英语语言学各章要点、难点问答

1、语言学导论各章要点、难点问答 Chapter One1. 语言学的主要分支是什么。每个分支的研究对象是什么? Linguistics mainly involves the following branches:G eneral linguistics, which is the study of language as a whole and which deals with the basic concepts, theories, descriptions, models and methods applicable in any linguistic studyPhonetics, w

2、hich studies the sounds that are used in linguistic communication Phonology, which studies how sounds are put together and used in communicationMorphology, which studies the way in which morphemes are arranged to form wordsSyntax, which studies how morphemes and words are combined to form sentences

3、Semantics, which is the study of meaning in language.Pragmatics, which is the study of meaning not in isolation, but in context of use Sociolinguistics, which is the study of language with reference to societyPsycholinguistics, which is the study of language with reference to the workings of mind.Ap

4、plied linguistics, which is concerned about the application of linguistic findings in linguistic studies; In a narrow sense, applied linguistics refers to the application of linguistic principles and theories to language teaching and learning, especially the teaching of foreign and second languages.

5、Other related branches are anthropological linguistics, neurological linguistics, mathematical linguistics, and computational linguistics.2. 现代语言学与传统语法有什么区别?Traditional grammar is prescriptive; it is based on "high "(religious, literary written language . It sets models for language users

6、to follow. But Modern linguistics is descriptive; its investigations are based on authentic, and mainly spoken language data. It is supposed to be scientific and objective and the task of linguists is supposed to describe the language people actually use, whether it is "correct" or not.3.

7、什么叫共时研究?什么叫历时研究?The description of a language at some point in time is a Synchronic study; the description of a language as it changes through time is a diachronic study. A synchronic study of language describes a language as it is at some particular point in rime, while a diachronic study of langua

8、ge is a historical study; it studies the historical development of language over a period of time.4. 人类语言的甄别性特征是什么?1 ArbitrarinessIt means that there is no logical connection between meanings and sounds. For instance, there is no necessary relationship between the word dog and the animal it refers t

9、o. The fact that different sounds are used to refer to the same object in different languages and that the same sound may be used to refer to different objects is another good example. Although language is arbitrary by nature, it is not entirely arbitrary. Some words, such as the words created in th

10、e imitation of sounds by sounds are motivated in a certain degree. The arbitrary nature of language makes it possible for language to have an unlimited source of expressions.2 ProductivityLanguage is productive or creative in that it makes possible the construction and interpretation of an infinitel

11、y large number of sentences, including those that they have never said or heard before.3 DualityIt means that language is a system, which consists of two sets of structure, or two levels, one of sounds at the lower level and the other of meanings at the higher level. At the lower or the basic level,

12、 there is the structure of individual and meaningless sounds, which can be grouped into meaningful units at the higher level. This duality of structure or double articulation of language enables its users to talk about anything within their knowledge.4 DisplacementIt means that language can be used

13、to talk about what happened in the past, what is happening now, or what will happen in the future. Language can also be used to talk about our real word experiences or the experiences in our imaginary world. In other words, language can be used to refer to contexts removed from the immediate situati

14、ons of the speaker.5 Cultural transmissionWhile we are born with the ability to acquire language, the details of any language are not genetically transmitted, but instead have to be taught and learned anew.5. Chomsky的语言能力和语言使用各指什么?American linguist N. Chomsky in the late 1950s proposed the distincti

15、on between competence and performance. Chomsky defines competence as the ideal users knowledge of the rules of his language. This internalized set of rules enables the language user to produce and understand an infinitely large number of sentences and recognize sentences that are ungrammatical and a

16、mbiguous. According to Chomsky, performance is the actual realization of this knowledge in linguistic communication. Although the speakers knowledge of his mother tongue is perfect, his performances may have mistakes because of social and psychological factors such as stress, embarrassment, etc. Cho

17、msky believes that what linguists should study is the competence, which is systematic, not the performance, which is too haphazard.6. Saussure 是如何区分语言和言语的?The distinction between langue, and parole was made by the famous Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure early this century. Langue and parole are

18、French words. Langue refers to the abstract linguistic system shared by all the members of a speech community, and parole refers to the realization of langue in actual use. Langue is the set of conventions and rules which language users all have to follow while parole is the concrete use of the conv

19、entions and the application of the rules. Langue is abstract;It is not the language people actually use, but parole is concrete; it refers to the naturally occurring language events. Langue is relatively stable, it does not change frequently; while parole varies from person to person, and from situa

20、tion to situation.Chapter Two7. 语言交际的两大媒介是什么?哪一个是基本的交际媒介?为什 么?Modern linguistics regards the spoken form of language as primary, but not the written form, because the spoken form is prior to the written form and most writing systems are derived from the spoken form of language.8. 语音学的三个分支是什么。它们研究的对象

21、各是什么?Articulatory phonetics: It studies the human speech organs and the way in which thee speech sounds are produced.Acoustic phonetics: It studies the physical properties of the speech sounds; it deals with the sound waves through the use of such machines as a spectrograph.Auditory phonetics is the

22、 study of the perception of sounds by the human ear.9. 什么叫浊音化?它是如何形成的?Voicing is the result of the vibration of the vocal cords. When the vocal cords are drawn wide apart, letting air go through without causing vibration, the sounds produced in such a way are voiceless. When vocal cords are held tog

23、ether tautly so that the air stream vibrates them, the sounds produced in this way are voiced.10. 宽式标音和严式标音有什么区别?The broad transcription is the transcription of sounds by using one letter to represent one sound. The narrow transcription is the transcription with diacritics to show detailed articulat

24、ory features of sounds.11. 英语的辅音是如何分类的?1 by place of articulation :a. bilabial such as p,b,m,wb. labiodental such as f,vc. dental such as , d. alveolar such as t,d,s,z,n,l,re. palatal such as , , t , d , jf. velar such as k, g, g. glottal such as h2 by manner of articulation.a. Stops such as p,b,t,d

25、,k,gb. Fricatives such as f,v,s,z, , , , , hc. Afficates such as t, d d. Liquids such as l, re. Nasals such as n,m,f. Glides such as w, j12. 英语的元音是如何分类的?1 Vowels may be distinguished as front vowels such as i: i e a, central vowels such as :, ,and back vowels such asu: : and : in terms of the positi

26、on of the tongue in the mouth.2 According to how wide our mouth is opened, we classify the vowels into four groups: close vowels such as i:, i,u:, semi-close vowels such ase, : , semi-open vowels such as , : , and open vowels such as æ, a, and :.3 According to the shape of the lips, vowels are

27、divided into rounded vowels and unrounded vowels.4 The English vowels can also be classified into long vowels and short vowels according to the length of the sound. The long vowels include i: : : u: :, while the rest are short vowels.13. 语音学和音系学有什么区别?They differ in their approach and focus. Phonetic

28、s is of a general nature; it is interested in all the speech sounds used in all human languages: how they are produced, how they differ from each other, what phonetic features they possess, how they can be classified. Phonology, on the other hand, is interested in the system of sounds of a particula

29、r language; it aims to discover how speech sounds in a language form patterns and how these sounds are used to convey meaning in linguistic communication.14. 音素、音位和音位变体有什么区别?Phones are the speech sounds we use when speaking a language. A phone is a phonetic unit or segment. It does not necessarily d

30、istinguish meaning.; some do, some dont. A phoneme is a basic unit in phonology; it is a unit that is of distinctive value. It is an abstract unit. It is not a sound, but a collection of distinctive phonetic features. In actual speech, a phoneme is realized phonetically as a certain phone. The diffe

31、rent phones which can represent a phoneme in different phonetic environments are called the allophones of that phoneme.15. 什么是超音位特征?它是如何影响语义的?1 The location of stress in English distinguishes meaning, such as import and import. The similar alternation of stress also occurs between a compund noun a a

32、 phrase consisting of the same elements. A phonological feature of the English compounds, is that the stress of the word always falls on the first element and the second element receives secondary stress, for example: blackbird is a particular kind of bird, which is not necessarily black, but a blac

33、k bird is a bird that is black.2 The more important words such as nouns, verbs adjectives , adverbs,etc are pronounced with greater force and made more prominent. But to give special emphasis to a certain notion, a word in sentence that is usually unstressed can be stressed to achieve different effe

34、ct. Take the sentence “He is driving my car.” for example. To emphasize the fact that the car he is driving is not his, or yours, but mine, the speaker can stress the possessive pronoun my , which under normal circumstances is not stressed.3 English has four basic types of intonation, known as the f

35、our tones: When spoken in different tones, the same sequence of words may have different meanings. Generally speaking, the falling tone indicates that what is said is a straight-forward, matter-of-fact statement, the rising tone often makes a question of what is said, and the fall-rise tone often in

36、dicates that there is an implied message in what is said.16. 什么叫音位对立?什么叫互补分布?什么是最小对立对?If two phonetically similar sounds can occur in the same environments and they distinguish meaning, they are in phonemic contrast. If two phonetically similar sounds are two allophones of the same phoneme and they

37、occur in different environments, they are said to be in complementary distribution.17. 复合词有什么特点?Orthographically a compound can be written as one word, two separate words with or without a hyphen in between. Syntactically, the part of speech of a compound is determined by the last element. Semantica

38、lly, the meaning of a compound is idiomatic, not calculable from the meanings of all its components. Phonetically, the word stress of a compound usually falls on the first element.Chapter Three18. 词素可以划分成哪些类别?Free morphemes: They are the independent units of meaning and can be used fr eely all by th

39、emselves, for example, “book -” in the word “bookish”.Bound morphemes: They are those that cannot be used independently but have to be combined with other morphemes, either free or bound, to form a word such as “ -ish” in “bookish”. Bound mor phemes can be subdivided into roots and affixes. A root i

40、s seen as part of a word; it can never stand by itself although it has a clear and definite meaning, such as “gene -” in the word “generate”. Affixes are of two types: inflectional and derivational. Inflectional morphemes manifest various grammatical relations or grammatical categories such as “ -s”

41、 in the word “books” to indicate plurality of nouns. Derivational affixes are added to an existing form to create a word such as “mis -” in the word “misinform”. Derivational affixes can also be divided into prefixes andsuffixes. Prefixes occur at the beginning of a word such as “dis - ” in the word

42、 “dislike”, while suffixes occur at the end of a word such as “ -less” in the word “friendless”.Chapter Four19. 什么是 X-标杆理论 ?X-bar theory is a general and highly abstract schema that collapses all phrasal structure rules into a single format: X (Spec X (Compl. In this format, Spec stands for specifie

43、r while Compl stands for complement. This theory is capable of reducing the redundancies of individual phrasal structure rules and may well capture certain basic properties shared by all phrasal categories, i.e. NP, VP, AP, PP, across the languages of the world.20. 英语的句子中的三种基本类型是什么?Traditionally, th

44、ree major types of sentences are distinguished. They are simple sentence, coordinate or compound sentence and complex sentence. (1 A simple sentence consists of a single clause which contains a subject and a predicate and stands alone as its own sentence. For example, John reads extensively. Mary de

45、cided to take a linguistic class the next semester. Each of the two sentences contains a single clause and can stand structurally independent. (2 A coordinate sentence contains two clauses joined by a linking word called coordinating conjunction, such as “and”, “but”, “or”. The two clauses in a coor

46、dinate sentence are structurally equal parts of the sentence; neither is subordinate to the other. For example, John is reading a linguistic book, and Mary is preparing for her history exam. John likes linguistics, but Mary is interested in history. (3 A complex sentence contains two or more clauses

47、, one of which is incorporated into the other. The two clauses in a complex sentence have unequal status, one subordinating the other. The incorporated, or subordinate, clause is normally called an embedded clause, and the clause into which it is embedded is called a matrix sentence. For example, Ma

48、ry told Jane that John liked linguistics. That John likes linguistics puzzles everyone. Mary showed interest in linguistics after John gave her a lecture. In the above threeexamples, the clauses in the square brackets are embedded clauses. They are subordinate to the clauses outside the brackets whi

49、ch are called matrix clauses.21. 画出 “Flying planes can be dangerous.” 的树型图。 ”This sentence is ambiguous because it has two readings:a. Planes which are flying can be dangerous.b. To fly planes can be dangerous.The tree diagrams are as follows:a.SNP VPFlying planes can be dangerous.b.SS VPNP VP(Someo

50、ne fly planes can be dangerous.Chapter Five22. 语义研究的主要流派有哪些?1 The naming theory: It was proposed by the ancient Greek scholar Plato. According to this theory, the linguistic forms or symbols used in a language are taken to be labels of the objects they stand for. So words are just names or labels fo

51、r things.2 The conceptualist view: It holds that there is no direct link between a lin-guistic form and what it refers to. In the interpretation of meaning, they are linked through the mediation of concepts in the mind.3 Contextualism : It is based on the presumption that one can derive meaning from

52、 or reduce meaning to observable contexts. Two kinds of context are recognized:the situational context and the linguistic context .For example, the meaning of the word "seal" in the sentence "The seal could not be found" can only be determined according to the context in which th

53、e sentence occurs:The seal could not be found. The zoo keeper became worried.(seal meaning an aquatic mammalThe seal could not be found. The king became worried.(seal meaning the king's stamp4 BehaviorismThe contextualist view was further strengthened by Bloomfield . He drew on behaviorist psych

54、ology when he tried to define the meaning of linguistic forms. Behaviorists attempted to define the meaning of a language form as " the situation in which the speaker utters it and the response it calls forth in the hearer". (Bloomfield,This behaviorist theory is somewhat close to contextu

55、alism. It is linked with psychological interest.23. 所指与意义有什么关系?Sense and reference are two terms in the study of meaning. (1 Sense is concerned with the inherent meaning of the linguistic form. It is the collection of all the features of the linguistic form; it is abstract and de-contextualized. It

56、is the aspect of meaning that dictionary compilers are interested in. Reference means what a linguistic form refers to in the real, physical world; it deals with the relationship between thelinguistic element and the non-linguistic world of experience. (2 Obviously, linguistic forms having the same

57、sense may have different references in different situations. On the other hand, there are less frequent occasions when linguistic forms with the same reference might differ in sense, e.g. “morning star” and “evening star”.24. 同义词可以分为哪些类别?Dialectal synonyms : Dialectal synonyms are words which have m

58、ore or less the same meaning and are used in different regional dialects such as petroleum in British English and gasoline in American English. Dialectal synonyms can also be found within British, or American English itself. For example, "girl" is called "lass" or "lassie" in Scottish dialect.Stylistic synonyms: Stylistic synonyms are words which have the same meaning but differ in style, or degree of formality. Some of the stylistic synonyms tend to be more formal , others tend to be casual , and still others are neutral in style. For example:old ma