语用学练习题

英语语言学练习----语用学

一、Decide whether each of the following statements is true or false.

contextual view is often considered as the initial effort to study meaning in a pragmatic sense. ( )

is related to and also different from semantics. ( )

notion of context is not important to the pragmatic study of language. ( )

utterances take the form of sentences. ( )

act theory was proposed by the British philosopher John Austin in the late 1950s. ( )

made a distinction between what he called “constatives” and “performatives”. ()

locutionary act is the act of conveying literal meaning by means of syntax, lexicon, and phonology. ( )

their study of language communication, linguists are only interested in how a speaker expresses his intention and pay no attention to how his intention is recognized by the hearer. ( )

are attempts by the speaker to get the hearer to do something. ( )

Cooperative principle was proposed by John Searle. ( )

are four maxims under the Cooperative principle. ( )

violations of the maxims make our language indirect. ( )

the utterances take the form of sentences. ( )

thought that stating was also a kind of act, and that we can perform with language. ( )

to the speech act theory, when we are speaking a language, we are doing something, or in other words performing acts; and the process of linguistic communication consists of a sequence of acts. ( )

the acts that belong to the same category act share the same purpose or the same illocutionary act, and they are the same in their strength or force. ( )

the utterances that can be made to serve the same purpose may vary in the syntactic form. ( )

participants nearly always observe the CP and the maxims of the CP. ( )

sentence is grammatical concept, and the meaning of a sentence is often studied as the abstract intrinsic property of the sentence itself in terms of a predication. ( )

is based on sentence meaning, it is the realization of the abstract meaning of a sentence in a real situation of communication or simply in a context. ( )

the process of communication is essentially a process of conveying meaning in a certain context, pragmatics can also be regarded as a kind of meaning study. ( )

linguists found that it would be impossible to give an adequate description of meaning if the context of language use was left considered.

essentially distinguishes semantics and pragmatics is whether in the study of meaning the context of use is considered. ( )

the shared knowledge both by the speaker and the hearer, linguistic communication would not be possible, and without considering such knowledge, linguistic communication cannot be satisfactorily accounted for in a semantic sense. ( )

perlocutionary act is the act of expressin g the speaker’s intention. ()

to Paul Grice’s idea, in making conversation, the participants must first of all be willing to cooperate, otherwise, it would not be possible for them to carry on the talk. ( )

illocutionary act is the consequence of or the change brought about by the utterance.

【Keys】:

1. T

2. T

11. T 16. F 17. T

21. T 26. T 27. F

二、Fill each of following blanks with one word which begins with the letter given.

1. The shared knowledge which constitutes context is of two types; the knowledge of the

l________ they use, and the knowledge about the w_______, including the general knowledge about the world and specific knowledge about the situation in which linguistic communication is taking place.

2. If we think of a sentence as what people actually utter in the course of communication, it becomes an u________, and it should be considered in the situation in which it is actually used.

3. The idea of Paul Grice is that in making conversation, the participants must first of all be willing to c_______, otherwise, it would be impossible for them to carry on the talk. The general principle is called the c________ p_________, abbreviated as CP.

4. There are four maxims under the CP: the maxim of quantity, the maxim of q_________, the maxim of relation and the maxim of m____________.

5. The maxim of relation requires that what the conversation participants say must be

r__________.

6. As the process of communication is essentially a process of conveying meaning in a certain context, p__________ can be regarded as a kind of meaning study.

7. If c___________ is not considered, the study of meaning is restricted to the area of traditional semantics.

8. The meaning of an u__________ is concrete and context-dependent.

9. An i___________ act is the act of expressing the speaker’s intention.

10. According to Seale, s__________acts fall into five general categories.

11. C__________ are those speech acts whose point is to commit the speaker to some future course of action.

12. To ask someone to pass a book is obviously a d__________.

13. According to Paul Grice, in making c__________ the participants must first of all be willing to cooperate.

14. Most of the violations of the four maxims give rise to c___________ implicatures.

15. The significance of Grice’s c___________ principle lies in that it explains how it is possible for the speaker to convey more than is literally said.

【Keys】:

1. language, word

2. utterance

3. cooperate, Cooperative Principle

4. quality,

mannar 5. relevant

6. pragmatics

7. context

8. utterance

9. illocutionary 10. speech 11. Commissive 12. dirextive 13.

conversation 14. conversational

15. Cooperative

三、There are four choices following each statement. Mark the choice that can best complete the statement.

1. __________ resulted mainly from the eapansion of the study of linguistics, especially that of semantics.

A. Pragmatics

B. Pragmatism

C. Phonology

D. Practicalism

2. Once the notion of _________ was taken into consideration, semantics spiiled into pragmatics.

A. meaning

B. context

C. form

D. content

3. If a sentence is regarded as what people actually utter in the course of communication, it becomes _______.

A. a sentence

B. an act

C. a unit

D. an utterance

4. A ___________ analysis of an utterance will reveal what the speaker intends to do with it.

A. semantic

B. syntactic

C. pragmatic

D. grammatical

5. _______ act theory is an important theory in the pragmatic study of language.

A. Speaking

B. Speech

C. Sound

D. Spoken

6. ______ act is the act performed by or resulting from saying something.

A. A locutionary

B. An illocutionary

C. A perlocutionary

D. A speech

7. One of the contributions Searle has made is his classification of __________ acts.

A. locutionary

B. illocutionary

C. perlocutionary

D. speech

8. The illocutionary point of __________ is to express the psychological state specified in the utterance.

A. directives

B. commisives

C. expressives

D. declarations

9. All the utterance that can be made to serve the same purpose may vary in their _________ form.

A. syntactic

B. semantic

C. grammatical

D. pragmatic

10. The cooperative Principle is proposed by ________.

A. John Searle

B. John Austin

C. Paul Grice

D. John Lyons

11. Linguists found that it would be impossible to give an adequate description of meaning if the ________ of language use was left unconsidered.

A. brevity

B. context

C. accuracy

D. none of the above

12. Of the three speech acts, linguistic are most interested in the _________.

A. locutionary act

B. perlocutionary act

C. illocutionary act

D. none of the above

13. The maxim of quantity requires: ___________.

A. make your contribution ad informative as required.

B. Do not make contribution more informative than is required.

C. Do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence.

D. Both A and B.

14. The maxim of quality requireds: do not say what you believe to be ________.

A. false

B. true

C. brief

D. orderly

15. Most of the violations of the maxims of the CP give rise to _______.

A. utterance meaning

B. speech act theory

C. conversational implicatures

D. all of the above.

16. The significance of Grice’s CP lies in that it explains how it is possible for the speaker to convey _________ is literally said.

A. more than

B. less than

C. the same as

D. none of the above.

【Keys】:

1. A

2. B

3. D

4. C

5. B

6. C

7. B

8. C

9. A 10. C 11. B 12. C 13.

D 14. A 15. C 16. A

四、Define the following terms.

1. context

2. utterance meaning

3. locutionary act

4. illocutionary act

5. perlocutionary act

【Keys】:

1. Context is regarded as constituted by all kinds of knowledge assumed to be shared by the speaker and the hearer.

2. Utterance meaning is the realization of the abstract meaning of a sentence in a real situation of communication, or simply in a context; it is concrete and dependent on the context.

3. A locutionary act is the act of uttering words, phrases, and clauses. It is the act of conveying literal meaning by means of syntax, lexicon and phonology.

4. An il locutionary act is the act of expressing the speaker’s intention; it is the act performed in saying something.

5. A perlocuionary act is the act performed or resulting from saying something; it is the consequence of, or resulting saying something.