现代语言学的二稿.doc

1. Explain the following definition of linguistics: Linguistics is the scientific study of language. Linguistics investigates not any particular language, but languages in general. Linguistic study is scientific because it is based on the systematic investigation of authentic(可靠的，真实的) language data. No serious linguistic conclusion is reached until after the linguist has done the following three things: observing the way language is actually used, formulating some hypotheses, and testing these hypotheses against linguistic facts to prove their validity.2. What are the branches of linguistics? What does each of them study? (语言学的主要分支是什么。每个分支的研究对象是什么？)Linguistics mainly involves the following branches: 1) General linguistics, which is the study of language as a whole and which deals with the basic concepts, theories, descriptions, models and methods applicable in any linguistic study 2) Phonetics, which studies the sounds that are used in linguistic communication 3) Phonology, which studies how sounds are put together and used to convey meaning in communication 4) Morphology, which studies the way in which morphemes are arranged to form words 5) Syntax, which studies how morphemes and words are combined to form sentences 6) Semantics, which is the study of meaning in language. 7) Pragmatics, which is the study of meaning not in isolation, but in the context of use 8) Sociolinguistics, which is the study of language with reference to society 9) Psycholinguistics, which is the study of language with reference to the workings of mind. 10) Applied linguistics, which is concerned about the application of linguistic findings in linguistic studies; in a narrow sense, applied linguistics refers to the application of linguistic principles and theories to language teaching, especially the teaching of foreign and second languages. 11) Other related branches are anthropological linguistics(人类语言学), neurological linguistics（神经语言学）, mathematical linguistics（数学语言学）, and computational linguistics（计算机语言学）. 3. What makes modern linguistics different from traditional grammar? (现代语言学与传统语法有什么区别？) Traditional grammar is prescriptive（规定性）; it is based on high (religious, literary) written language. It sets models for language users to follow. But Modern linguistics is descriptive（描述性）; its investigations are based on authentic and mainly spoken language data. It is supposed to be scientific and objective and the task of linguists is supposed to describe the language people actually use, whether it is correct or not. 4. Is modern linguistics mainly synchronic（共时性） or diachronic（历时性）? Why? (The description of language at some point in time is a synchronic study; the description of a language as it changes through time is a diachronic study.)Modern linguistics is mainly synchronic, focusing on the present-day language. Unless the various states of a language are successfully studied, it will not be possible to describe language from a diachronic point of view.5. Which enjoys priority in modern linguistics, speech or writing? Why? Modern linguistics gives priority to the spoken language for the following reasons: First, speech precedes writing. The writing system is always a later invention used to record the speech. There are still some languages that only have the spoken form. Then, a larger amount of communication is carried out in speech than in writing. Third, speech is the form in which infants acquire their native language.6. Do you think human language is entirely arbitrary? Why?Language is arbitrary in nature, it is not entirely arbitrary, because there are a limited number of words whose connections between forms and meanings can be logically explained to a certain extent, for example, the onomatopoeia, words which are coined on the basis of imitation of sounds by sounds such as bang, crash, etc. Take compounds for another example. The two elements “photo” and “copy” in “photocopy” are non-motivated, but the compound is not arbitrary. What are the two major media of communication? Of the two, which one is primary and why? 语言交际的两大媒介是什么？哪一个是基本的交际媒介？为什么？ Speech and writing are the major media of communication. Speech is considered primary over writing. The reasons are: speech is prior to writing in language evolution, speech plays a greater role in daily communications, and speech is the way in which people acquire their native language.1. What is voicing and how is it caused? 什么叫浊音化？它是如何形成的？ Voicing is the result of the vibration of the vocal cords. When the vocal cords are drawn wide apart, letting air go through without causing vibration, the sounds produced in such a way are voiceless. When vocal cords are held together tautly so that the air stream vibrates them, the sounds produced in this way are voiced. 2. What is the function of nasal cavity? How does it perform this function?The function of nasal cavity is to nasalize the sounds that are produced. It does this by closing the air passage connecting the oral and nasal cavities so that the air stream can only go through the nasal cavity.3. Describe the various parts in the oral cavity which are involved in the production of speech sounds? The various pats of the tongue: the tip, the front, the blade, and the back; the uvula; the soft palate; the hard palate; the teeth ridge (alveolar); the upper and lower teeth; the lips.4. How broad transcription and narrow transcription differ? 宽式标音和严式标音有什么区别？(P22)The broad transcription is the transcription of sounds by using one letter to represent one sound. The narrow transcription is the transcription with diacritics （变音符号） to show detailed articulatory features of sounds. 5. What is the difference between a monophthong and a diphthong? A monophthong is one for which the organs of speech remain in a given position for a period of time. A diphthong is a vowel sound consisting of a deliberate glide. The organs of speech starting in the position of one vowel and immediately moving in the direction of another vowel, for example: i:, i are monophthongs, and a , e are diphthongs.6. How do phonetics and phonology differ in their focus of study? Who do you think will be more interested in the difference between land l, p and ph, a phonetician or a phonologist? Why? Phonetics: description of all speech sounds and their fine differences. It not necessarily distinguish meaning. Phonology: description of sound systems of particular languages and how sounds function to distinguish meaning. It is realized as certain phone and it distinguish meaning. A phonetician would be more interested in such differences because such differences will not cause differences in meaning, but can make finer distinctions of the sounds.7. What is a phone? How is it different from a phoneme? How are allophones related to a phoneme? Phone: a speech sound, a phonetic unit. （It not necessarily distinguish meaning） Phoneme: a collection of abstract sound features, a phonological unit. (realized as certain phone, distinguish meaning) Allophones: actual realization of a phoneme in different phonetic contexts.8. What is a minimal pair and what is a minimal set? Why is it important to identify the minimal set in a language? Minimal pair: two sound combinations identical in every way except in one sound element that occurs in the same position. Minimal set: a group of sound combinations with the above feature. By identifying the minimal pairs or the minimal set of a language, a phonologist can identify its phonemes.9. Explain with examples the sequential rule, the assimilation rule and the deletion rule. (P36,每条规则记一个例子) Sequential rule: rule governing the combination of sounds in a particular language. Assimilation rule: rule assimilating one sound similar to the following one by copying one of its phonetic features. Deletion rule: rule governing the deletion of a sound in a certain phonetic context although it is represented in spelling.10. What does sentence stress mean? Sentence stress refers to the relative force which is given to the words in a sentence. Some words are more important than others, and the more important words are pronounced with greater force and made more prominent. The more important words in English are nouns, main verbs, adjectives, adverbs, and demonstrative pronouns, and the other categories of words (articles, personal pronouns, auxiliary verbs, prepositions, and conjunctions) are usually not stressed. To give special emphasis to a certain notion, a word in a sentence that is usually unstressed can be stressed. For example: He is driving my car. My may be stressed to emphasize the fact that the car is mine.1. What are the main features of the English compounds? Despite the various formations, all compounds share the following features:1) Orthographically, a compound can be written as one word with or without a hyphen in between, or as two separate words, e.g., armchair, follow-up, thunder bird.2) Syntactically, the part of speech of the compound is generally determined by the part of speech of the second element, e.g., head-strong adj. greenhouse n.3) Semantically, the meaning of compound is often idiomatic, not always being the sum total of the meanings of its components. For example, a blackleg is not a leg that is black, a greenhouse is not a house that is green, a hotdog is not a dog at all.4) Phonetically, the stress of a compound always falls on the first element, while the second element receives secondary stress. For example, “,running dog.” Thus pronounced, the form means “a dog that is running,” the other way is to put the primary stress on the first element “running”, in this case, “running dog” is actually a compound noun and metaphorically it refers to a person who follows another person obediently in his wrong doings.1. What are the major types of synonyms in English? (同义词的分类)1) Dialectal synonyms: Dialectal synonyms are words which have more or less the same meaning and are used in different regional dialects such as petroleum in British English and gasoline in American English.Dialectal synonyms can also be found within British, or American English itself. For example, girl is called lass or lassie in Scottish dialect. 2) Stylistic synonyms: Stylistic synonyms are words which have the same meaning but differ in style, or degree of formality. Some of the stylistic synonyms tend to be more formal, others tend to be casual , and still others are neutral in style. For example: old man, daddy, dad, father, male parent. 3) Synonyms that differ in their emotive or evaluative meaning: They are words that have the same meaning but express different emotions of the user. The emotions of the user indicate the attitude or bias（偏爱） of the user toward what he is talking about, such as thrifty and miser.4) Collocational synonyms: Some synonyms differ in their collocation. That is, they go together with different words, for example: accuse . . . of, charge . . . with,rebuke . . . for. 5) Semantically different synonyms: They refer to the synonyms that differ slightly in what they mean. For example, amaze and astound are very close in meaning to the word surprise, but they have very subtle differences in meaning. While amaze suggests confusion and bewilderment, astound suggests difficulty in believing. 2. How can words opposite in meaning be classified? (反义关系可以分为哪几个类别？各有什么特征？)1) Gradable antonyms: Some antonyms are gradable because there are often intermediate forms between the two members of a pair such as far/near, dark/bright, ugly/beautiful2) Complementary antonyms: a pair of complementary antonyms is characterized by the feature that the denial of one member of the pair implies the assertion of the other. left/right, vacant/occupied, north/south3) Relational opposites: pairs of words that exhibit the reversal of a relationship between the two items. father/daughter, doctor/patient3. In what way is componential analysis similar to the analysis of phonemes into distinctive features? In the light of componential analysis, the meaning of a word consists of a number of distinctive meaning features; it is these different features that distinguish word meaning. Similarly, a phoneme is considered as a collection of distinctive sound features and it is these sound features that distinguish different sounds.4. What is grammaticality? What might make a grammatically meaningful sentence semantically meaningless? (P107-108) Grammaticality: the grammatical well-formedness of a sentence. A sentence may be well-formed grammatically, i.e. it conforms（使一致） to the grammatical rules of the language, but it is not necessarily semantically well-formed, i.e. it may not make sense at all. Whether a sentence is semantically meaningful is governed by the rules called the selectional restrictions, i.e. constrains on what lexical items can go with what others. Some sentences may be grammatically well formed, i.e. they comply perfectly with the grammar rules, yet they may not be semantically meaningful. The reason is that they contain words which are not supposed to go together, thus violating the selectional restrictions.tion) 1. What does pragmatics study? How does it differ from traditional semantics? 语用学和传统语义学有什么区别？ Pragmatics studies how speakers of a language use sentences to effect successful communication. (or how meaning is conveyed in the process of communication.)Pragmatics is the study of meaning in the context of use, while traditional semantics treats meaning as something intrinsic, abstract and de-contextualized.（展开：Traditional semantics studied meaning, but the meaning of language was considered as something intrinsic, and inherent, i.e. a property attached to language itself. Therefore, meanings of words, meanings of sentences were all studied in an isolated manner, detached from the context in which they were used. Pragmatics studies meaning not in isolation, but in context. The essential distinction between semantics and pragmatics is whether the context of use is considered in the study of meaning. If it is not considered, the study is restricted to the area of traditional semantics; if it is considered, the study is being carried out in the area of pragmatics.）1. What is the purpose or significance of the historical study of language?1) Researches in historical linguistics shed light on prehistoric developments in the evol