语言学概论复习资料

1. What are the categories of lexical meaning?

Lexical meaning includes: a) referential meaning (also denotative meaning). b) Associative meanings. Referential meaning is the central meaning and it is more stable and universal. Associative meanings are meanings are meanings that hinge on referential meaning, which are less stable and more culture-specific.

Types of associative meanings: connotative meaning, social meaning, affective meaning, reflected meaning, collective meaning

2. What are the components of metaphor?

There are two positions on the function of metaphors: a) the classical view sees metaphor a rhetorical device; b) another view holds metaphor a cognitive device. Metaphors 一s possible precisely because there are metaphors in a person’s concep tual systems.

All metaphors are composed of two domains: target domain (also tenor) and source domain (vehicle).

3. How does transformational grammar account for sentence- relatedness?

1) According to Chomsky, a grammar as the tacit shared knowledge of all speakers is a system of finite rules by which an infinite number of sentences can be generated. He attempts to account for this aspect of syntax by postulating that deep structures and surface structures.

2) Deep structures are the basic structures generated by phrase structure rules.

3) Surface structures are derived structures, the structures of sentences that we actually speak. Surface structures are derived from deep structures through transformational rules which include replacement, insertion, deletion and coping, etc.

4. On what basis do linguists regard human language as species-specific (unique to humans)?

Language is a system of arbitrary vocal symbols used for human communication. Many philosophers and linguists believe that language is unique to man. Language is a human trait that sets us apart from other living creatures. They spell out a number of features of language which are not found in animal communication systems. These features: creativity, duality, arbitrariness, displacement, cultural transmission, interchangeability and reflexivity. These are universal features possessed by all human languages. Although some animal communication systems possess, to a very limited degree, one or another of these features except creativity and duality, none is found to have all the features. On this basis linguists tend to conclude that human languages are qualitatively different

form animal communication systems.

5. What part of syntax can phrase structure rules account for and what they cannot?

Phrase structure rules are rules that specify the constituents of syntactic categories. These rules are part of speakers’ syntactic knowledge, which govern the construction of sentences.

There are a lot of part of syntactic knowledge, including structural ambiguity (which strings of words have more than one meaning), words order (different arrangements of the same words have different meanings), grammatical relations (what element relates to what other element directly or indirectly), recursion (the repeated use of the same rules to create infinite sentences), sentence relatedness (sentences may be structurally variant but semantically related), and syntactic categories (a class of words or phrases that can substitute for one another without loss of grammaticality) etc. Phrase structure rules can account for structural ambiguity, word order, grammatical relations, recursion, and syntactic categories; but they cannot account for sentence relatedness.

6. How do sociolinguists classify the varieties of English?

The term variety is the label given to the form of a language used by any group of speakers or used in a particular field. A variety is characterized by the basic lexicon, phonology, syntax shared by members of the group. Varieties of a language are of four types: the standard variety, regional dialects, sociolects and registers.

A regional dialect is a variety of a language spoken by people living in an area. The English language has many regional dialects. British English, American English, Australian English. Indian English, South African English, etc. are all regional varieties of the language. One dialect is distinctive from another phonologically, lexically and grammatically.

7. What are the functions of supra-segmental features?

The phonetic features, distinctive or non-distinctive, that we have discussed so far may be properties of single segments. In this section we will look at features that are found over a segment or sequence of two or more segments, which are called suprasegmental features. These features are also distinctive features. They are found in such units of syllables, words, phrases and sentences. The most widely found suprasegmental features are stress, intonation and tone.

Stress is defined as the perceived prominence (comparative loudness) of one or more syllable elements over others in a word. This definition implies that stress is a relative notion. Intonation: when we speak, we change the pitch of our voice to express ideas. The same sentence uttered