语言学课后习题答案.doc

语言学课后习题答案第5章1. (1) The naming theory proposed by the ancient Greek scholar Plato. According to this theory, the linguistic forms or symbols, in other words, the words used in a language are simply labels of the objects they stand for. So words are just names or labels for things. (2) The conceptualist view has been held by some philosophers and linguists from ancient times. This view holds that there is no direct link between a linguistic form and what it refers to (i. e., between language and the real world); rather, in the interpretation of meaning they are linked through the mediation of concepts in the mind. (3) The contextualist view held that meaning should be studied in terms of situation, use, context elements closely linked with language behaviour. The representative of this approach was J.R. Firth, famous British linguist.(4) Behaviorists attempted to define the meaning of a language form as the “situation in which the speaker utters it and the response it calls forth in the hearer.” This theory, somewhat close to contextualism, is linked with psychological interest.2. The major types of synonyms are dialectal synonyms, stylistic synonyms, emotive or evaluative synonyms, collocational synonyms, and semantically different synonyms.3. (1) Homonymy refers to the phenomenon that words having different meanings have the same form, i.e., different words are identical in sound or spelling, or in both. When two words are identical in sound, they are homophones. When two words are identical in spelling, they are homographs.When two words are identical in both sound and spelling, they are complete homonyms (2) While different words may have the same or similar meaning, the same one word may have more than one meaning. This is what we call polysemy, and such a word is called a polysemic word. There are many polysemicwords in English, The fact is the more commonly used a word is, the more likely it has acquired more than one meaning. (3) Hyponymy refers to the sense relation between a more general, more inclusive word and a more specific word. The word which is more general in meaning is called the superordinate, and the more specific words are called its hyponyms. Hyponyms of the same superordinate are co-hyponyms to each other. Hyponymy is a relation of inclusion; in terms of meaning, the superordinate includes all its hyponyms.4. They can be gradable antonyms, complementary antonyms and relational opposite Gradable antonyms: wide /narrow poor/rich Complementary antonyms: vacant/occupied literate/illiterate Relational opposite: north/south, doctor/patient, father/daughter, above/below5. “Toms wife is pregnant” presupposes “Tom has a wife.” “My sister will soon be divorced” presupposes “My sister is a married woman.” “He likes seafood” is entailed by “He likes crabs.” “They are going to have another baby” presupposes “They have a child.” 6. They both base on the belief that the meaning of a word can be dissected into meaning components.7.7. Grammaticality refers to the grammatical well-formedness of a sentence. The violation of the selectional restrictions, i.e., constrains on what lexical items can go with what others, might make a grammatically meaningless.8.8. MAN, ICE-CREAM (SELL) BABY (SLEEP) (SNOW) TREE (GROW)第6章1. Generally speaking, pragmatics is the study of meaning in the context. It studies meaning in a dynamic way and as a process. In order to have a successful communication, the speaker and hearer must take the context into their consideration so as to affect the right meaning and intention. The development and establishment pragmatics in 1960s and 1970s resulted mainly from the expansion of the study semantics. However, it is different from the traditional semantics. The major difference between them lies in that pragmatics studies meaning in a dynamic way, while semantics studies meaning in a static way. Pragmatics takes context into consideration while semantics does not. Pragmatics takes care of the aspect of meaning that is not accounted for by semantics.2. The notion of context is essential to the pragmatic study of language. It is generally considered as constituted by the knowledge shared by the speaker and the hearer. Various continents of shared knowledge have been identified, e.g. knowledge of the language they use, knowledge of what has been said before, knowledge about the world in general, knowledge about the specific situation in which linguistic communication is taking place, and knowledge about each other. Context determines the speakers use of language and also the heaters interpretation of what is said to him. 3. A sentence is a grammatical concept, and the meaning of a sentence is often studied as the abstract, intrinsic property of the sentence itself in terms of predication. But if we think of a sentence as what people actually utter in the course of communication, it becomes an utterance, and it should be considered in the situation in which it is actually uttered (or used). So it is impossible to tell if “The dog is barking” is a sentence or an utterance. It can be either. It all depends on how we look at it and how we are going to analyze it. If we take it as a grammatical unit and consider it as a self-contained unit in isolation from context, then we are treating it as a sentence. If we take it as something a speaker utters in a certain situation with a certain purpose, then we are treating it as an utterance. 5. According to Austins new model, a speaker might be performing three acts simultaneously when speaking: locutionary act, illocutionary act, and perlocutionary act. A locutionary act is the act of uttering words, phrases, clauses. It is the act of conveying literal meaning by means of syntax, lexicon and phonology. An illocutionary act is the act of expressing the speakers intention; it is the act performed in saying something. A perlocutionary act is the act performed by or resulting from saying something; it is the consequence of, or the change brought about by the utterance; it is the act performed by saying something. 6.6. (1) representatives: stating or describing, saying what the speaker believes to be true(2) directives: trying to get the hearer to do something (3) commissives: committing the speaker himself to some future course of action(4) expressives: expressing feelings or attitude towards an existing(5) declarations: bringing about immediate changes by saying something The illocutionary point of the representatives is to commit the speaker to somethings being the case, to the truth of what has been said, in other words, when performing an illocutionary act of representative, the speaker is making a statement or giving a description which he himself believes to be true. Stating, believing, sweating, hypothesizing are among the most typical of the representatives. Directives ate attempts by the speaker to get the hearer to do some- thing. Inviting, suggesting, requesting, advising, wanting, threatening and ordering are all specific instances of this class. Commissives are those illocutionary acts whose point is to commit the speaker to some future course of action, i.e. when speaking the speaker puts himself under a certain obligation. Promising, undertaking, vowing are the most typical ones. The illocutionary point of expressives is to express the psychological state specified in the utterance. The speaker is expressing his feelings or attitudes towards an existing state of affairs, e.g. apologizing, thanking, congratulating. The last class “declarations” has the characteristic that the successful performance of an act of this type brings about the correspondence between what is said and reality.7. Cooperative Principle, abbreviated as CP. It goes as follows: Make your conversational contribution such as required at the stage at which it occurs by the accepted purpose or direction of the talk exchange in which you are engaged. To be more specific, there are four maxims under this general principle: (1) The maxim of quantity (2) The maxim of quality (3) The maxim of relation (4) The maxim of manner第7章1. a. size ( old French) b. skill ( old Norse) c. royal ( old French Latin) d.ranch (SpanishFrench) e.robot (Czechold Church Slavonic) f. potato ( Spanish Taino) g. astronaut ( French) h. emerald ( Middle English & old French) i. pagoda ( Persian Sanskrit) j. khaki ( Hindi Persian) k. bulldoze ( bull(Botany Bay Slang) old English) l. hoodlum ( German)3. In modern English, these lines are more likely written as: King: Where is Pelonius? Hamlet: In heaven, send to see there. If your messenger cannot find him there, yourself seek him at the other place. But indeed, if you cannot find him within this month, you shall notice him as you go up the stairs into the lobby.4. The statement means that when necessary, people will make use of available uses even if there is no writers efforts. 5. Keep the door closed. 第8章1. There are many indications of the inter-relationship between language and society. One of them is that while language is principally used to communicate meaning, it is also used to establish and maintain social relationships. This social function of language is embodied in the use of such utterances as “Good morning!”, “Hi!”, “Hows your family?”, “Nice day today, isnt it?” Another indication is that users of the same language in a sense all speak differently. The kind of language each of them chooses to use is in part determined by his social background. And language, in its turn, reveals information about its speaker. When we speak, we cannot avoid giving clues to our listeners about ourselves. Then to some extent, language, especially the structure of its lexicon, reflects both the physical and the social environments of a society. For example while there is only one word in English for “snow”, there are several in Eskimo. This is a reflection of the need for the Eskimos to make distinctions between various kinds of snow in their snowy living environment. As a social phenomenon language is closely related to the structure of the society in which it is used, and the evaluation of a linguistic form is entirely social. 2. To a linguist, all language forms and accents are equally good as far as they can fulfill the communicative functions they are expected to fulfill. Therefore, judgments concerning the correctness and purity of linguistic varieties are social rather than linguistic. A case in point is the use of thepostvocalic r. While in English accents without postvocalic r are considered to be more correct than accents with it, in New York city, accents with postvocalic r enjoys more prestige and are considered more correct than without it.3.3. The main social dialects discussed in this chapter are regional dialect, sociolect, gender and age. Idiolect is a personal dialect, of an individual speaker that combines elements regarding regional, social, gender, and age variations. These factors jointly determine the way he/she talks. While the language system provides all its users with the same set of potentials, the realization of these potentials is individualized by a number of social factors, resulting in idiolects.4.4. First of all, the standard dialect is based on a selected variety of the language, usually it is the local speech of an area which is considered the nations political and commercial center. Second, the standard dialect is not dialect a child acquires naturally like his regional dialect. It is a superimposed variety; it is a variety imposed from above over the range of regional dialects. Then the standard dialect has some special functions. Also designated as the official or national language of a country, the standard dialect is used for such official purposes as government documents, education, news reporting; it is the language used on any formal occasions.5. According to Halliday, “Language varies as its function varies; it differs in different situations.” The type of language which is selected as appropriate to the type of situation is a register. Halliday further distinguishes three social variables that determine the register: field of discourse, tenor of discourse, and mode of discourse. For example, a lecture on linguistics could be identified as Field: scientific (linguistic) Tenor: teacher students (formal, polite) Mode: oral (academic lecturing)6. A prominent phonological feature of Black English is the simplification of consonant clusters at the end of a word. According to this consonant deletion rule, the final-position consonants are often deleted; thus “passed” is pronounced pa:s, mend men, desk des. A syntactic feature of Black English that has often been cited to show its illogicality is the deletion of the link verb “be”. In Black English we frequently come across sentences without the copula verb: “They mine”, “You crazy”, “Her hands cold”, and “That house big”. Another syntactic feature of Black English that has been the target of attack is the use of double negation constructions, e.g. He dont know nothing. 7. Pidgins arose from a blending of several languages such as Chinese dialects and English, African dialects and French. Usually a European language serves as the basis of the pidgin in the sense that some of its grammar and vocabulary is derived from the European language used by traders and missionaries. Pidgins typically have a limited vocabulary and a very reduced grammatical structure characterized by the loss of inflections, gender end case. 8.8. Bilingualism refers to the situation that in some speech communities, two languages are used side by side with each having a different role to play; and language switching occurs when the situation changes. But instead of two different languages, in a diglossic situation two varieties of a language exist side by side throughout the community, with each having a definite role to play.The two languages of bilingualism and the two varieties of diglossia each has different role to play as situation changes. 第9章1. The relation between language and culture is dialectical. Every language is part of a culture. As such, it cannot but serve and reflect cultural needs. Within tile broad limits set by the specific needs of a culture, a language is free to make arbitrary selections of signified. That is to say, language is not a passive reflector of culture. Even assuming that culture is in many cases the first cause in the language-culture relationship, language as the effect in the first link of the causal chain will in turn be the cause in the next link, reinforcing and preserving beliefs and customs and conditioning their future course. We can find similar relationship between local dialect and regional culture. For example, in China, there are many local dialects and many regional operas. Those regional operas can only be performed in the local dialects; meanwhile those regional operas are part of local cultures.2. The studies have shed new light on our understanding of the hypothesis: people tend to sort out and distinguish experiences differently according to the semantic categories provided by their different codes. For example, English-speaking culture teaches its people to name what is practical, useful and important. In a general sense, the important things take on specific names while the less important things have general names that must be modified through additional words to become specific. A good illustration of this point is the word snow in Eskimo and English. 4. I find it is very important to learn its culture when learning a foreign language. A typical example of these is that when greeting acquaintances, we tend to say Have you eaten?, which will cause misunderstanding to a foreigner. 5. Linguistic imperialism is closely related to cultural imperialism. Linguistic imperialism is a kind of linguicism which can be defined as the promulgation of global ideologies through the world-wide expansion of one language. With the monopoly of one language over others, its accompanied ideologies, structures and practices will be a potential threat to the individual cultural identity and cultural integrity. From this, we can know that linguistic imperialism is something worth consideration.6. a) 无情逼索全部债务；合法但极不合理的要求。源自莎士比亚戏剧威尼斯商人 b) 只工作不玩耍，聪明孩子也变傻。 源自谚语。 c) 绝交信；要求解除婚约的信。 源自美国口语。 d) 好鱼游水底，良鸟藏深山。 源自谚语。e) 潘多拉的盒子；一切灾难的根源。 源自希腊神话。 f) 能胜任, 值得雇用。 源自古语。 g) 珍爱的人。 源自古语。第10章1. Language acquisition refers to the childs acquisition of his mother tongue, i.e. how the child comes to understand and speak the language of his community.Language Acquisition Device, (also known as LAD). The LAD was described as an imaginary “black box” existing somewhere in the human brain. The “black box” is said to contain principles that are universal to all human languages. Children need access to the samples of a natural language to activate the LAD, which enables them to discover his languages structure by matching the innate knowledge of basic grammatical system to that particular language.Eric Lenneberg, a biologist, argued that the LAD, like other biological functions, works successfully only when it is stimulated at the right time a specific and limited time period for language acquisition which is referred to as the Critical Period Hypothesis (CPH). There are two versions of the CPH. While the strong one suggests that children must