语言学教程课后习题与答案第一章
(完整)语言学教程复习题与答案(胡壮麟版)1.docx
语言学教程复习题与答案(胡壮麟版第一章)Chapter I IntroductionI. Decide whether each of the following statements is True or False:1.Linguistics is generally defined as the scientific study of language.2.Linguistics studies particular language, not languages in general.3. A scientific study of language is based on what the linguist thinks.4. In the study of linguistics,hypotheses formed should be based on languagefacts and checked against the observed facts.5.General linguistics is generally the study of language as a whole.6.General linguistics, which relates itself to the research of other areas,studies the basic concepts, theories, descriptions, models and methodsapplicable in any linguistic study. 7.7. Phonetics is different from phonology in that the latter studies thecombinations of the sounds to convey meaning in communication.8.Morphology studies how words can be formed to produce meaningful sentences.9.The study of the ways in which morphemes can be combined to form wordsis called morphology.10. Syntax i s different from morphology in that the former not only studies themorphemes, but also the combination of morphemes into words and wordsinto sentences.11.The study of meaning in language is known as semantics.12.Both semantics and pragmatics study meanings.13.Pragmatics is different from semantics in that pragmatics studies meaningnot in isolation, but in context.14.Social changes can often bring about language changes.15.Sociolinguistics is the study of language in relation to society.16.Modern linguistics is mostly prescriptive, but sometimes descriptive.17.Modern linguistics is different from traditional grammar.18.A diachronic study of language is the description of language at some pointin time.19.Modern linguistics regards the written language as primary, not the writtenlanguage.20. The distinction between competence and performance was proposed by F.de Saussure.II.Fill in each of the following blanks with one word which begins with theletter given:21. Chomsky defines“ competence” as the ideal user’s k__________ of the rulesof his language.ngue refers to the a__________ linguistic system shared by all the membersof a speech community while the parole is the concrete use of the conventions andapplication of the rules.23.D_________ is one of the design features of human language which refers to thepheno 广告网址 n that language consists of two levels: a lower level of meaninglessindividual sounds and a higher level of meaningful units.nguage is a system of a_________ vocal symbolsused for human communication.25.The discipline that studies the rules governing the formation of words into permissible sentences in languages is called s________.26.Human capacity for language has a g____ basis, but the details of language have to be taught and learned.27.P ____ refers to the realization of langue in actual use.28.Findings in linguistic studies can often be applied to the settlement of some practical problems.The study of such applications is generally known as a________ linguistics.nguage is p___________in that it makes possible the construction and interpretation of new signals by its users.In other words,they can produce and understand an infinitely large number of sentences which they have never heard before.30.Linguistics is generally defined as the s ____ study of language.III.There are four choices following each statement. Mark the choice that canbest complete the statement.31. If a linguistic study describes and analyzes the language people actually use, itis said to be ______________.A. prescriptiveB.analyticC. descriptiveD. linguistic32.Which of the following is not a design feature of human language?A. ArbitrarinessB. DisplacementC. DualityD. Meaningfulness33. Modern linguistics regards the written language as ____________.A. primaryB. correctC. secondaryD. stable34.In modern linguistics, speech is regarded as more basic than writing, because___________. A. in linguistic evolution, speech is prior to writingB. speech plays a greater role than writing in terms of the amount of informationconveyed. C. speech is always the way in which every native speaker acquireshis mother tongueD. All of the above35.A historical study of language is a ____ study of language.A. synchronicB. diachronicC. prescriptiveD. comparative36.Saussure took a (n)__________view of language, while Chomsky looks at language from a ________ point of view.A. sociological⋯psychologicalB. psychological⋯sociologicalC. applied⋯pragmaticD.semantic and linguistic37. According to F. de Saussure, ____ refers to the abstract linguistic system shared by all the members of a speech community.A. paroleB. performanceC. langueD. Languagenguage is said to be arbitrary because there is no logical connection between_________ and meanings.A. senseB. soundsC. objectsD. ideasnguage can be used to refer to contexts removed from the immediate situations of the speaker. This feature is called_________,A. displacementB. dualityC. flexibilityD. cultural transmission40. The details of any language system is passed on from one generation to the next through ____ , rather than by instinct.A. learningB. teachingC. booksD. both A and BIV. Define the following terms:41.Linguistics42.Phonology43.Syntax44.Pragmatics45. nguage 47.Phonetics48. Morphology49.Semantics50.Sociolinguistics51.Applied Linguistics 52.Arbitrariness53 Productivity54.Displacement55.Duality56.Design Features 57. Competence58 Performance59. Langue60 ParoleV.Answer the following questions as comprehensively as possible.Give examples for illustration if necessary:nguage is generally defined as a system of arbitrary vocal symbols used for human communication. Explain it in detail.62.What are the design features of human language? Illustrate them with examples.63.How is modern linguistics different from traditional grammar?64. How do you understand the distinction between a synchronic study and a diachronic study?65. Why does modern linguistics regard the spoken form of language as primary,not the written?66.What are the major distinctions between langue and parole?67.How do you understand competence and performance ?68. Saussure’ s distinction between langue and parole seems similar to Chomsky’s distinction between competence and performance. What do you think are their major differences?69. Do you think human language is entirely arbitrary? Why?I.Decide whether each of the following statements is True or False:l.T 2.F 3.F 4.T 5.T 6.F 7.T8.F 9.T 10.F 11.T12.T 13.T 14.T15.T 16.F17.T 18.F 19.F20.FII.Fill in each of the following blanks with one word which begins with the le tter given:21.knowledge22.abstract23.Duality24.arbitrary25.syntax2 6.genetic27.Parole28.applied 29.productive30.scientific(or systemati c)III. There are best complete fourthechoices followingstatement. 3l.Ceach32.Dstatement.33.C 34.DMark the35.Bchoice36.Athat37.Ccan38.B 39.A 40.DIV. Define the following terms:41. Linguistics: Linguistics is generally definedas the scientific study of language.42. Phonology: The study of how soundsare put together and used in communication is called phonology.43. Syntax: The study of how morphemes and words are combined to form sentences is calledsyntax.44.Pragmatics: The study of meaning in context of use is calledpragmatics.45. Psycholinguistics: The study of language with reference tothe workings of mind is called psycholinguistics.46. Language: Language is a system of arbitrary vocal symbols used for human communication.47. Phonetics: The study of sounds which are used in linguistic communication iscalled phonetics.48. Morphology: The study of the way in which morphemesare arranged to form words is called morphology.49. Semantics: The study of meaning in language is called semantics.50. Sociolinguistics:The study of language with reference to society is called sociolinguistics.51.Applied linguistics: In a narrow sense, applied linguistics refers to the applicationof linguistic principles and theories to language teaching and learning, especially theteaching of foreign and second languages. In a broad sense, it refers to theapplication of linguistic findings to the solution of practical problems such asthe recovery of speech ability.52. Arbitrariness: It is one of the designfeatures of language. It means that there is no logical connection betweenmeanings and sounds53. Productivity: Language is productive or creative inthat it makes possible the con-struction and interpretation of new signals by itsusers.54. Displacement: Displacement means that language can be usedto refer to things which are present or not present, real or imagined matters in thepast, present, or future, or in far-away places. In other words, language can be usedto refer to contexts removed from the immediate situations of the speaker55. Duality: The duality nature of language means that language is a system, whichconsists of two sets of structure, or two levels, one of sounds and the other ofmeanings. 56. Design features: Design features refer to the defining properties of human language that distinguish it from any animal system of communication 57. Competence:Chomsky defines competence as the ideal user's knowledge of the rules of his language, 58. Performance: performance isthe actual realization of the knowl-edge of the rules in linguistic communication.ngue:Langue refers to the abstract linguistic system shared by all the members of a speech community;Langue is the set of conventions and rule s which language users all have to follow;Langue is relatively stable,it does not change frequently60.Parole:Parole refers to the realization of lang ue in actual use;parole is the concrete use of the conventions and the appli cation of the rules;parole varies from person to person,and from situation t o situation.V. Answer the following questions as comprehensively as possible.Give exam ples for illustration if necessary:nguage is generally defined as a system of arbitrary vocal symbols used for human communication.Explain it in detail.First of all,language is a sys tem,because elements of language are combined according to rules.Secondl y, language is arbitrary because there is no intrinsic connection between form and meaning,or between the sign and what it stands for.Different language s have different words for the same object in the world.This fact is a good i llustration of the arbitrary nature of language.This also explains the symbolic nature of language:words are just symbols;they are associated with object s, actions,ideas,etc.by convention .Thirdly,language is vocal because the primary medium is sound for all languages,no matter how well-developed t heir writing systems are.The term"human"in the definition indicates that l anguage is possessed by human beings only and is very different from the c ommunication systems of other living creatures.The term"communication"m eans that language makes it possible for its users to talk to each other and fulfill their communicative needs.62.What are the design features of human language?Illustrate them with ex amples.1)Arbitrariness As mentioned earlier,the arbitrary property of langu age means that there is no logical connection between meanings and sounds. For instance,there is no necessary relationship between the word elephant and the animal it symbolizes.In addition,different sounds are used to refer t o the same object in different languages,and even within the same language, the same sound does not refer to the same thing.However,language is not entirelyarbitrary.There are words which are created in the imitation of sound s by sounds,such as crash,bang in English.Besides,some compound word s are also not entirely arbitrary.But the non-arbitrary words are quite limitedin number.The arbitrary nature of language makes it possible for language to have an unlimited source of expressions.2)Productivity Language is prod uctive or creative in that it makes possible the construction and interpretationof new signals by its users.This is why they can produce and understand a n infinitely large number of sentences,including sentences that they have ne ver said or heard before.They can send messages which no one else has ever sent before.Productivity is unique to human language.Most animal comm unication systems appear to be highly restricted with respect to the numberof different signals that their users can send and receive.3)Duality The du ality nature of language means that language is a system,which consists of two sets of structure,or two levels,one of sounds and the other of meaning s.At the lower or the basic level,there is the structure of sounds,which are meaningless,discrete,individual sounds.But the sounds of language can be combined according to rules into units of meaning such as morphemes and words,which,at the higher level, can be arranged into sentences.This duality of structure or double articulation of language enables its users to talk abou t anything within their knowledge.No animal communication system has duali ty or even comes near to possessing it.4) Displacement Displacement mea ns that language can be used to refer to things which are present or not present,real or imagined matters in the past, present,or future,or in far-away p laces.In other words,language can be used to refer to contexts removed fro m the immediate situations of the speaker.Animal calls are mainly uttered in response to immediate changes of situation.5)Cultural transmission Huma n beings were born with the ability to acquire language,but the details of an y language are not genetically transmitted or passed down by instinct.They have to be taught and learned, but animal call systems are genetically transmi tted.63.How is modern linguistics different from traditional grammar?Traditional gram-mar is prescriptive;it is based on"high"(religious,literary)writte n language.It sets grammatical rules and imposes the rules on language users.But Modern linguistics is descriptive;It collects authentic,and mai nly spoken language data and then it studies and describes the data in a n objective and scientific way.64.How do you understand the distinction between a synchronic study anda diachronic study?The description of a language at some point in timeis a Synchronic study;the description of a language as it changes throu gh time is a diachronic study.A synchronic study of language describesa language as it is at some particular point in time,while a diachronic study of language is the study of the historical development of language o ver a period of time.65.Why does modern linguistics regard the spoken form of language as primary,not the written?First,the spoken form is prior to the writ-ten for m and most writing systems are derived from the spoken form of langua ge.Second,the spoken form plays a greater role than writing in terms of the amount of information conveyed and it serves a wider range of purp oses Finally,the spoken form is the medium through which we acquire o ur mother tongue.66.What are the major distinctions between langue and parole?The distinction between langue,and parole was made by the famous linguist Ferdinand de Saussure early this ngue refers to the abstract linguisticsystem shared by all the members of a speech community,and parole ref ers to the realization of langue in actual use. Langue is the set of conve ntions and rules which language users all have to follow while parole is t he concrete use of the conventions and the application of the ng ue is abstract;it is not the language people actually use,but parole is c oncrete;it refers to the naturally occurring language ngue is rel atively stable;it does not change frequently;while parole varies from per son to person,and from situation to situation.67.How do you understand competence and performance?American linguist N. Chomsky in the late1950 ’s proposed the distinction between comp etence and performance.Chomsky defines competence as the ideal user ’s knowledge of the rules of his language.This internalized set of rules e nables the language user to produce and understand an infinitely large n umber of sentences and recognize sentences that are ungrammatical and ambiguous.According to Chomsky, performance is the actual realization of this knowledge in linguistic communication.Although the speaker’s knowledge of his mother tongue is perfect,his performances may have mista kes because of social and psychological factors such as stress,embarras sment,etc..Chomsky believes that what linguists should study is the co mpetence,which is systematic,not the performance,which is too haphaz ard.68. Saussure ’s distinction between langue and parole seems similar to Chomsky ’ s distinction between competence and performance.What do you thi nk are their major differences?Although Saussure’s distinction and Cho msky ’ s are very similar,they differ at least in that Saussure took a soci ological view of language and his notion of langue is a mater of social c onventions,and Chomsky looks at language from a psychological point of vies and to him,competence is a property of the mind of each individual.69. Do you think human language is entirely arbitrary?Why?Language isarbitrary in nature,it is not entirely arbitrary,because there are a limited number of words whose connections between forms and meanings can be logically explained to a certain extent,for example,the onomatopoeia,words which are coined on the basis of imitation of sounds by sounds s uch as bang,crash,etc..Take compounds for another example.The two el ements“photo ” and“ copy” in“ photocopy” are non-motivated,but t he compound is not arbitrary.语言学教程复习题与答案(胡壮麟版第二章 )Chapter 2 ： PhonologyI.Decide whether each of the following statements is True or False:1.Voicing is a phonological feature that distinguishes meaning in both Chinese and English.2.If two phonetically similar sounds occur in the same environments and they distinguish meaning,they are said to be in complementary distribution.3.A phone is a phonetic unit that distinguishes meaning.4.English is a tone language while Chinese is not.5.In linguistic evolution,speech is prior to writing.6.In everyday communication,speech plays a greater role than writing in terms of the amount of information conveyed.7.Articulatory phonetics tries to describe the physical properties of thestream of sounds which a speaker issues with the help of a machinecalled spectrograph.8.The articulatory apparatus of a human being are contained in three important areas:the throat,the mouth and the chest.9.Vibration of the vocal cords results in a quality of speech sounds called voicing.10.English consonants can be classified in terms of place of articulationand the part of the tongue that is raised the highest.11.According to the manner of articulation,some of the types into whichthe consonants can be classified are stops,fricatives,bilabial and alv eolar.12.Vowel sounds can be differentiated by a number of factors:the position of tongue in the mouth,the openness of the mouth,the shape of the lips,and the length of the vowels.13.According to the shape of the lips,vowels can be classified into close vowels,semi-close vowels, semi-open vowels and open vowels.14.Any sound produced by a human being is a phoneme.15.Phones are the sounds that can distinguish meaning.16.Phonology is concerned with how the sounds can be classified into different categories.17.A basic way to determine the phonemes of a language is to see if substituting one sound for another results in a change of meaning.18.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 words are said to form a phonemic contrast.19.The rules governing the phonological patterning are language specific.20.Distinctive features of sound segments can be found running over asequence of two or more phonemic segments.II. Fill in each of the following blanks with one word which begins with t he letter given:puff of air stream in the production of spee 21. A ____refers to astrongch sounds.22.A____phonetics describes the way our speech organs work to produce the speech sounds and how they differ.23.The four sounds/p/,/b/,/m/and/w/have one feature in common,i.e,they are all b_______sounds.24.Of all the speech organs,the t____is the most flexible,and is responsible for varieties of articulation than any other.25.English consonants can be classified in terms of manner of articulation or in terms of p____of articulation.26.When the obstruction created by the speech organs is total or complete,the speech sound produced with the obstruction audibly released a nd the air passing out again is called a s________. <![endif]>27.S_________features are the phonemic features that occur above the level of the segments.They include stress,tone,intonation,etc.28.The rules that govern the combination of sounds in a particular language are called s ____rules.29.The transcription of speech sounds with letter-symbols only is calledbroad transcription while the transcription with letter-symbols together with the diacritics is called n_________transcription.30.When pitch,stress and sound length are tied to the sentence rather than the word in isolation,they are collectively known as i_________. 31.P______is a discipline which studies the system of sounds of a particular language and how sounds are combined into meaningful units t o effect linguistic communication.32.The articulatory apparatus of a human being are contained in three important cavities:the pharyngeal cavity,the o_______cavity and the na sal cavity.33.T____are pitch variations,which are caused by the differing rates ofvibration of the vocal cords and which can distinguish meaning just li ke phonemes.<![endif]>34. Depending on the context in which stress is considered,there are twokinds of stress: word stress and s_________stressbelow.Mark t III. There are four choices following each of thestatementshe choice that can best complete the statement.35.Of all the speech organs,the_______is/are the most flexible. A. mouth B.lips C.tongue D.vocal cords36.The sounds produced without the vocal cords vibrating are____ sounds. A. voiceless B.voiced C. vowel D.consonantal37.__________is a voiced alveolar stop.A./z/B./d/C./k/D./b/38.The assimilation rule assimilates one sound to another by “ copying ”a feature of a sequential phoneme, thus making the two phones____________. A.identical B.same C. exactly alike D.similar39.Since/p/and/b/are phonetically similar,occur in the same environments and they can distinguish meaning,they are said to be_________ __.A.in phonemic contrastB.in complementary distributionC.the allophonesD.minimal pair40.The sound/f/is_________________. A.voiced palatal affricateB.voiced alveolar stopC.voiceless velar fricativeD.voiceless labiodental fricative41.A____vowel is one that is produced with the front part of the tongue maintaining the highest position. A. back B.central C.front D.middle42.Distinctive features can be found running over a sequence of two ormore phonemic segments.The phonemic features that occur above the level of the segments are called____________. A. phonetic components B.immediate constituents C.suprasegmental features D.se mantic features43.A(n)___________is a unit that is of distinctive value. It is an abstractunit,a collection of distinctive phonetic features. A.phone B.so und C. allophone D.phoneme44.The different phones which can represent a phoneme in different phonetic environments are called the____of that phoneme. A. phones B.sounds C. phonemes D. allophones<![endif]>IV. Define the terms below:45. phonology46.phoneme47.allophone48.international phonetic alphabet49.intonation50.phonetics51.auditory phonetics52.acoustic phonetics53.phone54. phonemic contrast55. tone56.minimal pairV. Answer the following questions as comprehensively as possible.Give ex-amples for illustration if necessary:57.Of the two media of language,why do you think speech is more basic than writing?58.What are the criteria that a linguist uses in classifying vowels?59.What are the major differences between phonology and phonetics?60.Illustrate with examples how suprasegmental features can affect meaning.61.In what way can we determine whether a phone is a phoneme or not?I.Decide whether each of the following statements is True or False:l.T 2.F 3.F 4.F 5.T 6.T 7.F8.F9.T 10.F 11.F 12.T13.F 14.F15.F16.F17. T 18. F 19.T 20.TII.Fill in each of the following blanks with one word which begin s with the letter given:21.Aspiration 22.Articulatory23.b ilabial24. tongue25. place26.st op27.Suprasegmental 28.sequential29.narrow 30.intonation31.P honology32. oral33.Tone34. sentenceIII.There are four choices following each of the statements below.Mark the choice that can best complete the statement:35.C 36.A 37.B 38.D 39.A 40.D 41.C 42.C 43.D44.DIV.Define the terms below:45.phonology: Phonology guage; it aims to discover ns and how these sounds munication.studies the system of sounds of a particular lan how speech sounds in a language form patter are used to convey meaning in linguistic com46. phoneme: The basic unit in phonology is called phoneme; it is a unitof distinctive value. But it is an abstract unit. To be exact, a phoneme is not a sound; it is a collection of distinctive phonetic features.47. allophone:The different phones which can represent a phoneme in different phonetic environments are called the allophones of that phonem e.48. international phonetic alphabet: It is a standardized and internationallyaccepted system of phonetic transcription.49. intonation:When pitch, stress and sound length are tied to the sentence rather than the word in isolation,they are collectively known as i ntonation.50.51.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 languages52.auditory phonetics:It studies the speech sounds from the hearer's point of view.It studies how the sounds are perceived by the hear-er. 53.acoustic phonetics:It studies the speech sounds by looking at the sound waves.It studies the physical means by which speech sounds a re transmitted through the air from one person to another.54.phone: Phones can be simply defined as the speech sounds we usewhen speaking a language.A phone is a phonetic unit or segment.It does not necessarily distinguish meaning.55. phonemic contrast:Phonemic contrast refers to the relation between two phonemes.If two phonemes can occur in the same environment a nd distinguish meaning,they are in phonemic contrast.56. tone:Tones are pitch variations,which are caused by the differing rates of vibration of the vocal cords.57. minimal pair:When two different forms are identical in every way except for one sound segment which occurs in the same place in the stri ngs,the two words are said to form a minimal pair.V. Answer the following questions as comprehensively as possible.Give ex-amples for illustration if necessary:58. Of the two media of language,why do you think speech is more basic than writing?1)In linguistic evolution,speech is prior to writing.2)In everyday communication,speech plays a greater role than writing in terms of the amount of information conveyed.3)Speech is always the way in which every native speaker acquires his mother tongue, and writing is learned and taught later at school.59. What are the criteria that a linguist uses in classifying vowels?。
(完整版)胡壮麟《语言学教程》课后答案(学习必备)
胡壮麟《语言学教程》课后答案胡壮麟《语言学教程》课后答案1. Design feature:are features that define our human languages,such asarbitrariness,duality,creativity,displacement,cultural transmission,etc.2.Function: the use of language tocommunicate,to think ,nguage functions inclucle imformative function,interpersonal function,performative function,interpersonal function,performative function,emotive function,phatic communion,recreational function and metalingual function.3. etic: a term in contrast with emic which originates from American linguist Pike’s distinction of phonetics and phonemics.Being etic mans making far too many, as well as behaviously inconsequential,differentiations,just as was ofter the case with phonetic vx.phonemic analysis in linguistics proper.4. emic: a term in contrast with etic which originates from American linguist Pike’s distinction of phonetics and phonemics.An emic set of speech acts and events must be one that is validated as meaningful via final resource to the native members of a speech communith rather than via qppeal to the investigator’s ingenuith or intuition alone.5. synchronic: a kind of description which takes a fixed instant(usually,but not necessarily,the present),as its point of observation.Most grammars are of this kind.6.diachronic:study of a language is carried through the course of its history.7. prescriptive: the study of a language is carried through the course of its history.8. prescriptive: a kind of linguistic study in which things are prescribed how ought to be,ying down rules for language use.9. descriptive: a kind of linguistic study in which things are just described.10. arbitrariness: one design feature of human language,which refers to the face that the forms of linguistic signs bear no natural relationship to their meaning.11. duality: one design feature of human language,which refers to the property of having two levels of are composed of elements of the secondary.level and each of the two levels has its own principles of organization.12. displacement: one design feature of human language,which means human language enable their users to symbolize objects,events and concepts which are not present c in time and space,at the moment of communication.13. phatic communion: one function of human language,which refers to the social interaction of language.14. metalanguage: certain kinds of linguistic signs or terms for the analysis and description of particular studies.15. macrolinguistics: he interacting study between language and language-related disciplines such as psychology,sociology,ethnograph,science of law and artificial intelligence etc.Branches of macrolinguistics include psycholinguistics,sociolinguistics, anthropological linguistics,et16. competence: language user’s underlying knowledge about the system of rules.17. performance: the actual use of language in concrete situation.18. langue: the linguistic competence of the speaker.19. parole: the actual phenomena or data of linguistics(utterances).20．Articulatory phonetics: the study of production of speechsounds. 21．Coarticulation: a kind of phonetic process in which simultaneous or overlapping articulations are involved..Coarticulation can be further divided into anticipatory coarticulation and perseverative coarticulation.22．Voicing:pronouncing a sound (usually a vowel or a voiced consonant) by vibrating the vocal cords.23．Broad and narrow transcription: the use of a simple set of symbols in transcription is called broad transcription;the use of a simple set of symbols in transcription is called broad transcription;while,the use of more specific symbols to show more phonetic detail is referred to as narrow transcription.24．Consonant: 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. 25．Phoneme: the abstract element of sound, identified as being distinctive in a particular language.26．Allophone:any of the different forms of a phoneme(eg.<th>is an allophone of /t/in English.When /t/occurs in words like step,it is unaspirated<t>.Both<th>and <t>are allophones of the phoneme/t/.27． Vowl:are sound segments produced without such obstruction,so no turbulence of a total stopping of the air can be perceived.28．Manner of articulation: in the production of consonants,manner of articulation refers to the actual relationship between the articulators and thus the way in which the air passes through certain parts of the vocal tract.29.Place of articulation: in the production of consonants,place of articulation refers to where in the vocal tract there is approximation,narrowing,or the obstruction of air.30．Distinctive features: a term of phonology,i.e.a property which distinguishes one phoneme from another.31．Complementary distribution: the relation between tow speech sounds that never occur in the same environment.Allophones of the same phoneme are usually in complementary distribution. 32．IPA: the abbreviation of International Phonetic Alphabet,which is devised by the International Phonetic Association in 1888 then it has undergong a number of revisions.IPA is a comprised system employing symbols of all sources,such as Roman small letters,italics uprighted,obsolete letters,Greek letters,diacritics,etc.33．Suprasegmental:suprasegmental featuresare those aspects of speech that involve more than single sound segments.The principal supra-segmental features aresyllable,stress,tone,,and intonation.34．Suprasegmental:aspects of speech that involve more than single sound segments.The principle suprasegmental features are syllable,stress,tone,and intonation.35. morpheme:the smallest unit of language in terms of relationship between expression and content,a unit that cannot be divided into further small units without destroying or drastically altering the meaning,whether it is lexical or grammatical.36. compoundoly morphemic words which consist wholly of free morphemes,such as classroom,blackboard,snowwhite,etc.37.inflection: the manifestation of grammatical relationship through the addition of inflectional affixes,such as number,person,finiteness,aspect and case,which do not change the grammatical class of the stems to which they are attached.38.affix: the collective term for the type of formative that can be used only when added to another morpheme(the root or stem).39. derivation: different from compounds,derivation shows the relation between roots and affixes.40. root: the base from of a word that cannot further be analyzed without total lass of identity.41.allomorph: any of the different form of a morpheme.For example,in English the plural mortheme is but it is pronounced differently in different environments as/s/in cats,as/z/ in dogs and as/iz/ in classes.So/s/,/z/,and /iz/ are all allomorphs of the plural morpheme.42.Stem: any morpheme or combination of morphemes to which an inflectional affix can be added.43. bound morpheme: an element of meaning which is structurally dependent on the world it is added to,e.g. the plural morpheme in “dog’s”.44.free morpheme: an element of meaning which takes the form of an independent word.45.lexeme:A separate unit of meaning,usually in the form of a word(e.g.”dog in the manger”)46.lexicon: a list of all the words in a language assigned to various lexical categories and provided with semantic interpretation.47.grammatical word: word expressing grammatical meanings,suchconjunction,prepositions,articles and pronouns.48. lexical word: word having lexical meanings,that is ,those which refer to substance,action and quality,such as nouns,verbs,adjectives,and verbs.49.open-class: a word whose membership is in principle infinite or unlimited,such asnouns,verbs,adjectives,and many adverbs.50. 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.51. loanvoord: a process in which both form and meaning are borrowed with only a slight adaptation,in some cases,to eh phonological system of the new language that they enter.52.loanblend: a process in which part of the form is native and part is borrowed, but the meaning is fully borrowed.53. leanshift: a process in which the meaning is borrowed,but the form is native.54.acronym: is made up form the first letters of the name of an organization,which has a heavily modified headword.55.loss: the disappearance of the very sound as a morpheme in the phonological system.56. back-formation: an abnormal type of word-formation where a shorter word is derived by deleting an imagined affix from a long form already in the language.57.assimilation: the change of a sound as a result of the influence of an adjacent sound,which ismore specifically called.”contact”or”contiguous”assimilation.58.dissimilation: the influence exercised.By one sound segment upon the articulation of another, so that the sounds become less alike,or different.59.folk etymology: a change in form of a word or phrase,resulting from an incorrect popular nation of the origin or meaning of the term or from the influence of more familiar terms mistakenly taken to be analogous60.category:parts of speech and function,such as the classification of words in terms of parts of speech,the identification of terms of parts of speech,the identification of functions of words in term of subject,predicate,etc.61.concord: also known as agreement,is the requirement that the forms of two or more words in a syntactic relationship should agree with each other in terms of some categories.62. syntagmatic relation between one item and others in a sequence,or between elements which are all present.63.paradigmatic relation: a relation holding between elements replaceable with each other at a particular place in a structure,or between one element present and he others absent.64.immediate constituent analysis: the analysis of a sentence in terms of its immediate constituents---word groups(or phrases),which are in trun analyzed into the immediate constituents of their own,and the process goes on until the ultimate constituents are reached.65.endocentric construction: one construction whose distribution is functionally equivalent,or approaching equivalence,to one of its constituents,which serves as the centre,or head, of the whole.Hence an endocentric construction is also known as a headed construction.66.exocentric construction: a construction whose distribution is not functionally equivalent to any to any of its constituents.67.deep structure: the abstract representation of the syntactic properties of a construction,i.e.the underlying level of structural relations between its different constituents ,such sa the relation between,the underlying subject and its verb,or a verb and its object.68.surfacte structure: the final stage in the syntactic derivation of a construction,which closely corresponds to the structural organization of a construction people actually produce and receive. 69.c-command: one of the similarities,or of the more general features, in these two government relations,is technically called constituent command,c-command for short.ernment and binding theory: it is the fourth period of development Chomsky’s TG Grammar, which consists of X-bar theme: the basis,or the starting point,of the utterance.municative dynamism: the extent to which the sentence element contributes to the development of the communication.72.ideational function: the speaker’s experience of the real world,including the inner world of his own consciousness.73. interpersonal function: the use of language to establish and maintain social relations: for the expression of social roles,which include the communication roles created by language itself;and also for getting things done,by means of the interaction between one person and another..74.textual function: the use of language the provide for making links with itself and with features of the situation in which it is used.75.conceptual meaning: the central part of meaning, which contains logical,cognitive,or denotative content.76.denotation: the core sense of a word or a phrade that relates it to phenomena in the real world.77.connotation: a term in a contrast with denotation,meaning the properties of the entity a word denotes.78.reference: the use of language to express a propostion,meaning the properties of the entity a word denotes.79.reference: the use of anguage to express a proposition,i.e. to talk about things in context.80.sense: the literal meaning of a word or an expression,independent of situational context.81.synonymy: is the technical name for the sameness relation.plentary antonymy: members of a pair in complementary antonymy are complementary to each field completely,such as male,female,absent.83.gradable antongymy: members of this kind are gradable,such aslong:short,big;small,fat;thin,etc.84.converse antonymy: a special kind of antonymy in that memembers of a pair do not constitutea positive-negative opposition,such as buy;sell,lend,borrow,above,below,etc.85.relational opposites:converse antonymy in reciprocal social roles,kinship relations,temporal and spatial relations.There are always two entities involved.One presupposes the other. Theshorter,better;worse.etc are instances of relational opposites.86.hyponymy: a relation between tow words,in which the meaning of one word(the superordinate)is included in the meaning of another word(the hyponym)87.superordinate: the upper term in hyponymy,i.e.the class name.A superordinate usually has several hyponyms.Under animal,for example,there are cats,dogs,pigs,etc,88.semantic component: a distinguishable element of meaning in a word with twovalues,e.g<+human>positionality: a principle for sentence analysis, in which the meaning of a sentence depends on the meanings of the constituent words and the way they are combined.90.selection restriction:semantic restrictions of the noun phrases that a particular lexical item can take,e.g.regret requires a human subject.91.prepositional logic: also known as prepositional calculus or sentential calculus,is the study of the truth conditions for propositions:how the truth of a composite propositions and the connection between them.92.proposition;what is talk about in an utterance,that part of the speech act which has to do with reference.93.predicate logic: also predicate calculus,which studies the internal structure of simple.94.assimilation theory: language(sound,word,syntax,etc)change or process by which features of one element change to match those of another that precedes or follows.95.cohort theory: theory of the perception of spoken words proposed in the mid-1980s.It saaumesa “recognition lexicon”in which each word is represented by a full and independent”recognistion element”.When the system receives the beginning of a relevant acoustic signal,all elements matching it are fully acticated,and,as more of the signal is received,the system tries to match it independently with each of them,Wherever it fails the element is deactivated;this process continues until only one remains active.96.context effect: this effect help people recognize a word more readily when the receding words provide an appropriate context for it.97.frequency effect: describes the additional ease with which a word is accessed due to its more frequent usage in language.98.inference in context: any conclusion drawn from a set of proposition,from something someone has said,and so on.It includes things that,while not following logically,are implied,in an ordinarysense,e.g.in a specific context.99.immediate assumption: the reader is supposed to carry out the progresses required to understand each word and its relationship to previous words in the sentence as soon as that word in encountered.nguage perception:language awareness of things through the physical senses,esp,sight. nguage comprehension: one of the three strand of psycholinguistic research,which studies the understanding of language.nguage production: a goal-directed activety,in the sense that people speak and write in orde to make friends,influence people,convey information and so on.nguage production: a goal-directed activity,in the sense that people speak and write in order to make friends,influence people,concey information and so on.104.lexical ambiguity:ambiguity explained by reference to lexical meanings:e.g.that of I saw a bat,where a bat might refer to an animal or,among others,stable tennis bat.105.macroproposition:general propositions used to form an overall macrostructure of the story. 106.modular:which a assumes that the mind is structuied into separate modules or components,each governed by its own principles and operating independently of others.107.parsing:the task of assigning words to parts of speech with their appropriateaccidents,traditionally e.g.to pupils learning lat in grammar.108.propositions:whatever is seen as expressed by a sentence which makes a statement.It is a property of propositions that they have truth values.109.psycholinguistics: is concerned primarily with investigating the psychological reality of linguistic structure.Psycholinguistics can be divided into cognitive psycholing uistics(being concerned above all with making inferences about the content of human mind,and experimental psycholinguistics(being concerned somehow whth empirical matters,such as speed of response to a particular word).110.psycholinguistic reality: the reality of grammar,etc.as a purported account of structures represented in the mind of a speaker.Often opposed,in discussion of the merits of alternative grammars,to criteria of simplicity,elegance,and internal consistency.111.schemata in text: packets of stored knowledge in language processing.112.story structure: the way in which various parts of story are arranged or organized.113.writing process: a series of actions or events that are part of a writing or continuingdevelopmeng.municative competence: a speaker’s knowledge of the total set ofrules,conventions,erning the skilled use of language in a society.Distinguished by D.Hymes in the late 1960s from Chomsley’s concept of competence,in the restricted sense of knowledge of a grammar.115.gender difference: a difference in a speech between men and women is”genden difference”116.linguistic determinism: one of the two points in Sapir-Whorf hypothesis,nguage determines thought.117.linguistic relativity: one of the two points in Spir-Whorf hypotheis,i.e.there’s no limit to the structural diversity of languages.118.linguistic sexism:many differences between me and women in language use are brought about by nothing less than women’s place in society.119.sociolinguistics of language: one of the two things in sociolinguistics,in which we want to look at structural things by paying attention to language use in a social context.120.sociolinguistics of society;one of the two things in sociolinguistics,in which we try to understand sociological things of society by examining linguistic phenomena of a speaking community. 121.variationist linguistics: a branch of linguistics,which studies the relationship between speakers’social starts and phonological variations.122.performative: an utterance by which a speaker does something does something,as apposed to a constative,by which makes a statement which may be true or false.123.constative: an utterance by which a speaker expresses a proposition which may be true or false. 124.locutionary act: the act of saying something;it’s an act of conveying literal meaning by means of syntax,lexicon,and ly.,the utterance of a sentence with determinate sense and reference.125.illocutionary act: the act performed in saying something;its force is identical with the speaker’s intention.126.perlocutionary act: the act performed by or resulting from saying something,it’s the consequence of,or the change brought about by the utterance.127.conversational implicature: the extra meaning not contained in the literalutterances,underatandable to the listener only when he shares the speaker’s knowledge or knowswhy and how he violates intentionally one of the four maxims of the cooperative principle.128.entailment:relation between propositions one of which necessarily follows from theother:e.g.”Mary is running”entails,among other things,”Mary is not standing still”.129.ostensive communication: a complete characterization of communication is that it is ostensive-infer-ential.municative principle of relevance:every act of ostensive communication communicates the presumption of its own optimal relevance.131.relevance: a property that any utterance,or a proposition that it communicates,must,in the nature of communication,necessarily have.132.Q-principle: one of the two principles in Horn’s scale,i.e.Make your contribution necessary (G.Relation,Quantity2,Manner);Say no more than you must(given Q).133.division of pragmatic labour: the use of a marked crelatively complex and/or expression when a corresponding unmarkeda(simpler,less”effortful”)alternate expression is available tends to be interpreted as conveying a marked message(one which the unmarked alternative would not or could not have conveyed).134.constraints on Horn scales:the hearer-based o-Principle is a sufficiency condition in the sense that information provided is the most the speaker is able to..135.third-person narrator: of the narrator is not a character in the fictional world,he or she is usually called a third –person narrator.136.I-narrator: the person who tells the story may also be a character in the fictional world of the story,relating the story after the event.137.direct speech: a kind of speech presentation in which the character said in its fullest form. 138.indirect speech: a kind of speech presentation in which the character said in its fullest form. 139.indirect speech: a kind of speech presentation which is an amalgam of direct speech.140.narrator’s repreaentation of speech acts: a minimalist kind of presentation in which a part of passage can be seen as a summery of a longer piece of discourse,and therefore even more backgruonded than indirect speech representation would be.141.narrator”srepresentation of thought acts: a kind of categories used by novelists to represent the thoughts of their of characters are exactly as that used to present speech acts.For example,,she considered his unpunctuality.142.indirect thought: a kind of categories used by novelist to represent the thoughts of their characters are exactly as that used to present indirect speech.For example,she thought that he woule be late.143.fee indirect speech: a further category which can occur,which is an amalgam of direct speech and indirect speech features.144.narrator’s representation of thought acts:a kind of the categories used by novelists to present the thoughts of therir characters are exactly the same as those used to represent a speech e.g.He spent the day thinking.145.indirect thought: a kind of categories used by novelist to represent the thoughts of their characters are exactly as that used to present indirect speech.For example,she thought that he would be late.146.fee indirect speech: a further category which can occur,which is an amalgam of direct speech and indirect speech features.147.narrator”s representation of thought: the categories used by novelists to present the thoughts of their characters are exactly the same as those used to represent a speech e.g.He spent the day thinking.148.free indirect thought: the categories used by novelists to represent the thoughts of their characters are exactly the same as those used to represent a speech,e.g.He was bound to be late. 149.direct thought: categories used by novelists to represent the thoughts of their characters are exactly the same as those used to represent a speech..puter system: the machine itself together with a keyboard,printer,screen,diskdrives,programs,etc.puter literacy: those people who have sufficient knowledge and skill in the use of computers and computer software.puter linguistics: a branch of applied liguistics,dealing with computer processing of human language.153.Call: computer-assisted language learning(call),refers to the use of a computer in the teaching or learning of a second or foreign language.154.programnded instruction: the use of computers to monitor student progress,to direct students into appropriate lessons,material,etc.155.local area network: are computers linked together by cables in a classroom,lab,or building.They offer teachers a novel approach for creating new activities for students that provide more time and experience with target language.156.CD-ROM: computer disk-read only memory allows huge amount of information to be stored on one disk with quich access to the information.Students and teachers can access information quickly and efficiently for use in and out of the classroom.157.machine translation: refers to the use of machine(usually computer)to translate texts from one language to another.158.concordance: the use of computer to search for a particular word,sequence of words.or perhaps even a part of speech in a text.The computer can also receive all examples of a particular word,usually in a context,which is a further aid to the linguist.It can also calculate the number of occurrences of the word so that information on the frequency of the word may be gathered.159.annotation: if corpora is said to be unannotated-it appears in its existing raw state of plain text,whereas annotated corpora has been enhanced with various type of linguistic information, 160.annotation: if corpora is said to be unannotated—it appears in its existing raw state of plain text,whereas annotated corpora has been enhanced with various type of linguistic information. rmational retrieval: the term conventionally though somewhat inaccurately,applied to the type of actrvity discussed in this volume.An information retrieval system does not infor(i.e.change the knowledge of)the user on the subject of his inquiry.it merely informs on the existence(or non-existence)and whereabouts of documents relating to his request.162.document representative: information structure is concerned with exploiting relationships,between documents to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of retrieval strategies.It covers specifically a logical organization of information,such as document representatives,for the purpose of information retrieval.163.precision: the proportion of retrieval documents which are relevant.164.recall: the proportion of retrieval documents which are relevant.165.applied linguistics: applications of linguistics to study of second and foreign language learning and teaching,and other areas such as translation,the compiling of dictionaries,etcmunicative competence: as defined by Hymes,the knowledge and ability involved in putting language to communicative use.167.syllabus:the planning of course of instruction.It is a description of the cousr content,teaching procedures and learning experiences.168.interlanguage:the type of language constructed by second or foreign language learners who are still in the process of learning a language,i.e.the language system between the target language and the learner’s native language.169.transfer: the influence of mother tongue upon the second language.When structures of the two languages are similar,we can get positive transfer of facilitation;when the two languages are different in structures,negative transfer of inference occurs and result in errors.170.validity: the degree to which a test meansures what it is meant to measure.There are four kinds of validity,i.e.content validity,construct validity,empirical valiodity,and face validity.171.rebiability: can be defined as consistency.There are two kinds of reliability,i.e.stability reliability,and equiralence reliability.172.hypercorrection: overuse of a standard linguistic features,in terms of bothfrequency,i.e.overpassing the speakers of higher social status,and overshooting thetarget,i.e.extending the use of a form inalinguistic environment where it is not expected to occur,For example,pronouncing ideas as[ai’dier],extending pronouncing post-vocalic/r/ in an envorienment where it’s not supposed to occur.173.discrete point test: a kind of test in which language structures or skills are further divided into individual points of phonology,syntax and lexis.174.integrative test: a kind of test in which language structures or skills are further divided into individual points of phonology,syntax and lexis.。
语言学教程课后习题答案第一章资料(最新整理)
Chapter 1 Invitations to Linguistics1. Define the following terms:design feature: the distinctive features of human language that essentially make human language distinguishable from languages of animals.function: the role language plays in communication (e.g. to express ideas, attitudes) or in particular social situations (e.g. religious, legal).synchronic: said of an approach that studies language at a theoretical ‘point’ in time.diachronic: said of the study of development of language and languages over time. prescriptive: to make authoritarian statement about the correctness of a particular use of language.descriptive: to make an objective and systematic account of the patterns and use of a language or variety.arbitrariness: the absence of any physical correspondence between linguistic signals and the entities to which they refer.duality: the structural organization of language into two abstract levels: meaningful units (e.g. words) and meaningless segments (e.g. sounds, letters).displacement: the ability of language to refer to contexts removed from the speaker’s immediate situation.phatic communion: said of talk used to establish atmosphere or maintain social contact.metalanguage: a language used for talking about language.macrolinguistics: a broad conception of linguistic enquiry, including psychological, cultural, etc.competence: unconscious knowledge of the system of grammatical rules in a language.performance: the language actually used by people in speaking or writing.langue: the language system shared by a “speech community”.parole: the concrete utterances of a speaker.2. Consult at least four introductory linguistics textbooks (not dictionaries), and copy the definitions of “language” that each gives. After carefully comparing the definitions, write a paper discussing which points recur and explaining the significance of the similarities and differences among the definitions.ANSWER:All the definitions should not exclude the description of design features that have been mentioned in this course book. Also it will be better if other design features, say, interchangeability or cultural transmission is included. But it seems impossible to give an unimpeachable definition on language, because the facets people want to emphasize are seldom unanimous. To compare several definitions can make you realize where the argument is.3. Can you think of some words in English which are onomatopoeic?ANSWERS:creak: the sound made by a badly oiled door when it opens.cuckoo: the call of cuckoo.bang: a sudden loud noise.roar: a deep loud continuing sound.buzz: a noise of buzzing.hiss: a hissing sound.neigh: the long and loud cry that a horse makes.mew: the noise that a gull makes.bleat: the sound made by a sheep, goat or calf.4. Do you think that onomatopoeia indicates a non-arbitrary relationship between form and meaning?ANSWER:4. No matter you say "Yes" or "No", you cannot deny that onomatopoeia needs arbitrariness. Before we feel a word is onomatopoeic we should first know which sound the word imitates. Just as what is said in Chapter One, in order to imitate the noise of flying mosquitoes, there are many choices like "murmurous" and "murderous". They both bear more or less resemblance to the genuine natural sound, but "murmurous" is fortunately chosen to mean the noise while "murderous" is chosen to mean something quite different. They are arbitrary as signifiers.5. A story by Robert Louis Stevenson contains the sentence “As the night fell, the wind rose.” Could this be expressed as “As the wind rose, the night fell?” If not, why? Does this indicate a degree of non-arbitrariness about word order? (Bolinger, 1981: 15)5. Yes. It is a case in point to illustrate non-arbitrariness about word order. When the two parts interchange, the focus and the meaning of the sentence is forced to change, because clauses occurring in linear sequence without time indicators will be taken as matching the actual sequence of happening. The writer’s original intention is distorted, and we can feel it effortlessly by reading. That is why systemic-functionalists and American functionalists think language is not arbitrary at the syntactic level.6. Does the traffic light system have duality? Can you explain by drawing a simple graph?6. Traffic light does not have duality. Obviously, it is not a double-level system. There is only one-to-one relationship between signs and meaning but the meaning units cannot be divided into smaller meaningless elements further. So the traffic light only has the primary level and lacks the secondary level like animals’ calls.ANSWER:Red→stopGreen→goYellow→get ready to go or stop7. The recursive nature of language provides a theoretical basis for the creativity of language. Can you write a recursive sentence following the example in section 1.3.3.ANSWER:Today I encountered an old friend who was my classmate when I was in elementary school where there was an apple orchard in which we slid to select ripe apples that…8. Communication can take many forms, such as sign, speech, body language and facial expression. Do body language and facial expression share or lack the distinctive properties of human language?ANSWER:On a whole, body language and facial expression lack most of the distinctive properties of human language such as duality, displacement, creativity and so on. Body language exhibits arbitrariness a little bit. For instance, nod means "OK/YES" for us but in Arabian world it is equal to saying "NO". Some facial expressions have non-arbitrariness because they are instinctive such as the cry and laugh of a newborn infant.9. Do you agree with the view that no language is especially simple?ANSWER:Yes. All human languages are complicated systems of communication. It is decided by their shared design features.10. What do you think of Bertrand Russell’s observation of the dog language: “No matter how eloquently a dog may bark, he cannot tell you that his parents were poor but honest”? Are you familiar with any type of ways animals communicate among themselves and with human beings? ANSWER:When gazelles sense potential danger, for example, they flee and thereby signal to other gazellesin the vicinity that danger is lurking. A dog signals its wish to be let inside the house by barking and signals the possibility that it might bite momentarily by displaying its fangs.11.Can you mention some typical expressions of phatic communion in Chinese? There is the dialog between Ms. P and Ms. Q. in section 1.5.5. When someone sneezes violently, do you say anything of the nature of phatic communion? Have you noticed your parents or grandparents say something special on such an occasion?Some of the typical phatic expressions in Chinese are: 吃了吗？家里都好吧？这是去哪里啊？最近都挺好的？ANSWER:If someone is sneezing violently, maybe you parents and grandparents may say: “Are you ok?”, “Do you need to see a doctor?”, “Do you need some water?”, “Do you need a handkerchief?”, “Do you have a cold?” or something like these to show their concerns.12．There are many expressions in language which are metalingual or self-reflexives, namely, talking about talk and think about thinking, for instance, to be honest, to make a long story short, come to think of it, on second thought, can you collect a few more to make a list of these expressions? When do we use them most often?ANSWER:To tell the truth, frankly speaking, as a matter of fact, to be precise, in other words, that is to saySuch expressions are used most frequently when we want to expatiate the meaning of former clauses in anther way in argumentation.13. Comment on the following prescriptive rules. Do you think they are acceptable?(A) It is I.(B) It is me.You should say A instead of B because “be” should be followed by the nominative case, not the accusative according to the rules in Latin.(A) Who did you speak to?(B) Whom did you speak to?You should say B instead of A.(A) I haven't done anything.(B) I haven't done nothing.B is wrong because two negatives make a positive.ANSWER:(1) the Latin rule is not universal. In English, me is informal and I is felt to be very formal.(2) Whom is used in formal speech and in writing; who is more acceptable in informal speech.(3) Language does not have to follow logic reasoning. Here two negative only make a more emphatic negative. This sentence is not acceptable in Standard English not because it is illogical, but because language changes and rejects this usage now.14. The prescriptivism in grammar rules has now shifted to prescriptions in choice of words. In the “guidelines on anti-sexist language” issued by the British sociological association, someguidelines are listed below. Do you think they are descriptive and prescriptive? What’s your comment on them?(1) Do not use man to mean humanity in general. Use person, people, human beings, men and women, humanity and humankind.(2) colored: This term is regarded as outdated in the UK and should be avoided as it is generally viewed as offensive to many black people.(3) civilized: This term can still carry racist overtones which derive from a colonialist perception of the world. It is often associated with social Darwinist thought and is full of implicit value judgments and ignorance of the history of the non-industrialized world.ANSWER:They are undoubtedly descriptive. Guidelines are not rules that can determine whether a sentence is right or not. The guidelines advise you to avoid the use of particular words that are grammatically correct but offensive to some certain groups. Actually, they describe the way anti-sexist advocators speak and write.15. Why is the distinction between competence and performance an important one in linguistics? Do you think the line can be neatly drawn between them? How do you like the concept “communicative competence”?ANSWER:This is proposed by Chomsky in his formalist linguistic theories. It is sometimes hard to draw a strict line. Some researchers in applied linguistics think communicative competence may be a more revealing concept in language teaching than the purely theoretical pair—competence and performance.16. Which branch of linguistics do you think will develop rapidly in China and why?It is up to you to decide after you have gone through the whole book. At this stage, we suggest all branches of linguistics have the potential to flourish.17. The following are some well-known ambiguous sentences in syntactic studies of language. Can you disambiguate them?The chicken is too hot to eat.Flying planes can be dangerous.ANSWER:The chicken is too hot to eat.The chicken meat is too hot, so it cannot be eaten at the moment.The chicken feels so hot (maybe after some intense aerobic exercises) that it cannot start eating and needs to calm down first.Flying planes can be dangerous.The ambiguity comes from "flying planes". It can be deciphered as "the planes that is flying" or "to fly planes".18. There are many reasons for the discrepancy between competence and performance in normal language users. Can you think of some of them?ANSWEREthnic background, socioeconomic status, region of the country, and physical state (such as intoxication, fatigue, distraction, illness) vary from individual to individual.19. What do these two quotes reveal about the different emphasis or perspectives of language studies?(1) A human language is a system of remarkable complexity. To come to know a human language would be an extraordinary intellectual achievement for a creature not specifically designed to accomplish this task. A normal child acquires this knowledge on relatively slight exposure and without specific training. He can then quite effortlessly make use of an intricate structure of specific rules and guiding principles to convey his thoughts and feelings to others, ... Thus language is a mirror of mind in a deep and significant sense. It is a product of human intelligence, created anew in each individual by operations that lie far beyond the reach of will or consciousness.(Noam Chomsky: Reflections on Language. 1975: 4)(2) It is fairly obvious that language is used to serve a variety of different needs, but until we examine its grammar there is no clear reason for classifying its uses in any particular way. However, when we examine the meaning potential of language itself, we find that the vast numbers of options embodied in it combine into a very few relatively independent “networks”; and these networks of options correspond to certain basic functions of language. This enables us to give an account of the different functions of language that is relevant to the general understanding of linguistic structure rather than to any particular psychological or sociological investigation. (M. A. K. Halliday, 1970: 142)ANSWER:The first quote shows children’s inborn ability of acquiring the knowledge of intricate structure of specific rules. It implies that the language user's underlying knowledge about the system of rules is the valuable object of study for linguists. The second attaches great importance to the functions of language. It regards the use of language as the choice of needed function. The meaning of language can be completely included by a few “networks” which is directly related to basic functions of language. It indicates the necessity to study the functions of language.20. You may be familiar with the following proverbs. How do you perceive them according to the arbitrariness and conventionality of language?The proof of the pudding is in the eating.Let sleeping dogs lie.You can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.Rome was not built in a day.When in Rome, do as the Romans do.All roads lead to Rome.ANSWER:20. Arbitrariness and conventionality derive from the choice of the subject matter. For example, in the “The proof of the pudding is in the eating.” The word “pudding” is selected arbitrarily, for we can use another word such as cheese instead of pudding without changing the associative meaning of the proverb. On the other hand, once such links between particular words and associativemeaning are fixed, it becomes a matter of conventionality.21. Give examples of situations in which a usage generally considered non-standard (e.g. ain’t) would be acceptable, even appropriate.ANSWER21. In the talks between intimate friends, one may say “gimme that!” instead of “give me that!” and “wachya doin’?” instead of “what are you doing?” and this list may go on.22. The following are some book titles of linguistics. Can you judge the diachronic and diachronic orientation just from the titles?English Examined: Two centuries of Comment on the Mother-Tongue.Protean Shape: A Study in Eighteenth-century Vocabulary and Usage.Pejorative Sense Development in English.The Categories and Types of Present-Day English Word-Formation.Language in the Inner City: Studies in the Black English Vernacular.ANSWER22. Synchronic:Protean Shape: A Study in Eighteenth-century Vocabulary and Usage.The Categories and Types of Present-Day English Word-Formation.Language in the Inner City: Studies in the Black English Vernacular.Diachronic:English Examined: Two centuries of Comment on the Mother-Tongue.Pejorative Sense Development in English。
刘润清《新编语言学教程》笔记和课后习题(含考研真题)详解(1-6章)【圣才出品】
第1章导言1.1复习笔记本章要点：1.The definition and main branches of linguistics study语言学的定义和研究的范围2.The definition and the origins of language语言的定义与起源3.The design feature and the function of language语言的特征和功能4.Some major concepts in linguistics语言学中重要的概念本章考点：1.有关语言学的常考考点(1)语言学的定义，现代语言学与传统语法学研究的区别。
(2)语言学中几组重要概念，每组两个概念的含义、区分及其意义。
(3)普通语言学的主要分支学科及各自的研究范畴。
(4)宏观语言学及应用语言学的主要分支及各自的研究范畴。
2.有关语言的常考考点(1)语言的定义；语言的基本特征(任意性、二重性、多产性、移位性、互换性、专门性和文化传递性)；(2)语言的功能(寒暄、指示、信息、疑问、表达、劝说和施为)；(3)语言的起源(叮咚说、唱歌说、哒哒说、汪汪、噗噗、哟嘿吼理论等。
)本章内容索引：I.Definition of linguisticsII.Linguistics vs.traditional grammarIII.Scope of linguistics1.Microlinguistics2.MacrolinguisticsIV.Definition of languageV.Origins of language1.Ding-Dong Theory2.Sing-Song Theory3.Pooh-Pooh Theory4.Yo-He-Ho Theory5.Ta-Ta Theory6.Bow-Wow TheoryVI.Design features of language1.Arbitrariness2.Duality3.Productivity4.Interchangeability5.Displacement6.Specialization7.Cultural transmissionVII.Functions of language1.Phatic function/communion2.Directive functionrmative function4.Interrogative function5.Expressive function6.Evocative function7.Performative functionVIII.Some major concepts in linguistics1.Descriptive and prescriptive grammar2.Synchronic and diachronic linguisticsngue and parolepetence and performance5.Syntagmatic and paradigmatic relations6.Functionalism and formalismI.Definition of linguistics(语言学的定义)【考点：名词解释】The scientific or systemic study of language,which is always guided by the-three canons ofscience:exhaustiveness,consistency and economy.语言学是对语言的科学或系统的研究。
语言学教程复习题与答案一
语言学教程复习题与答案一语言学教程复习题与答案(胡壮麟版第一章)Chapter I IntroductionI. Decide whether each of the following statements is True or False:1. Linguistics is generally defined as the scientific study of language.2. Linguistics studies particular language, not languages in general.3. A scientific study of language is based on what the linguist thinks.4. In the study of linguistics, hypotheses formed should be based on languagefacts and checked against the observed facts.5. General linguistics is generally the study of language as a whole.6. General linguistics, which relates itself to the research of other areas, studiesthe basic concepts, theories, descriptions, models and methods applicable inany linguistic study. 7.7. Phonetics is different from phonology in that the latter studies thecombinations of the sounds to convey meaning in communication.8. Morphology studies how words can be formed to produce meaningfulsentences.9. The study of the ways in which morphemes can becombined to form words iscalled morphology.10. Syntax is different from morphology in that the former not only studies themorphemes, but also the combination of morphemes into words and words intosentences.11. The study of meaning in language is known as semantics.12. Both semantics and pragmatics study meanings.13. Pragmatics is different from semantics in that pragmatics studies meaning notin isolation, but in context.14. Social changes can often bring about language changes.15. Sociolinguistics is the study of language in relation to society.16. Modern linguistics is mostly prescriptive, but sometimes descriptive.17. Modern linguistics is different from traditional grammar.18. A diachronic study of language is the description of language at some point intime.19. Modern linguistics regards the written language as primary, not the writtenlanguage.20. The distinction between competence and performance was proposed by F.deSaussure.II. Fill in each of the following blanks with one word which begins with the lettergiven:21. Chomsky defines “competence”as the ideal user’s k__________ of the rulesof his language./doc/8c745149.html,ngue refers to the a__________ linguistic system shared by all the members of a speech community while the parole is the concrete use of the conventions andapplication of the rules.23.D_________ is one of the design features of human language which refers to thepheno广告网址n that language consists of two levels: a lower level of meaninglessindividual sounds and a higher level of meaningful units.24. Language is a system of a_________ vocal symbols used for human communication.25. The discipline that studies the rules governing the formation of words into permissible sentences in languages is called s________.26. Human capacity for language has a g ____ basis, but the details of language have to be taught and learned.27. P ____ refers to the realization of langue in actual use.28. Findings in linguistic studies can often be applied to the settlement of some practical problems. The study of such applications is generally known as a________ linguistics.29. Language is p___________ in that it makes possible the construction and interpretation of new signals by its users. In other words, they can produce and understand an infinitely large number of sentences which they have never heard before.30. Linguistics is generally defined as the s ____ study of language.III. There are four choices following each statement. Mark the choice that can bestcomplete the statement.31. If a linguistic study describes and analyzes the language people actually use, itis said to be ______________.A. prescriptiveB. analyticC. descriptiveD. linguistic32.Which of the following is not a design feature of human language?A. ArbitrarinessB. DisplacementC. DualityD. Meaningfulness33. Modern linguistics regards the written language as ____________.A. primaryB. correctC. secondaryD. stable34. In modern linguistics, speech is regarded as more basic than writing, because___________. A. in linguistic evolution, speech is prior to writingB. speech plays a greater role than writing in terms of the amount of informationconveyed. C. speech is always the way in which every native speaker acquires hismother tongueD. All of the above35. A historical study of language is a ____ study of language.A. synchronicB. diachronicC. prescriptiveD. comparative36.Saussure took a (n)__________ view of language, while Chomsky looks at language from a ________ point of view.A. sociological…psychologicalB. psychological…sociologicalC. applied…pragmaticD.semantic and linguistic37. According to F. de Saussure, ____ refers to the abstract linguistic system shared by all the members of a speech community.A. paroleB. performanceC. langueD. Language38. Language is said to be arbitrary because there is no logical connection between_________ and meanings.A. senseB. soundsC. objectsD. ideas39. Language can be used to refer to contexts removed from the immediate situations of the speaker. This feature is called_________,A. displacementB. dualityC. flexibilityD. cultural transmission40. The details of any language system is passed on from one generation to the next through ____ , rather than by instinct.A. learningB. teachingC. booksD. both A and BIV. Define the following terms:41. Linguistics 42. Phonology 43. Syntax 44. Pragmatics 45. Psycholinguistics 46. Language 47. Phonetics 48. Morphology 49.Semantics 50. Sociolinguistics 51. Applied Linguistics 52.Arbitrariness 53 Productivity 54. Displacement 55.Duality 56. Design Features 57. Competence 58 Performance 59. Langue 60 ParoleV. Answer the following questions as comprehensively as possible. Give examples for illustration if necessary:61. Language is generally defined as a system of arbitrary vocal symbols used for human communication. Explain it in detail.62. What are the design features of human language? Illustrate them with examples.63. How is modern linguistics different from traditional grammar?64. How do you understand the distinction between a synchronic study and a diachronic study?65. Why does modern linguistics regard the spoken form of language as primary,not the written?66. What are the major distinctions between langue andparole?67. How do you understand competence and performance ?68. Saussure’s distinction between langue and parole seems similar to Chomsky’s distinction between competence and performance. What do you think are their major differences?69. Do you think human language is entirely arbitrary? Why?I. Decide whether each of the following statements is True or False:l.T 2.F 3.F 4.T 5.T 6.F 7.T 8.F 9.T 10.F 11.T 12.T 13.T 14.T 15. T 16.F 17.T 18.F 19.F 20.FII. Fill in each of the following blanks with one word which begins with the le tter given: 21. knowledge 22. abstract 23. Duality 24. arbitrary 25. syntax 26.genetic 27. Parole 28. applied 29. productive 30. scientific (or systematic)III. There are four choices following each statement. Mark the choice that can best complete the statement. 3l.C 32.D 33.C 34.D35.B 36.A 37.C 38.B 39.A 40.DIV. Define the following terms: 41. Linguistics: Linguistics is generally definedas the scientific study of language. 42. Phonology: The study of how soundsare put together and used in communication is called phonology. 43. Syntax: The study of how morphemes and words are combined to form sentences is calledsyntax. 44.Pragmatics: The study of meaning in context ofuse is calledpragmatics. 45. Psycholinguistics: The study of language with reference tothe workings of mind is called psycholinguistics. 46. Language: Language is a system of arbitrary vocal symbols used for human communication.47. Phonetics: The study of sounds which are used in linguistic communication iscalled phonetics. 48. Morphology: The study of the way in which morphemesare arranged to form words is called morphology. 49. Semantics: Thestudy of meaning in language is called semantics. 50. Sociolinguistics:The study of language with reference to society is called sociolinguistics.51. Applied linguistics: In a narrow sense, applied linguistics refers to theapplication of linguistic principles and theories to language teaching and learning,especially the teaching of foreign and second languages. In a broad sense, it refersto the application of linguistic findings to the solution of practical problems such asthe recovery of speech ability. 52. Arbitrariness: It is one of the designfeatures of language. It means that there is no logical connection betweenmeanings and sounds 53. Productivity: Language is productive or creative inthat it makes possible the con-struction and interpretation of new signals by itsusers. 54. Displacement: Displacement means that language can be usedto refer to things which are present or not present, real or imagined matters in thepast, present, or future, or in far-away places. In other words, language can be usedto refer to contexts removed from the immediate situations of the speaker55. Duality: The duality nature of language means that language is a system, whichconsists of two sets of structure, or two levels, one of sounds and the other ofmeanings. 56. Design features: Design features refer to the definingproperties of human language that distinguish it from any animal system ofcommunication 57. Competence: Chomsky defines competence as the idealuser's knowledge of the rules of his language, 58. Performance: performance isthe actual realization of the knowl-edge of the rules in linguistic communication.59. langue : Langue refers to the abstract linguistic system shared by all the members of a speech community; Langue is the set of conventions and rule s which language users all have to follow; Langue is relatively stable, it does not change frequently 60. Parole: Parole refers to the realization of lang ue in actual use; parole is the concrete use of the conventions and the appli cationof the rules; parole varies from person to person, and from situation t o situation.V. Answer the following questions as comprehensively as possible. Give exam ples for illustration if necessary:61. Language is generally defined as a system of arbitrary vocal symbols used for human communication. Explain it in detail.First of all, language is a sys tem, because elements of language are combined according to rules. Secondl y, language is arbitrary because there is no intrinsic connection between form and meaning, or between the sign and what it stands for. Different language s have different words for the same object in the world. This fact is a good i llustration of the arbitrary nature of language. This also explains the symbolic nature of language: words are just symbols; they are associated with object s, actions, ideas, etc. by convention . Thirdly, language is vocal because the primary medium is sound for all languages, no matter how well - developed t heir writing systems are. The term "human" in the definition indicates that l anguage is possessed by human beings only and is very different from the c ommunication systems of other living creatures. The term "communication" m eans that language makes it possible for its users to talk to each other and fulfill their communicative needs.62. What are the design features of human language? Illustrate them with ex amples. 1) Arbitrariness As mentioned earlier, the arbitrary property of langu age means that there is no logical connection between meanings and sounds. For instance,there is no necessary relationship between the word elephant and the animal it symbolizes. In addition, different sounds are used to refer t o the same object in different languages, and even within the same language, the same sound does not refer to the same thing. However, language is not entirelyarbitrary. There are words which are created in the imitation of sound s by sounds, such as crash, bang in English. Besides, some compound word s are also not entirely arbitrary. But the non-arbitrary words are quite limited in number. The arbitrary nature of language makes it possible for language to have an unlimited source of expressions. 2) Productivity Language is prod uctive or creative in that it makes possible the construction and interpretation of new signals by its users. This is why they can produce and understand a n infinitely large number of sentences, including sentences that they have ne ver said or heard before. They can send messages which no one else has ev er sent before. Productivity is unique to human language. Most animal comm unication systems appear to be highly restricted with respect to the number of different signals that their users can send and receive. 3) Duality The du ality nature of language means that language is a system, which consists of two sets of structure, or two levels, one of sounds and the other of meaning s. At the lower or the basic level, there is the structure of sounds, which are meaningless, discrete, individual sounds. But the sounds of language can be combined according to rules into units of meaning such as morphemes and words, which, at the higher level, can be arranged into sentences. This duality of structure or double articulation of language enables its users to talk abou t anything within their knowledge. No animal communication system has duali ty or even comes near to possessing it. 4)Displacement Displacement mea ns that language can be used to refer to things which are present or not present, real or imagined matters in the past, present, or future, or in far-away p laces. In other words, language can be used to refer to contexts removed fro m the immediate situations of the speaker. Animal calls are mainly uttered in response to immediate changes of situation. 5) Cultural transmission Huma n beings were born with the ability to acquire language, but the details of an y language are not genetically transmitted or passed down by instinct. They have to be taught and learned, but animal call systems are genetically transmi tted.63. How is modern linguistics different from traditional grammar? Traditional gram-mar is prescriptive; it is based on "high "(religious, literary) writte n language. It sets grammatical rules and imposes the rules on language users. But Modern linguistics is descriptive; It collects authentic, and mai nly spoken language data and then it studies and describes the data in a n objective and scientific way.64. How do you understand the distinction between a synchronic study anda diachronic study? The description of a language at some point in timeis a Synchronic study; the description of a language as it changes throu gh time is a diachronic study. A synchronic study of language describesa language as it is at some particular point in time, while a diachronic study of language is the study of the historical development of language o ver a period of time.65. Why does modern linguistics regard the spoken form of language as primary, not the written? First, the spoken form is prior to the writ-ten for m and most writing systems are derived from the spoken form of langua ge. Second, the spoken form plays a greater role than writing in terms of the amount of information conveyed and it serves a wider range of purp oses Finally, the spoken form is the medium through which we acquire o ur mother tongue.66. What are the major distinctions between langue and parole? The distinction between langue, and parole was made by the famous linguist Ferdinand de Saussure early this century. Langue refers to the abstract linguisticsystem shared by all the members of a speech community, and parole ref ers to the realization of langue in actual use. Langue is the set of conve ntions and rules which language users all have to follow while parole is t he concrete use of the conventions and the application of the rules. Lang ue is abstract; it is not the language people actually use, but parole is c oncrete; it refers to the naturally occurring language events. Langue is rel atively stable; it does not change frequently; while parole varies from per son to person, and from situation to situation.67. How do you understand competence and performance? American linguist N. Chomsky in the late 1950’s proposed the distinction between comp etence and performance. Chomsky defines competence as the ideal user’s knowledge of the rules of hislanguage. This internalized set of rules e nables the language user to produce and understand an infinitely large n umber of sentences and recognize sentences that are ungrammatical and ambiguous. According to Chomsky, performance is the actual realization of this knowledge in linguistic communication. Although the speaker’s knowledge of his mother tongue is perfect, his performances may have mista kes because of social and psychological factors such as stress, embarras sment, etc.. Chomsky believes that what linguists should study is the co mpetence, which is systematic, not the performance, which is too haphaz ard.68. Saussure’s distinction between langue and parole seems similar to Chomsky’s distinction between competence and performance. What do you thi nk are their major differences? Although Saussure’s distinction and Cho msky’s are very similar, they differ at least in that Saussure took a soci ological view of language and his notion of langue is a mater of social c onventions, and Chomsky looks at language from a psychological point of vies and to him, competence is a property of the mind of each individual.69. Do you think human language is entirely arbitrary? Why? Language isarbitrary in nature, it is not entirely arbitrary, because there are a limited number of words whose connections between forms and meanings can be logically explained to a certain extent, for example, theonomatopoeia,words which are coined on the basis of imitation of sounds by sounds s uch as bang, crash,etc.. Take compounds for another example. The two el ements “photo”and “copy”in “photocopy”are non-motivated, but t he compound is not arbitrary.语言学教程复习题与答案(胡壮麟版第二章)Chapter 2：PhonologyI. Decide whether each of the following statements is True or False:1. Voicing is a phonological feature that distinguishes meaning in both Chinese and English.2. If two phonetically similar sounds occur in the same environments and they distinguish meaning, they are said to be in complementary distribution.3. A phone is a phonetic unit that distinguishes meaning.4. English is a tone language while Chinese is not.5. In linguistic evolution, speech is prior to writing.6. In everyday communication, speech plays a greater role than writing in terms of the amount of information conveyed.7. Articulatory phonetics tries to describe the physical properties of thestream of sounds which a speaker issues with the help of a machinecalled spectrograph.8. The articulatory apparatus of a human being are containedin three important areas: the throat, the mouth and the chest.9. Vibration of the vocal cords results in a quality of speech sounds called voicing.10. English consonants can be classified in terms of place of articulationand the part of the tongue that is raised the highest.11. According to the manner of articulation, some of the types into whichthe consonants can be classified are stops, fricatives, bilabial and alv eolar.12. Vowel sounds can be differentiated by a number of factors: the position of tongue in the mouth, the openness of the mouth, the shape of the lips, and the length of the vowels.13. According to the shape of the lips, vowels can be classified into close vowels, semi-close vowels, semi-open vowels and open vowels.14. Any sound produced by a human being is a phoneme.15. Phones are the sounds that can distinguish meaning.16. Phonology is concerned with how the sounds can be classified into different categories.17. A basic way to determine the phonemes of a language is to see if substituting one sound for another results in a change of meaning.18. When two different forms are identical in every wayexcept for one sound segment which occurs in the same place in the strings, the two words are said to form a phonemic contrast.19. The rules governing the phonological patterning are language specific.20. Distinctive features of sound segments can be found running over asequence of two or more phonemic segments.II. Fill in each of the following blanks with one word which begins with t he letter given:21. A ____ refers to a strong puff of air stream in the production of speech sounds.22. A ____ phonetics describes the way our speech organs work to produce the speech sounds and how they differ.23. The four sounds /p/,/b/,/m/ and /w/ have one feature in common, i.e, they are all b_______ sounds.24. Of all the speech organs, the t ____ is the most flexible, and is responsible for varieties of articulation than any other.25. English consonants can be classified in terms of manner of articulation or in terms of p____ of articulation.26. When the obstruction created by the speech organs is total or complete, the speech sound produced with the obstruction audibly released a nd the air passing out again is called a s________.27. S_________ features are the phonemic features that occur above the level of the segments. They include stress, tone, intonation, etc.28. The rules that govern the combination of sounds in a particular language are called s ____ rules.29. The transcription of speech sounds with letter-symbols only is calledbroad transcription while the transcription with letter-symbols together with the diacritics is called n_________ transcription.30. When pitch, stress and sound length are tied to the sentence rather than the word in isolation, they are collectively known as i_________.31. P______ is a discipline which studies the system of sounds of a particular language and how sounds are combined into meaningful units t o effect linguistic communication.32. The articulatory apparatus of a human being are contained in three important cavities: the pharyngeal cavity, the o_______ cavity and the na sal cavity.33. T____ are pitch variations, which are caused by the differing rates ofvibration of the vocal cords and which can distinguish meaning just li ke phonemes.34. Depending on the context in which stress is considered, there are twokinds of stress: word stress and s_________ stressIII. There are four choices following each of the statements below. Mark t he choice that can best complete the statement.35. Of all the speech organs, the _______ is/ are the most flexible. A. mouth B. lips C. tongue D. vocal cords36. The sounds produced without the vocal cords vibrating are ____ sounds. A. voiceless B. voiced C. vowel D. consonantal37. __________ is a voiced alveolar stop.A. /z/B. /d/C. /k/D./b/38. The assimilation rule assimilates one sound to another by “copying”a feature of a sequential phoneme, thus making the two phones ____________. A. identical B. same C. exactly alike D. similar39. Since /p/ and /b/ are phonetically similar, occur in the same environments and they can distinguish meaning, they are said to be _________ __.A. in phonemic contrastB. in complementary distributionC. the allophonesD. minimal pair40. The sound /f/ is _________________. A. voiced palatal affricateB. voiced alveolar stopC. voiceless velar fricativeD. voiceless labiodental fricative41. A ____ vowel is one that is produced with the front part of the tongue maintaining the highest position. A. back B. central C. front D. middle42. Distinctive features can be found running over a sequence of two ormore phonemic segments. The phonemic features that occur above the level of the segments are called ____________. A. phonetic components B. immediate constituents C. suprasegmental features D. se mantic features43. A(n) ___________ is a unit that is of distinctive value. It is an abstractunit, a collection of distinctive phonetic features. A. phone B. so und C. allophone D. phoneme44. The different phones which can represent a phoneme in different phonetic environments are called the ____ of that phoneme. A. phones B. sounds C. phonemes D. allophonesIV. Define the terms below:45. phonology 46. phoneme 47.allophone 48. international phonetic alphabet 49. intonation 50. phonetics 51. auditory phonetics52. acoustic phonetics 53. phone 54. phonemic contrast 55. tone 56. minimal pairV. Answer the following questions as comprehensively as possible. Give ex-amples for illustration if necessary:57. Of the two media of language, why do you think speech is more basic than writing?58. What are the criteria that a linguist uses in classifying vowels?59. What are the major differences between phonology and phonetics?60. Illustrate with examples how suprasegmental features can affect meaning.61. In what way can we determine whether a phone is a phoneme or not?I. Decide whether each of the following statements is True or False:l.T 2.F 3.F 4.F 5.T 6.T 7.F 8.F 9.T 10.F 11.F 12.T 13.F 14.F 15.F 16. F 17. T 18. F 19. T 20. TII. Fill in each of the following blanks with one word which begin s with the letter given:21. Aspiration 22.Articulatory 23. bilabial 24. tongue 25. place 26. stop 27. Suprasegmental 28. sequential 29. narrow 30. intonation 31. P honology 32. oral 33. Tone 34. sentence III. There are four choices following each of the statements below.Mark the choice that can best complete the statement:35.C 36.A 37.B 38.D 39.A 40.D 41.C 42.C 43.D 44.DIV. Define the terms below:45.phonology: Phonology studies the system of sounds of a particular lan guage; it aims to discover how speech sounds in a language form patter ns and how these sounds are used to convey meaning in linguistic com munication.46. phoneme: The basic unit in phonology is called phoneme; it is a unitof distinctive value. But it is an abstract unit. To be exact, a phoneme is not a sound; it is a collection of distinctive phonetic features.47. allophone: The different phones which can represent a phoneme in different phonetic environments are called the allophones of that phoneme.48. international phonetic alphabet: It is a standardized and internationallyaccepted system of phonetic transcription.49. intonation: When pitch, stress and sound length are tied to the sentence rather than the word in isolation, they are collectively known as i ntonation.50.51. 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 languages52. auditory phonetics: It studies the speech sounds from the hearer's point of view. It studies how the sounds are perceived by the hear-er. 53. acoustic phonetics: It studies the speech sounds by looking at the sound waves. It studies the physical means by which speech sounds a re transmitted through the air from one person to another.54. phone : Phones can be simply defined as the speech sounds we usewhen speaking a language. A phone is a phonetic unit or segment. It does not necessarily distinguish meaning.55. phonemic contrast: Phonemic contrast refers to the relation between two phonemes. If two phonemes can occur in the same environment a nd distinguish meaning, they are in phonemic contrast.56. tone: T ones are pitch variations, which are caused by the differing rates of vibration of the vocal cords.57. minimal pair: When two different forms are identical in every way except for one sound segment which occurs in the same place in the stri ngs, the two words are said to form a minimal pair.V. Answer the following questions as comprehensively as possible. Give ex-amples for illustration if necessary:58. Of the two media of language, why do you think speech is more basic than writing? 1) In linguistic evolution, speech is prior to writing.。
语言学教程课后习题答案第一章
Chapter 1 Invitations to Linguistics1. Define the following terms:design feature: the distinctive features of human language that essentially make human language distinguishable from languages of animals.function: the role language plays in communication (e.g. to express ideas, attitudes) or in particular social situations (e.g. religious, legal).synchronic: said of an approach that studies language at a theoretical ‘point’ in time.diachronic: said of the study of development of language and languages over time. prescriptive: to make authoritarian statement about the correctness of a particular use of language.descriptive: to make an objective and systematic account of the patterns and use of a language or variety.arbitrariness: the absence of any physical correspondence between linguistic signals and the entities to which they refer.duality: the structural organization of language into two abstract levels: meaningful units (e.g. words) and meaningless segments (e.g. sounds, letters).displa cement: the ability of language to refer to contexts removed from the speaker’s immediate situation.phatic communion: said of talk used to establish atmosphere or maintain social contact.metalanguage: a language used for talking about language.macrolinguistics: a broad conception of linguistic enquiry, including psychological, cultural, etc.competence: unconscious knowledge of the system of grammatical rules in a language.performance: the language actually used by people in speaking or writing.l angue: the language system shared by a “speech community”.parole: the concrete utterances of a speaker.2. Consult at least four introductory linguistics textbooks (not dictionaries), and copy the definitions of “language” that each gives. After careful ly comparing the definitions, write a paper discussing which points recur and explaining the significance of the similarities and differencesamong the definitions.ANSWER:All the definitions should not exclude the description of design features that have been mentioned in this course book. Also it will be better if other design features, say, interchangeability or cultural transmission is included. But it seems impossible to give an unimpeachable definition on language, because the facets people want to emphasize are seldom unanimous. To compare several definitions can make you realize where the argument is.3. Can you think of some words in English which are onomatopoeic?ANSWERS:creak: the sound made by a badly oiled door when it opens.cuckoo: the call of cuckoo.bang: a sudden loud noise.roar: a deep loud continuing sound.buzz: a noise of buzzing.hiss: a hissing sound.neigh: the long and loud cry that a horse makes.mew: the noise that a gull makes.bleat: the sound made by a sheep, goat or calf.4. Do you think that onomatopoeia indicates a non-arbitrary relationship between form and meaning?ANSWER:4. No matter you say "Yes" or "No", you cannot deny that onomatopoeia needs arbitrariness. Before we feel a word is onomatopoeic we should first know which sound the word imitates. Just as what is said in Chapter One, in order to imitate the noise of flying mosquitoes, there are many choices like "murmurous" and "murderous". They both bear more or less resemblance to the genuine natural sound, but "murmurous" is fortunately chosen to mean the noise while "murderous" is chosen to mean something quite different. They are arbitrary as signifiers.5. A story by Robert Louis Stevenson contains the sentence “As the night fell, the wind rose.” Could this be expressed as “As the wind rose, the night fell?” If not, why? Does this indicate a degree of non-arbitrariness about word order? (Bolinger, 1981: 15)5. Yes. It is a case in point to illustrate non-arbitrariness about word order. When the two parts interchange, the focus and the meaning of the sentence is forced to change, because clauses occurring in linear sequence without time indicators will be taken as matching the actual sequence of happening. The writer’s original intention is distorted, and we c an feel it effortlessly by reading. That is why systemic-functionalists and American functionalists think language is not arbitrary at the syntactic level.6. Does the traffic light system have duality? Can you explain by drawing a simple graph?6. Traffic light does not have duality. Obviously, it is not a double-level system. There is only one-to-one relationship between signs and meaning but the meaning units cannot be divided into smaller meaningless elements further. So the traffic light only has the primary level and lacks the secondary level like animals’ calls.ANSWER:Red→stopGreen→goYellow→get ready to go or stop7. The recursive nature of language provides a theoretical basis for the creativity of language. Can you write a recursive sentence following the example in section 1.3.3.ANSWER:Today I encountered an old friend who was my classmate when I was in elementary school where there was an apple orchard in which we slid to select ripe apples that…8. Communication can take many forms, such as sign, speech, body language and facial expression. Do body language and facial expression share or lack the distinctive properties of human language?ANSWER:On a whole, body language and facial expression lack most of the distinctive properties of human language such as duality, displacement, creativity and so on. Body language exhibits arbitrariness a little bit. For instance, nod means "OK/YES" for us but in Arabian world it is equal to saying "NO". Some facial expressions have non-arbitrariness because they are instinctive such as the cry and laugh of a newborn infant.9. Do you agree with the view that no language is especially simple?ANSWER:Yes. All human languages are complicated systems of communication. It is decided by their shared design features.10. What do you think of Bertrand Russell’s observation of the dog language: “No matter how eloquently a dog may bark, he cannot tell you that his parents were poor but honest”? Are you familiar with any type of ways animals communicate among themselves and with human beings? ANSWER:When gazelles sense potential danger, for example, they flee and thereby signal to other gazelles in the vicinity that danger is lurking. A dog signals its wish to be let inside the house by barking and signals the possibility that it might bite momentarily by displaying its fangs.11.Can you mention some typical expressions of phatic communion in Chinese? There is the dialog between Ms. P and Ms. Q. in section 1.5.5. When someone sneezes violently, do you say anything of the nature of phatic communion? Have you noticed your parents or grandparents say something special on such an occasion?Some of the typical phatic expressions in Chinese are: 吃了吗？家里都好吧？这是去哪里啊？最近都挺好的？ANSWER:If someone is sneezing violently, ma ybe you parents and grandparents may say: “Are you ok?”, “Do you need to see a doctor?”, “Do you need some water?”, “Do you need a handkerchief?”, “Do you have a cold?” or something like these to show their concerns.12．There are many expressions in language which are metalingual or self-reflexives, namely, talking about talk and think about thinking, for instance, to be honest, to make a long story short, come to think of it, on second thought, can you collect a few more to make a list of these expressions? When do we use them most often?ANSWER:To tell the truth, frankly speaking, as a matter of fact, to be precise, in other words, that is to say Such expressions are used most frequently when we want to expatiate the meaning of former clauses in anther way in argumentation.13. Comment on the following prescriptive rules. Do you think they are acceptable?(A) It is I.(B) It is me.You should say A instead of B because “be” should be followed by the nominative case, not the accusative according to the rules in Latin.(A) Who did you speak to?(B) Whom did you speak to?You should say B instead of A.(A) I haven't done anything.(B) I haven't done nothing.B is wrong because two negatives make a positive.ANSWER:(1) the Latin rule is not universal. In English, me is informal and I is felt to be very formal.(2) Whom is used in formal speech and in writing; who is more acceptable in informal speech.(3) Language does not have to follow logic reasoning. Here two negative only make a more emphatic negative. This sentence is not acceptable in Standard English not because it is illogical, but because language changes and rejects this usage now.14. The prescriptivism in grammar rules has now shifted to prescriptions in choice of words. In the “guid elines on anti-sexist language” issued by the British sociological association, some guidelines are listed below. Do you think they are descriptive and prescriptive? What’s your comment on them?(1) Do not use man to mean humanity in general. Use person, people, human beings, men and women, humanity and humankind.(2) colored: This term is regarded as outdated in the UK and should be avoided as it is generally viewed as offensive to many black people.(3) civilized: This term can still carry racist overtones which derive from a colonialist perception of the world. It is often associated with social Darwinist thought and is full of implicit valuejudgments and ignorance of the history of the non-industrialized world.ANSWER:They are undoubtedly descriptive. Guidelines are not rules that can determine whether a sentence is right or not. The guidelines advise you to avoid the use of particular words that are grammatically correct but offensive to some certain groups. Actually, they describe the way anti-sexist advocators speak and write.15. Why is the distinction between competence and performance an important one in linguistics? Do you think the line can be neatly drawn between them? How do you like the concept “communicative competence”?ANSWER:This is proposed by Chomsky in his formalist linguistic theories. It is sometimes hard to draw a strict line. Some researchers in applied linguistics think communicative competence may be a more revealing concept in language teaching than the purely theoretical pair—competence and performance.16. Which branch of linguistics do you think will develop rapidly in China and why?It is up to you to decide after you have gone through the whole book. At this stage, we suggest all branches of linguistics have the potential to flourish.17. The following are some well-known ambiguous sentences in syntactic studies of language. Can you disambiguate them?The chicken is too hot to eat.Flying planes can be dangerous.ANSWER:The chicken is too hot to eat.The chicken meat is too hot, so it cannot be eaten at the moment.The chicken feels so hot (maybe after some intense aerobic exercises) that it cannot start eating and needs to calm down first.Flying planes can be dangerous.The ambiguity comes from "flying planes". It can be deciphered as "the planes that is flying" or "to fly planes".18. There are many reasons for the discrepancy between competence and performance in normal language users. Can you think of some of them?ANSWEREthnic background, socioeconomic status, region of the country, and physical state (such as intoxication, fatigue, distraction, illness) vary from individual to individual.19. What do these two quotes reveal about the different emphasis or perspectives of language studies?(1) A human language is a system of remarkable complexity. To come to know a human language would be an extraordinary intellectual achievement for a creature not specifically designed to accomplish this task. A normal child acquires this knowledge on relatively slight exposure andwithout specific training. He can then quite effortlessly make use of an intricate structure of specific rules and guiding principles to convey his thoughts and feelings to others, ... Thus language is a mirror of mind in a deep and significant sense. It is a product of human intelligence, created anew in each individual by operations that lie far beyond the reach of will or consciousness.(Noam Chomsky: Reflections on Language. 1975: 4)(2) It is fairly obvious that language is used to serve a variety of different needs, but until we examine its grammar there is no clear reason for classifying its uses in any particular way. However, when we examine the meaning potential of language itself, we find that the vast numbers of options e mbodied in it combine into a very few relatively independent “networks”; and these networks of options correspond to certain basic functions of language. This enables us to give an account of the different functions of language that is relevant to the general understanding of linguistic structure rather than to any particular psychological or sociological investigation. (M. A. K. Halliday, 1970: 142)ANSWER:The first quote shows children’s inborn ability of acquiring the knowledge of intricate structure of specific rules. It implies that the language user's underlying knowledge about the system of rules is the valuable object of study for linguists. The second attaches great importance to the functions of language. It regards the use of language as the choice of needed function. The meaning of language can be completely included by a few “networks” which is directly related to basic functions of language. It indicates the necessity to study the functions of language.20. You may be familiar with the following proverbs. How do you perceive them according to the arbitrariness and conventionality of language?The proof of the pudding is in the eating.Let sleeping dogs lie.You can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.Rome was not built in a day.When in Rome, do as the Romans do.All roads lead to Rome.ANSWER:20. Arbitrariness and conventionality derive from the choice of the subject matter. For example, in the “The proof of the pudding is in the eating.” The word “pudding” is selected arbitrarily, for w e can use another word such as cheese instead of pudding without changing the associative meaning of the proverb. On the other hand, once such links between particular words and associative meaning are fixed, it becomes a matter of conventionality.21. Give examples of situations in which a usage generally considered non-standard (e.g. ain’t) would be acceptable, even appropriate.ANSWER21. In the talks between intimate friends, one may say “gimme that!” instead of “give me that!” and “wachya doin’?” instead of “what are you doing?” and this list may go on.22. The following are some book titles of linguistics. Can you judge the diachronic and diachronic orientation just from the titles?English Examined: Two centuries of Comment on the Mother-Tongue.Protean Shape: A Study in Eighteenth-century V ocabulary and Usage.Pejorative Sense Development in English.The Categories and Types of Present-Day English Word-Formation.Language in the Inner City: Studies in the Black English Vernacular.ANSWER22. Synchronic:Protean Shape: A Study in Eighteenth-century V ocabulary and Usage.The Categories and Types of Present-Day English Word-Formation.Language in the Inner City: Studies in the Black English Vernacular.Diachronic:English Examined: Two centuries of Comment on the Mother-Tongue.Pejorative Sense Development in English。
语言学教程复习题与答案(胡壮麟版)1
语言学教程复习题与答案(胡壮麟版第一章)Chapter I Introduction I. Decide whether each of the following statements is True or False:1. Linguistics is generally defined as the scientific study of language.2. Linguistics studies particular language, not languages in general.3. A scientific study of language is based on what the linguist thinks.4. In the study of linguistics, hypotheses formed should be based on language facts andchecked against the observed facts.5. General linguistics is generally the study of language as a whole.6. General linguistics, which relates itself to the research of other areas, studies the basicconcepts, theories, descriptions, models and methods applicable in any linguistic study. 7.7. Phonetics is different from phonology in that the latter studies the combinations of thesounds to convey meaning in communication.8. Morphology studies how words can be formed to produce meaningful sentences.9. The study of the ways in which morphemes can be combined to form words is calledmorphology.10. Syntax is different from morphology in that the former not only studies the morphemes, butalso the combination of morphemes into words and words into sentences.11. The study of meaning in language is known as semantics.12. Both semantics and pragmatics study meanings.13. Pragmatics is different from semantics in that pragmatics studies meaning not in isolation,but in context.14. Social changes can often bring about language changes.15. Sociolinguistics is the study of language in relation to society.16. Modern linguistics is mostly prescriptive, but sometimes descriptive.17. Modern linguistics is different from traditional grammar.18. A diachronic study of language is the description of language at some point in time.19. Modern linguistics regards the written language as primary, not the written language.20. The distinction between competence and performance was proposed by F.de Saussure.II. Fill in each of the following blanks with one word which begins with the letter given:21. Chomsky defines “competence”as the ideal user’s k__________ of the rules of his language.ngue refers to the a__________ linguistic system shared by all the members of a speech community while the parole is the concrete use of the conventions and application of the rules.23.D_________ is one of the design features of human language which refers to the pheno广告网址n that language consists of two levels: a lower level of meaningless individual sounds and a higher level of meaningful units.24. Language is a system of a_________ vocal symbols used for human communication.25. The discipline that studies the rules governing the formation of words into permissible sentences in languages is called s________.26. Human capacity for language has a g ____ basis, but the details of language have to be taught and learned.27. P ____ refers to the realization of langue in actual use.28. Findings in linguistic studies can often be applied to the settlement of some practical problems. The study of such applications is generally known as a________ linguistics.29. Language is p___________ in that it makes possible the construction and interpretation of new signals by its users. In other words, they can produce and understand an infinitely large number of sentences which they have never heard before.30. Linguistics is generally defined as the s ____ study of language.III. There are four choices following each statement. Mark the choice that can best complete the statement.31. If a linguistic study describes and analyzes the language people actually use, it is said to be ______________.A. prescriptiveB. analyticC. descriptiveD. linguistic 32.Which of the following is not a design feature of human language?A. ArbitrarinessB. DisplacementC. DualityD. Meaningfulness33. Modern linguistics regards the written language as ____________.A. primaryB. correctC. secondaryD. stable34. In modern linguistics, speech is regarded as more basic than writing, because ___________. A. in linguistic evolution, speech is prior to writingB. speech plays a greater role than writing in terms of the amount of information conveyed.C. speech is always the way in which every native speaker acquires his mother tongueD. All of the above35. A historical study of language is a ____ study of language.A. synchronicB. diachronicC. prescriptiveD. comparative36.Saussure took a (n)__________ view of language, while Chomsky looks at language from a ________ point of view.A. sociological…psychologicalB. psychological…sociologicalC. applied…pragmaticD.semantic and linguistic37. According to F. de Saussure, ____ refers to the abstract linguistic system shared by all the members of a speech community.A. paroleB. performanceC. langueD. Language38. Language is said to be arbitrary because there is no logical connection between _________ and meanings.A. senseB. soundsC. objectsD. ideas39. Language can be used to refer to contexts removed from the immediate situations of the speaker. This feature is called_________,A. displacementB. dualityC. flexibilityD. cultural transmission40. The details of any language system is passed on from one generation to the next through ____ , rather than by instinct.A. learningB. teachingC. booksD. both A and BIV. Define the following terms:41. Linguistics 42. Phonology 43. Syntax 44. Pragmatics 45. Psycholinguistics 46. Language 47. Phonetics 48. Morphology 49.Semantics 50. Sociolinguistics 51. Applied Linguistics 52.Arbitrariness 53 Productivity 54. Displacement 55.Duality 56. Design Features 57. Competence 58 Performance 59. Langue 60 ParoleV. Answer the following questions as comprehensively as possible. Give examples for illustration if necessary:61. Language is generally defined as a system of arbitrary vocal symbols used for human communication. Explain it in detail.62. What are the design features of human language? Illustrate them with examples.63. How is modern linguistics different from traditional grammar?64. How do you understand the distinction between a synchronic study and a diachronic study?65. Why does modern linguistics regard the spoken form of language as primary, not the written?66. What are the major distinctions between langue and parole?67. How do you understand competence and performance ?68. Saussure’s distinction between langue and parole seems similar to Chomsky’s distinction between competence and performance. What do you think are their major differences?69. Do you think human language is entirely arbitrary? Why?I. Decide whether each of the following statements is True or False:l.T 2.F 3.F 4.T 5.T 6.F 7.T 8.F 9.T 10.F 11.T 12.T 13.T 14.T 15.T 16.F 17.T 18.F 19.F 20.FII. Fill in each of the following blanks with one word which begins with the letter given: 21. knowledg e 22. abstract 23. Duality 24. arbitrary 25. syntax 26.genetic 27. Parole 28. applied 29. productiv e 30. scientific (or systematic)III. There are four choices following each statement. Mark the choice that can best complete the state ment. 3l.C 32.D 33.C 34.D 35.B 36.A 37.C 38.B 39.A 40.DIV. Define the following terms: 41. Linguistics: Linguistics is generally defined as the scientific study of language. 42. Phonology: The study of how sounds are put together and used in communication is called phonology. 43. Syntax: The study of how morphemes and words are combined to form sentences is called syntax. 44.Pragmatics: The study of meaning in context of use is called pragmatics.45. Psycholinguistics: The study of language with reference to the workings of mind is called psycholinguistics. 46. Language: Language is a system of arbitrary vocal symbols used for human communication. 47. Phonetics: The study of sounds which are used in linguistic communication is called phonetics. 48. Morphology: The study of the way in which morphemes are arranged to form words is called morphology. 49. Semantics: The study of meaning in language is called semantics.50. Sociolinguistics: The study of language with reference to society is called sociolinguistics.51. Applied linguistics: In a narrow sense, applied linguistics refers to the application of linguistic principles and theories to language teaching and learning, especially the teaching of foreign and second languages. In a broad sense, it refers to the application of linguistic findings to the solution of practical problems such as the recovery of speech ability. 52. Arbitrariness: It is one of the design features of language. It means that there is no logical connection between meanings and sounds 53. Productivity: Language is productive or creative in that it makes possible the con-struction and interpretation of new signals by its users.54. Displacement: Displacement means that language can be used to refer to things which are present or not present, real or imagined matters in the past, present, or future, or in far-away places. In other words, language can be used to refer to contexts removed from the immediate situations of the speaker 55. Duality: The duality nature of language means that language is a system, which consists of two sets of structure, or two levels, one of sounds and the other of meanings. 56. Design features: Design features refer to the defining properties of human language that distinguish it from any animal system of communication57. Competence: Chomsky defines competence as the ideal user's knowledge of the rules of his language,58. Performance: performance is the actual realization of the knowl-edge of the rules in linguistic communication.59. langue : Langue refers to the abstract linguistic system shared by all the members of a speech co mmunity; Langue is the set of conventions and rules which language users all have to follow; Langue is relatively stable, it does not change frequently 60. Parole: Parole refers to the realization of la ngue in actual use; parole is the concrete use of the conventions and the application of the rules; par ole varies from person to person, and from situation to situation.V. Answer the following questions as comprehensively as possible. Give examples for illustration if nec essary:61. Language is generally defined as a system of arbitrary vocal symbols used for human communicati on. Explain it in detail.First of all, language is a system, because elements of language are combined according to rules. Secondly, language is arbitrary because there is no intrinsic connection between fo rm and meaning, or between the sign and what it stands for. Different languages have different words for the same object in the world. This fact is a good illustration of the arbitrary nature of language. T his also explains the symbolic nature of language: words are just symbols; they are associated with o bjects, actions, ideas, etc. by convention . Thirdly, language is vocal because the primary medium is s ound for all languages, no matter how well - developed their writing systems are. The term "human" in the definition indicates that language is possessed by human beings only and is very different fro m the communication systems of other living creatures. The term "communication" means that language makes it possible for its users to talk to each other and fulfill their communicative needs.62. What are the design features of human language? Illustrate them with examples. 1) Arbitrarines s As mentioned earlier, the arbitrary property of language means that there is no logical connection between meanings and sounds. For instance, there is no necessary relationship between the word elep hant and the animal it symbolizes. In addition, different sounds are used to refer to the same object i n different languages, and even within the same language, the same sound does not refer to the same thing. However, language is not entirelyarbitrary. There are words which are created in the imitation of sounds by sounds, such as crash, bang in English. Besides, some compound words are also not enti rely arbitrary. But the non-arbitrary words are quite limited in number. The arbitrary nature of language makes it possible for language to have an unlimited source of expressions. 2) Productivity Languag e is productive or creative in that it makes possible the construction and interpretation of new signals by its users. This is why they can produce and understand an infinitely large number of sentences, including sentences that they have never said or heard before. They can send messages which no one else has ever sent before. Productivity is unique to human language. Most animal communication sys tems appear to be highly restricted with respect to the number of different signals that their users can send and receive. 3) Duality The duality nature of language means that language is a system, whic h consists of two sets of structure, or two levels, one of sounds and the other of meanings. At the lo wer or the basic level, there is the structure of sounds, which are meaningless, discrete, individual so unds. But the sounds of language can be combined according to rules into units of meaning such as morphemes and words, which, at the higher level, can be arranged into sentences. This duality of stru cture or double articulation of language enables its users to talk about anything within their knowledge. No animal communication system has duality or even comes near to possessing it. 4) Displacemen t Displacement means that language can be used to refer to things which are present or not present, real or imagined matters in the past, present, or future, or in far-away places. In other words, langua ge can be used to refer to contexts removed from the immediate situations of the speaker. Animal call s are mainly uttered in response to immediate changes of situation. 5) Cultural transmission Human beings were born with the ability to acquire language, but the details of any language are not genetica lly transmitted or passed down by instinct. They have to be taught and learned, but animal call system s are genetically transmitted.63. How is modern linguistics different from traditional grammar? Traditional gram-mar isprescriptive; it is based on "high "(religious, literary) written language. It sets grammatical rules a nd imposes the rules on language users. But Modern linguistics is descriptive; It collects authentic, and mainly spoken language data and then it studies and describes the data in an objective and scientific way.64. How do you understand the distinction between a synchronic study and a diachronicstudy? The description of a language at some point in time is a Synchronic study; the descriptio n of a language as it changes through time is a diachronic study. A synchronic study of language describes a language as it is at some particular point in time, while a diachronic study of langua ge is the study of the historical development of language over a period of time.65. Why does modern linguistics regard the spoken form of language as primary, not thewritten? First, the spoken form is prior to the writ-ten form and most writing systems are derived from the spoken form of language. Second, the spoken form plays a greater role than writing interms of the amount of information conveyed and it serves a wider range of purposes Finally, the spoken form is the medium through which we acquire our mother tongue.66. What are the major distinctions between langue and parole? The distinction between langue, and parole was made by the famous linguist Ferdinand de Saussure early this century. Lan gue refers to the abstract linguistic system shared by all the members of a speech community, and parole refers to the realization of langue in actual use. Langue is the set of conventions and rules which language users all have to follow while parole is the concrete use of the conventions and the application of the rules. Langue is abstract; it is not the language people actually use, but parole is concrete; it refers to the naturally occurring language events. Langue is relatively stable; it does not change frequently; while parole varies from person to person, and from situation to situ ation.67. How do you understand competence and performance? American linguist N. Chomsky in the late 1950’s proposed the distinction between competence and performance. Chomsky defi nes competence as the ideal user’s knowledge of the rules of his language. This internalized set of rules enables the language user to produce and understand an infinitely large number of senten ces and recognize sentences that are ungrammatical and ambiguous. According to Chomsky, perfor mance is the actual realization of this knowledge in linguistic communication. Although the speake r’s knowledge of his mother tongue is perfect, his performances may have mistakes because of s ocial and psychological factors such as stress, embarrassment, etc.. Chomsky believes that what li nguists should study is the competence, which is systematic, not the performance, which is too h aphazard.68. Saussure’s distinction between langue and parole seems similar to Chomsky’s distinction between competence and performance. What do you think are their major differences? Altho ugh Saussure’s distinction and Chomsky’s are very similar, they differ at least in that Saussure took a sociological view of language and his notion of langue is a mater of social conventions, and Chomsky looks at language from a psychological point of vies and to him, competence is a property of the mind of each individual.69. Do you think human language is entirely arbitrary? Why? Language is arbitrary in nature, it is not entirely arbitrary, because there are a limited number of words whose connections b etween forms and meanings can be logically explained to a certain extent, for example, the onoma topoeia, words which are coined on the basis of imitation of sounds by sounds such as bang, cra sh,etc.. Take compounds for another example. The two elements “photo”and “copy”in “phot ocopy”are non-motivated, but the compound is not arbitrary.语言学教程复习题与答案(胡壮麟版第二章)Chapter 2：PhonologyI. Decide whether each of the following statements is True or False:1. Voicing is a phonological feature that distinguishes meaning in both Chinese and English.2. If two phonetically similar sounds occur in the same environments and they distinguish meaning, they are said to be in complementary distribution.3. A phone is a phonetic unit that distinguishes meaning.4. English is a tone language while Chinese is not.5. In linguistic evolution, speech is prior to writing.6. In everyday communication, speech plays a greater role than writing in terms of the amount of information conveyed.7. Articulatory phonetics tries to describe the physical properties of the stream of sounds which a speaker issues with the help of a machine called spectrograph.8. The articulatory apparatus of a human being are contained in three important areas: the throat, the mouth and the chest.9. Vibration of the vocal cords results in a quality of speech sounds called voicing.10. English consonants can be classified in terms of place of articulation and the partof the tongue that is raised the highest.11. According to the manner of articulation, some of the types into which the consonants can be classified are stops, fricatives, bilabial and alveolar.12. Vowel sounds can be differentiated by a number of factors: the position of tonguein the mouth, the openness of the mouth, the shape of the lips, and the length of the vowels. 13. According to the shape of the lips, vowels can be classified into close vowels, semi-close vowels, semi-open vowels and open vowels.14. Any sound produced by a human being is a phoneme.15. Phones are the sounds that can distinguish meaning.16. Phonology is concerned with how the sounds can be classified into different categories.17. A basic way to determine the phonemes of a language is to see if substituting onesound for another results in a change of meaning.18. When two different forms are identical in every way except for one sound segmentwhich occurs in the same place in the strings, the two words are said to form a phonemic contra st.19. The rules governing the phonological patterning are language specific.20. Distinctive features of sound segments can be found running over a sequence oftwo or more phonemic segments.II. Fill in each of the following blanks with one word which begins with the letter given:21. A ____ refers to a strong puff of air stream in the production of speech sounds.22. A ____ phonetics describes the way our speech organs work to produce the speech sounds and how they differ.23. The four sounds /p/,/b/,/m/ and /w/ have one feature in common, i.e, they are all b_______ sounds.24. Of all the speech organs, the t ____ is the most flexible, and is responsible for varieties of articulation than any other.25. English consonants can be classified in terms of manner of articulation or in termsof p____ of articulation.26. When the obstruction created by the speech organs is total or complete, the speech sound produced with the obstruction audibly released and the air passing out again is called a s________. <![endif]>27. S_________ features are the phonemic features that occur above the level of the segments. They include stress, tone, intonation, etc.28. The rules that govern the combination of sounds in a particular language are calleds ____ rules.29. The transcription of speech sounds with letter-symbols only is called broad transcription while the transcription with letter-symbols together with the diacritics is called n_________ tra nscription.30. When pitch, stress and sound length are tied to the sentence rather than the wordin isolation, they are collectively known as i_________.31. P______ is a discipline which studies the system of sounds of a particular language and how sounds are combined into meaningful units to effect linguistic communication.32. The articulatory apparatus of a human being are contained in three important cavities: the pharyngeal cavity, the o_______ cavity and the nasal cavity.33. T____ are pitch variations, which are caused by the differing rates of vibration of the vocal cords and which can distinguish meaning just like phonemes. <![endif]>34. Depending on the context in which stress is considered, there are two kinds of stress: word stress and s_________ stressIII. There are four choices following each of the statements below. Mark the choice that can best com plete the statement.35. Of all the speech organs, the _______ is/ are the most flexible. A. mouth B. lipsC. tongueD. vocal cords36. The sounds produced without the vocal cords vibrating are ____ sounds. A. voiceless B. voiced C. vowel D. consonantal37. __________ is a voiced alveolar stop.A. /z/B. /d/C. /k/D./b/38. The assimilation rule assimilates one sound to another by “copying”a feature of a sequential phoneme, thus making the two phones ____________. A. identical B. same C. exactly alike D. similar39. Since /p/ and /b/ are phonetically similar, occur in the same environments and theycan distinguish meaning, they are said to be ___________.A. in phonemic contrastB. in complementary distributionC. the allophonesD. minimal pair40. The sound /f/ is _________________. A. voiced palatal affricate B. voiced alveolar stopC. voiceless velar fricativeD. voiceless labiodental fricative41. A ____ vowel is one that is produced with the front part of the tongue maintainingthe highest position. A. back B. central C. front D. middle42. Distinctive features can be found running over a sequence of two or more phonemic segments. The phonemic features that occur above the level of the segments are called ____________. A. phonetic components B. immediate constituents C. suprasegmental features D. sem antic features43. A(n) ___________ is a unit that is of distinctive value. It is an abstract unit, a collection of distinctive phonetic features. A. phone B. sound C. allophone D. phoneme44. The different phones which can represent a phoneme in different phonetic environments are called the ____ of that phoneme. A. phones B. sounds C. phonemes D. allophone s <![endif]>IV. Define the terms below:45. phonology 46. phoneme 47.allophone 48. international phonetic alphabet 49. intonation 50. phonetics 51. auditory phonetics52. acoustic phonetics 53. phone 54.phonemic contrast 55. tone 56. minimal pairV. Answer the following questions as comprehensively as possible. Give ex-amples for illustration if ne cessary:57. Of the two media of language, why do you think speech is more basic than writing?58. What are the criteria that a linguist uses in classifying vowels?59. What are the major differences between phonology and phonetics?60. Illustrate with examples how suprasegmental features can affect meaning.61. In what way can we determine whether a phone is a phoneme or not?I. Decide whether each of the following statements is True or False:l.T 2.F 3.F 4.F 5.T 6.T 7.F 8.F 9.T 10.F 11.F 12.T 13.F 14.F 15.F 16. F 17. T 18. F 19. T 20. TII. Fill in each of the following blanks with one word which begins with the let ter given:21. Aspiration 22.Articulatory 23. bilabial 24. tongue 25. place 26. stop 27. Suprasegmental 28. sequ ential 29. narrow 30. intonation 31. Phonology 32. oral 33. Tone 34. sentenceIII. There are four choices following each of the statements below. Mark the ch oice that can best complete the statement:35.C 36.A 37.B 38.D 39.A 40.D 41.C 42.C 43.D 44.DIV. Define the terms below:45.phonology: Phonology studies the system of sounds of a particular language; it aims to discover h ow speech sounds in a language form patterns and how these sounds are used to convey meaning in linguistic communication.46. phoneme: The basic unit in phonology is called phoneme; it is a unit of distinctive value. But it is an abstract unit. To be exact, a phoneme is not a sound; it is a collection of distinctive phonetic features.47. allophone: The different phones which can represent a phoneme in different phonetic environments are called the allophones of that phoneme.48. international phonetic alphabet: It is a standardized and internationally accepted system of phonetic transcription.49. intonation: When pitch, stress and sound length are tied to the sentence rather than the word in isolation, they are collectively known as intonation.50.51. phonetics: Phonetics is defined as the study of the phonic medium of language; itis concerned with all the sounds that occur in the world' s languages52. auditory phonetics: It studies the speech sounds from the hearer's point of view. It studies how the sounds are perceived by the hear-er.53. acoustic phonetics: It studies the speech sounds by looking at the sound waves. It studies the physical means by which speech sounds are transmitted through the air from one per son to another.54. phone : Phones can be simply defined as the speech sounds we use when speaking a language. A phone is a phonetic unit or segment. It does not necessarily distinguish meaning.55. phonemic contrast: Phonemic contrast refers to the relation between two phonemes.If two phonemes can occur in the same environment and distinguish meaning, they are in phone mic contrast.56. tone: Tones are pitch variations, which are caused by the differing rates of vibration of the vocal cords.。
语言学教程各章节练习及答案
Exercises to Linguistics外语系黄永亮Chapter 1 Invitation to Linguistics1.Define the following terms:Langue:Langue refers to the abstract linguistic system shared by all the members of a speech community.Parole:parole refers to the realization of langue in actual use.Prescriptive: Prescriptive and descriptive represent two different types of linguistic study. if the linguistic study aims to lay down rules for “correct and standard”behaviour in usinglanguage, i.e. to tell people what they should day and what they should not say, it is saidto be prescriptive.Descriptive: Prescriptive and descriptive represent two different types of linguistic study. If a linguistic study aims to describe and analyze the language people actually use, it is saidto be descriptive;competence: Chomsky defines competence as the ideal user’s knowledge of the rules of his language.Performance: Chomsky defines performance the actual realization of this knowledge in linguistic communication.Synchronic: The description of a language at some point of time in history is a synchronic study;Diachronic: The description of a language as it changes through time is a diachronic study.Linguistics：Linguistics may be defined as the systematic (or scientific) study of language.language：Language is a form of human communication by means of a system of symbols principally transmitted by vocal sounds.”2.Does the traffic light system have duality, why?No. No discrete units on the first level that can be combined freely in the second level to form meaning.There is only simple one to one relationship between signs and meaning, namely, re-stop, green-go and yellow-get ready to go or stop.munication can take many forms, such as sign, speech, body language and facial expression. Dobody language and facial expression share or lack the distinctive properties of human language?Less arbitrary, lack duality, less creative, limited repertoire, emotional-oriented.4.Why is competence and performance an important distinction in linguistics?According to Chomsky, a language user’s underlying knowledge about the system of rules is called his linguistic competence. And performance refers to the actual enables a speaker to produce andunderstand an indefinite numbers of sentences and to recognize grammatical mistakes and ambiguities.A speaker’s competence is stable but his performance is often influenced by psychological and socialfactors. Thus, Chomsky proposed that linguists should focus on the study of competence, not performance. The distinction of the two terms “competence and performance”represents the orientation of linguistic study. So we can say competence and performance is an important distinction in linguistics.5.In what basic ways does modern linguistics differ from traditional grammar?Modern linguistics differs from traditional grammar in the following basic ways:Firstly, priority is given, as mentioned earlier, to spoken language. Secondly, focus is on synchronic study of language, rather than on diachronic study of language. Thirdly, modern linguistics is descriptive rather than prescriptive in nature. Linguists endeavor to state objectively the regularities of a language. They aim at finding out how a language is spoken: they do not attempt to tell people how it should be spoken. Fourthly, modern linguistics is theoretically rather than pedagogically oriented. Modern linguists strive to construct theories of language that can account for language in general. These features distinguished modern linguistics from traditional grammar. The two are complementary. Not contradictory. Knowledge of both is necessary for a language teacher: knowledge of the latter is necessary for a language learner.Chapter 2 Phonetics1. Give the description of the following sound segments in English1)[❆] voiced dental fricative2)[☞] voiceless alveolar fricative3)[☠] velar nasal4)[♎] voiced alveolar stop5)[☐] voiceless bilabial stop6)[ ] voiceless velar stop7)[●] (alveolar) lateral8)[♓] high front lax unrounded vowel9)[◆:] high back tense rounded vowel10)[ ] low back lax rounded vowel2. How is the description of consonants different from that of vowels?Consonants are described according to manner and place of articulation while vowels are described with four criteria: part of the tongue that is raised; extent to which the tongue rises in the direction of the palate; kind of opening made at the lips; position of soft palate.3. Which sound may be described asa voiced bilabial plosive [♌]a voiced labio-dental fricative [❖]a voiceless velar plosive [ ]4. Why might a photographer ask the person she is photographing to say cheese?The vowel of the word cheese [♓:] is produced with the lips spread, this resembling a smile.5.Account for the difference in articulation in each of the following pairs of words:coast ghost; ghost boastboast most; ghost mist;The words coast and ghost are distinguished by the fact that the initial segment is voiceless in the case of the former and voiced in the case of the latter.The word ghost and boast are distinguished by the place of articulation of the initial segment, [♑] being velar while [♌] is bilabial.Boast and most are distinguished by the manner of articulation of the initial segment, [❍] being nasal.Most and mist are distinguished by the fact that the former has a rounded back vowel shile the latter has a spread front vowel.Chapter 3 Phonology1.Define the following termsPhonology: Phonology is concerned with the sound system of languages. It is concerned with which sounds a language uses and how the contribution of sounds to the task of communication.Phone: A phone is a phonetic unit or segment. The speech sounds we hear and produce during linguistic communication are all phonesPhoneme: Phoneme is the abstract element of sound, identified as being distinctive in a particular language.Allophone: Allophone refers any of the different forms of a phoneme is an allophone of it in English.Compare the words peak and speak, for instance. The /☐/ in peak is aspirated; phonetically transcribed as [☐♒] while the /☐/ in speak is unaspirated, phonetically [☐＝]. [☐,☐♒] are two different phones and are variants of the phoneme /☐/. Such variants of a phoneme are called Allophone of the same phoneme.Suprasegmental features:. The phonemic features that occur above the level of the segment are called Suprasegmental features. Suprasegmental features include: stress, tone and intonation.2.Transcribe the realization of the past tense morpheme for each of the following words:Waited waved wiped waded. account for the differences.[id] in “waited”and “waded”follows another alveolar plosive. [d] in “waved”follows voiced consonants.[t] in “wiped” follows voiceless consonants, there being voicing assimilation.3. which of the following would be phonologically acceptable as English words?Thlite grawl dlesher shlink tritch sruck stwondle“grawl” and “tritch”4.Why can we not use the sequence [☠kl] in twinkle as an example of a consonant cluster?The sequence [☠kl] bridges two syllables.5.For each of the following pairs compare the position of the stress. Comment.Economy/economic wonder/wonderfulBeauty/beautiful acid/acidicIn adjectives ending in –ic the stress moves to the following syllable, in adjectives ending in –ful it does not.6.Explain why somebody might choose to stress the following utterances as indicated by the boldtype:a) John want ed to do this today. b) John wanted to do this today. c) John wanted to do thisto day.The first utterance implies that John was unable to do what he wanted.The second implies that he was only able to do something else.The third implies that he was only able to do it some other day.Chapter 4 Morphology1.Define the following terms:Morpheme: the smallest unit of language in terms of relationship between expression and content, a unit that can not be divided into further small units without destroying or drastically altering the meaning, whether it is lexical or grammatical.Compound:Polymorphemic words which consist wholly of free morphemes, such as classroom, blackboard, snowwhite, etc.Allomorph: any of the different form of a morpheme. For example, in English the plural morpheme -‘s but it is pronounced differently in different environments as /s/ in cats,as /z/ in dogs and as /iz/ in classes. So /s/, /z/, and /iz/ are all allomorphs of the plural morpheme.Bound morpheme: an element of meaning which is structurally dependent on the word it is added to,e.g. the plural morpheme in “dogs”.Free morpheme: an element of meaning which takes the form of an independent word.plete the words with suitable negative prefixesa. ir removable g. in humanb. in formal h. ir relevantc. im practicable i. un evitabled. in sensible j. im mobilee. in tangible k. il legalf. il logical l. in discreet3. “Morpheme” is defined as the smallest unit in terms of relationship betweenexpression and content. Then is morpheme a grammatical concept or asemantic one? What is its relation to phoneme?Since morpheme is defined as the smallest unit in terms of relationship between expression and content, it at the same time covers the grammatical and semantic aspect of linguistic unit. A morpheme may overlap with a phoneme, such as I, but usually not, as in pig, in which the morpheme is the whole word, i.e. and independent, free morpheme, but the phonemes are /p/, /i/ and /g/.4. Identify in the following sentence four bound morphemes. State the function ofeach and say whether each is derivational or inflectional.The teacher’s brother considered the project impossible.The –er and the –‘s of teacher’s are bound morphemes, the former being derivational, as it produces a lexeme that denotes the person who does an action, the latter being an inflectional morpheme, as it indicates possession.The –ed of considered is inflectional, indicating that the action took place in the past. The im- of impossible is derivational, producing a new lexeme that denotes the opposite of possible.Chapter 5 Syntax1.Define the following terms:Category: parts of speech and functions, such as the classification of words in terms of parts of speech, the identification of functions of words in term of subject, predicate, etc.Concord:also known as agreement, is the requirement that the forms of two or more words in a syntactic relationship should agree with each other in terms of some categories Syntagmatic relation:. Syntagmatic relation is a relation between one item and others in a sequence, or between elements which are all present.Paradigmatic relation: a relation holding between elements replaceable with each other at a particular place in a structure, or between one element present and the others absent. Deep structure: 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 Surface structure: is the final stage in the syntactic derivation of a construction, which closely corresponds to the structural organization of a construction people actually produceand receive.Theme: The Theme is the first constituent of the clause.Rheme: All the rest of the clause is simply labeled the Rheme.2.Why is it important to know the relations a sign has with others, such as syntaxgmatic andparadigmatic relations?As the relation between a signifier and signified is arbitrary, the value of a sign can not be determined by itself. To know the identity of a sign, the linguist will have to know the signs it is used together with and those it is substitutable for. The former relation is known as syntagmatic and the latter paradigmatic.3.In what ways is IC analysis better than traditional parsing?In traditional parsing, a sentence is mainly seen as a sequence of individual words, as if it has onlya linear structure. IC analysis, however, emphasizes the hierarchical structure of a sentence,seeing it as consisting of word groups first. In this way the internal of structure of a sentence is shown more clearly, hence the reason of some ambiguities may be revealed.4.What are the problems in IC analysis?There are some technical problems caused by the binary division and discontinuous constituents.But the main problem is that there are structures whose ambiguities cannot be revealed by IC analysis, e.g. the love of God. In terms of both the tree diagram and the label, there is only one structure, but the word God is in two different relations with love, i.e. either as subject or object.5.Clarify the ambiguity in the following sentence by tree diagrams:Old teachers and priests fear blackbirds.SNP VPAdj. NP V NOld fear blackbirds.N Conj. Nteachers and priestsSNP VPNP Conj. N V NAdj. N and priests fear blackbirds.Old teachersChapter 6 Semantics1. defining the following terms:semantics: The subject concerning the study of meaning is called semantics. More specifically, semantics is the study of the meaning of linguistics units, words and sentences inparticular.Denotation: the core sense of a word or a phrase that relates it to phenomena in the real world. Connotation: a term in a contrast with denotation, meaning the properties of the entity a word denotes.Sense: the literal meaning of a word or an expression, independent of situational context. Reference: the use of language to express a proposition, i.e. to talk about things in context. Synonymy: is the technical name for the sameness relation.Antonymy: is the name for oppositeness relation:hyponymy: a relation between two words, in which the meaning of one word (the superordinate) is included in the meaning of another word (the hyponym)semantic component: a distinguishable element of meaning in a word with two values, e.g.[+human].2. Some people maintain that there are no true synonyms. If two words mean really the same,one of them will definitely die out. An example often quoted is the disuse of the word “wireless”, which has been replaced by “radio”. Do you agree? In general what type of meaning we are talking about when we say two words are synonymous with each other?It is true that there are no absolute synonyms. When we say two words are synonymous with each other, we usually mean they have the same conceptual meaning.3. For each of the following pairs of words, state the principal reason why they may not beconsidered to be synonyms:man boy toilet loo determined stubbornpavement sidewalk walk runThe words man and boy are principally distinguished be age, the words walk and run by speed.The principal distinction between the words toilet and loo is one of social register. Determined and stubborn are largely distinguished by attitude—a person reluctant to give up is described as determined by those who sympathize and as stubborn by those who do not. The difference between the words pavement and sidewalk is a matter of geography, the former being used in Britain and the latter in America.Chapter 7 Pragmantics1. defining the following terms:Performative:an utterance by which a speaker does something does something,as apposed to a constative, by which makes a statement which may be true or false.Constative:an utterance by which a speaker expresses a proposition which may be true or false. Locutuonary act: the act of saying something; it’s an act of conveying literal meaning by means of syntax, lexicon, and phonology. Namely, the utterance of a sentence with determinatesense and reference.Illocutuonary act:the act performed in saying something; its force is identical with the speaker’s intention.Perlocutionary act: the act performed by or resulting from saying something, it’s the consequence of, or the change brought about by the utterance.Cooperative principle:in making conversation, there is, as Grice holds, a general principle which all participants are expected to observe. He calls this guiding principle theCooperative Principle, CP for short.. It runs as follows: "make yourconversational contribution such as is required, at the stage at which it occurs, bythe accepted purpose or direction of the talk exchange in which you are engaged.”Conversational implicature: the extra meaning not contained in the literal utterances, understandable tothe listener only when he shares the speaker’s knowledge or knows why andhow he violates intentionally one of the four maxims of the CooperativePrinciple (CP)2. Consider the following dialogue between a man and his daughter. Try to explain the illocutionary force in each of the utterances.[The daughter walks into the kitchen and takes so e popcorn.]Father: I thought you were practicing your violin.Daughter: I need to get the violin stand.Father: Is it under the popcorn?The illocutionary force of “I thought you were practicing your violin” is a criticism of the daughter for her not practicing the violin. That of the daughter’s answer is a defense for herself—I’m going to do that. And that of the father’s retort is a denial of the daughter’s excuse.3.If you ask somebody “Can you open the door?” he answered “Yes” but does not actually do it, what would be your reaction? Why? Try to see it in the light of speech act theory.I would be angry with him. “Can you open the door” is normally a request of the hearer to do it rather than a question about his ability. The fact that he answers “Yes” but does not actually do it shows that he declines my request.4. A is reading the newspaper. When B asks “What’s on television tonight?” he answers “Nothing.”What does A mean in normal situations? Think of two situations in which this interpretation of “Nothing” will be cancelled.Normally “Nothing” here means “Nothing interesting”. If A adds after “Nothing” “The workers are on strike today” or “There’s going to be a blackout tonight”, then the interpretation of “Nothing interesting’will be cancelled.11。
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Chapter 1 Invitations to Linguistics1. Define the following terms:design feature: the distinctive features of human language that essentially make human language distinguishable from languages of animals.function: the role language plays in communication (e.g. to express ideas, attitudes) or in particular social situations (e.g. religious, legal).synchronic: said of an approach that studies language at a theoretical ‘point’ in time.diachronic: said of the study of development of language and languages over time. prescriptive: to make authoritarian statement about the correctness of a particular use of language.descriptive: to make an objective and systematic account of the patterns and use of a language or variety.arbitrariness: the absence of any physical correspondence between linguistic signals and the entities to which they refer.duality: the structural organization of language into two abstract levels: meaningful units (e.g. words) and meaningless segments (e.g. sounds, letters).displa cement: the ability of language to refer to contexts removed from the speaker’s immediate situation.phatic communion: said of talk used to establish atmosphere or maintain social contact.metalanguage: a language used for talking about language.macrolinguistics: a broad conception of linguistic enquiry, including psychological, cultural, etc.competence: unconscious knowledge of the system of grammatical rules in a language.performance: the language actually used by people in speaking or writing.l angue: the language system shared by a “speech community”.parole: the concrete utterances of a speaker.2. Consult at least four introductory linguistics textbooks (not dictionaries), and copy the definitions of “language” that each gives. After careful ly comparing the definitions, write a paper discussing which points recur and explaining the significance of the similarities and differencesamong the definitions.ANSWER:All the definitions should not exclude the description of design features that have been mentioned in this course book. Also it will be better if other design features, say, interchangeability or cultural transmission is included. But it seems impossible to give an unimpeachable definition on language, because the facets people want to emphasize are seldom unanimous. To compare several definitions can make you realize where the argument is.3. Can you think of some words in English which are onomatopoeic?ANSWERS:creak: the sound made by a badly oiled door when it opens.cuckoo: the call of cuckoo.bang: a sudden loud noise.roar: a deep loud continuing sound.buzz: a noise of buzzing.hiss: a hissing sound.neigh: the long and loud cry that a horse makes.mew: the noise that a gull makes.bleat: the sound made by a sheep, goat or calf.4. Do you think that onomatopoeia indicates a non-arbitrary relationship between form and meaning?ANSWER:4. No matter you say "Yes" or "No", you cannot deny that onomatopoeia needs arbitrariness. Before we feel a word is onomatopoeic we should first know which sound the word imitates. Just as what is said in Chapter One, in order to imitate the noise of flying mosquitoes, there are many choices like "murmurous" and "murderous". They both bear more or less resemblance to the genuine natural sound, but "murmurous" is fortunately chosen to mean the noise while "murderous" is chosen to mean something quite different. They are arbitrary as signifiers.5. A story by Robert Louis Stevenson contains the sentence “As the night fell, the wind rose.” Could this be expressed as “As the wind rose, the night fell?” If not, why? Does this indicate a degree of non-arbitrariness about word order? (Bolinger, 1981: 15)5. Yes. It is a case in point to illustrate non-arbitrariness about word order. When the two parts interchange, the focus and the meaning of the sentence is forced to change, because clauses occurring in linear sequence without time indicators will be taken as matching the actual sequence of happening. The writer’s original intention is distorted, and we c an feel it effortlessly by reading. That is why systemic-functionalists and American functionalists think language is not arbitrary at the syntactic level.6. Does the traffic light system have duality? Can you explain by drawing a simple graph?6. Traffic light does not have duality. Obviously, it is not a double-level system. There is only one-to-one relationship between signs and meaning but the meaning units cannot be divided into smaller meaningless elements further. So the traffic light only has the primary level and lacks the secondary level like animals’ calls.ANSWER:Red→stopGreen→goYellow→get ready to go or stop7. The recursive nature of language provides a theoretical basis for the creativity of language. Can you write a recursive sentence following the example in section 1.3.3.ANSWER:Today I encountered an old friend who was my classmate when I was in elementary school where there was an apple orchard in which we slid to select ripe apples that…8. Communication can take many forms, such as sign, speech, body language and facial expression. Do body language and facial expression share or lack the distinctive properties of human language?ANSWER:On a whole, body language and facial expression lack most of the distinctive properties of human language such as duality, displacement, creativity and so on. Body language exhibits arbitrariness a little bit. For instance, nod means "OK/YES" for us but in Arabian world it is equal to saying "NO". Some facial expressions have non-arbitrariness because they are instinctive such as the cry and laugh of a newborn infant.9. Do you agree with the view that no language is especially simple?ANSWER:Yes. All human languages are complicated systems of communication. It is decided by their shared design features.10. What do you think of Bertrand Russell’s observation of the dog language: “No matter how eloquently a dog may bark, he cannot tell you that his parents were poor but honest”? Are you familiar with any type of ways animals communicate among themselves and with human beings? ANSWER:When gazelles sense potential danger, for example, they flee and thereby signal to other gazelles in the vicinity that danger is lurking. A dog signals its wish to be let inside the house by barking and signals the possibility that it might bite momentarily by displaying its fangs.11.Can you mention some typical expressions of phatic communion in Chinese? There is the dialog between Ms. P and Ms. Q. in section 1.5.5. When someone sneezes violently, do you say anything of the nature of phatic communion? Have you noticed your parents or grandparents say something special on such an occasion?Some of the typical phatic expressions in Chinese are: 吃了吗？家里都好吧？这是去哪里啊？最近都挺好的？ANSWER:If someone is sneezing violently, ma ybe you parents and grandparents may say: “Are you ok?”, “Do you need to see a doctor?”, “Do you need some water?”, “Do you need a handkerchief?”, “Do you have a cold?” or something like these to show their concerns.12．There are many expressions in language which are metalingual or self-reflexives, namely, talking about talk and think about thinking, for instance, to be honest, to make a long story short, come to think of it, on second thought, can you collect a few more to make a list of these expressions? When do we use them most often? ANSWER:To tell the truth, frankly speaking, as a matter of fact, to be precise, in other words, that is to saySuch expressions are used most frequently when we want to expatiate the meaning of former clauses in anther way in argumentation.13. Comment on the following prescriptive rules. Do you think they are acceptable?(A) It is I.(B) It is me.You should say A instead of B because “be” should be followed by the nominative case, not the accusative according to the rules in Latin.(A) Who did you speak to?(B) Whom did you speak to?You should say B instead of A.(A) I haven't done anything.(B) I haven't done nothing.B is wrong because two negatives make a positive.ANSWER:(1) the Latin rule is not universal. In English, me is informal and I is felt to be very formal.(2) Whom is used in formal speech and in writing; who is more acceptable in informal speech.(3) Language does not have to follow logic reasoning. Here two negative only makea more emphatic negative. This sentence is not acceptable in Standard English not because it is illogical, but because language changes and rejects this usage now.14. The prescriptivism in grammar rules has now shifted to prescriptions in choice of words. In the “guid elines on anti-sexist language” issued by the British sociological association, some guidelines are listed below. Do you think they are descriptive and prescriptive? What’s your comment on them?(1) Do not use man to mean humanity in general. Use person, people, human beings, men and women, humanity and humankind.(2) colored: This term is regarded as outdated in the UK and should be avoided asit is generally viewed as offensive to many black people.(3) civilized: This term can still carry racist overtones which derive from a colonialist perception of the world. It is often associated with social Darwinist thought and is full of implicit value judgments and ignorance of the history of the non-industrialized world.ANSWER:They are undoubtedly descriptive. Guidelines are not rules that can determine whether a sentence is right or not. The guidelines advise you to avoid the use of particular words that are grammatically correct but offensive to some certain groups. Actually, they describe the way anti-sexist advocators speak and write.15. Why is the distinction between competence and performance an important one in linguistics? Do you think the line can be neatly drawn between them? How do you like the concept “communicative competence”?ANSWER:This is proposed by Chomsky in his formalist linguistic theories. It is sometimes hard to draw a strict line. Some researchers in applied linguistics think communicative competence may be a more revealing concept in language teaching than the purely theoretical pair—competence and performance.16. Which branch of linguistics do you think will develop rapidly in China and why? It is up to you to decide after you have gone through the whole book. At this stage, we suggest all branches of linguistics have the potential to flourish.17. The following are some well-known ambiguous sentences in syntactic studies of language. Can you disambiguate them?The chicken is too hot to eat.Flying planes can be dangerous.ANSWER:The chicken is too hot to eat.The chicken meat is too hot, so it cannot be eaten at the moment.The chicken feels so hot (maybe after some intense aerobic exercises) that it cannot start eating and needs to calm down first.Flying planes can be dangerous.The ambiguity comes from "flying planes". It can be deciphered as "the planes that is flying" or "to fly planes".18. There are many reasons for the discrepancy between competence and performance in normal language users. Can you think of some of them?ANSWEREthnic background, socioeconomic status, region of the country, and physical state (such as intoxication, fatigue, distraction, illness) vary from individual to individual.19. What do these two quotes reveal about the different emphasis or perspectives of language studies?(1) A human language is a system of remarkable complexity. To come to know a human language would be an extraordinary intellectual achievement for a creature not specifically designed to accomplish this task. A normal child acquires this knowledge on relatively slight exposure and without specific training. He can then quite effortlessly make use of an intricate structure of specific rules and guiding principles to convey his thoughts and feelings to others, ... Thus language is a mirror of mind in a deep and significant sense. It is a product of human intelligence, created anew in each individual by operations that lie far beyond the reach of will or consciousness.(Noam Chomsky: Reflections on Language. 1975: 4)(2) It is fairly obvious that language is used to serve a variety of different needs, but until we examine its grammar there is no clear reason for classifying its uses in any particular way. However, when we examine the meaning potential of language itself, we find that the vast numbers of options embodied in it combine into a very few relatively independent “networks”; and these networks of options correspond to certain basic functions of language. This enables us to give an account of the different functions of language that is relevant to the general understanding of linguistic structure rather than to any particular psychological or sociological investigation.(M. A. K. Halliday, 1970: 142)ANSWER:The first quote shows children’s inborn ability of acquiring the knowledge of intricate structure of specific rules. It implies that the language user's underlying knowledge about the system of rules is the valuable object of study for linguists. The second attaches great importance to the functions of language. It regards the use of language as the choice of needed function. The meaning of language can be completely included by a few “networks” which is directly related to basic functions of language. It indicates the necessity to study the functions of language.20. You may be familiar with the following proverbs. How do you perceive them according to the arbitrariness and conventionality of language?The proof of the pudding is in the eating.Let sleeping dogs lie.You can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.Rome was not built in a day.When in Rome, do as the Romans do.All roads lead to Rome.ANSWER:20. Arbitrariness and conventionality derive from the choice of the subject matter. For example, in the “The proof of the pudding is in the eating.” The word “pudding” is selected arbitrarily, for w e can use another word such as cheeseinstead of pudding without changing the associative meaning of the proverb. On the other hand, once such links between particular words and associative meaning are fixed, it becomes a matter of conventionality.21. Give examples of situations in which a usage generally considered non-standard(e.g. ain’t) would be acceptable, even appropriate.ANSWER21. In the talks between intimate friends, one may say “gimme that!” instead of “give me that!” and “wachya doin’?” instead of “what are you doing?” and this list may go on.22. The following are some book titles of linguistics. Can you judge the diachronic and diachronic orientation just from the titles?English Examined: Two centuries of Comment on the Mother-Tongue.Protean Shape: A Study in Eighteenth-century Vocabulary and Usage.Pejorative Sense Development in English.The Categories and Types of Present-Day English Word-Formation.Language in the Inner City: Studies in the Black English Vernacular.ANSWER22. Synchronic:Protean Shape: A Study in Eighteenth-century Vocabulary and Usage.The Categories and Types of Present-Day English Word-Formation.Language in the Inner City: Studies in the Black English Vernacular. Diachronic:English Examined: Two centuries of Comment on the Mother-Tongue.Pejorative Sense Development in English。