英语语言学练习题

Chp 1

I. Blank filling

1. Langue refers to the _____ linguistic system shared by all the members of a speech

community; parole refers to the _____ of langue in actual use.

2.Chomsky defines competence as the ideal user’s_____ of the rules of his language, and

performance, the actual _____ of this knowledge in linguistic communication.

3.“A rose by any other name would smell as sweet”. This quotation from Shakespeare illustrates

that language has the design feature of _____.

4.The property of _____ of language provides a speaker with an opportunity to talk about a wide

range of things, free from barriers caused by separation in time and place.

nguage is a system, which consists of two sets of structures, one of_____, and the other

of_____. This double articulation of language enables its users to talk about anything within their knowledge.

II. T-F choice

1.Linguistics can be defined as the scientific study of a particular language.

2. Language is arbitrary by nature but it is not completely arbitrary.

3. We can use the word “word” to talk about a word, we can talk about “talk”, we can think about “thinking”, this shows that language has a metalingual function.

III. Answer questions.

1.What features of human language have been specified by C. Hockett to show that it is

essentially different from any animal communication system?

Chp 2

1. The difference between a consonant and a vowel lies in whether there is air _______in the production of them.

2. Vibration of the vocal cords results in a quality of speech sounds called ______, which is a feature of all vowels and some consonants.

3. Two ways to transcribe speech sounds are available, broad transcription and narrow transcription. The major difference between them is with or without_______.

4. The basic unit of phonology is a phoneme. It is an abstract collection of ______ features.

5. When phonemic contrast is mentioned we realize that the two sounds belong to _____phoneme(s), when complementary distribution is discussed, the allophones come from ______phoneme(s).

II.

1. Phonology aims to discover how speech sounds of all human languages form patterns and how these sounds are used to convey meaning in linguistic communication.

2. In English, pill and bill form a minimal pair, and so do life and knife, pin and ping.

3. The phoneme /t/ and /d/ can occur in the same position and they distinguish meaning, therefore

they are said to be in complementary distribution.

4. The distinctive features in English can apply to the other languages, too. For instance, voicing distinguishes meaning in both English and Chinese.

5. In a standardized English syllable all of the three parts of onset, nucleus and coda are compulsory.