语言学概论相关试题及答案

《语言学概论》相关试题及答案1、How to define language? What are the design features of language?Definition: Language is a system of arbitrary vocal and symbols used for human communication.The design features of language are Arbitrariness, Duality, Creativity and Displacement. The illustrations are as followed.Firstly, Arbitrariness’s meaning was discussed by Saussure. It refers to the fact that the forms of linguistic signs bear no natural relationship to their meaning. For instance, we can’t explain why a book is called a /buk/ and a pen a /pen/. Instead of going to extreme, more would agree that there seems to be different levels of arbitrariness. There is arbitrary relationship between the sound of a morpheme and its meaning. For example, dogs bark “bowwow” in English but “汪汪” in Chinese. And syntax is purely arbitrary to some people. Functionalists hold that the most strictly arbitrary level of language exists in the distinctive units of sounds by which we distinguish pairs of words like “pin” and “bin”, or “fish” and “dish”. So Arbitrariness is the first feature.Secondly, Duality refers to the property of having two levels of structures, units of the primary level being composed ofelements of the secondary level and each level having its own principles of organization according to Lyons. Roughly speaking, the elements of the spoken language are sounds which do not convey meaning in themselves. The only function of sounds is to combine with one another to form units that have meaning, such as words. We call sounds here secondary units as opposed to such primary units as words. So Duality is the second feature.Thirdly, Language is creative in another sense, that is, its potential to create endless sentences according to Chomskian linguistics. For example, we can write a sentence like the following and go on endlessly: He bought a book which was written by a teacher who taught in a school which was know for its graduates who…In other words, language is characterized by its creativity, as grammar enables us to produce infinite number of sentences.Lastly, Displacement means that human language enable their users to symbolize objects, events and concepts which are not present(in time and space) at the moment of communication. Thus, I can refer to Confucius, or the North Pole, even though the first has been dead for over 2500 years and the second is situated far away from us.All in all, these features are so important that makeshuman language more complicated and flexible.2、How do you understand the functions of language?Many categorizations of Functions of language have been made. Language is put to in our daily life (such as to chat, to think, to buy and sell, to read and write, to greet people) or perform in human communication. But the most basic and important theories are Jakobson’s classification and Halliday’s theory of metafunctions. For Jakobson and the Prague school structuralists, language is above all, as any sematic system, for commu nication. In Jakobson’s article, “Linguistics and Poetics” , he defined the six primary factors of any speech event, namely :SPEAKER, ADDRESSEE, CONTEXT, MESSAGE, CODE, and CONTACT.His well-know framework of language functions, namely: REFERENTIAL, POETIC, EMOTIVE, CONATIVE, PHATIC and METALINGUAL. Besides, Halliday proposed seven categories of language function, that is, instrumental, regulatory, representational, interactional, personal, heuristic and imaginative. Thus, the function of language can be summarized into seven categories: Referential Function, Interpersonal Function, Performative Function, Emotive Function, Phatic Communication, Recreational Function and MetalingualFunction. The illustrations are as followed.Referential Function also can be called INFORMATIONAL, or REFERENTIAL, or IDEATIONAL. It means that function is associated with what objects and ideas are called and how events are described. For example, for the same event-someone broke the vase in his colleague’s house whil e the latter went to the other room to answer the phone, the following things can be said, “I broke the vase”，“The vase was broken by me”, “The vase broke” etc. And each represents a choice in the TRANSITIVITY system realizing the IDEATIONAL METAFUNCTION.Interpersonal Function is variational and negotiable aspects of language in contrast to conventional concerns with the more ideational, content-based and stable relations between forms and meaning. In short, it is interactional and attitudinal. For example, the ways in which people address others and refer to themselves(e.g. “Dear Sir”, “Dear Professor”, “Johnny”, “yours”, “your obedient servant”) indicate the various grades of interpersonal relations. What’s more, the interpersonal function is often discussed under various other terms as performative, emotive, expressive and phatic function of language. They emphasize different aspects of the interpersonal function.Performative Function originates from the philosophiscal study of language represented by Austin and Searle. It is primarily to change the social status of persons as in marriage ceremonies, the sentencing ceremony, and the cursing of enemies. The kind of language employed in performative verbal acts is usually quite formed and even ritualized. For example, in Chinese when someone breaks a bowl or a plate the host or the people present are likely to say “岁岁(碎碎)平安” as a means of controlling the forces which the believers feel might affect their lives.Emotive Function is one of the most powerful uses of language because it is so crucial in changing the emotional status of an audience for or against someone or something. It is also a means of getting rid of our nervous energy when we under stress. For example, swear words, obscenities, involuntary verbal reactions to beautiful art or scenery; conventional words/phrases, like “God”, “My”, “Dame it”, “What a sight”, “Wow”, “Ugh”, “Ow” etc. It is also discussed under the term EXPRESSIVE function.P hatic Communication originates from Malinowski’s study of the functions of language used on Trobriand Islands. It refers to the social interaction of language. For example, Mrs. Psneezes violently. Mrs. Q: Bless you. Mrs. P: Thank you. We all use such small seemingly meaningless expressions to maintain a comfortable relationship between people without involving any factual content. Ritual exchanges about health or weather such as “Good morning!”,“God bless you!”, “Nice day!” often state the obvious. Some typical expressions of phatic communication in Chinese ar e: “好久不见”, “祝你一路顺风”，and “过年好”etc.The Recreational Function is use for the sheer joy, such as a baby’s babbling or a chanter’s chanting. In China, there widespread use of verbal dueling. When we observe a children’s play, we can find nonsensical lyrics performing a recreational function in the game. Adults also have their way to appreciate language for its own sake. For instance, poetry writing gives them the pleasure of using language for its sheer joy.Metalingual Function means that our language can be used to talk about itself. For example, I can use the word “book” to refer to a book or talk about the concept “book” ,and I can also use the expression “the word ‘book’” to talk about the sign “book” itself. To organize any written text into a coherent whole, writers employ certain expressions to keep their readers informed about where they are and where they are going. Forinstance, instead of saying “The lion beat the unicorn all round the town.”, They say “All around the town the lion beat the unicorn,” The change in linear order chang es our perspective about the concerns of clause.This is the METALINGUAL function of language, or in Halliday’s term, the TEXTUAL FUNCTION.3、How many speech organs are involved in speaking? How can we study phonetics?There are 23 speech organs are involves in speaking. They are the LUNGS, the TRACHEA(or wind-pipe), the THROAT, the NOSE, and the MOUTH. What’s more, they are the TONGUE, the PALATE, the PHARYNX, the LARYNX, the VOCAL FOLDS(or VOCAL CARDS), the VOCAL TRACT, the ORAL CAVITY and the NASAL CA VITY. Besides, they are also BRONCHIOLES, the BRONCHI, the VENTRICULAR FOLDS, the LIP, the TEETH, the ALVEOLAR RIDGE, the HARD PALATE, the SOFT PALATE, the UVULA and the MANDIBLE.PHONETICS is a matter of anatomy and physiology, referring to speech organs and their functions, speech sounds, waves carrying speech sounds, analysis and processing of the sounds by the listener. It can be further divided into anatomyand physiology of speech, articulatory phonetics, acoustic phonetics, and auditory or perceptual phonetics. We can study phonetics from aspects as followed.First, we should use the notation system of the INTERNATIONAL PHONETIC ALPHABET(IPA). In 1886, the INTERNATIONAL PHONETIC ASSOCIATION was inaugurated by a small group of language teachers in France who had found the practice of phonetics useful in their teaching and wished to popularize their method. Its main principles were that there should be a separate letter for each distinctive sound, and that the same symbol should be used for that sound in any language in which it appears. The IPA has been revised and corrected several times and is now widely used in dictionaries and textbooks through the world. So we should learn IPA well if we want to learn PHONETICS.Secondly, we can study PHONETICS by learning Consonants and V owels well. Theoretically, as far as phoneticians are concerned, any segment must be either a vowel or a consonants. We can learn Consonants from these aspects: Manners of Articulation, Places of Articulation and the Consonants of English. Then we can study V owels from the Criteria of V owel Description, the Theory of Cardinal V owelsand the Change of V owel Quality.Thirdly, we can study PHONECTICS from some other aspects, like Syallables, Stress, Pitch, Intonation and Tone. The Syllable is an important unit in the study of suprasegmentals. Then, Stress refers to the degree of force used in producing a syllable. The Pitch of a sound is dependent on the rate of vibration of the vocal folds within the larynx. Intonation involves the occurrence of recurring pitch patterns, each of which is used with a set of relatively consistent meanings, either on single words or on groups of relatively consistent meanings, either on single words or on groups of words of varying length. Pitch can cause changes in word meaning are called Tone. Above all, we can study Phonetics from these aspects.In a word, we can study PHONETICS by studying more theories and practising more.4、As phonetics is concerned, what are segments, divergences, and phonetic transcription respectively?Segments means that the English spelling does not represent its pronunciation all the time. In the production of theword “above” , for example, alt hough the spelling suggests five sounds, there are in fact four. When the word is said slowly, we recognize the four sound SEGMENTS that are comparable to the “a”, “b”, “o” and “v” of the spelling.Divergences are apart results between sounds and symbols. Because there more sounds in English than its letters can represent, each letter must represent more than one sound. For example, in 1400 the words “put”, “bush”, “pull”, “cup”, “luck”and“mud”all had the vowels[u], a high front vowel, for the Londoners. By about 1550, however, the vowel in“cup”,“luck”and“mud”had lowered to[γ], a mid-high back vowel, whereas [u] was retained in “put”, “bush” and “pull”.Phonetic Transcription is a set of symbols to record the sounds. The divergence between spelling and pronunciation become greater when we consider the many accents of English used by people from different regions. In addition, there are still many languages in the world that do not have a writing system of their own. So, it is necessary to devise sets of symbols that can be used for transcribing sounds in language. Then, INTERNATIONAL PHONETIC ALPHABET(IPA) appears.5、What does morphology study? How to define morphemes, morphs and allomorphs?MORPHOLOGY is the branch of linguistics that studies the internal structure of words and the rules by which words are formed.Traditionally, words are treated as the basic and minimal units of a language to make sentences, which are combinations of words according to syntactic rules. These minimal meaningful units are known as MORPHEMES. Secondly, in view of word-formation, the morpheme is seen as “the smallest functioning unit in the composition of words” according to Crystal. Syntactically, however, a morpheme is the minimal form of grammatical analysis.MORPHS are actual spoken forms, minimal carriers of meaning. In other words the phonetic or orthographic strings or segments which realize morpheme are termed “morphs”. Most morphemes are realized by one morph like “bird”, “tree”, “green”, “sad”, “want” etc.ALLOMORPHY is concerned with the ways in which morphemes are related to phonological forms, in other words, with the principles governing the range of variation in shapeshown by particular morphemes. It deals with the relation between morphs and morphemes.6、What are the classification of morphemes?Morphemes vary in function. Accordingly, we can classify morphemes into several general categories: free versus bound, derivational versus inflectional, and lexical versus grammatical.I shall define each type in terms of its characteristics.Free versus Bound Morphemes: Firstly, Free Morphemes are independent of other morphemes and can stand by themselves. These morphemes can be used as free grammatical units in sentences. They are identical with words, for example, “man”, “earth”, “wind”, “car” and “anger”. However, Bound Morphemes are bound to other morphemes to form words or to perform a particular grammatical function. They are mainly found in derived words. For example, each of the three words comp rises three morphemes: “recollection”（re-collect-ion）, “idealistic”( ideal -ist -ic), “ex-prisoner”(ex- prison -er). Secondly, Free Morphemes are all roots, which are capable of being used as words or as word-building elements to form newwords. For example, “sun”, “moon”,“use”are all roots. But Bound Morphemes consist of both roots and affixes , most of which can be used to create new words like re-, -ion, -ist, -ic and ex-. But there are a few affixes, which can only indicate such grammatical concepts as “tense”, “aspect”, “number” and “case”, for example, the -ing in “watching”, -er in “earsier”, -s in “books”, and -ed in “worked”Derivational versus Inflectional Morphemes: Firstly, Derivational Morphemes are used to derive new words. Because when these morphemes are conjoined, new words are derived. For example, a+mor+al, clear+ance, life+like and homo+gen+eous. But Inflectional Morphemes, in contrast, indicate the syntactic relationships between words and thus function as grammatical marks. For example, the usage of the regular plural suffix -s(es), the possessive case of nouns –’s, the comparative or superative degrees -er, -est , the past tense marker -ed and progressive marker -ing. Secondly, Inflectional Morphemes does not change meaning or part of speech of the stem. But Derivational Morphemes changes meaning or part of speech of the stem. Thirdly, Inflectional Morphemes indicate syntactic or semantic relations between words in a sentence. However, Derivational Morphemes indicates semantics relationswithin the word. Fourthly, Inflectional Morphemes occurs with all members of some large class of morphemes. In the contrast, Derivational morpheme occurs with only some members of a class of morphemes. Lastly, Inflectional Morphemes occurs at margins of words. But Derivational Morphemes occurs before any inflectional morpheme.Lexical versus Grammatical Morphemes: Lexical Morphemes are used as we see above to derive new words, so also known as derivational morphemes. These morphemes, whether free or bound, whether roots or affixes. Grammatical Morphemes, on the other hand, are grammatical in nature. They function primarily as grammatical markers or show syntactics relations. They encompass both inflectional morphemes and such free morphemes as “in”, “and”, “do”, “have”, “they”, “while”, “where” and “that”, “which” are traditionally known as functional words. What’s more, the boundary between lexical and grammatical morphemes ,however, is not always clear.7、How are words formed? What rules can we apply to form words?It is clear that words can be analyzed into morphemes, which are minimal meaningful units in the composition of words. In word-formation, however, morphemes are conventionally labeled root, stem, base, and affix. What’s more, word-formation has many processes. It includes Compounding, Affixation, and Shortening.Compounding: COMPOUNDS mostly consist of two or more free morphemes like “dump show”, “hot seat”, “childhood” and “sweetheart”. They are formed on a variety of patterns, which yield three major classes of words: nouns, adjectives and verbs, e.g. “information highway”(n+n), “sunrise”(n+v), pickpocket(v+n). There are also a small number of words which combine with only bound forms as in “biochemistry”, “sociolinguistics”, in which bio-, socio-, tele-, and anglo- are combining forms. According to sematic criteria, compounds fall into four classes. The first class is called ENDOCENTRIC COMPOUNDS comprising words like “armchair” and “house party”. The second class is EXOCENTRIC COMPOUNDS, consisting of words like “redskin” and “birdbrain”. The third class is APPOSITIONAL COMPOUNDS. They are words like “girlfriend” and “women lawyer”. The final classCOPULATIVE COMPOUND is exemplified by “French-German” and “aural-oral”, each of which shows a coordinating relationship and it is often difficult to decide which of the two is the focal element.Affixation: AFFIXATION is also known as derivation, a process of producing new words by adding affixes to stems or bases. As infixes are unknown in English, all the affixes can be classified into prefixes and suffixes. Prefixes change the meaning of the base but normally not the part of speech. For example, “obey”, “treat” and “distribute” are verbs and remain verbs after dis-, mal-, re- are at tached to them as “disobey”, “maltreat” and “redistribute”. Suffixes change the part of speech and alter the meaning as well. For example, if suffixes are added to those words above, their part of speech will all change as “obedient”, “treatment” and “distributor”Shortening: SHORTENING used in this context is a cover term referring to any process of word formation to create words by making the original shorter in various ways. It includes five aspects. Blends are words formed by combining elements of two stems, either part of both words or part of one with the whole of the other. For example, “colaholic” ( cocacola+ aco holic),“telequiz”(telephone+quiz). Besides, Acronyms and Abbreviations are the combinations of initial letters of a noun phrase but they are different mainly in formation and pronunciation. Like “radar”( radio detecting and ranging), VIP(very important person.). Clippings are shorted forms of words by cutting a part off the original. For example, “quake”(earthquake), “van”( advantage) and “flu”(influenza). Backformation is another kind of word creation by means of reduction. For example, “auth”( from author), “bant”(from banting),etc.8、What is referential theory?The REFERENTIAL THEORY is known as the theory of meaning which relates the meaning of a word to the thing it refers to, or stands for. It is generally , as we have shown in the previous section, to explain the meaning of a word by pointing noun phrases, this is especially true. When we say “The most influential linguist” and “Noam Chomsky” to mean a particular person, and “MIT” a particular institution of higher learning.However, there are also problems with this theory. One is that when we explain the mea ning of “desk” by pointing to the thing it refers to, we do not mean a desk must be of theparticular size, shape, colour and material as the desk we are pointing to at the moment of speaking. The theory include Concept.CONCEPT means that something is abstract, which has no existence in the material world and can only be sensed in our mind. A theory which explicitly employs the notion “concept” is the SEMANTIC TRIANGLE proposed by Ogden and Richards in their book The Meaning of Meaning. They argue that the relation between a word and a thing it refers to is not direct. It is mediated by concept.Leech also uses SENSE as a briefer term for his conceptual meaning. This usage is justifiable in that as a technical term “sense” may be used in the same way as “connotation” is used in philosophy. For example, the definition of “desk” as “a piece of furniture with a flat top and four legs, at which one reads and writes” may also be called the sense of “desk”.REFERENCE is different from SENSE. The distinction be tween “sense” and “reference” is comparable to that between “connotation” and “denotation”. The former refers to some abstract properties, while the latter refers to some concrete entities. What’s more, we can say every word has a sense, butnot every word has a reference. For example, “but”, “if” and “and” do not refer anything. And words like “God”, “ghost” and “dragon” refer to imaginary things, which do not exist in reality.9、In Semantics, what are the sense relations?We should define the “sense” first, if we want to know the sense relations.The sense of a word may be seen as the network of its sense relations with others. In other words, sense may be defined as the semantic relations between one word and another, or more generally between one linguistic relationsSo, words are in different SENCE RELATIONS with each other. Some words have more similar senses than others. For example, the sense of “desk” is more closely related to that of “table” than to “chair” . Converse ly we can say the sense of “desk” is more different from that of “chair” than from “table”. And the sense of “desk” is included in the sense of “furniture”, or the sense of “furniture” includes that of “desk”.There are generally three kinds of sense relations recognized, namely, sameness relation, oppositeness relation and inclusiveness relation.。