2.胡壮麟_语言学_复习及答案.doc

胡壮麟 语言学 复习及答案Chapter I Introduction IV. Define the following terms: 41. Linguistics42. Phonology43. Syntax44. Pragmatics 45. Psycholinguistics46. Language47. Phonetics48. Morphology49.Semantics 50. Sociolinguistics51. Applied Linguistics 52.Arbitrariness 53 Productivity54. Displacement55.Duality 56. Design Features 57. Competence 58 Performance 59. Langue60 ParoleV. Answer the following questions as comprehensively as possible. Give examplesfor illustration if necessary: 61. Language is generally defined as a system of arbitrary vocal symbols used for human communication. Explain it in detail. 62. What are the design features of human language? Illustrate them with examples. 63. How is modern linguistics different from traditional grammar? 64. How do you understand the distinction between a synchronic study and a diachronic study? 65. Why does modern linguistics regard the spoken form of language as primary, not the written? 66. What are the major distinctions between langue and parole?67. How do you understand competence and performance ?68. Saussures distinction between langue and parole seems similar to Chomskys distinction between competence and performance. What do you think are their major differences?69. Do you think human language is entirely arbitrary? Why?IV. Define the following terms: 41.Linguistics: Linguistics is generally defined as the scientific study of language. 42.Phonology: The study of how sounds are put together and used in communication is called phonology. 43.Syntax: The study of how morphemes and words are combined to form sentences is called syntax. . 44.Pragmatics: The study of meaning in context of use is called pragmatics. 45.Psycholinguistics: The study of language with reference to the workings of mind is called psycholinguistics. 46.Language: Language is a system of arbitrary vocal symbols used for human communication. 47.Phonetics: The study of sounds which are used in linguistic communication is called phonetics. 48.Morphology: The study of the way in which morphemes are arranged to form words is called morphology. 49.Semantics: The study of meaning in language is called semantics. 50.Sociolinguistics: The study of language with reference to society is called sociolinguistics. 51.Applied linguistics: In a narrow sense, applied linguistics refers to the application of linguistic principles and theories to language teaching and learning, especially the teaching of foreign and second languages. In a broad sense, it refers to the application of linguistic findings to the solution of practical problems such as the recovery of speech ability. 52.Arbitrariness: It is one of the design features of language. It means that there is no logical connection between meanings and sounds 53.Productivity: Language is productive or creative in that it makes possible the con-struction and interpretation of new signals by its users. 54.Displacement: Displacement means that language can be used to refer to things which are present or not present, real or imagined matters in the past, present, or future, or in far-away places. In other words, language can be used to refer to contexts removed from the immediate situations of the speaker 55.Duality: The duality nature of language means that language is a system, which consists of two sets of structure, or two levels, one of sounds and the other of meanings. 56.Design features: Design features refer to the defining properties of human language that distinguish it from any animal system of communication 57.Competence: Chomsky defines competence as the ideal users knowledge of the rules of his language, 58.Performance: performance is the actual realization of the knowl-edge of the rules in linguistic communication. 59.langue : Langue refers to the abstract linguistic system shared by all the members of a speech community; Langue is the set of conventions and rules which language users all have to follow; Langue is relatively stable, it does not change frequently 60. Parole: Parole refers to the realization of langue in actual use; parole is the concrete use of the conventions and the application of the rules; parole varies from person to person, and from situation to situation. V. Answer the following questions as comprehensively as possible. Give examplesfor illustration if necessary:61. Language is generally defined as a system of arbitrary vocal symbols used for human communication. Explain it in detail.First of all, language is a system, because elements of language are combined according to rules. Secondly, language is arbitrary because there is no intrinsic connection between form and meaning, or between the sign and what it stands for. Different languages have different words for the same object in the world. This fact is a good illustration of the arbitrary nature of language. This also explains the symbolic nature of language: words are just symbols; they are associated with objects, actions, ideas, etc. by convention . Thirdly, language is vocal because the primary medium is sound for all languages, no matter how well - developed their writing systems are. The term human in the definition indicates that language is possessed by human beings only and is very different from the communication systems of other living creatures. The term communication means that language makes it possible for its users to talk to each other and fulfill their communicative needs.62.What are the design features of human language? Illustrate them with examples. 1) Arbitrariness As mentioned earlier, the arbitrary property of language means that there is no logical connection between meanings and sounds. For instance, there is no necessary relationship between the word elephant and the animal it symbolizes. In addition, different sounds are used to refer to the same object in different languages, and even within the same language, the same sound does not refer to the same thing. However, language is not entirely arbitrary. There are words which are created in the imitation of sounds by sounds, such as crash, bang in English. Besides, some compound words are also not entirely arbitrary. But the non-arbitrary words are quite limited in number. The arbitrary nature of language makes it possible for language to have an unlimited source of expressions. 2) Productivity Language is productive or creative in that it makes possible the construction and interpretation of new signals by its users. This is why they can produce and understand an infinitely large number of sentences, including sentences that they have never said or heard before. They can send messages which no one else has ever sent before. Productivity is unique to human language. Most animal communication systems appear to be highly restricted with respect to the number of different signals that their users can send and receive. 3) Duality The duality nature of language means that language is a system, which consists of two sets of structure, or two levels, one of sounds and the other of meanings. At the lower or the basic level, there is the structure of sounds, which are meaningless, discrete, individual sounds. But the sounds of language can be combined according to rules into units of meaning such as morphemes and words, which, at the higher level,can be arranged into sentences. This duality of structure or double articulation of language enables its users to talk about anything within their knowledge. No animal communication system has duality or even comes near to possessing it. 4) Displacement Displacement means that language can be used to refer to things which are present or not present, real or imagined matters in the past, present, or future, or in far-away places. In other words, language can be used to refer to contexts removed from the immediate situations of the speaker. Animal calls are mainly uttered in response to immediate changes of situation. 5) Cultural transmission Human beings were born with the ability to acquire language, but the details of any language are not genetically transmitted or passed down by instinct. They have to be taught and learned,but animal call systems are genetically transmitted. 63.How is modern linguistics different from traditional grammar? Traditional gram-mar is prescriptive; it is based on high (religious, literary) written language. It sets grammatical rules and imposes the rules on language users. But Modern linguistics is descriptive; It collects authentic, and mainly spoken language data and then it studies and describes the data in an objective and scientific way. 64.How do you understand the distinction between a synchronic study and a diachronic study? The description of a language at some point in time is a Synchronic study; the description of a language as it changes through time is a diachronic study. A synchronic study of language describes a language as it is at some particular point in time, while a diachronic study of language is the study of the historical development of language over a period of time. 65.Why does modern linguistics regard the spoken form of language as primary, not the written? First, the spoken form is prior to the writ-ten form and most writing systems are derived from the spoken form of language. Second, the spoken form plays a greater role than writing in terms of the amount of information conveyed and it serves a wider range of purposes Finally, the spoken form is the medium through which we acquire our mother tongue. 66. What are the major distinctions between langue and parole?The distinction between langue, and parole was made by the famous linguist Ferdinand de Saussure early this century. Langue refers to the abstract linguistic system shared by all the members of a speech community, and parole refers to the realization of langue in actual use. Langue is the set of conventions and rules which language users all have to follow while parole is the concrete use of the conventions and the application of the rules. Langue is abstract; it is not the language people actually use, but parole is concrete; it refers to the naturally occurring language events. Langue is relatively stable; it does not change frequently; while parole varies from person to person, and from situation to situation. 67. How do you understand competence and performance? American linguist N. Chomsky in the late 1950s proposed the distinction between competence and performance. Chomsky defines competence as the ideal users knowledge of the rules of his language. This internalized set of rules enables the language user to produce and understand an infinitely large number of sentences and recognize sentences that are ungrammatical and ambiguous. According to Chomsky,performance is the actual realization of this knowledge in linguistic communication. Although the speakers knowledge of his mother tongue is perfect, his performances may have mistakes because of social and psychological factors such as stress, embarrassment, etc. Chomsky believes that what linguists should study is the competence, which is systematic, not the performance, which is too haphazard.68. Saussures distinction between langue and parole seems similar to Chomskys distinction between competence and performance. What do you think are their major differences? Although Saussures distinction and Chomskys are very similar, they differ at least in that Saussure took a sociological view of language and his notion of langue is a mater of social conventions, and Chomsky looks at language from a psychological point of vies and to him, competence is a property of the mind of each individual.69.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.Chapter 2：PhonologyIV. Define the terms below:45. phonology46. phoneme 47.allophone48. international phonetic alphabet49. intonation50. phonetics51. auditory phonetics52. acoustic phonetics53. phone54. phonemic contrast55. tone56. minimal pair V. Answer the following questions as comprehensively as possible. Give ex-amples for illustration if necessary: 57.Of the two media of language, why do you think speech is more basic than writing? 58.What are the criteria that a linguist uses in classifying vowels? 59.What are the major differences between phonology and phonetics? 60.Illustrate with examples how suprasegmental features can affect meaning. 61.In what way can we determine whether a phone is a phoneme or not?IV. Define the terms below: 45. phonology: Phonology studies the system of sounds of a particular language; it aims to discover how speech sounds in a language form patterns and how these sounds are used to convey meaning in linguistic communication.46. phoneme: The basic unit in phonology is called phoneme; it is a unit of distinctive value. But it is an abstract unit. To be exact, a phoneme is not a sound; it is a collection of distinctive phonetic features.47. allophone: The different phones which can represent a phoneme in different phonetic environments are called the allophones of that phoneme.48. international phonetic alphabet: It is a standardized and internationally accepted system of phonetic transcription.49. intonation: When pitch, stress and sound length are tied to the sentence rather than the word in isolation, they are collectively known as intonation.50. phonetics: Phonetics is defined as the study of the phonic medium of language; it is concerned with all the sounds that occur in the world s languages51. auditory phonetics: It studies the speech sounds from the hearers point of view. It studies how the sounds are perceived by the hear-er.52. acoustic phonetics: It studies the speech sounds by looking at the sound waves. It studies the physical means by which speech sounds are transmitted through the air from one person to another.53. phone : Phones can be simply defined as the speech sounds we use when speaking a language. A phone is a phonetic unit or segment. It does not necessarily distinguish meaning.54. phonemic contrast: Phonemic contrast refers to the relation between two phonemes. If two phonemes can occur in the same environment and distinguish meaning, they are in phonemic contrast.55. tone: Tones are pitch variations, which are caused by the differing rates of vibration of the vocal cords.56. minimal pair: When two different forms are identical in every way except for one sound segment which occurs in the same place in the strings, the two words are said to form a minimal pair.V. Answer the following questions as comprehensively as possible. Give ex-amples for illustration if necessary: 57.Of the two media of language, why do you think speech is more basic than writing? 1)In linguistic evolution, speech is prior to writing. 2)In everyday communication, speech plays a greater role than writing in terms of the amount of information conveyed. 3)Speech is always the way in which every native speaker acquires his mother tongue, and writing is learned and taught later at school. 58.What are the criteria that a linguist uses in classifying vowels? 1)Vowels may be distinguished as front, central and back in terms of the position of the tongue in the mouth. 2)According to how wide our mouth is opened, we classify the vowels into four groups: close vowels, semi-close vowels, semi-open vowels, and open vowels. 3)According to the shape of the lips, vowels are divided into rounded vowels and unrounded vowels. 4)The English vowels can also be classified into long vowels and short vowels according to the length of the sound. 59.What are the major differences between phonology and phonetics? They differ in their approach and focus. Phonetics is of a general nature; it is interested in all the speech sounds used in all human languages: how they are produced, how they differ from each other, what phonetic features they possess, how they can be classified. Phonology, on the other hand, is interested in the system of sounds of a particular language; it aims to discover how speech sounds in a language form patterns and how these sounds are used to convey meaning in linguistic communication. 60.Illustrate with examples how suprasegmental features can affect meaning. 1)The location of stress in English distinguishes meaning, such as import and import. The similar alternation of stress also occurs between a compound noun and a phrase consisting of the same elements. A phonological feature of the English compounds is that the stress of the word always falls on the first element and the second element receives secondary stress, for example: blackbird is a particular kind of bird, which is not necessarily black, but a black bird is a bird that is black. 2)The more important words such as nouns, verbs adjectives , adverbs,etc are pronounced with greater force and made more prominent. But to give special emphasis to a certain notion, a word in sentence that is usually unstressed can be stressed to achieve different effect. Take the sentence “He is driving my car.”for example. To emphasize the fact that the car he