语言学教程课后习题与答案第一章

Chapter 1 Invitations to Linguistics

1. Define the following terms:

design feature: the distinctive features of human language that essentially make human language distinguishable from languages of animals.

function: the role language plays in communication (e.g. to express ideas, attitudes) or in particular social situations (e.g. religious, legal).

synchronic: said of an approach that studies language at a theoretical ‘point’ in time.

diachronic: said of the study of development of language and languages over time. prescriptive: to make authoritarian statement about the correctness of a particular use of language.

descriptive: to make an objective and systematic account of the patterns and use of a language or variety.

arbitrariness: the absence of any physical correspondence between linguistic signals and the entities to which they refer.

duality: the structural organization of language into two abstract levels: meaningful units (e.g. words) and meaningless segments (e.g. sounds, letters).

displa cement: the ability of language to refer to contexts removed from the speaker’s immediate situation.

phatic communion: said of talk used to establish atmosphere or maintain social contact.

metalanguage: a language used for talking about language.

macrolinguistics: a broad conception of linguistic enquiry, including psychological, cultural, etc.

competence: unconscious knowledge of the system of grammatical rules in a language.

performance: the language actually used by people in speaking or writing.

l angue: the language system shared by a “speech community”.

parole: the concrete utterances of a speaker.

2. Consult at least four introductory linguistics textbooks (not dictionaries), and copy the definitions of “language” that each gives. After careful ly comparing the definitions, write a paper discussing which points recur and explaining the significance of the similarities and differences

among the definitions.

ANSWER:All the definitions should not exclude the description of design features that have been mentioned in this course book. Also it will be better if other design features, say, interchangeability or cultural transmission is included. But it seems impossible to give an unimpeachable definition on language, because the facets people want to emphasize are seldom unanimous. To compare several definitions can make you realize where the argument is.

3. Can you think of some words in English which are onomatopoeic?

ANSWERS:

creak: the sound made by a badly oiled door when it opens.

cuckoo: the call of cuckoo.

bang: a sudden loud noise.

roar: a deep loud continuing sound.

buzz: a noise of buzzing.

hiss: a hissing sound.

neigh: the long and loud cry that a horse makes.

mew: the noise that a gull makes.

bleat: the sound made by a sheep, goat or calf.

4. Do you think that onomatopoeia indicates a non-arbitrary relationship between form and meaning?

ANSWER:4. No matter you say "Yes" or "No", you cannot deny that onomatopoeia needs arbitrariness. Before we feel a word is onomatopoeic we should first know which sound the word imitates. Just as what is said in Chapter One, in order to imitate the noise of flying mosquitoes, there are many choices like "murmurous" and "murderous". They both bear more or less resemblance to the genuine natural sound, but "murmurous" is fortunately chosen to mean the noise while "murderous" is chosen to mean something quite different. They are arbitrary as signifiers.

5. A story by Robert Louis Stevenson contains the sentence “As the night fell, the wind rose.” Could this be expressed as “As the wind rose, the night fell?” If not, why? Does this indicate a degree of non-arbitrariness about word order? (Bolinger, 1981: 15)

5. Yes. It is a case in point to illustrate non-arbitrariness about word order. When the two parts interchange, the focus and the meaning of the sentence is forced to change, because clauses occurring in linear sequence without time indicators will be taken as matching the actual sequence of happening. The writer’s original intention is distorted, and we c an feel it effortlessly by reading. That is why systemic-functionalists and American functionalists think language is not arbitrary at the syntactic level.