当代语言学导论 课文重点 重点词汇 考试内容 课后习题答案

当代语言学导论课文重点重点词汇考试内容课后习题答案1. Human superiority lies in his unique endowment天赋—the ability to talk, or rather, tocommunicate by means of language.2. Language is a vehicle of power, for control, for creation. Andfor change.3. The study of human language is called linguistics.4. Language is the system of human communication which consists of the structuredarrangement of sounds(or their written representation) into larger units, e.g. morphemes,words, sentences, utterances.5. Varieties of language: Any particular language is in essence a set of varieties. There are localvarieties 区域变体–dialects and accents(the former differ from each other in pronunciation,social varieties—sociolects vocabulary, and even grammar; thelatter only in pronunciation ),社会方言(=social dialects , used by people of different classes, ages, or sexes ), historicalvarieties—registers语域(e.g. formal English, scientific English), and even individualvarieties—idiolects个人语言. Usually a language has an officially declared or generallyconsidered standard dialect(e.g. Putonghua in China, General American in the US)6. Prescriptivism is the view that one variety of language has an inherently higher value thanothers.7. Descriptivism is the policy of describing languages as they are bound to exist. Usages ofdifferent varieties should be observed and recorded instead of being judged with someimposed norms.8. Plato’s problem: How can every human being develop a rich system of linguistic knowledgeon the basis of limited and fragmentary empirical evidence?9. Plato held that there was a universally correct and acceptable logic of language for man tofollow in expressing his ideas.10. Aristotle argued that knowledge of language was arrived at by convention and agreement ofthe speakers of a given language.11. In ancient China, Xun Zi reasoned that a name was accepted through public agreement, andthe appropriateness of naming a thing lay in convention.12. According to Chomsky, knowledge of language is the result of interaction of UG and laterexperience.13. (Ferdinand de) Saussure advocated the diversion of the focus of linguistic study fromdiachronic to synchronic.14. Chomsky’s epistemology of the knowledge of language foes as follows:1) Every human being has the language competence能力, because he has the inborn UGwhich other species lack.2) UG is the initial state of the human language faculty语言器官/机制 which alone cannotenable a human baby to speak. A baby needs to be exposed to the linguisticenvironment of a certain language and accumulate experience.3) Due to the effect of later experience, the baby’s mind develops from the initial state intothe steady state, which corresponds to the competence of speaking a specific humanlanguage.15. Beha viorists’ or empiricists’ opinions are identical 统一的，同一的with Aristotle’s.16. Connectionism/ emergentism argues that the mental neural mechanisms responsible forboth lexical and grammatical processing are not unique to language.17. diachronic: focus on the comparison between languages and the exploration of the historicalchange and variation of some ancient languages./ of, relating to, or dealing with phenomena(as of language or culture) as they occur or change over a period of time 18. synchronic: research of the facts of language agreed upon or shared by he members oflanguage community at a given point in time./ concerned with events existing in a limitedtime period and ignoring historical antecedents19. Galilean thesis ”nature is perfect”20. Fossilization is a process in which incorrect linguistic features become a permanent part ofthe way a person speaks a second language.21. Three adequacies:observational adequacydescriptive adequacyexplanatory adequacy(provide a descriptively adequate grammar for every natural language,and does so in terms of maximally constrained set of universal principles which representpsychologically plausible natural principles of mental computation.)22. A theory in science must not be pure speculation but testable at observational, descriptive,and explanatory levels.23. Science tells us that nature is a physical continuum连续体, which does not break itself intophysics, chemistry, psychology, linguistics…; these disciplines 学科are not facts but ourdecisions.24. Plato asserted that there was a” legislator” who gave the correct, natural name toeverything, and languages belonged to states but not to individuals.25. J.G. Herder pointed out that babies’ cry is a sort of natural sounds , which could neverdevelop into a language.26. A cornerstone of science is Galilean’s intuition that nature is perfect.27. Sir William Johns first proposed that a language in South Asia be a relative of many Europeanlanguages .28. The origin of language as a topic was banned by the Linguistic Society of Paris founded in1866.29. In accordance with the three phases just mentioned, phonetics is divided into threesub-fields. Articulatory phonetics发音语音学 studies speech production by the speechorgans; acoustic phonetics声学语音学 studies physical properties of speech sounds, theway sounds travel from the speaker to the hearer; and auditory phonetics听觉语音学studies the perception of speech sounds in the human auditory and cognitive system. 30. A “sound” people say t hey produce is actually a combination of sounds called a syllable,which is often related to a chest pulse.31. The place of articulation refers to the point in the vocal tract at which the main closure ornarrowing is made so as to modify the flow of air from the chest to the mouth in producing asound.32. The manner of articulation refers to the type of constriction收缩 or movement that occursat any place of articulation.33. The production of different speech sounds through the use of these organs is known asarti culation.34. Vibration 颤动35. Adam’s apple area 喉结36. Consonants are sounds made by a closure in the vocal tract, or by a narrowing from whichair cannot escape without producing audible friction摩擦, and vowels are sounds in whichthere is no obstruction to the flow of air as it passes from the larynx to the lips. 37. Bilabial双唇音, formed by bringing the lips together , e. g. [ p ] , [ m] . Here the function oflips is somewhat complicated: they both can be regarded as theactive and passivearticulat ors simultaneously.38. Labi o-dental唇齿音 , formed by the lower lip against the upper teeth, e . g. [ f] . 39. Dental齿音, formed by placing the tip of the tongue against the upper teeth, e . g. [ð].40. Alveolar齿龈音, formed by placing the tip or blade of the tongue against the alveolar ridge,e. g. [ t ] .41. Palatal腭音, formed by the front of the tongue against the hard palate, namely, the roof ofthe mouth, e . g. [ j] .42. Palato- alveolar腭龈音, formed midway between the places of articulation for palatals andalveolars: the blade ( and sometimes the tip) of the tongue articulates with the alveolarridge, with a simultaneous raising of the front of the tonguetowards the hard palate , e. g.[?] .43. Velar软腭音, formed by the back of the tongue against the soft palate, e. g. [ k] . 44. Glottal声门音, formed by the vocal cordscoming together t o cause a closure or friction, e .g.[ h] .45. Retrofle卷舌音, formed when the apex of the tongue is curledback in the direction of thehard palate, as heard in many Indian English accents.46. Uvular小舌音, formed by the back of the tongue against the uvula, as heard in some accentsof French.47. Pharyngeal咽音, formed in the pharynx, the part of the throat above the larynx. Specifically,the front wall of t he pharynx articulates with the back wall , as hear d in Arabic . 48. Organs in the vocal tract, such as the lips, teeth, or hard palate, are called articulators.49. Consonants are also classified according to the manner of articulation, concerning whichphoneticians tend to consider several factors .50. The first factor is the degree of the constriction of airflow.At least six main classes can bedistinguished in English:51. Plosive爆破音, formed by completely closing the air passage and suddenly removing theobstacle , so that the air escapes making an explosive sound, e. g. [ p] ,[ d] . It belongs toa broader category called “stop” which includes closures produced by air streams not fromthe lungs , as encountered in some southern African languages.52. Nasal鼻音, formed with the soft palate lowered, thus allowingair to resonate in the nose,e . g. [ m] .53. Affricate塞擦音, a consonant which starts as a plosive, but instead of ending with plosion,ends with a fricative made in the same place, e. g. [t? ] .54. Liquid流音, formed by some obstruction of the air stream in the mouth, which seems notenough to cause any real constrict ion or friction, e. g. [ l] ,[ r ]. [ l] is cal led a lateral liquid,because in making it, an obstacle is placed in the middle of the mouth, leaving the air free toescape at one or both sides.55. Fricative擦音 , formed by a narrowing of the air passage at some point so that the air inescaping makes audible frication. e. g. [ f] , [ z] . Somefricatives are also cal led sibilants齿擦音, which are made with a groove- like structure in the front partof the tongue, producing akind of hissing sound, e. g. [ s] , [?] .56. Glide滑音, sometimes called semi -vowel because it is typically produced with the tonguemoving, or “gliding”, to or from the position of a nearby vowel,e.g. [ h] , [ w] . 57. The second factor is voicing. Voice is caused by the vibration of the vocal cords.58. The third factor is aspiration. This is the sound of air rushing through the vocal tract, usuallyfound after the release of plosive consonants in some situation.59. Different vowels result from changing the shape of the mouth;all of them are voicedcontinuous sounds.60. [i:] close vowels , [a:] open vowels, [e] semi-closed vowels, [?:] semi-open vowels61. Four rounded vowels: [u:] [u] [?:] [?], they are all back vowels.62. [a:]is the only English back vowel that occurs without lip rounding. 63. There is another interesting rule: all the longvowels( e.g. [i:] [u:])are tense vowels紧元音,and all the short vowels ([i] [u]) are lax vowels松元音.64. Every vowel constitutes a single syllable. The vowel can be a monophthong, a diphthong, oreven a triphthong that contains three distinctive qualities,e.g.[ai ?]. However, not everysyllable contains a vowel. The second syllable of the wordlittle[litl] has no vowel after theplosive [t] but a liquid [l].65. Phonemes have no meaning of themselves, but they are the smallest linguistic unit, whosechange will lead to the change of meaning. A phoneme is defined as the smallest unit ofsound in a language which can distinguish two words.66. Allophone is the phonetic variant of a phoneme, which can be substituted of anotherwithout bring about a change of meaning.67. Phoneme用//; allophone用[]68. A phonetic property特性，特质 that distinguishes phonemes from one another is called adistinctive feature.69. Phonetics is more specifically the study of how speech sounds are produced, what theirphysical properties are, and how they are interpreted.70. Phonology, is a description of the sounds of a particular language and the rules governingthe distribution of those sounds. Furthermore, phonology is also concerned with theuniversal properties of natural language sound systems and aims at revealing the generalprinciples of the sound patterns of all languages.71. Pitch is the auditory sensation of the height of a sound.72. There are two ways in which languages make use of pitch variations in speech.1) In languages such as English, French, and German, regular sequences of different pitchescharacterize stretches of speech between pauses and are known collectively asintonation. The differences of intonation may correlate with different types ofutterances.2) In languages such as Chinese , Vietnamese, Thai, and Zulu, pitch differences help todistinguish one word from another and may be the onlydifferentiating feature betweentwo or more words whose composition is the same in terms of consonants and vowels.Pitch differences used in these ways are called tones and these languages are called tonelanguages.73. Stress, pitch, tone and intonation are also called suprasegmentals超切分音位 because theyrelate to aspects of pronunciation that go beyond the production of individual segments. 74. Larynx喉: the beginning of the vocal tract, containing the vocal cords.75. Pharynx咽: the tube-like passage in the throat which connectsthe larynx to the upper partof the vocal tract.76. Vocal cords声带:two muscular folds in the larynx that vibrate asa source of sound. 77. Soft palate 软腭:the backward continuation of the roof of the mouth, which can be loweredto let air pass through the nose.78. Hard palate 硬腭:the roof of the mouth79. Alveolar ridge 齿龈脊: the bony prominence behind the upperfront teeth.80. Trachea 气管: the passage between lungs and larynx.81. Segment is the smallest unit that can be identified in continuous speech.82. A syllable cannot contain more than one vowels. Even if a diphthong or thiphthong iscontained, it is still a single vowel, pronounced within one chest pulse. 83. Words are not the smallest unit of meaning. They are composed of smaller units of meaning,called morphemes. Morphemes are the minimal language units.Morphology deals with word structure. Many words are themselves morphemes, such as big andbook. They cannot be broken into smaller units that in themselves carry meaning. We call them free morphemes—morphemes that can stand alone as a word. Many other words are created by joining together two morphemes, e.g. blackboard, in which the two morphemes black and board can be recognized as meaningful words by themselves. So they are also free morphemes .84. Another type of morpheme is the bound morpheme , which occurs only when attached toanother morpheme, such as -ly in happily and un- in unhappy.The function of an affix can be derivational 派生的，衍生的or inflectional屈折的. Aderivational morpheme is one that is added to a root to form a new word that differs, usually, in its part-of-speech词性 classification. For example, when the suffix -ness is added to the adjective happy, the noun happiness is formed.85. Prefixes as derivational morphemes usually change the basic meaning of a word but do notchange its part- of-speech classification .(即系本来系动词就系动词)86. An inflectional morpheme indicates certain grammatical properties associated with nounsand verbs, such as gender , number , case, and tense. Unlike highly inflected languagessuch as Latin , English has very few inflectional morphemes. In English, the inflectionalmorphemes are all suffixes. The suffix -s, which indicates plurality in nouns as well as thethird-person singular in verbs, is an inflectional morpheme ; the past tense suffix -ed, whichis added to verbs, is another .87. According to Wilhelm von Humboldt , languages of the world can be classifiedmorphologically into three types: isolating, inflecting, and agglutinating.88. An isolating language is also called an analytic language or root language, in which all thewords are invariable. Chinese, Vietnamese and Samoan are typical cases. An inflectinglanguage is also called a synthetic language or fusional language,in which grammaticalrelationships are expressed by changing the internal structure of the words—typically bythe use of inflectional endings which express several grammatical meanings at once. Latin,Greek, and Arabic are clear cases. An agglutinating language is also called agglutinativelanguage, in which a word typically consists of a neat linear sequence of morphemes, allclearly recognizable. Turkish, Finnish, Japanese, and Swahili are usual cases. 89. Compounding is a process that forms new words not by means of affixes but from two ormore independent words. Compounds are different from phrases in that they symbolize anintegrated整体的concept.90. There are different semantic relationships within the morphemes comprising a compound. 91. Idiomatic 惯用的，成语的expressions: metaphoric(e.g. I’m really tied up无法分身.)，allusive(e.g. the ruling party met its Waterloo 毁灭性的打击in the new election.), amajority are institutionalized.92. Morphology is the study of word-making and word-marking. On the one hand, morphologyexamines relationships between words and the ways in which these connections areindicated. On the other, morphology looks at how grammatical relationships between wordsare marked. Different languages focus on different word relationships, and they make use ofdifferent patterns of marking.93. The study of the internal structure of words, and of the rules by which words are formed, iscalled morphology.94. Words are not the most elemental sound-meaning units. The most elemental grammaticalunits in a language are morphemes.95. Bound morphemes like “a-”, “pre-”, “-ly”, “-ness”, whic h have only grammatical meanings,are limited in number, about 100 in English.96. Compounds are different from phrases in that they symbolize an integrated concept.Phonologically, they have primary stress on the first word only, while individual words inphrases have independent primary stress .97. Modern linguistic research suggests that language isintrinsically 内在的，本质的less literalidiomatic expressions . than we have always assumed. It is abundant in98. Languages of the world can be classified morphologically into three types: isolating,inflecting, and agglutinating.99. The tree relationship is non-linear but hierarchical.100. Family tree sequence次序—top-down; syntactic tree sequence—bottom-up.101. The bottom-up process in sentence production is called merging 合并.102. A head of a phrase is the key word which determines the properties of the phrase. 103. The I( inflectional morpheme) plays an essential role in merging an NP and a VP into asentence.104. Besides a labeled tree-diagram, this hierarchically arranged structure with in a sentencecan also be represented in the form of labeled bracketing.105. There are two groups of syntactical categories: lexical categories and functional categories.All the content words, namely nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs, belong to lexicalcategories ; on the other hand, any word or morpheme which has no descriptive content andwhich serves an essentially grammatical function belongs to a functional category. Afunctional category plays a role like glue in combining content words into phrases andphrases into a sentence .106. XP can be defined as the maximal projection headed by X, and X itself, i. e. the head, as theminimal projection.107. I is a category devised by Chomsky whose members include not only inflectional morphemesbut also finite auxiliaries限定助动词 ( which are inflected for tense / agreement ) , and theinfinitival particle to.108. When a constituent is made the topic of a sentence, it may be moved into a more prominentposition at the front of the sentence. This process is called topicalization话题化—A devicewhich marks sth as a topic by simply moving the topic to the front of the sentence, as in Thisbook I can’t recommend.109. Syntax is the subfield of linguistics that studies the internal structure of sentences and therelationship among their component parts.110. In the VP draw a tree, draw is the head of the phrase while a tree is the complement.111. A phrase is the projection of the head. XP can be defined as the projection headed by X, X’ ,as the intermediate projection, and X itself, i . e. the head , as the minimal projection.112. According to X-bar theory, head X can either be a lexical category, such as nouns and verbs,or a functional category.113. In the skeleton骨架，框架 of XP, SPEC stands for specifier and COMP stands forare sisters. So are X and COMP. complement. SPEC and X’114. IP refers to inflectional phrase. I, a functional category, includes not only inflectionalmorphemes but also finite auxiliaries, and the infinitival particle to.115. CP refers to complementizer phrase and can be found in analysis of complex sentence aswell as wh-questions and topicalization.116. When we put a sentence in out mind by reading or listening, our mind will immediately treatit as a set of meaning units, called propositions.117. An intransitive verb—1 NP—the subject(external argument); a simple transitive verb—2NPs—subject(external argument) and object(internal argument); a ditransitive verb 双宾语动词---3 NPs—subject(EA), direct object and indirect object(IA); an unusual verb in English,rain, requires no NPs.118. NPs required by a verb are called its arguments论元.119. A verb very often permits some further phrases, which are optional. These optional phrasesare adjuncts附加成分，修饰成分, which are expressed most often as prepositional phrasesor adverbial phrases in English.120. Theta theory(orθ-theory)题元角色 is concerned with assigning指定thematic roles(θ-role)论旨角色 to the arguments of verbs.121. Theta-roles:1) Agent: instigator发起者 of some action. E.g. John threw the ball.2) Theme: entity实体，实质undergoing the effect of some action. Often a theme isaccusative宾格(and can be called a patient as well), e.g. John hit the cat; however, it isnominative主格 with a few verbs like fall, die, etc. e.g. The cat (accusative)died.3) Experiencer: entity experiencing some psychological state. E.g. John was happy.4) Benefactive: entity benefiting from some action. E.g. Mary bought some chocolate forJohn.5) Recipient: entity receiving some entity. E.g. John got Mary a present(patient).6) Instrument: means by which sth comes about. E.g. Joanna dug the garden with a spade.7) Locative: place in which sth is situated. E.g. John put the washing in the bin.8) Goal: entity towards which sth moves. E.g. Mary passed the plateto John.9) Source: entity from which sth moves. E.g. John returned from London.122. Theta theory enables us to reveal some semantic differencesthat are not reflected in thesyntactic structure demonstrated by X-bar tree diagrams.123. As for verbs, the lexicon contains information about their transitivity, their argumentstructure , and the theta roles that can be assigned to their arguments. 124. 和动词最密切的是theme，及物动词的theme是object，不及物动词的theme是subject?125. The output of the grammatical system consists of two levels of description: the phoneticdescription for the generated sentence to be spoken out ; the semantic description whichlogically represents the meaning the speaker would like to convey through uttering thesentence.126. Logicians have long been concerned with formulating representations for the semanticstructure of sentences, or more correctly propositions. NPs required by a verb are called itsarguments. A proposition comprises a predicate V and a set of arguments. In addition toits arguments , a verb very often permits some optional phraseswhich are called adjuncts.127. The internal argument of a verb has to be realized inside the maximal projection of that verb.The external argument of a verb is not contained in the maximal projection of that verb .For example, in John [ (VP) buys books ] , John is the external argument and books is theinternal argument of the verb buy.128. E ach verb may have none or one internal argument( s) . Eachverb may have none, one ormore internal argument(s).129. Each argument is assigned one and only one theta/ thematic role. Each theta/thematic roleis assigned to one and only one argument.130. Language is symbolic, but not all symbols belong to language.In addition to symbols, thereand indexes which also convey meaning. Picasso is an icon of modernism; smoke are iconsis an index of fire. Such relationships are beyond the reach of semantics. They are the, which investigates the types of research objects of a more general field called semioticsrelationships that may exist between a sign and the object it represents . Semantics can beregarded as a part of this extensive effort, with its particular emphasis on linguistic meaning.Therefore, John I. Saeed, a contemporary authority in this field, proposes a more properdefinition: semantics is the study of meaning communicated through language.131. Language is the vehicle, and meaning is the cargo.132. Every argument has a theta role assigned from the predicate according to the theory.133. Semantic features are defined as a class of theoretical constructs developed in analogy tothe distinctive features of phonology—they are considered to be the smallest semantic unitsfor the description of linguistic expressions and their semantic relations. 134. She was the only man in her cabinet. Man---hard, iron handy. The word man is used as ametaphor. When a word is used as a metaphor, it will not keep all the features of itsconceptual meaning, but will highlight a certain associative property of its connotativemeaning, according to Leech.135. Saussurean arbitrariness, which claims that the relationship between a linguisticsign( signifier) and its content ( signified) is arbitrary.136. According to Ogden and Richards, the “symbol” refers to the linguistic elements(word,sentence, etc.), the” referent” refer s to the object in the world of experience, and the“thought” “reference” refers to concept or notion.Ogden& Richards’ Semantic Triangle137. Most signs have at least one normal, “common sense” meaning, called the sign’ denotaion,is shared among many people and is the most widely used meaning of the sign. But signsmay also have many different ”subjective” meanings that arise from each individual’ personalexperiences. These are called the connotations of the sign.138. Meaning falls into at l east two categories--denotative and connotative. A concept in anindividual’s mind is mostly the connotativ e meaning, formed through one’s perception ofsome features of the object a sign refers to. The denotative meaning is not necessarilygenerated in such a process, but has long been an agreement amongall the people in acommunity.139. Pierce’s “Semiotic Triangle” Charles S. Pierce is generally acknowledged as an importantpioneer in the study of signs.Perception--the ongoing group of bodily processes by which human beings receive dataabout their environmentsExperience--the memory of previous perceptions and concepts, which is constantly beingaltered or “updated” by new experienceConvention--the constantly changing social “rules of meaning” that unify groups of peoplewithin their communication environments.140. Some semantic properties of the words we use to think and talk about the world areautomatically captured by the resources of our human minds.141. All these dimensions of internalized semantic knowledge, namelya)synonymy同义,b)contradiction反义, c)entailment蕴含, d) presupposition前提, e) ambiguity,f)inclusive-exclusive distinction, g) metaphorical interpretation, h) infelicity不恰当, can bemeaning proposed by Chomsky ( 2000 ). attributed to properties of I- 142. The semantic properties of words are used to think and talkabout the world in terms of themade available by the resources of the mind. perspectives143. I-meaning is the human genetic faculty in calculating the logic in meaning ( e. g.presupposition, entailment.. . ) .144. The real meaning in communication is contextual meaning.Without context, a sentenceconveys only literal information.145. Words or expressions that have identical meanings are called synonyms.146. Words or phrases that have opposite meanings are called antonyms.147. When a word has two or more meanings that are at least vaguely related to each other, it iscalled a polysemy多义词. For example, “leaf” can refer to “a part of a tree” and also “a sheetof paper”.148. When words have a single phonetic form but two or more entirely different meanings, they。