英语语言学复习整理.doc

1. Language and Linguistics1. What are design features of language? (P 2-P 12)a. language is systematicb. language is symbolicc. language is arbitraryd. language is primarily vocale. language is human specificf. language is used for communication2. What are general functions of language? Please illustrate your point with examples.(P 14-P 17)a. physiological functionb. phatic functionc. recording functiond. identifying functione. communicating functionf. pleasure functiong. reasoning function3. Distinctions between Langue and Parole (P 29)langueparolethe abstract systema collective body of knowledgea kind of common reference manualacquired by all members of a community of speakers.the particular actualities of individual utterancethe contingent executive side of thingsthe relatively superficial behavioral reflexes of knowledgethe use of language of utterances.4. Distinctions between synchronic and diachronic (P 30)a. The diachronic study refers to the description of the historical development of a language.b. The synchronic study refers to the description of a particular state of a language at a single point of time. It is necessary for the synchronic description to find out these systematic rules as they operate in the language at a particular time.5. Distinctions between competence and performance (P 33)a. Competence refers to the know that native speakers have of their language as system of abstract formal relations.b. Performance refers to what we do when we speak or listen, that is, the infinite varied individual acts of verbal behavior with their irregularities, inconsistences, and errors.2. Phonetics and Phonology1. What is phonetics and its three subdivisions? (P 43)a. Phonetics is the scientific study of speech and is concerned with defining and classifying speech sounds.b. Articulatory phoneticsAcoustic phoneticsAuditory phonetics2. Distinctions among bilabial, dental, alveolar, labiodental, velar sounds. (P 47-P 49)a. Bilabial are articulations made with the upper and lower lips brought together. /p/,/b/,/m/.b. Dentals are produced by the front of the tongue touching the back of the upper front teeth. th/,/.c. Labiodentals are articulations produced with the lower lip approximating to the underside of the upper front teeth. /f/,/v/.d. Alveolars are sounds produced by the tip and/or blade of the tongue touching or nearly touching the gum ridge behind the upper teeth. /t/,/d/,/n/,/s/,/z/,/l/.e. Velar sounds are produced with the back of the tongue dorsum raised up to the soft palate (or velum) at the back of the mouth. /k/,/g/,/w/.3. What is phonology? (P 56)Phonology is the study of the sound patterns in human language. (The term phonology is used in two ways, either as the study of the sound patterns in language or as the sound patterns of a language.)4. Distinctions between phonemes (P 56) and allophones (P 58).a. The segments of an underlying representation are called phonemes.Phoneme is the minimum phonetic unit that is not further analyzable into smaller units.Phoneme is the abstract set of units as the basis of our speech.Phonemes are said to be the distinctive sounds.A phoneme may have its variants.b. There is only one phoneme between two words and it turns up in two variant forms in these two words. These phonetics variants of phoneme are called allophones.5. What are minimal pairs? (P 58)a. A pair of phonemes is also known as a minimal pair.b. When two different forms are identical in every way except for one sound segment that occurs in the same place in the string, the two words are called minimal pairs.6. What are components of a syllable? (P 66)Structurally, the syllable may be divided into three parts: the onset, the peak, the coda.3. Morphology and Lexicon1. What is morphology? (P 73)Morphology studies morphemes and their different forms and the way they combine in word formation.2. Distinctions between word (P 74)/morpheme (P 81)/lexeme (P 91).a. Word is the smallest form that can occur by itself. (“a minimum free form”Bloomfield)A word is a sound or combination of sounds which we produce voluntarily with our vocal equipment.A word is symbolic, i.e. it stands for something else, such as objects, happenings, or ideas.Words are part of the large communication system we call language.Words help human beings interact culturally with one another.b. A morpheme is a smallest linguistic unit that carries grammatical and/or semantic meaning. That means it cannot be further divided into smaller grammatical units.A morpheme may undergo certain phonetic changes when combined with the base word.c. A lexeme is referred to the smallest unit in the meaning system of a language that can be distinguished from other smaller units.A lexeme is an abstract unit and may occur in many different forms in actual spoken or written texts.Collocation is an important feature in the combination of lexemes.3. What are open-class words? (P 79)We can add new words to these classes of nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs.4. What are closed-class words? (P 79)It is not easy to think of new pronouns, determiners, conjunctions, or prepositions that enter the language recently.5. Distinctions between bound morpheme and free morpheme. (p 83)a. If a morpheme can constitute a word by itself, it is called a free morpheme, like room, bottle, stand, large.b. If a morpheme has meaning only connected with at least another morpheme, it is called bound morpheme, like un- in unlucky, and the plural s in bags.A bound morpheme is also called an affix in the sense that it is always added to another morpheme. Affix can be divided into prefixes, suffixes and infixes.6. Distinctions between inflectional morpheme and derivative morpheme (P 84)a. Bound morphemes can be divided into two types according to whether they provide the lexical item to which they are added any further grammatical meaning and/or lexical meaning.b. An inflectional morpheme provides further grammatical information about an existing lexical item. English inflectional morphemes are largely in the form of suffix. Only in some few irregular plurals can we identify the existence of infixes.c. A derivative morpheme refers to one that creates an entirely new word. It may take the form of a prefix or a suffix.7. Distinctions between prefixes and suffixes. (P 83)a. A prefix is one that added to the beginner of the stem, like un- in unlucky, in- in inappropriate, dis- in disorder.Prefixes generally do not change the grammatical categories of the stem. They only add some lexical meanings to the stem.b. A suffix is one that is added to the end of the stem, like ing in waiting, -ful in useful, -less in meaningless.Most suffixes have two functions: (1) to add some grammatical meanings to the stem or (2) to change its grammatical categories.Sometimes suffixes do not change the grammatical categories of the stem.8. What are major processes of word-formation? Give each one or two examples. (P 86)a. Compounding (refers to the process of conjoining two or more free morphemes to form a new word. The new word form is called a compound.i.e. fifteen, Sunday, Monday.b. Derivation i.e. antislavery, deprogram, disapprove, robotics.c. Conversion i.e. n.v. elbow to elbow v.n. to doubt doubt adj./adv.v. dry to dry adj. n. native two nativesd. Abbreviation i.e. bicycle bike gymnasium gym omnibus bus UN WTOe. Back formation i.e. to audit audition to donate donation to enthuse enthusiasmf. Neologism i.e. moonwalker, software, internetg. Borrowing i.e. paper tiger, moonrise, cold war4. Syntax1. What are constituents in syntactic analysis? (P 98)Constituents are structural units, i.e. any linguistic form, such as words or word groups. When constituents are considered as part of the successive unraveling of a sentence, they are known as its immediate constituents.2. What is immediate Constituent Analysis? (P 98)The segmentation of the sentence up into its immediate constituents by using binary cuttings until its ultimate constituents are obtained is an important approached to the realization of the nature of language, called Immediate Constituent Analysis (IC Analysis). The analysis can be carried out in ways of tree diagrams, bracketing, or any other.3. According to their structures and forms, what are major types of English sentences?According to their structures and forms, sentences can be divided into simple sentences, coordinate sentences, and complex sentences. (P 100)a. A simple sentence is a group of words which expresses a single independent thought.b. A coordinate sentence or compound sentence is a group of words which expresses two or more connected and coordinate thoughts.c. A complex sentence is a group of words which expresses two or more unified thoughts, one of which is the main or principle thought dependent on it one or more subordinate thoughts.4. According to functional approach, what are major types of English sentences? List them with examples. (P 101)a. declarative Pauline gave Mary a digital watch for her birthday.b. interrogativeDid Pauline give Tom a digital watch for his birthday?c. imperativeGive me a digital watch for my birthday.d. exclamatoryWhat a fine watch he received for his birthday!5. Semantics1. What is semantic field? (P 134)Semantic field refers to the organization of related lexemes into a system which shows their relationship to one another.2. Distinctions between conceptual meaning and associative meaning. (P 126)a. Conceptual meaning refers to the definition given in the dictionary. It is widely assumed to be the central factor in linguistic communication and is integral to the essential functioning of language.b. Associative meaning refers to the meaning associated with the conceptual meaning, which can be further divided into following five types:Connotative meaningSocial meaningAffective meaningReflected meaningCollocative meaning3. Distinctions among synonymy (P 136), antonym (P 138), meronymy (P 140), hyponymy (P 140).a. Words or expressions with the same or similar meaning are said to be synonymous. Synonyms are words or expressions that share common semantic features.Synonyms can be used as a rhetorical device to make the expressions coherent, varied and/or more colorful.b. Antonymy is the relationship of oppositeness of meaning.Antonyms can be used as a rhetorical device to make the expressions more contrastive and impressive.c. Meronymy is a term used to describe a part-whole relationship between lexical items.Meronymy reflects hierarchical classifications in the lexicon.d. Hyponymy is used to refer to a specific-general semantic relationship between lexical items.A word may be the meronymy of one term but the hyponymy of another. Hyponymy differs from meronymy in transitivity. Hyponymy is always transitive in the sense that there is a hierarchical relation between different terms. In contrast, meronymy may or may not be hierarchical. Meronymy and hyponymy are important routes of semantic relations along which lexical-semantic changes occur. Meronymy and hyponymy are among the widely used rhetorical devices to make the expressions more varied and colorful.4. Distinctions between sentence meaning and utterance meaning (P 132)a. sentence meaning is directly predictable from the grammatical meaning and utterance features of the sentence.b. Utterance meanings may not be directly related with them. You have to depend on various contextual factors to comprehend the utterance meaning.5. Distinctions between lexical meaning and grammatical meaning. (P130)a. lexical meaning is expressed by those “meaningful” parts of speech, such as noun. verb, adjectives, and adverbs, and is given in the dictionary.b. Grammatical meaning is expressed by such syntactic categories as the distinction between the subject and the object of a sentence, oppositions of definiteness, tense and number, and function words and intonation.c. The total meaning constitute the linguistic meanings, not the total meaning. The total meaning of our utterance consists always of the linguistic meanings plus the social-cultural meanings.6. Pragmatics and Text Analysis1. What is the cooperative principle? Please give some examples flouting these four maxims which may cause the conversational implicature. (P 169)a. According to the cooperative principle, the participants in a conversation normally communicate in a maximally efficient, rational and cooperative way. They should speak sincerely, relevantly, and clearly, while providing sufficient information.b. The maxim of qualityc. The maxim of quantity d. The maxim of relevancee. The maxim of manner2. Identify the cohesive ties (grammatical devices or lexical ones) in a discourse. 如课后练习会找出语篇中的衔接手段 (P 184)7. Language and Social Culture1. What is dialect? (P 204) (regional (P 206), social (P 207), ethnic (P 209)a. Dialect refers to any regional, social, or ethic variety of a language.The dialects of a single language may be defined as mutually intelligible forms of a language that differ in systematic ways from each other.b. Regional dialect refers to the language variety used in a geographical region.c. Social dialect is used to describe differences in speech associated with various social groups or classes.d. Ethnic varieties are used by ethnic groups and regarded as social dialect.2. Features of Black English. (P 210)a. Consonant deletion rule is used.b. In syntax, the frequent absence of various forms of “be” is one of its prominent syntactic features.c. Another syntactic feature of black English is the systematic use of the expression “it is” where Standard English uses “there is” in the sense of “there exists”.d. Another syntactical feature of black English is the use of double negation constructions.3. Shifts of meaning (P 219) and syntactical change (P 222) in language change process.a. More productive as a way enlarging the vocabulary than borrowing and creating new words from native elements is expanding the meaning of word that already exists in the language.(by amelioration; the opposite of amelioration; through generalization; through specializa