英语语言学试题B卷

I.Define the following linguistic terms: (2%×10=20%)

1) government: It is a type of control over the form of some words by other words in certain syntactic constructions.

　 2) exocentric construction(离心结构): It is an construction whose distribution is not functionally equivalent to any of its constituents.

　 3) complementary antonym(互补反义关系): It is a form of antonym that the assertion of one means the denial of the other, or vice versa.

　 4) perlocutionary force (取效行为): It is an act which is performed by means of a locutionary act.

　 5) applied linguistics: It is a discipline that links the theories of linguistics with the practice of foreign language teaching.

　 6) allophone(音位变体): Variants of a phoneme are called its allophones.

　 7) bound morpheme(粘着语素): The morphemes that do not occur alone.

　 8) interlanguage(中介语): It is formed when the learner attempts to learn a new language, and it has features of both the first language and the second language but is neither.

　 9) arbitrariness(任意性): The forms of linguistic signs bear no natural relationship to their meaning.

10) assimilation: A process by which one sound takes on some or all the characteristics of a neighboring sound.

II. Translation (0.5%×20=10%)

　 Translate the following terms into Chinese: (0.5%×10=5%)

　 1) lateral  边音  　 2) linguistic determinism 语言决定论       

3)anthropological linguistics 人类语言学     4) locutionary act发话行为　　

5) transformation  转换    　   6) co-hyponym同下义词  　　7) context of situation情景语境　8) allomorph语素变体　　   9) theme主位　　 10) primary stress主重音

　 Translate the following terms into English: (0.5%×10=5%)

　 11) 语篇功能textual function              12) 意义潜势meaning potential                  

13) 直接成分分析法immediate component analysis

14) 最大节首辅音原则maximal onset principle 15) 聚合关系paradigmatic relation   

16) 音位规则phonological structure            17) 前缀prefix  18) 语境context   　　

19) 皮钦语/洋泾浜语pidgin          　 20) 历时语言学historical linguistics

III. Read each of the following statements carefully. Decide which one of the four choices best completes the statement and put the corresponding letter A, B, C or D in the brackets. (1%×20=20%)

1) The study of language at one point of time is a _______ study.

　A. synchronic(共时)                                           B. historic

　C. diachronic(历时)   D. descriptive

2) Synonyms are classified into several kinds. The kind to which “fall” and “autumn” belong is called _____ synonyms.

　A. stylistic　　 B. dialectal 　　 C. emotive　　 D. collocational (搭配)

3) The sentence “John likes ice-cream” contains ________ arguments (论元).

　A. one                         B. two C. none                 D. three

4) Semantics can be defined as the study of ________.

　A. naming       B. meaning C. communication   D. context

5) Once the notion of ________ was taken into consideration, semantics spilled into pragmatics.

　A. meaning        B. context C. form                      D. content

6) Of the three speech acts, linguists are most interested in the _______.

　A. locutionary act (发话行为)                              B. perlocutionary act(取效行为)

　C. illocutionary act (行事行为)                         D. none of the above

7) Most of the violations of the maxims of the Cooperative Principle give rise to _____.

　A. utterance meaning                                            B. speech act theory

　C. conversational implicatures                            D. none of the above

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

　A. more than                                     B. less than

　C. the same as               D. none of the above

9) The goal of ______ is to explore the nature of language variation and language use among a variety of speech communities and different social situations.

　A. psycholinguistics            B. sociolinguistics

　C. historical linguistics                              D. general linguistics

10) Black English has a number of distinctive features in its phonological, morphological and syntactic systems which are _______.

　 A. rule-governed           B. systematic

　 C. arbitrary                                      D. both A and B

11) As modern linguistics aims to describe and analyze the language people actually use, and not to lay down rules for "correct" linguistic behavior, it is said to be ___.

　 A. prescriptive                                          B. sociolinguistic

　 C. descriptive                                                  D. psycholinguistic

12) Language is a system of arbitrary _________ symbols used for human communication.

　 A. cultural                                             B. conventional

　 C. decoded                                                  D. vocal

13) A word with several meanings is called _________.

　 A. an abnormal word                                 B. a polysemous word

　 C. a synonymous word                             D. none of the above

14) There are different types of affixes or morphemes. The affix “ed” in the word “learned” is known as a (n) __________.

　 A. derivational morpheme                    B. free morpheme

　 C. inflectional morpheme                  D. free form

15) The syntactic rules of any language are ________ in number.

　 A. large                                                B. small

　 C. finite          D. infinite

16) “I bought some roses” __________ “I bought some flowers”.

　 A. entails                       B. presupposes

　 C. is inconsistent with                                       D. is synonymous with

17) The phrase “boys and girls” belongs to the ____________ construction.

　 A. predicate       B. endocentric     　　 C. subordinate               D. exocentric

18) Can I borrow your bike?" ___ "You have a bike."

A. is synonymous with                               B. is inconsistent with

　 C. entails                                        D. presupposes　　

19) Of all the speech organs, the ___ is/are the most flexible.

　 A. mouth   B. lips　　         C. tongue　　 D. vocal cords　

20) Chomsky uses the term _______ to refer to the actual realization of a language user’s knowledge of the rules of his language in linguistic communication.

　 A. langue (语言)　　                                  B. competence (语言能力)

　 C. parole (言语)　　                                      D. performance (语言表现)

IV. Decide whether each of the following statements is true or false: (1%×15=15%)

T 1) Language is a system of arbitrary vocal symbols used for human communication.

T 2) The writing system of a language is always a later invention used to record speech; thus there are still many languages in today’s world that can only be spoken, but not written.

F 3) The open-class (开放类) words include prepositions.

F 4) In classifying the English consonants and vowels, the same criteria can be applied.

T 5) According to semantic triangle (语义三角), there is no direct link between a symbol and referent, i.e. between a word and a thing it refers to.

F 6) Syntactic categories (句法范畴) refer to sentences (S) and clauses (C) only.

F 7) By synchrony we mean to study language change and development.

T 8) The IC analysis (直接成分分析法) is not able to analyze split verbs like “do sb. in”.

T 9) The relationship of “flower”, “violet”, “rose” and “tulip” is hyponymy (上下义关系).

F 10) A syllable without a coda(结尾) is a closed syllable.

F 11) Parole refers to the abstract linguistic system shared by all the members of a speech community.

F 12) Phonology is a branch of linguistics which studied the sentences patterns of a language.

F 13) Human capacity for language has a genetic basis, i.e. we are all born with the ability to acquire language and the details of a language system are genetically transmitted.

F 14) Only words of the same parts of speech can be combined to form compounds.

F 15) Sentences are strings of words put together in a random order.

V. Fill in the blank in each of the following statements with one word, the first letter of which is already given as a clue. Note that you are to fill in ONE word only, and you are not allowed to change the letter given. (1%×10=10%)

1) The modern linguistics is descriptive, not prescriptive, and its investigations are based on authentic and mainly spoken language data.

　 2) Morpheme_ is the smallest meaningful unit of language.

　 3) Langue refers to the language system shared by a community of speaker while parole contrasted with langue is the concrete act of speaking in actual situations by an individual speaker..

　 4) The transformational component has transformational rules, which change the deep structures generated by the phrase structure component into surface structure.

　 5) In semantic triangle, the relation between a word and a thing it refers to is not direct, and it is mediated by concept..

6) H. Sweet made a distinction between narrow and broad transcription.

　 7) In the cooperative principle, Grice introduced four categories of maxims (准则). They are maxim of quality, maxim of quantity, maxim of relation and maxim of manner.

　　8) The strong version of Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is that language determines our thinking pattern.

　 9) There are two major approaches to error analysis: contrastive and non-contrastive analysis.

10) Pragmatics is the study of language in use.

VI. The following two are ambiguous in their meanings. Give your understanding of the different meanings of each expression. (2.5%×2=5%)

1) Smoking cigar is very harmful.

The cigar that is smoking is very harmful.

　　 The act of smoking the cigar is very harmful.

　 2) The boy saw the man with the telescope.

 The boy saw the man who had a telescope.

　　 Using the telescope, the boy saw the man.

VII. Answer the following questions in English.　 (4%×5=20%)

1) What are the four maxims under the cooperative principle ?

A. The maxim of quantity

　　1. Make your contribution as informative as required (for the current purpose of the exchange) .

　　2. Do not make your contribution more informative than is required.

B. The maxim of quality

　　1. Do not say what you believe to be false.

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

C. The maxim of relation　Be relevant.

D. The maxim of manner

　　1. Avoid obscurity of expression.                      2. Avoid ambiguity.

　　3. Be brief (avoid unnecessary prolixity).   4. Be orderly.

　 2) What are the design features of language ?

Arbitrariness; Productivity; Duality; Displacement; Cultural transmission;

　 3) What are the differences between modern linguistics and traditional grammar ?

A. Linguistics is descriptive, not prescriptive

B. Linguistics regards the spoken language as primary, not the written.

C. Linguistics differs from traditional grammar in that it does not force languages into a Latin-based framework.

　 4) Why do we say that a meaning of a sentence is not the sum total of the meanings of all its components ?

The meaning of a sentence is not the sum total of the meanings of all its components because it cannot be worked out by adding up all the meanings of its constituent words. For example;

　　 (A) The dog bit the man.

　　 (B) The man bit the dog.

　　If the meaning of a sentence were the sum total of the meanings of all its components, then the above two sentences would have the same meaning. In fact they are different in meanings.

　　As we know, there are two aspects to sentence meaning: grammatical meaning and semantic meaning. The grammatical meanings of “the dog” and “the man” in (A) are different from the grammatical meanings of “the dog” and “the man” in (B). The meaning of a sentence is the product of both lexical and grammatical meaning. It is the product of the meaning of the constituent words and of the grammatical constructions that relate one word syntagmatically to another.

　 5) What do you know about linguistics.

Linguistics is usually defined as the science of language or, alternatively, as the scientific study of language. It is bound to be an academically and economically favored pursuit. Contemporary linguistics still has a long way to go to enjoy a “boom”. As a science, linguistics now has a set of established theories, methods and sub-branches.