第一章 绪论
1. why is language not entirely arbitrary? Because there are words in every language that imitate natural sounds, such as crash, bang in English .besides, some compound words are level ,the units can be arranged and rearranged into an infinite number of sentences .
4. why is productivity unique to language ? Language is productive or creative in that it makes possible the construction and interpretation of new people actually use, whether it is correct or not. 7. what’s the distinction between synchronic study and a diachronics study? Language exists in time and changes trough time. The description of a language at some point in time is a synchronic study, refers to the realization of langue in actural use. Langue is the set of conventions and rules which language users all have to follow while parole is the concrete use of the conversation and the application of the rules. 10. how does Chomsky also not entirely arbitrary .these words cannot be made freely . 2. why is language culturally transmitted and why are animal call system genetically transmitted ? Because the details of any language are not genetically transmitted ,but instead have to be taught and learned anew . it is passed on from one generation to another through teaching and learning rather than by instinct . in contrast ,animals are born with the capacity to produce the set of calls peculiar to their species, so animals call system are genetically transmitted. 3. language has the design feature of duality .why ? The duality nature of language means that language is system ,which consists off two sets of structures ,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. At the higher
signal by its users. The users can send message which no one else has ever sent before. 5. what does the displacement feature of language mean ? 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 context removed from the immediate situation of the speakers. 6.how is the modern linguistics differ from traditional grammar? Modern linguistics differs from traditional grammar . traditional grammar is prescriptive, it is based on high written language . it sets models for language users to follow . but modern linguistics is descriptive ,its investigation are based on authentic ,and mainly spoken language data. It is supposed to be scientific and objective and the task of linguistics is supposed to describe the language the description of a language as it changes though time is a diachronic study. A synchronic study of language describe a language as it is at some particular point in time ,while a diachronic study language is a historical stud ; it studies the historical development of language over a period. 8. why does modern linguistic regards the spoken form of language as primary ? speech and writing are the two major media of communication . modern linguistics regards the spoken form of language as primary , but not the written form ,because the spoken form is prior to the written form and most writing systems are derived from spoken form of language. 9. what do langue and parole mean respectively? Langue and parole are French words, langue refers to the abstract linguistic system shared by all the members of a speech communication ,and parole define competence and performance? Chomsky defines competence as the ideal user’s knowledge of the rules of his language ,and performance the actual realization of this knowledge in linguistics
communication. 第二章 音系学
1. why does linguistics regard speech as the primary than writing ? speech and writing are the two major media of communication. Modern linguistics regards the spoken form of language as primary ,but not the written form ,because the spoken for id prior to the written form and most writing systems are derived from the spoken form of language. 2. what’s the basic difference between a vowel and a consonant ? the basic difference between a vowel and a consonant is that the pronunciation of a vowel,
the air stream from the lung meets no obstruction of any kind in the throat, the nose, or the mouth, while in the pronunciation of a consonant , the air stream from the lungs is obstructed in one way or another.
3. how do you set up the allophone of the same morphemes which are independent units of meaning and can be used freely all by themselves or in combination with other morphemes .bound morphemes are the morphemes which cannot be used independently but have to be combined with snowfall,and facelift are
noun instead of verbs.
5. why is the meaning of a compound often idiomatic ? semantically, the meaning of a compound is often idiomatic, not always being the sum total of the meaning of its components. study of language. The word language in this definition implies that linguistics studies not any particular language ,but investigate or examine. And the word scientific refers to the way in which language is studied.
3. what is fundamental phoneme? Which allophone is to be used is determined by the phonetic context in which it occurs. But the choice of an allophone is not random or haphazard in most cases; it is rule-governed . one of the tasks of the phonologist is to find out these rules.
4. why are stress tone and intonation called the suprasegmental phonemes? The phonemic features that occur above the level of the segments are called suprasegmental phonemes; these are the phonological properties of such units as the syllable , the word ,and the sentence. The main suprasegmental features include stress, tone, and intonation.
第三章 形态学
1. what are the two sub-branches of morphology? Morphology is divided into sub-branches : inflectional morphology and lexical or derivational morphology. 2. what’s the free morpheme? Free morphemes are the
other morphemes, either free or bound ,to form a word.
3. what are inflectional and derivational affixes、 derivational affixes are added to an exciting form to create a word . prefixes occur at the beginning of a word and. Prefixes modify the meaning of he stem .suffixes are added to the end of the stems ;they modify the meaning of the original word and in many cases change its part of speech.
4. how do you distinguish a compound noun from a noun phrase? Syntactically, the part of speech of the compound is generally determined by the part of speech o the second element, e.g. icy-cold adj. head—strong adv. Greenhouse n. but there are many exception ,especially with hose compounds ending with a verb or an adverb or a preposition . for example,follow up , crackdown ,kickoff are all nouns instead of adverbs.and toothpick, For example ,a greenhouse is not a house that is green .in order to find out the meaning of a compound, one sometimes has to consult the dictionary instead of doing some guess work.
第四章 句法学 1. why is syntax regarded as a system of rules? As a major component of grammar, syntax consists of a set o abstract rules that allow words to be combined with other words to form grammatical sentences. A sentences is considered grammatical when it is in agreement with the grammatical knowledge in the mind of native speakers. Universally found in the grammars of all human language ,syntactic rules comprise the system of internalized linguistic knowledge of a language speaker known as linguistic competence.
2. what is the major goal of linguistics? Linguistics is generally defined as the scientific aim in the linguistic analysis of a language according to Noam Chomsky? Chomsky thinks that linguistics should study the ideal speaker’s competence, but not his performance. 4. why are the syntactic rules of a language finite in number? For any natural language ,a set of syntactic rules are capable of yielding an endless number of sentences in that language .that is ,the syntactic rules of any language are finite in number, and yet there is no limit to the number of sentences native speakers of that language are able to produce and comprehend. 5. what are the three major types of sentences? Explain each of them with examples. Traditionally, there are three major types of sentences. They are simple sentence,coordinate sentence,and complex sentences.
6. why does a sentence
have both a linear and a hierarchical structure? When a sentence is uttered or written down ,the words of the sentences are produced one after another in a sequence. Meanwhile,they are heard or read as arranged one what do the parameters of UG do ? parameters are syntactic options of UG that allow general principles to operate in one way or another and contribute to significant linguistics variation between and 9. Obviously, linguistic forms with the same sense may have different references in different situation. For example, in the following exchange, the two speakers are surely talking about two different between polysemy and homonymy? A polysemic word i.e. a word with several meanings, is the result of the evolution of the primary meaning o the word ,the various meaning of the word are related to some after another in a sequence.therfore, the structure of a sentence is linear.
7. what are the major lexical categories and the mirror lexical categories? And what is the difference between them . major lexical categories are open categories in the sense that new words are constantly added. Minor lexical categories are closed categories because the number of lexical items in this categories is fixed and no new members are allowed for.
8. what is difference between phrase structure rules and transformational rules? The combinational pattern in a linear formula may be called a phrase structural rule. Syntactic movement is governed by transformational rules. The operation of the transformational rules may chang the syntactic representation of a sentence.
among natural language. 10. what is the significance of UG principle and parameters? Another parameter, the one that involves word order, concerns the directionality of case assignment ,i.e the directionality parameter. This parameter offers a neat and consist account for the typological difference in the word order within the VP category between English and Japanese
第五章 语义学
1. how many kinds of contexts are recognized in contextualism? What are they? Contextualism is based on the presumption that one can derive meaning from or reduce meaning to observable contexts. Two kinds of contest are recognized :the situational context and the Linguistic context. 2. how are sense and reference related to and different from each other? references, i.e. two different gogs.
3. why are complete synonyms are there? But because of their different origin ,there are often subtle differences between these
synonyms .synonyms that are mutually substitutable under all circumstances are called complete synonyms . however, complete synonyms are rare.
4. how many types of synonyms are there? What are they? Dialectal synonyms which are used in different regional dialects .stylistic synonyms which differ in style. Synonyms hat siffer in their emotive or evaluation meaning collocational synonyms
semantically different synonyms. 5. what is the difference degree ,as is discussed in the previous section. 6. what is the advantage of componential? There is one advantage of componential analysis . by specifying the semantic features of certain words I will be possible to show how these words are related in meaning.
7. how many kinds of antonyms are there ? what are they ? there are three kinds. they are gradable antonyms,
complementary antonyms and relational opposites. 第六章语用学
1. why is the notion of context essential to pragmatics? Without this shared knowledge, linguistics communication would be impossible, and without considering this knowledge , linguistics communication cannot satisfactorily accounted for in a
英语自考现代语言学简答题
