北京外国语大学02年语言学考研真题.doc

北京外国语大学2002年语言学考研真题考试科目：语言学和应用语言学1. Displacement, arbitrariness, cultural transmission, discreteness and duality are sometimes listed as the 6 core feature of human language. Choose 3 out of the 6 and explain with examples what they mean. (12 points )2. Briefly explain what phonetics and phonology are concerned with and what kind of relationships hold between the two. (10 points )3. In deriving new words via a prefix such as mi-, there seems to be some constraint on what is permitted. The words in the first column below are acceptable formation, but the forms in the other columns are not. Work out what the rules might be for making new adjectives with the suffix mis- (18 points ) Misadventure mishappy mismilk Misjudgement mismeal missad Misplace misglad misword Mistrustful misrule miscraz4. Using what you know about Grices cooperative principle and its four maxims, analyze the following short exchange. (20 points )同事甲：小张昨晚去哪儿了？同事乙：今天早上我看见一辆白色富康停在小林家门口。5 In each of the following sentence, the second part cancels some information given by the first part. However, this seems to result in quite utterances in group (1) and in very awkward utterance in group (2). Explain why. (20 points )Group (1)a. 老张有三个小孩子，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，说真的我没在乡下呆过。5. Put yourself into the position of an English teacher in China. What are your goals and the goals of the students and the educational system in the teaching and learning of English? When the goals do not converge, hoe do you reconcile the differences between them? (20 points) 参考答案1. Cultural transmission: this refers to the fact that the details of the linguistic system must be learned anew by each speaker. They are not biologically transmitted from generation to generation. Though the capacity for language in human beings has a genetic basis, the particular language a human being learns is a cultural fact, not a genetic one. A human being brought up in isolation simply does not acquire language, as is shown by the rare studies of children brought up by animals without human contact.Discreteness: a distinctive characteristic of language that refers to the fact that language are organized in terms of two levels. At one level, language consists of sequences of segments or units which do not themselves carry meaning (such as the letters “g” , “d” , “o”).However, when these units are combined in certain sequences, they form larger units and carry meaning (such as dog, god).2. By definition, phonetics is the study of speech sounds, including the production of speech, while phonology is the study of the rules governing the structure, distribution, and sequencing of speech sounds and the shape of syllables. Both phonetics and phonology are concerned with speech. Phonetics is the study of the production, perception, and physical properties of speech sounds; phonology attempts to account for how they convey meaning in particular languages. Phonetics is the study of actual sounds, that is, the analysis and modeling of the speech signal; phonology is concerned with a more abstract description of speech sounds and tries to describe the regularities of sound patterns in different languages or within a language. In this sense, phonetics is concrete, while phonology is abstract. What phonetics studies is the speech sound, namely phone, what phonology studies is phoneme.3. The prefix mis- means bad or badly, wrong or wrongly, and an opposite or the lack of something. It can usually be added to verbs and adjectives, and several nouns which are derived from the corresponding verbs, to form a new word that is contrast to the original meaning. According to the examples give above, we can see if mis- is used to form new adjectives, there are some following rules to observe:1) The prefix mis- could not be added to nouns which have no corresponding verbs that can be prefiexed by it; thus mismeal, mismilk, misword and misrule are not acceptable.2) It should not be added to the root word with negative meanings, because the prefix mid- itself meand bad, wrong or opposite( thus miscrazy, and missed are not acceptable.) 3) The prefix mis- should not combine with mono-morphemic root to create a new adjective word, thus misplaced and mistrustful are acceptable but mishappy are not. 4. Paul Grice made an attempt to explain the course of natural conversation, in which implied massages are frequently involved. His idea is that in making conversation, the participants must first of all be willing to cooperate; otherwise, it would not be possible for them to carry on the talk. This general principle is called the Cooperative principle. There are four maxims under this general principle: the maxim of quantity (make your contribution as informative as required; do not make your contribution more informative than is required); the maxim of quality (do not say you believe to be false; do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence); the maxim of manner (avoid obscurity of expression; avoid ambiguity; be brief; be orderly). While conversation participants nearly always observe the CP, they do not always observe these maxims strictly. These maxims can be violated for various reasons, but only when they are “flouted, does “conversational implicature” occurs. When participants flout a maxim, their language becomes indirect. In the above example, this conversation is said when it is known to both 同事甲and 同事乙 that it is possible for 同事乙 to tell 同事甲 where 小林 had gone yesterday. 同事乙response is thus apparently irrelevant to 同事甲s question. But we can see that 同事乙 intendeds to observe the CP, otherwise he would not give any answer to 同事甲， but he answers indirectly. Under the Paul Grices CP, we can see 同事乙s response flouts the maxim of relation but may observe the maxim of quality. The 同事乙s implicature may be “I am not sure but maybe he went to 小林s home because I see his car there this morning.”5. In group (1), the second part of the three sentences all cancel the implied meaning of the first part by adding some extra contents. This is a character of cancellation of conversational implicature. The presence of a conversational implicature relies on a number of factors: the conventional meaning of words used, the CP, the linguistic context, etc. if any of them changes, the implicature will also change. This can be done simply by adding more information, like the examples in group (1). When the second parts are added, the original implicatures are no longer there.In group (2), the case is very different because the two parts of those sentences are self-contradictory. While in group (1),even the second parts function of cancellation of implicature is based on the truth-value of its corresponding first part. But in group (2), the sentences second part actually deny the truth value of the first part, thus the two parts are inconsistent with each other and can not exist simultaneously. The sentences examples in group (2)are considered self-contradictory and then not acceptable.6. Whenever we talk about the goal or objectives of TEFL, we might think of the so-called “language skills” including listening, speaking, reading and writing. This is the basic object for both students and teachers in learning English. The curriculums in the school are mainly centered on these four aspects. Students usually spend much time improving their language ability by doing grammatical exercise, listening to the types, etc. Certainly, the learning-well of English depends on the four good foundations; however, we think that this aim is too general. The goal of language teaching is shifting from linguistic competence to communicative competence and the mode of teaching from single skill development to integrated skills training. For it is widely agreed that in learning the formal rules of the language and the thought of teaching a language in addition to learning a language, it is necessary to develop ones ability to use the language for communication is accepted by most, if not all, people in the TEFL circles. In the syllabus, the ultimate goal of TEFL has been set at “developing students communicative competence”, and cultural aspect of TEFL has been taken into account. The teaching objective of English is to help students develop a relatively strong reading ability and general skills of listening, speaking, writing and translating, and by so doing make students able to use English for communications. “English teaching is intended to help students lay a solid foundation of languages skills, acquire good language learning strategies, nourish their liberal accomplishment, and adapt themselves to the requirements of social development and economic construction.”If I was the English teacher, I will focus on the combination of linguistic competence (mainly the grammar, vocabulary, etc ,) and the communicative competence. Because each language is composed of the basic grammar and vocabulary, the learning of a second language is necessary beginning with these language elements. The formal rules should not be neglected even the communicative competence is emphasized. On the base of teaching linguistic element, TEFL should also be aimed at developing students communicative competence. That language teaching recognizes a social, interpersonal and cultural dimension and attributes to it just as much importance as to the grammatic