陈新仁《英语语言学实用教程》配套题库【课后练习】(英语语言结构(I))【圣才出品】

第4章英语语言结构（I）

课后习题详解

Check your understanding.

State whether each of the following statements is True or False.

(1) Word order plays an important role in the organization of English sentences. 【答案】T

(2) All ambiguous sentences result from our failure to use proper organization. 【答案】F

(3) With transformations, we can organize a sentence the way we like.

【答案】F

(4) Like English, modern Chinese is a SVO language.

【答案】T

In-Class Activities

1. Natural language is said to differ from animals’ communication systems along many lines. For example, it is characterized by its recursive property; in other words, there is no limit to the potential length of sentences, and the set of sentences of any language is infinite. There are a variety of means that enable recursion. Here are the illustrations for some of them in English:

a. Jane visited John’s brother’s wife’s mother’s father’s cousin’s friend’s

store. (NP recursion)

b. The very seedy battered rundown old red wooden shack fell down. (AP recursion)

c. Jane wants to begin to try to learn to write novels in English. (VP recursion)

d. John likes the brightness of the coloring of the lettering on the cover of Jane’s report. (PP recursion)

Ask

(1) Can you think of other modes of recursion?

Key: Relative-clause recursion.

(2) Give one example of VP recursion.

Key: Begin planning to learn to swim.

2. The sentence Jane made John a good husband because she made him a good wife looks interesting because the two parts of the sentence linked by “because”seem to share the same surface structure but differ in their deep or underlying structure.

Ask

(1) Paraphrase the two parts of the sentence before and after “because”.

Key: Under Jane’s influence, John became a good husband.

She serves as a good wife for John.

(2) Which sentence patterns do the two parts belong to?

Key: VOC; VOO

(3) Can you find more verbs like “make” in English?

Key: Leave, allow, etc.

3. Like “make”, “leave” is another potent verb in English because it can be used in different sentence patterns. Look at the public sign below.

(1) Is the sign ambiguous? If so, use paraphrases to show the different readings.

Key: a. Do not let such situation happen that no one attends the valuables.

b. Do not go away from the valuables that are not attended.

(2) Is the ambiguity involved the same kind as that in “The mother of the boy and the girl arrived”?

Key: No. Ambiguity in the latter case arises from coordination as shown by the use of “and”.

(3) Newspaper headlines and advertisements often deliberately employ ambiguity

to attract customers or readers. How are the following ambiguous?

1) A New Model for Getting Rich Online

2) Two Philippine Ships Collido-One Dies.

3) Eye Drops off Shelf.

4) Wanted: A man to Wash Dishes and Two Young Waitresses.

Key: (a) A New Model For Getting Rich Online. “Online” may modify both “model” and “getting rich”.