of componential analysis and mark the feature that you think is distinguisher.

Stew [+water][+pot ][ ][ ]

stew: +cook +hot +close dish +juice (+ juice: semantic distinguisher)

7. Analyze the cause of the error that some Chinese speakers of English use although and but within one sentence.

In the process of analyzing learners' language, error analysis is a milestone. Explaining errors is the final but very important step in error

analysis. In terms of sources, errors are divided into interlingual errors and intralingual errors. Interlingual errors are caused by mother tongue interference which means the negative role one's knowledge of L1 to L2 learning. In Chinese, we can use “不但”，“而且”in the same sentence, so some Chinese speakers transfer this expression directly to English. But according t o English grammar, “although” and “but” can not appear in the same sentence. This phenomenon is a kind of negative transfer of learners' syntactic knowledge. This is a typical phenomenon of interference in learning.

8. Analyze the sentence in terms of type of process, mood structure, and theme and rheme:

The academician will address the issue of the legitimacy of cloning at the conference.

It is the verbal process. In this sentence, the sayer is the academician, the receivers are the people at the conference though it is not mentioned but we can infer it from the sentence. The verbiage is the issue of the legitimacy of cloning.

This sentence is the realization of linguistic interaction, it is the giving of information. Its syntactic form is statement. The subject is the academician, the finite is the verbal operator “will”.

The constituent that stands for the starting-point for the message is termed theme; all the rest of the sentence is labeled rheme. In this sentence, the theme is the academician and “the issue of the legitimacy of cloning at the conference” is the rheme.

9. Analyze the semantic properties of the given cooking terms, using the features [+/- W ATER], [+/-FAT], [+/- PAN], [+/- POT], [+/- OVEN], [+/- SIEVE], etc.

boil: [+W ATER] [-FAT] [- PAN] [+ POT] [- OVEN] [- SIEVE]

fry: [- W ATER] [+FAT] [+ PAN] [- POT], [- OVEN] [+SIEVE] steam: [+W ATER] [-FAT] [- PAN] [+POT] [-OVEN] [- SIEVE]

stew: [+W ATER] [+FAT] [- PAN] [+ POT] [- OVEN] [- SIEVE]

bake: [- W ATER] [+FAT] [- PAN] [- POT] [+ OVEN] [- SIEVE]

10. Write the type of reference of it in each of the following sentences:

(1) It is rather foggy these days.

(2) It is so far hard to tell how many lives are claimed in the catastrophe..

(3) The most powerful earthquake triggered massive tidal waves that slammed into coastlines across Asia yesterday. It killed over 30,000 people in Sri Lanka, Indonesia, India, Thailand, Malaysia, Myanmar, Bangladesh and Maldives.

(1) “It” here refers to the weather. It is an exphoric reference, referring to

the world outside linguistic forms.

(2) “It” refers to the following expression, “how man lives are claimed in the catastrophe”, which is a linguistic form.. Thus, it is an endophor ic reference, specifically, cataphoric reference (cataphora).

(3) “It” refers to the preceding expression, that “massive tidal waves slammed into coastlines across Asia yesterday”. Therefore, it is an endophoric reference, specifically, anaphoric reference (anaphora).

11. Analyze the ambiguity of the two sentences, telling the difference:

(1)Flying planes can be dangerous.

(2)She cannot bear children.

1. a. The behavior of flying planes can be dangerous.

b. Planes which is flying can be dangerous.

2. a. She cannot endure children.

b. She cannot give birth to children.