大学英语语言学期末考试名词解释和论述答案

名词解释petence and Performance:The distinction is discussed by the American linguist N. Chomsky in the late 1950’s. Competence----the ideal user’s knowledge of the rules of his language.Performance----the actual realization of this knowledge in linguistic communication.(American linguist N. Chomsky in the late 1950’s proposed the distinction between competence and performance. Chomsky defines competence as the ideal user’s 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 speaker’s 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. )2.Sociolinguistics: is the sub-field of linguistics that studies the relation between language and society, between the uses of language and the social structures in which the users of language live.( It is a field of study that assumes that human society is made up of many related patterns and behaviors, some of which are linguistic.)nguage Acquisition:refers to the child’s acquisition of his mother tongue, i.e. how the child comes to understand and speak the language of his community. (Language acquisition is concerned with language development in humans. In general, language acquisition refers to children’s development of their first language, that is, the native language of the community in which a child has been brought up.)4.the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis:The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is a theory put forward by the American anthropological linguists Sapir and Whorf (and also a belief held by some scholars). It states that the way people view the world is determined wholly or partly by the structure of their native language. (2) The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis consists of two parts, i.e. linguistic determinism and relativism. Whorf proposed first that all higher levels of thinking are dependent on language. Or put it more bluntly, language determines thought, i.e. the notion of linguistic determinism. Because languages differ in many ways, Whorf also believed that speakers of different languages perceive and experience theworld differently, i.e. relative to their linguistic background, hence the notion of linguistic relativism.5.Phrase structure rule: The grammatical mechanism that regulates the arrangement of elements that make up a phrase is called a phrase structure rule, such as:NP →(Det) + N +(PP)……e.g. those people, the fish on the plate, pretty girls.VP →(Qual) + V + (NP)……e.g. always play games, finish assignments.AP →(Deg) + A + (PP)……very handsome, very pessimistic, familiar with,very close toPP →(Deg) + P + (NP)……on the shelf, in the boat, quite near the station.The boy liked the dog.(The combinational pattern in a linear formula may be called a phrase structural rule, or rewrite rule[重写规则]. )6.Arbitrariness:The form of linguistic signs bear no natural relationship to their meaning. The link between them is a matter of convention.( It means that there is no logical connection between meanings and sounds. For instance, there is no necessary relationship between the word dog and the animal it refers to. The fact that different sounds are used to refer to the same object in different languages and that the same sound may be used to refer to different objects is another good example. Although language is arbitrary by nature, it is not entirely arbitrary. Some words, such as the words created in the imitation of sounds by sounds are motivated in a certain degree. The arbitrary nature of language makes it possible for language to have an unlimited source of expressions. )7.narrow transcription: transcription with letter-symbols together with the diacritics. This is the transcription required and used by the phoneticians in their study of speech sounds.( The narrow transcription is the transcription with diacritics to show detailed articulatory features of sounds.)8.Second Language Acquisition: Second Language Acquisition (SLA) refers to the systematic study of how one person acquires a second language subsequent to his native language.( SLA is viewed as a process of creative construction, in which a learner constructs a series of internal representations that comprises the learner's interim knowledge of the target language, known as interlingua. This is the language that a learner constructs at a given stage of SLA. Specifically, interlanguage consists of a series of interlocking and approximate linguistic systems in-between and yet distinct from the learner's native and target languages. It represents the learner’s transitional competence moving along a learning continuum stretching from one’s LI competence to the target language competence. As a type of linguistic system in its own right, interlanguage is a product of L2 training, mother tongue interference, overgeneralization of the target language rules, and communicative strategies of the learner. If learners were provided sufficient and the right kind of language exposure and opportunities to interact with language input, their interlanguage would develop gradually in the direction of the target language competence. )9.sense and reference: Sense and reference are both concerned with the study of word meaning. They are two related but different aspects of meaning.Sense — is concerned with the inherent meaning of the linguistic form. It is the collection of all the features of the linguistic form; it is abstract and de-contextualized. It is the aspect of meaning dictionary compilers are interested in.Reference — what a linguistic form refers to in the real, physical world; it deals with the relationship between the linguistic element and the non-linguistic world of experience.10.Interlanguage: Learns put their first language back to the whole picture and studied its role from a cognitive perspective. In this sense, native language functions as a kind of “input from inside,” therefore transfer is not transfer, but a kind of mental process.( SLA is viewed as a process of creative construction, in which a learner constructs a series of internal representations that comprisesthe learner’s interim knowledge of the target language, known asinterlanguage.)nguage Acquisition Device: The Language Acquisition Device (LAD) is a hypothetical brain mechanism that Noam Chomsky postulated to explain human acquisition of the syntactic structure of language. This mechanism endows children with the capacity to derive the syntactic structure and rules of their native language rapidly and accurately from the impoverished input provided by adult language users. The device is comprised of a finite set of dimensions along which languages vary, which are set at different levels for different languages on the basis of language exposure. The LAD reflects Chomsky's underlying assumption that many aspects of language are universal (common to all languages and cultures) and constrained by innate core knowledge about language called Universal Grammar. This theoretical account of syntax acquisition contrasts sharply with the views of B. F. Skinner, Jean Piaget, and other cognitive and social-learning theorists who emphasize the role of experience and general knowledge and abilities in language acquisition.(LAD, that is Language Acquisition Device, is posited by Chomsky in the 1960s as a device effectively present in the minds of children by which a grammar of their native language is constructed.)12.Cooperative Principle: According to Grice, in making conversation, there is a general principle which all participants are expected to observe. It goes as follows:Make your conversational contribution such as required at the stage at which it occurs by the accepted purpose or direction of the talk exchange in which you are engaged.使你所说的话，在其所发生的阶段，符合你所参与的交谈的公认目标或方向。