语言学复习资料

I. Multiple Choice1. The study of language as a whole is often called _____ linguistics.A. particularB. generalC. ordinaryD. generative2. A _____ vowel is one that is produced with the front part of the tongue maintaining the highest position.A. backB. centralC. frontD. middle3. 3. The low, back and tense, unrounded vowel is ____.A. [ ɑ:]B. [ɔ:]C. [ə: ]D. [u:]4. ____ are sometimes called “semivowels”.A. vowelsB. fricativeC. glidesD. nasals5. _____ is a typical tone language.A. EnglishB. ChineseC. FrenchD. American English6. Human beings are the only species that learns and acquires language ____ explicit instruction.A. withB. withoutC. withinD. through7. According to F. de Saussure, _____ refers to the abstract linguistic system shared by all the members of a speech community.A. paroleB. performanceC. langueD. language8. Acoustic phonetics try to describe the _____ properties of the stream of sounds which a speakers issues.A. oralB. mentalC. physicalD. recorded9. _____ is concerned with all the sounds that occur in the world’s languages.A. PhonologyB. phoneticsC. MorphologyD. Phonemics10. _____ transcription is the use of more specific symbols to sow more phonetic details.A. BroadB. DetailedC. WideD. Narrow11. The word “motel” is formed via word formation rule of _____.A. clippingB. blendingC. acronymD. coinage12. If a linguistic study aims to lay down rules for “correct” behavior, i.e., to tell people what they should say and what they should not say, it is said to be ______.A. productiveB. arbitraryC. prescriptiveD. creative13. _____ is a kind of abbreviation of otherwise longer words or phrases.A. AbbreviationB. AcronymC. ClippingD. Blending14. Since the phonetic contrast between /k/ in the word “kill” and /k/ in the word “coal” is not a distinctive one, the two /k/-s are only ____.A. phonemesB. phonesC. segmentsD. allophones15. When /p/ and /b/ occur in the same environment and distinguish meaning, they are in _____.A. minimal pairB. minimal setC. phonemic contrastD. complementary distribution16. ____ at the end of stems can modify the meaning of the original word and in many cases change its part of speech.A. RootsB. PrefixesC. SuffixesD. Free morphemes17. As /k/ in the word “came” and /g/ in the word “game” are said to form a distinctive opposition in English, they are _____.A. soundsB. phonemesC. allophonesD. varieties18. The sounds produced without the vocal cords vibrating are _____ sounds.A. consonantalB. voicedC. vowelD. voiceless19. _____ are added to an existing form to create a word, which is a very common way to create new words in English.A. Inflectional affixesB. Free morphemesC. Derivational affixesD. Stems20. _____ studies how sounds are put together to convey meaning in communication.A. PhonologyB. MorphologyC. LexicologyD. Phonetics21. A compound word consists of ______.A. two wordsB. two morphemesC. two root morphemesD. two or more morphemes22. “alive” and “dead” are _____ .A. gradable antonymsB. relational oppositesC. complementary antonymsD. None of the above23.The meaning carried by inflectional morphemes is _____.A. lexicalB. grammaticalC. morphemicD. semanticII. Fill in each blank with ONE word, the first letter of which is already given as a clue.1.The affixes occurring at the beginning of a word are called p___________.2.The phonemic features that occur above the level of the segments are calleds_______________ features.3.C_______________ is a process of combining two or more words into a new word.4.If a linguistic study describes and analyzes the language people actually use, it is said to bed________________.5.F________ morphemes are independent units of meaning and can be used freely all bythemselves.6.B___________ is a process of forming a new word by combining parts of other words.7.C______________ distribution means that the allophones of the same phoneme always occurin different phonetic environment.8.Affixes like “im-”, “il-”, “un-”, “-tion”, are called d___________ affixes.9. A bound r________ can never stand by itself although it bears clear, definite meaning.10.P________ occur at the beginning of a word and suffixes at the end.11.Linguistics is generally defined as the s____________ study of language.12.D______________ means that language can be used to refer to things present or not present,real or imagined in the past, present, or future, or in faraway places.13.Lying across the glottis are the v______ cords, which are not really cords or strings as thename indicates, but two membranes.14.I____________ affixes manifest various grammatical relations or grammatical categories suchas number, degree and case.15.An acronym is a word created by combining the i___________ letters of a number of words.16.The long vowels are all t_______ vowels and the short vowels are l_______ vowels.17.When two different forms are identical in every way except for one sound segment whichoccurs in the same place in the strings, the two words are said to form a m_________ pair. 18.Chomsky defines “competence”as the user’s u__________ knowledge of the rules of hislanguage.19.The four sounds /p/, /b/, /m/, /w/ have one feature in common, i.e., they are all b__________.20.M______________ is branch of grammar which studies the internal structure of words andthe rules by which words are formed.21.S____________ can be define as the study of meaning.22.Words that are close in meaning are called s_____________.23.When two words are identical in sound, but different in spelling and meaning, they are calledh______________.24.R____________ opposites are a pair of words that exhibit the reversal of a relationshipbetween the two items.25.A s__________ may be a noun or a noun phrase in a sentence that usually proceeds thepredicate.26.Coarticulation can be further divided into a__________ coarticulation and perseveratorycoarticulation.27.The use of a simple set of symbols in transcription is called b__________ transcription;while, the use of more specific symbols to show more p__________ detail is referred to as narrow transcription.28.There are two possibilities of assimilation: if a following sound is influencing a precedingsound, we call it r__________ assimilation; the converse process, in which a preceding sound is influencing a following sound, is known as p__________ assimilation.III. Judge if each of the following is true or false:1.Modern linguistics is mostly descriptive, but sometimes prescriptive.2.Distinctive features are the same to any language.3.The most vigorous and ongoing change in the historical development of a language is thechange in its vocabulary.4.Both phonology and phonetics are studies of speech sounds.5.The root of a word is the smallest meaningful unit of language.6. A synchronic study of language is a historical study.7.The structure of words is not governed by rules.8.Epenthesis is a change that involves the insertion of a consonant or a vowel sound to themiddle of a word.9.Phonology is defined as the study of the phonic medium of language; it is concerned with allthe sounds that occur in the world’s language.10.Depending on the context in which stress is considered, there are two kinds of stress: wordstress and sentence stress.nguage change is different from change in the grammar.12.An acronym is a shorthand form of a word or phrase which represents the complete form.13.Suffixes, in contrast with prefixes, are added to the end of stems.14.Sound assimilation refers to the physiological effect of one sound on another.15.It is the property of arbitrariness that provides speakers with an opportunity to talk about awide range of things, free from barriers caused by separation in time and place.16.A scientific study of language is based on what the linguist thinks.17.The location of one of the suprasegmental features in English ---- stress does not distinguishmeaning.18.It seems that with the help of language people may “think” better, and here it is believed thatlanguage is exerting its function of interpersonal communication.19.General linguistics studies the basic concepts, theories, descriptions, model and methodsapplicable in any linguistic study.nguages vary in the order of the subject, the verb and the object.21.The distinction between Saussure’s langue and Chomsky’s competence lies in that the formeris a matter of social conventions while the latter emphasizes the property of the mind of each individual.22.Words are the smallest unit of language that can not be broken down into even smallercomponents.23.Blending is process of combining two or more words into one lexical unit.24.Phonetics deals with how sounds are put together and used to convey meaning.25.There are actually many other communicative system rather than human language that arealso rule governed.26.The greatest source of modification of the air stream is found in the oral cavity.27.Both phonology and phonetics are studies of sound though they have different emphasis.28.Generally speaking, the standard language is more effective in expressing ideas than any otherdialect coexisting with it.29.In modern linguistic studies, the written form of language is given more emphasis than thespoken form for a number of reasons.30.Sense is concerned with the relationship between the linguistic element and the non-linguisticworld of experience, while the reference deals with the inherent meaning of the linguistic form.31.Linguistics forms having the same sense may have different references in different situations. IV. Explain the following terms briefly:1. Design features: refers to the defining properties of human language that distinguish it from any animal system of communication.2. Arbitrariness: one design feature of human language which refers to the fact that the forms of linguistic signs bear no natural relationship to their meaning.3. Duality: one design feature of human language which refers to the property of having two levels of structures, such as units of the primary level are composed of elements of the secondary level and each of the two levels has its own principles of organization.4. Displacement: one design feature of human language which means human language enables their users to symbolize objects, events and concepts which are not present in time and space at the moment of communication.5. Creativity: one design feature of human language by which we mean language is resourceful because of its duality and its recursiveness.6. Competence: competence means the language user’s underlying knowledge about the system of rules.7. Langue: According to Saussure, refers to the abstract linguistic system shared by all the members of a speech community.8. Parole: According to Saussure, parole refers to the actualized language, or realization of langue.9. Consonant: Consonants are sound segments produced by constricting or obstructing the vocal tract at some place to divert, impede, or completely shut off the flow of air in the oral cavity.10. Coarticulation: a kind of phonetic process in which simultaneous or overlapping articulations are involved.14. Phoneme: A sound which is capable of distinguishing one word or one shape of a word from another in a given language is a phoneme. It’s a basic unit in phonological analysis. It is not anyparticular sound, but an abstract segment.15. Allophone: the phones which are variations of one phoneme are referred to as the allophones of that phoneme.16. Minimal pairs: When two different forms are identical in every way except for one sound segment which occurs in the same place in the strings, the two sound combinations are said to form a minimal pair.17. V owels: are sound segments produced without obstruction of the airstream in the vocal tract are call vowels.19. Assimilation: a process by which one sound takes on some or all the characteristics of a neighboring sound.20. Phonetics: Phonetics is defined as the study of the phonic medium of language; it is concerned with all the sounds that occur in the world’s languages. What it studies includes the organs of speech, transcription, classification of speech sounds, etc.22. Suprasegmental features: aspects of speech that involve more than single sound segments. The principle suprasegmental features are syllables, stress, tone and intonation.23. Morphology: Morphology is a branch of grammar which studies the internal structure of words and the rules by which words are formed. Morphology is divided into two sub-branches: inflectional morphology, which studies the inflections and derivational morphology, which studies the word-formation.24. Morpheme: The smallest meaningful components at the lowest level of a word are called morphemes. The meaning morphemes convey may be of two kinds: lexical meaning and grammatical meaning.27. Affix: The collective term for the type of formative that can be used only when added to another morpheme.28. Root: The base form of a word that cannot further be analyzed without total loss of identity. 28. Compound: The term compound refers to those words that consist of more than one lexical morpheme, or the way to join two separate words to produce a single new word.29. Free morpheme: They are the independent units of meaning and can occur alone, for example, “book-” in the word “bookish”.30. Bound morpheme: an element of meaning which is structurally dependent on the word it is added to.31. Blending: A relatively complex form of compounding, in which two words are blended by joining the initial part of the first word and the final part of the second word, or by joining the initial parts of the two words.32. Syntax: Syntax is the study of how words combine to form sentences and the rules which govern the formation of sentences.33. Constituent: A term used in structural analysis for every linguistic unit which is a part of a larger linguistic unit.38: Semantics: Semantics can be defined as the study of meaning in language.39. Sense: Sense is concerned with the inherent meaning of the linguistic form. It is the collection of all the features of the linguistic form; it is abstract and de-contextualized.40. Reference: Reference means what a linguistic form refers to in the real, physical world; it deals with the relationship between the linguistic elements and non-linguistic world of experience.41. Synonymy: Synonymy refers to the sameness or close similarity of meaning.42. Antonymy: Antonymy refers to the oppositeness relation between words.43. Hyponymy: Hyponymy refers to the sense relation of inclusiveness.V. Questions:1. What are the major functions of language according to Holliday?Language functions include informative function, interpersonal function, performative function, emotive function, phatic function, recreational function and metalingual function.3. State briefly how consonants are classified.Consonants are classified according to the following three parameters: (1) place of articulation: place in the mouth where obstruction occurs: bi-labial, labio-dental, alveolar, etc. (2) manner of articulation: ways in which articulation can be accomplished: plosive, fricative, nasal, etc. (3) state of vocal cords: if the vocal cords vibrate or not: voiced and voiceless consonants.4. How are pure vowels classified?There are four ways to classify simple vowels: (1) According to the height of the tongue raising: high, middle, low. (2) According to the position of the highest part of the tongue: front, central, back. (3) According to the shape of the lips (the degree of lip-rounding): rounded, unrounded. (4) According to the length or tenseness of the vowel: long v.s short or tense v.s lax.5. Compare phone and phoneme.A phone refers to any of the possible speech sounds we hear and produce during linguistic communication. It’s a phonic unit or segment. It is the smallest identifiable unit found in the stream of speech.A sound which is capable of distinguishing one word or one shape of a word from another in a given language is a phoneme. It’s a basic contrastive unit in phonological analysis. It is not any particular sound, but an abstract segment. In actual speech, a phoneme is realized phonetically as a certain phone. The phoneme is the smallest meaning distinguishing unit.8. How are morphemes classified?morpheme free: free root rootbound root stembound derivationalaffixinflectionalsuffixinfixprefix11. What are the major branches of linguistics? What does each of them study?They are phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, sociolinguistics, psycholinguistics, applied linguistics.Phonetics----it’s defined as the study of the phonic medium of language, it’s concerned with all the sounds that occur in the world’s languages.Phonology---the study of sounds systems—the inventory of distinctive sounds that occur in a language and the patterns into which they fall.Morphology---It’s a branch of a grammar whic h studies the internal structure of words and the rules by which words are formed.Syntax-------it's a subfield of linguistics that studies the sentence structure of a language.Semantics---It’s simply defined as the study of meaning in abstraction.Pragmatics---the study of meaning in context of words.Sociolinguistics—the study of language with reference to society.Psycholinguistics---the study of language with reference to the working of the mind.Applied linguistics---the application of linguistic principles and theories to language teaching and learning.。