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

第10章英语语言变体（I）课后习题详解Check your understanding.State whether each of the following statements is True or False.(1) A language often has some dialects.【答案】T(2) London Cockney is very prestigious in Britain.【答案】F(3) Different social classes often have their own dialects.【答案】T(4) Spoken English is informal in style.【答案】FIn-Class Activities1. Regional dialects used to coincide with geographical barriers, like mountains andrivers. However, as modern communications technology develops, such physical barriers seem to disappear.Ask(1) Do you speak any local dialect(s)? Demonstrate a little bit.Key: Omit.(2) How did dialects come into existence?Key: People speaking the same language are long separated and then variations occur.(3) What do you think about the future of dialects? Should we take measures to protect our dialects?Key: Dialects will be disappeared, if we ban speaking dialects or withouttransmitting to next generation. Yes, we should take measures to protect our dialects, because it’s our valued culture legacy.2. T emporal dialects are also one dimension of linguistic variation. For example, English has gone through several major stages of development, from Old English, through Middle English, to Modern English. Study the following passage from Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Act IV, Scene iii.HAMLET: A man may fish with the worm that hath eat of a king, and eat of the fish that hath fed of that worm.KING: What dost thou mean by this?HAMLET: Nothing but to show you how a king may go a progress through the guts era beggar.KING: Where is Polonius?HAMLET: In heaven. Send thither to see. If your messenger find him not there, seek him in the other place yourself. But indeed, if you find him not within this month, you shall nose him as you go up the stairs into the lobby.Ask:(1) Can you identify any linguistic difference between Elizabethan and currentModem English? (e. g., in line 3, thou is now you.)Key: The differences are underlined below:HAMLET: A man may fish with the worm that hath eat of a king, and eat of the fish that hath fed of that worm.KING: What dost thou mean by this?HAMLET: Nothing but to show you how a king may go a progress through the guts of a beggar.KING: Where is Polonius?HAMLET: In heaven. Send thither to see. If your messenger find him notthere, seek him in the other place yourself. But indeed, if you findhim not within this month, you shall nose him as you go up thestairs into the lobby.(2) Since Shakespeare (1564-1616), do you think the English grammar has changedprofoundly? Justify your judgment with evidence from the above excerpt.Key: Not much. The basic patterns are the same. A noticeable difference lies in the position of “not” as in “If your messenger find him not there”. (3) How does modern English differ from Old English and Middle English?Key: You may refer to George Yule, The Study of English, pp. 218-223 For examples, Sound changes: One of the most obvious differencesbetween Modern English and the English spoken in earlier periods is in thequality of the vowel sounds. Here are some examples of words, in phonetic transcription, whose general form has remained the same, but whose vowel sounds have changed considerably. (Note the use of the colon whichindicates that the vowel sound is long.)3. The speech of an individual may develop into a personal style or an idiolect, characterized by some linguistic pattern unique to him or her. Thus we may talk about Shakespeare’s language or Lu Xun’s language. Study the following excerpts from two well-known authors.Excerpt 1 (Opening paragraph of Chapter 1 of Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn)YOU don’ t know about me without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer; but that ain’t no matter. That book wa s made by Mr. Mark Twain, and he told the truth, mainly. There was things which he stretched, but mainly he told the truth. That is nothing. I never seen anybody but lied one time or another, without it was Aunt Polly, or the widow, or maybe Mary. Aunt Polly-Tom’s Aunt Polly, she is-and Mary, and the Widow Douglas is all told about in that book, which is mostly a true book, with some stretchers, as I said before.Now the way that the book winds up is this: Tom and me found the money that the robbers hid in the cave, and it made us rich. We got six thousand dollars apiece-all gold. It was an awful sight of money when it was piled up. Well, Judge Thatcher he took it and put it out at interest, and it fetched us a dollar a day apiece all the year round--more than a body could tell what to do with. The Widow Douglas she took me for her son, and allowed she would sivilize me; but it was rough living in the house all the time, considering how dismal regular and decent the widow was in all her ways; and so when I c ouldn’t stand it no longer I lit out. I got into my old rags and my sugar-hogshead again, and was free and satisfied. But Tom Sawyer he hunted me up and said he was going to start a band of robbers, and I might join if I would go back to the widow and be respectable. So I went back.Excerpt 2 (Opening paragraph of Chapter 1 of Henry James’ The Portrait of a Lady)Under certain circumstances there are few hours in life more agreeable than the hour dedicated to the ceremony known as afternoon tea. There are circumstances in which, whether you partake of the tea or not--some people of course never do--the situation is in itself delightful. Those that I have in mind in beginning to unfold this simple history offered an admirable setting to an innocent pastime. The implements of the little feast had been disposed upon the lawn of an old English country-house, in what I should call the perfect middle of a splendid summer afternoon. Part of the afternoon had waned, but much of it was left, and what was left was of the finest and rarest quality. Real dusk would not arrive formany hours; but the t7ood of summer light had begun to ebb, the air had grown mellow, the shadows were long upon the smooth, dense turf. They lengthened slowly, however, and the scene expressed that sense of leisure still to come which is perhaps the chief source of one’s enjoyment of such a scene at such an hour. From five o’clock to eight is on certain occasions a little eternity; but on such an occasion as this the interval could be only an eternity of pleasure. The persons concerned in it were taking their pleasure quietly, and they were not of the sex which is supposed to furnish the regular votaries of the ceremony I have mentioned. The shadows on the perfect lawn were straight and angular; they were the shadows of an old man sitting in a deep wicker-chair near the low table on which the tea had been served, and of two younger men strolling to and fro, in desultory talk, in front of him. The old man had his cup in his hand, it was an unusually large cup, of a different pattern from the rest of the set and painted in brilliant colors. He disposed of its contents with much circumspection, holding it for a long time close to his chin, with his face turned to the house. His companions had either finished their tea or were indifferent to their privilege; they smoked cigarettes as they continued to stroll. One of them, from time to time, as he passed, looked with a certain attention at the elder man, who, unconscious of observation, rested his eyes upon the rich red front of his dwelling. The house that rose beyond the lawn was a structure to repay such consideration and was the most characteristic object in the peculiarly English picture I have attempted to sketch.Ask。