湖南科大学2004硕士英语语言文学试题A卷及答案

Entrance Examination（2004）of Linguistics for the Postgraduates of English Linguistics and Literature

（答案）

I. Define the following terms:5%

1.phoneme：A sound which can distinguish one word or one shape of a word

from another in a given language.

2.distinctive features: The features that can distinguish one phoneme from

another.

3.deep structure: It is defined as the abstract representation of the syntactic

properties of a construction, i.e. the underlying level of structural relations between its different constituents.

4.tenor of discourse: It is defined as the relation between the speaker and the

hearer.

5.optimal relevance: It is defined as achieving the sufficient contextual effects

with no unjustifiable processing effort in utterance comprehension.

II. Fill in the blanks:20%

1. Language has at least seven basic functions: phatic, directive, informative, interrogative, ___________, evocative and performative.(expressive)

2. A linguistic study is ____________ if it tries to lay down rules for “correct" behaviours.(prescriptive)

3. Design features refer to the defining properties of human language that distinguish it from any animal system of communication. They are arbitrariness, ________, productivity, displacement, cultural, transmission and interchangeability.(duality)

4. To make his analysis as scientific as possible, the linguist is usually guided by four principles: Exhaustiveness, ____________, Economy and Objectivity.(consistency)

5. The description of a language as it changes through time is a ____________ study.(diachronic)

6. Major branches of general linguistics consist of Phonology, Syntax, _________and Pragmatics.(Semantics)

7. Speech sounds may be studied from different angles, thus we have at least three branches of phonetics, ________________, auditory phonetics and acoustic phonetics.(articulatory)

8. In his Handbook of Phonetics, Henry Sweet made a distinction between

narrow and broad transcriptions, which he called Narrow Romic and Broad Romic. ____________ is meant to symbolize all the possible speech sounds, including the minute shades.(Narrow Romic)

9. If two sounds never occur in the same environment, they are said to be in _________________.(complementary distribution)

10. The syntactic constructions analysed are of two main types: endocentric and exocentric constructions. ________________is one whose distribution is functionally equivalent to that of one or more of its constituents, i.e., a word or

a group of words, which serves as a definable center or head.(endocentric)

11. /p/ and /b/ in English are two distinctive sounds; substituting one for the

other generally changes the meaning of a word. But in the context of /s-/, this phonological opposition is lost. This phenomenon is called ____________in Phonology.(neutralization)

12. Syntactic relations can be analysed into three kinds, namely, syntagmatic

relations, ________________ and relations of co-occurrence.(paradigmatic) 13. Generally speaking, we divide subjects into three kinds, grammatical

subjects, logical subjects and _________________.(psychological)

14. Sentences can be extended either by conjoining or embedding. ___________

refers to the process of construction where one clause is included in the sentence (main clause) in syntactic subordination.(Embedding)

15. Geoffrey Leech(1981) categorizes seven kinds of meaning, which are

conceptual meaning, connotative meaning, social meaning, _____________, reflected meaning and collocative meaning, and thematic meaning.(affective)

16. Out of hundreds of written languages today, writing systems fall into three

types, namely, word writing system, syllabic writing system and _______________.(sound)

17.Generally speaking, varieties of language can be classified in respect of their

users and use, the former being dialectal and the latter diatypic. Hence they are called _________and ________.(dialect, register)

18. A register consists of ___________, ______________ and

______________.(tenor of discourse, field of discourse , mode of discourse)

19. Grice suggests four maxims guiding the conduct of conversation, and they

are ___________,__________________, _______________, and __________________.(the maxim of quality, the maxim of quantity, the maxim of relevance, the maxim of manner)

20. Searle suggests five basic categories of illocutionary acts as the following:

__________,___________,____________,____________,and _________.

(assertives, directives, commissives, expressives, declarations)

III. Fill in the blanks with the proper special terms for the preceeding example, :10%

Example: 6. The girl smiled. ( exocentric )

1.top: [p]

/p/ ( free variation )

[p h]

2. transfer+resister transistor ( blending )

3. professor prof ( abbreviation )

4. a nadder an adder ( metanalysis )

5. editor edit (back-formation )

IV. Make your judgment with “√” or “Χ”:20%

l. By “language is arbitrary”, we mean that there is some logical connection between meanings and sounds.( Χ)

2. The speech sounds with meanings in actual use(we pronounce) are all

phonemes.( Χ)

3. Sentence stress differs from word stress in two ways,(1) monosyllabic words

may take sentence stress, (2) polysyllabic words may have the stress on a different syllable from where it is in isolation or they may lose it completely.( √)

4. Relations of co-occurrence partly belong to syntagmatic relations, partly to

paradigmatic relations.( √)

5.Sentence meaning is less predictable from the grammatical and lexical

features of the sentence as compared with utterance meaning.(Χ)

6. Assimilation is just the opposite of dissimilation. It refers to the influence exercised by one sound segment upon the articulation of another sound, so that the sounds become alike.( √)

7. According to Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, people do not perceive the world

freely but rather they do so through language, a filtering structure which will distort the reality and thus influence and control their thought.

( √)

8. Only the performative sentences with performative verbs can perform

acts.( Χ)

9. In literature, foregrounding is often achieved through unconventional

expressions which attract the readers’ attention. ( √)

10. The largest relevance is in fact the same as the optional relevance, meaning

that the listener achieves the greatest possible contextual effects with the smallest processing effort..( Χ)

IX. State your opinions on any one of the following topics with about 200 words:20%

https://www.360docs.net/doc/932957159.html,ment on the similarities and differences of langue and

parole,compentence and performance, linquistic potential and actual linguistic behaviour.

2.Make your comment briefly on Sapir-Whorf hypothesis.

3.Make your comment briefly on the Gricean Cooperative Principle.

1.Key point: Chomsky’s distinction and Saussure’s distinction are not exactly

the same. Saussure’s langue is a social product, a set of conventions for a speech community. Chomsky regards competence as a property of the mind of each individual. Saussure looks at language more from a sociological point of view while Chomsky looks at it more from a psychological point of view. Parole and performance have a lot in common.

2.Key point: State both opinions: positive and negative. Examples are

necessary here.

https://www.360docs.net/doc/932957159.html,y emphasis on the shortcomings of the Gricean Cooperative Principle,

mainly on the discussion of the Maxim of Relevance.