北外语言学试题2002-2005

2002年语言学与应用语言学（100 points）

All the questions are to be answered in English on the answer sheets provided.

1. Displacement,arbitrariness,productivity,cultural transmission,discreteness and duality are someti mes listed as the 6 core features of human language.Choose 3 out of the 6 and explain with examples w hat they mean. (12 points)

2. Briefly explain what phonetics and phonology are concerned with and what kind of relationsips ho ld between the two.(10 points)

3.In deriving new words via a prefix such as mis-, there seems to be some constraint on what is per mitted. The words in the first colum below are acceptable formations,but in the other columns are not.W ork out what the rule(s) might be for making new adjectives with the prefix mis-. (18 points) Column I : misadventure misjudgement misplaced mistrustful

Column II: *mishappy *mismeal *misglad *misrole

Column III: *mismilk *missad *misword *miscrazy

4. Using what you know about Grice's cooperative principle and its four maxims,analyze the followin

g short exchange.(20 points)

同事甲：小张昨晚去哪儿了？

同事乙：今天在早上我看见一辆白色富康停在小林家门口。

5. In each of the following sentences,the second part cancels some information given by the first pa rt. However,this seems to result in quite acceptable utterances in group (1) and in very awkward utteran ces in guoup (2). Explain why. (20 points)

Group (1)

a.老张有三个孩子，其实还不止三个。

b.我只喜欢黄色和蓝色，不过试试红色也未尝不可。

c.约翰的普通话说得还可以，确切地说是非常棒。

Group (2)

*d.我特后悔选修了这门课，其实我没有选修这门课。

*e.她这次考试又不及格，不过她上次及格了。

*f.我在乡下日子过得很苦，说真的我没在向下呆过。

6. Put yourself into the position of an English teacher in China. What are your goals and the goals o

f the students and the educational sysem in the teachin

g and learning of English? When the goeals do n ot converge,how can you reconcile the differences between them?(20 points)

2003 年语言学与应用语言学

All the questions are to be answered in English on the answer sheets provided.

1.Words in our mental lexicon are known to be related to one another. Discuss the relationships bet ween words,using examples from the English language.(15 points)

2.Some grammar books say there are three basic tenses in English-the present,the past and the fut ure; others say there are only two basic tenses,-the present and the past. Explain what tense is and whe ther it is justifiable to say there is a future tense in English.(35 points)

3.(1) Give an account of what you know about the English subjuntive mood.(20 points)

(2) If you are to teach a group of senior middle school students the subjunctive mood in 45 minute s,how are you going to plain your class?(20 points)

4. It has been observed that women tend to approximate more closely to the standard language tha n men do.Why do you think is this so?(30 points)

5.What do you think are teh similarities and dissimilarities between learning a first and a second lan guage?(30 points)

2004年语言学与应用语言学

IMPORTANT!!!

All the questions are to be answered in English on the answer sheets provided.

1. Shakespeare has Juliet say:

What is in a name?That which we call a rose

By any other name would smell as sweet.

What do you think the above lines say to you about the relationship between the form (sounds) a nd meaning (concept) of a word in spoken language?Explain with positive evidence as well as exceptio ns from the English language. (15 points)

2.How much does our language influence the way we think? How deeply do language and culture i nterpenetrate and influence one another?These questions about language have fascinated thinkers thro ughout the ages.For example,Johann Gottfried Herder and Wilhelm von Humboldt in the German Roma ntic tradition regarded language as a prisma or grid spread over things in the world so that each languag

e reflects a different worldview. Write a short essay to explain your position on this view. (35 points)

3.Is English a language that uses a phonetic alphabet system? Explain briefly why or why not with e xamples. (15 points)

4.Suppose you were given four cards,each of which had a different phoneme of English printed on i t:

/k/, /b/, /l/, /i/

Now arrange these cards to form all "possible" words that these four phonemes could form. Discuss what rules you have followed to come up with these words. (20 points)

5.Paraphrase each of the following sentences in two different ways to show that you understand the ambiguity involved: (10 points)

a. Dick finally decided on the boat.

b. The professor's appointment was shocking.

c. The governor is a dirty street fighter.

d. Terry loves his wife and so do I.

e. No smoking section available.

6.It is argued that grammatically judgments do not depend on whether the sentence is meaningful o r not,as shown by the sentence "Colorless green ideas sleep furiously",which doesn't make much sense but is syntactically well formed. How would you respond to this argument? (25 points)

7.TOEFL often requires the examinees to specify the situational context after listening to a convers ation.See for example a tape-script below for an exam item:

Voice A (male): How much is this tie?

Voice B (female): Forty.

Voice C (male): Where does this conversation most probably take place?

What do you think is the TOEFL people's belief about what constitutes linguistic competence and how linguistic competence can be tested? (30 points)

2005年语言学与应用语言学

All the questions are to be answered in English on the answer sheets provided.

1.Examine the following two statements about language,and discuss the similarities and differences between them.Do you agree with the two statements?Explain your answer.(25 points)

1) Sapir (1921: "Language"): "Language is a purely human and non-instinctive method of commun icating ideas,emotions and desires by means of voluntarily produced symbols" (p.8)

2) Bloch and Trager (1942: "Outline of Linguistic Analysis"): "A language is a system of arbitrary v ocal symbols by means of which a social group co-operates" (p.5)

2. What are phonemes,phones and allophones?Explain their relationship with examples from Englis

h or Chinese. (15 points)

3. Is it possible to seperate semantics and pragmatics?Why or why not? What are the implications o

f your answer for second language teaching? (30 points)

4.It has been noticed that Chinese learners of English tend to make mistakes in the marking of past tense,even at the advanced level of proficiency. What do you think are the possible causes of this proble m?How can language teachers help solve this problem and why? (30 points)

5. Look at the following real newspaper headlines and explain why they are considered ambiguous. Then revise the headlines so that they can express the intended meanings unambiguously. (20 points)

(1) Complaints about NBA Referees Growing Ugly

(2) Milk Drinkers Are Turning to Powder

(3) Two Sisters Reunited After 18 Years at Checkout Counter

(4) Enraged Cow Injures Farmer with Ax

(5) Safety Experts Say School Bus Passengers Should Be Belted

6. In interpreting utterances such as (1) and (2), the hearer generally treats the events described in the two sentences in each group as causally related even though such relationship is not encoded in the

meanings of the sentences. That is,the hearer tends to think htat Helen fell on the ground BECAUSE O

F Tom's pushing and that the vase broke BECAUSE it was dropped.Explain why. (30 points)

(1) Tom pushed Helen. Helen fell on the ground.

(2) Peter dropped the vase. It broke.