语言学习题答案

1. Q: What is the scope of linguistics?

The scope of linguistics can be illustrated as:

1) General linguistics: the study of language as whole. It deals with the basic concepts, theories, descriptions, models and methods applicable in any linguistic study.

2) Phonetics: the study of sounds used in communication.

3) Phonology: the study about how sounds are put together and used to convey meaning in communication.

4) Morphology: the study of the way in which symbols/morphemes are arranged to form words.

5) Syntax: the study of the rules about the combination of words to form permisible sentences.

6) Semantics: the study of meaning.

7) Pragmatics: the study of meaning in the context of use.

And the Interdisciplinary branches.

1) Sociolinguistics

2) Psycholingu istics ……………

2. Q: What makes modern linguistics different from traditional grammar?

Modern linguistics differs from traditional grammar in several basic ways: firstly, modern linguistics is descriptive, it describes the language as it is; while traditional grammar is prescriptive, it

prescribes the way language should be used. Secondly, modern linguistics regards the spoken language as primary, not the written. Then, modern linguistics differs from traditional grammar also in that it does not force languages into a latin-based framework.

3. Q: What is a phone? How is it different from a phoneme? How are allophones related to a phoneme?

A phone is a phonetic unit or segment.

A phoneme is a phonological unit; it is a unit that is of distinctive value. It is an abstract unit. It is not any particular sound.

The different phones which can represent a phoneme in different phonetic environments are called the allophones of that phoneme. 4. Q:Explain with examples the sequential rule, the assimilation rule and the deletion rule?

1) Sequential rules form the letters as “k, h ,l ,j” into all possible words in English. We might order them as: blik, klib, bilk, kilb. without other orders. So it indicates that there are rules that govern the combination of sounds in a particular language. One special sequential rule that……

2) Assimilation rule: it assimilates one sound to another by copying

a feather of a sequential phoneme, thus making the two phones similar. For example: “illegal”, inlegal

3) Deletion rule: It can be stated as: delete a [g] when it occurs before

a final nasal consonant. for example: “designation”,the [g] represented by the letter “g” is pronounced, while in the word “sign”. /g/ sound is deleted, because it is followed by and ended with the nasal consonant /n/.

5. Q: What are the major types of synonyms in English?

There are five types of synonyms in English. They are dialectal synonyms--synonyms used in different regional dialects; stylistics synonyms –synonyms differing in style; synonyms that differ in their emotive or evaluative meaning; collocational synonyms; semantically different synonyms.

6. Q: E xplain with examples “H omonymy”, “P olysemy”, and “H yponymy”?

Homonymy (定义) … . It includes homophones(定义) (piece\peace) , homographs (定义) (bow v.\ bow n.) and complete homonyms (定义) (scale n.\scale v.) .

Polysemy means that the same one word may have more that one meaning. For example: “table”, has at least seven meanings. Hyponymy means that the sense relation between a more general, more inclusive word and a more specific word. For example: “furniture” is super-ordinate, its hyponyms are bed, table, desk, dresser, wardrobe, settee……

7. Q: How can words opposite in meaning be classified? To which