语言学复习试题

语言学复习试题及参考答案

I. Mark the choice that can best complete the statement (20 x1)

1. Which of the following is not a design feature of human language?

A. Arbitrariness

B. Displacement

C. Duality

D. Meaningfulness

2. According to F. de Saussure, _______ refers to the abstract linguistic system shared by all the members of a speech community.

A. parole

B. performance

C. langue

D. Language

3. The assimilation rule assimilates one sound to another by “copying”a feature of a sequenti al phoneme, thus making the two phones ____________.

A. identical

B. same

C. exactly alike

D. similar

4. Distinctive features can be found running over a sequence of two or more phonemic segments. The phonemic features that occur above the level of the segments are called _______.

A. phonetic components

B. immediate constituents

C. suprasegmental features

D. semantic features

5. The morpheme “vision” in the common word “television” is a(n) ______.

A. bound morpheme

B. bound form

C. inflectional morpheme

D. free morpheme

6. The meaning carried by the inflectional morpheme is _______.

A. lexical

B. morphemic

C. grammatical

D. semantic

7. Phrase structure rules have ____ properties.

A. recursive

B. grammatical

C. social

D. functional

8. The syntactic rules of any language are ____ in number.

A. large

B. small

C. finite

D. infinite

9. “We shall know a word by the company it keeps.” This statement represents _______.

A. the conceptualist view

B. contexutalism

C. the naming theory

D. behaviourism

10. “Alive” and “dead” are ______________.

A. gradable antonyms

B. relational opposites

C. complementary antonyms

D. None of the above

11. What essentially distinguishes semantics and pragmatics is whether in the study of meaning _________ is considered.

A. reference

B. speech act

C. practical usage

D. context

12. __________ is the act performed by or resulting from saying something; it is the consequence of, or the change brought about by the utterance.

A. A locutionary act

B. An illocutionary act

C. A perlocutionary act

D. A performative act

13. Language change is ______________.

A. universal, continuous and, to a large extent, regular and systematic

B. continuous, regular, systematic, but not universal

C. universal, continuous, but not regular and systematic

D. always regular and systematic, but not universal and continuous

14. In Old and Middle English, both /k/ and /n/ in the word “knight” were pronounced, but in modern English, /k/ in the sound /kn-/ clusters was not pronounced. This phenomenon is known as ________.

A. sound addition

B. sound loss