英语语言学概论一

1、英语语言学概论一i. fill in each of the following blanks with one word beginning with the letter given: 1.modernlinguisticsisdescriptive_ratherthanprescriptive. 2.consonantscanbedescribedintermsofplaces_ofarticulation,mannersofarticulation,andvoicing_. 3.allophones_arevariantsofthesamephonemeindifferentphone

2、ticcontexts. 4.thesmallestmeaningfulunitoflanguageiscalledmorpheme_. 5.accordingtosaussure,alinguisticsigniscomposedofsignifier_andsignified_. 6.generallinguisticsisbasedontheviewthatlanguageasasystemcomposedofthreeaspects:sound,structure_andmeaning. 7.monophthongsanddiphthongs_aretwomajortypesofvow

3、els. 8.sequencesthatarepossiblebutdonotoccuryetarecalledaccidental_gap,e.g./blik/,/bilk/,/klib/,and/kilb/. 9.meanings_andsounds_makeuptwosubsystemsoflanguage. 10.thelanguageusedtotalkaboutlanguageiscalledmetalanguage_. 11.accordingtom.a.k.halliday,languageplaysthreemetafunctionssimultaneously:theide

4、ationalfunction,theinterpersonal_functionandthetextual_function. 12.chineseisatypicaltone_language.m(mother),m(hemp)m(horse)m(scold),forexample,arefourdistinguishedwords. 13.thetotalnumberofwordsstoredinthebrainiscalledlexicon_,whichcanbeunderstoodasamentaldictionary. 14.wordslikewent,whichisnotrela

5、tedinformtoindicategrammaticalcontrastwiththeroot,arecalledsuppletives_. 15.semantics_isdefinedasthestudyofmeaning. 16.synonym_arewordswhichhavedifferentformsbutsimilarmeanings.ii. indicate the following statements true or false. put t for true and f for false in the brackets: (t) 1. the swiss lingu

6、ist de saussure regarded the linguistic sign as composed of sound image and referent.(f) 2. chinese is an agglutinating language.(f) 3. not all vowels are voiced.(f ) 4. if segments appear in the same position but the mutual substitution does not result in change of meaning, they are said to be in f

7、ree variation.( f) 5. a greenbottle is a type of bottle.(t ) 6. productivity is the first and foremost striking feature of human language.(f) 7. language contains two subsystems, one of speaking and the other of writing. (t) 8. language can be used to refer to things real or imagined, past, present

8、or future.( t ) 9. modern linguistics is prescriptive rather than descriptive. ( f ) 10. the study of speech sounds is called phonology.( f ) 11. the voiceless bilabial stop in pin and the one in spin are in complementary distribution.( f ) 12. tone is the variation of pitch to distinguish utterance

9、 meaning.(t ) 13. compounding, the combination of free morphemes, is a common way to form words.(f ) 14. in the phrases a herd of cattle, a flock of sheep, both cattle and sheep contain only one morpheme.(f ) 15. the meaning of compounds is always the sum of meaning of the compounds.iii. multiple ch

10、oice 1. _ _ is the first and foremost striking feature of human language.(c )a. duality b. arbitrariness c. creativity d. displacement2. which of the following does not belong to the language metafunctions illustrated by m.a.k. halliday? .(d )a. ideational function b. interpersonal function c. textu

11、al function. d. logical function3. the study of speech sounds is called _.(a)a. phonetics b. articulatory phonetics c. phonology d. acoustic phonetics4. every syllable has a(n) _, which is usually a vowel. .(b )a. onset b. nucleus c. coda d. rhyme5. which of the following does not belong to supraseg

12、mental features? .(d )a. stress b. intonation c. tone d. syllable6. _ is defined as the study of the internal structure and the formation of words. .(a )a. morphology b. syntax c. lexicon d. morpheme7. _ is a process that puts an existing word of one class into another class. .(d )a. clipping b. ble

13、nding c. eponym d. conversion8. in the phrases a herd of cattle, a flock of sheep, both cattle and sheep contain _ morphemes. .(b )a. one b. two c. three d. four9. sip and zip, tip and dip, map and nap, etc, are all _.(b ) a. minimal pairs b. minimal sets c. allophones d. phonesiv. for each group of

14、 sounds listed below, state the phonetic feature(s) then share: example: s f p h voiceless1) g z d voiced2) v h s fricative3) m p b f v labial4) t d n l s z alveolar5) i: i u u: highv. transcribe the sound represented by the underlined letter(s) in the words and then describe it. example: heat i: vo

15、wel front higha) photo /f/coicelesslabiodentalfricativeb) write /r/alveolarretroflexliquid c) car /a:/lowbackvoweld) actor /k/voicelsssvelarstope) city /i/laxhighfrontvowelf) city /s/voicelessalveolarfrocativeg) worry /w/labiovelarglide h) yes /j/palatalglidevi. write the phonetic symbol that corres

16、ponds to the articulatory description. example: vowel front high i:1 bilabial nasal2 voiced labiovelar glide3 literal liquid4 voiced bilabial stop5 front high laxvii. pronounce the words key and core, ski and score, paying attention to the phoneme /k/. what difference do you notice between the first

17、 pair and the second pair in terms of the phonetic features of the voiceless velar stop? inpronouncingkey,thevoicelessvalarstopispalatalized.inkeyandcorethestopisaspirated.inski,thestopisalsopalatalized.inskiandscore,thestopisunaspirated.viii. consider the following words and answer the questions be

18、low: a) finger 1b) disgraceful 3c) stepsister 2underlinesisterd) psycholinguistics 4underlinelinguisticse) antidisestablishmentarianism 7underlineestablishi. tell the number of morphemes in each word.ii. underline the free morphemes in each word where possible to do so.ix. identify the difference be

19、tween a greenhouse and a green house, and the difference between a sleeping car and a sleeping baby. agreenhouse,thestreeisongreen,agreenhouse,thestressisonhouse.x. define the following term, giving examples for illustration:allophonegreenhouseisacompoundword;greenhouseisanounphrase.agreenhouserefer

20、stoabuildingwithsidesandroofofglass,usedforgrowingplantsthat needprotectionfromtheweather,whileagreenhousereferstoahousewhosecolourisgreen.xi. draw tree diagrams for the following two sentences: 1. a clever magician fooled the audience. asleepingcar2. the tower on the hill collapsed in the wind. the

21、stressisonsleeping3. they can fish. asleepingbaby,thestressisonbaby4. pat found a book on wall street. asleepingcarmeansacarinwhichonecansleep5. i saw the man with a telescope. asleepingbabymeansababywhoissleeping.xii. explain the ambiguity of the following sentences. a. this is a beautiful girls dr

22、ess.thisisadressforbeautifulgirls.thisisabeautifuldressforgirls.b. those who went there quickly made a fortune.thosewhoquicklywenttheremadeafortune. thosewhowenttheremadeafortunequickly.c. a woman murdereramurdererwhoisawoman.amurdererwhohaskilledawoman.xiii. tell the process of word formation illus

23、trated by the example and find as many words as you can that are formed in the same way. (1) flu clipping (2) opec acronyming(3) nobel eponyming(4) televise backformation(5) better (v.) conversionxiv. how would you read the phrases in the two columns? what does each of them mean? column i column iia

24、. the white house a white houseb. a redcoat a red coata. a bluebird a blue birdb. a lighthouse keeper a light housekeeperxv. explain the relation between bank1 (the side of a river) and bank2 (the financial institute). xvi. identify the type of transitivity process in each of the following sentences

25、. (1) john washed the car.(2) john likes the car.xvii. answer the following question: what are the three metafunctions according to halliday?英语语言学概论二i. indicate the following statements true or false. put t for true and f for false in the brackets:( false ) 1. pragmatics is concerned with speaker me

26、aning.(true ) 2. the reference of a deixis to a preceding expression is technically termed cataphoric reference. ii. multiple choice 1. both pretty and handsome mean good-looking but they differ in _abd_ meaning.a. collocative b. social c. affective d. reflected2. _b_ refers to having the right to s

27、peak by turns.a. adjacency pairs b. turn-talking c. preferred second parts d. insertion sequences3. british english and american english are _c_ varieties of the english language.a. functional b. social c. regional d. standard 4. _b_ is the approximate language system that the learner constructs for

28、 use in communication through the target language.a. metalanguage b. interlanguage c. sign d. esperanto 5. in _c_ stage, children use single words to represent various meanings.a. telegraphic b. two-word c. holophrastic d. babbling6. _a_ is a term widely used in sociolinguistics to refer to “varieti

29、es according to use.”a. register b. field c. mode d. tenoriii. tell the semantic relation within the given sentence and that between the two sentences.1. my uncle is male. tautology2. the spinster is married. contradiction3. jim is an orphan. jim lives with his parents. inconsistency4. sam is the hu

30、sband of sally. sally is the wife of sam. synonymy5. he has gone to london. he has gone to england. entailmentiv. data analysis: 1. what is the illocution of as utterance in the following brief encounter?a: you are in a non-smoking zone, sir.b: thanks (extinguishing the cigarette).a wants to stop b

31、from smoking there2. what kind of pre-sequence is as first utterance? (hint: a and b are two secretaries working in the same office.)a: are you going to be here long?b: you can go if you like.a: ill just be outside. call me if you need me.b: ok.pre-request.v. try to think of contexts in which the fo

32、llowing sentences can be used for other purposes than just stating facts: 1. the room is messy. its time to clean it up2. it would be good if she had a green skirt on. i wish she had a good time.vi. define the following term, giving examples for illustration: variety the term variety is the label gi

33、ven to the form of a language used by any group of speakers or used in a particular field. a variety is characterized by the basic lexicon, phonology, syntax shared by members of the group. varieties of a language are of four types: the standard variety, regional (geographical) dialects, sociolects

34、(social dialects) and registers (functional varieties).vii. give examples to illustrate gradable antonyms, complementary antonyms, and reversal antonyms. gradable antonyms are pairs of words opposite to each other, but the positive of one word does not necessarily imply the negative of the other, or

35、 vice versa. a person who is not rich is not necessarily poor. the two words represent two polarities between which there is continuum. this relation is found between many adjective and adverb pairs. they have three characteristics. firstly, they can be used in comparative or superlative degrees (fa

36、ster, fastest; slower, slowest). secondly, they can be modified by adverbs of degree, very, fairly, quite, rather, etc. thirdly, they can follow how in questions (how large is the room? how long is the river?). in raising such questions the basic one of the two is preferred. otherwise, there is pres

37、upposition in the question. for instance, “how short is the man?” presupposes the man is below the average in height.complementary antonyms are words opposite to each other and the positive of one implies the negative of the other. dead/alive, male/female, pass/fail, etc. are complementary antonyms.

38、 an animal may be neither big nor small, but it cannot be neither dead nor alive. adjectives and adverbs which are complementarily opposite to each other cannot be used in comparative or superlative degrees, nor modified by adverbs of degree. in addition, they cannot appear in questions beginning wi

39、th how.reversal antonyms are words that denote the same relation or process from one or the other direction. push/pull, come/go, ascend/descend, buy/sell, up/down in/out, employer/employee, husband/wife, are all reversal antonyms. if you see push on the door when you enter a room, then you will expe

40、ct to see pull, going out of the room through the same door. if john is on the right of jane, jane must be on the left of john. these examples show that reversal antonyms describe a relation between two entities from alternate directions or view points.viii. answer the following questions:1. what ar

41、e the features of metaphors?metaphors are systematic precisely because they are conceptual in nature. for example, there are many metaphors which reflect our conceptions of time. among them, time is money, time is a limited resource and time is a valueable commodity are three concepts which are syst

42、ematically related. these concepts are shown by many english metaphors as listed by lakoff & johnsonof these metaphors, some refer specifically to money (spent, invested, budget, profitably, cost), others to limited resources (use, use up, have enough of, run out of), and still others to valuable co

43、mmodities (have, give, lose, thank you for). the three metaphorical concepts form a conceptual system based on subcategorization and entailment. in modern industrialized societies, time is conceptualized as a valuable commodity, limited resource, and even money, because work and pay are quantified i

44、n terms of hours, weeks, and years. time is money entails time is a limited resource, which entails time is a valuable commodity. the most specific concept time is money is often used to characterize coherently and systematically all those concepts expressed by the metaphors listed. metaphor can cre

45、ate similarities between the two domains involved. this runs counter to the traditional view which holds that similarities are inherent in the entities themselves. but cognitive linguists hold that the similarities relevant to metaphors are experiential rather than objective. the metaphorical concep

46、ts time is money, for example, is not found in all cultures, nor in all historical periods of a particular culture. the correlation between the two semantic categories is established in the process of conceptualization. out of human experience, the concept of verticality has no relation to health, c

47、onsciousness, emotion, quality, and virtue. the up-down orientation is, however, found in many metaphors in which correlations are created. we select a few orientational metaphors below (lakoff and johnson 1980: 15-17): 2. how do you distinguish homonymy from polysemy?homonyms are listed as separate

48、 entries in a dictionary, because lexicographers see them as unrelated in sense. a polyseme is a word which has several related senses. in many dictionaries you can find bank(1) and bank(2) as separate entries. the relation between the two is homonymy. both of them are polysemes, because each of the

49、m has several definitions. lexicographers make the distinction between homonyms and polysemes based on the intuition of native speakers as well as the etymology or history of words.3. what is reference and what is sense? how are they related?linguistic expressions stand in a relation to the world. o

50、ne aspect of meaning is reference, the relation by which a word picks out or identifies an entity in the world. london refers to or denotes the capital of great britain. the word dog denotes a kind of domestic animal. the referential theory, the simplest theory of meaning, claims that meaning is ref

51、erence. as described by kempson (1977:13), the referential approach makes these generalizations: proper nouns denote individuals; common nouns denote sets of individuals; verbs denote actions; adjectives denote properties of individuals; adverbs denote properties of actions.words stand not only in r

52、elation to the world but also to human mind. so in addition to reference, there is another dimension of word meaning called sense. for example, when you hear the expression dog, you will naturally reflect on its features in addition to the kind of animal as the referent of the expression. sense is m

53、ental representation, the association with something in the speaker/hearers mind. words like dragon, but, of and phrases like a round triangle have sense, but no referent. words like dog, horse, car and gun have both referent and sense. the study of meaning from the perspective of sense is called th

54、e representational approach. the following sections will explore how to analyze meaning along this line.4. what are the components of metaphor?how do metaphors function as a mode of thinking and talking about the world? all metaphors are composed of two domains. they allow us to understand one domai

55、n of experiences in terms of another. the domain to be conceptualized is called target domain, while the conceptualizing domain is termed the source domain. (in the literature, another pair of terms used are tenor and vehicle). the transference of properties of the source domain to the target domain

56、 is referred to by some cognitive linguists as mapping. the source domain is concrete and familiar. the target domain is abstract and novel. bubble economy, soft landing, bottle-neck phenomena are metaphors used frequently in recent years in talking about the economy. economic phenomena are not easy to describe and und