语言学 作业

2. What are the major branches of linguistics? What does each of them study?

答：The major branches of linguistics are:

(1) phonetics: it studies the sounds used in linguistic communication;

(2) phonology: it studies how sounds are put together and used to convey meaning in communication;

(3) morphology: it studies the way in which linguistic symbols representing sounds are arranged and combined to form words;

(4) syntax: it studies the rules which govern how words are combined to form grammatically permissible sentences in languages;

(5) semantics: it studies meaning conveyed by language;

(6) pragmatics: it studies the meaning in the context of language use.

7. What characteristics of language do you think should be included in a good, comprehensive definition of language?

答：First of all, language is a system, i.e., elements of language are combined according to rules.

Second, language is arbitrary in the sense that there is no intrinsic connection between a linguistic symbol and what the symbol stands for.

Third, language is vocal because the primary medium for all languages is sound.

Fourth, language is human-specific, i. e., it is very different from the communication systems other forms of life possess.

8. What are the main features of human language that have been specified by C. Hockett to show that it is essentially different from animal communication system?

答：The main features of human language are termed design features. They include:

1) Arbitrariness

Language is arbitrary. This means that there is no logical connection between meanings and sounds. A good example is the fact that different sounds are used to refer to the same object in different languages.

2) Productivity

Language is productive or creative in that it makes possible the construction and interpretation of new signals by its users. This is why they can produce and understand an infinitely large number of sentences, including sentences they have never heard before.

3) Duality

Language consists of two sets of structures, or two levels. At the lower or the basic level there is a structure of sounds, which are meaningless by themselves. But the sounds of language can be grouped and regrouped into a large number of units of meaning, which are found at the higher level of the system.

4) Displacement

Language can be used to refer to things which are present or not present, real or imagined matters in the past, present, or future, or in far-away places. In other words, language can be used to refer to contexts removed from the immediate situations of the speaker. This is what “displacement”means.

5) Cultural transmission

While human capacity for language has a genetic basis, i.e., we were all born with the ability to acquire language, the details of any language system are not genetically transmitted, but instead have to be taught and learned.

8. What is a phone? How is it different from a phoneme? How are allophones related to a phoneme?

答：A phone is a phonetic unit or segment. The speech sounds we hear and produce during linguistic communication are all phones. A phoneme is not any particular sound, but rather it is represented or realized by a certain phone in a certain phonetic context. The different phones which can represent a phoneme in different phonetic environments are called the allophones of that phoneme. For example, the phoneme /l/ in English can be realized as dark [?], clear [l], etc. which are allophones of the phoneme /l/.

4. The italicized part in each of the following sentences is an inflectional morpheme. Study each inflectional morpheme carefully and point out its