语言学教程各章节练习及答案

1、Exercises to Linguistics外语系黄永亮Chapter 1 Invitation to Linguistics1. Define the following terms:Langue: Langue refers to the abstract linguistic system shared by all the members of a speech community.Parole: parole refers to the realization of langue in actual use. Prescriptive: Prescriptive and desc

2、riptive represent two different types of linguistic study. if the linguistic study aims to lay down rules for “correct and standard” behaviour in using language, i.e. to tell people what they should day and what they should not say, it is said to be prescriptive. Descriptive: Prescriptive and descri

3、ptive represent two different types of linguistic study. If a linguistic study aims to describe and analyze the language people actually use, it is said to be descriptive; competence: Chomsky defines competence as the ideal users knowledge of the rules of his language. Performance: Chomsky defines p

4、erformance the actual realization of this knowledge in linguistic communication.Synchronic: The description of a language at some point of time in history is a synchronic study; Diachronic: The description of a language as it changes through time is a diachronic study. Linguistics：Linguistics may be

5、 defined as the systematic (or scientific) study of language. language： Language is a form of human communication by means of a system of symbols principally transmitted by vocal sounds.”2. Does the traffic light system have duality, why?No. No discrete units on the first level that can be combined

6、freely in the second level to form meaning. There is only simple one to one relationship between signs and meaning, namely, re-stop, green-go and yellow-get ready to go or stop.3. Communication can take many forms, such as sign, speech, body language and facial expression. Do body language and facia

7、l expression share or lack the distinctive properties of human language?Less arbitrary, lack duality, less creative, limited repertoire, emotional-oriented.4. Why is competence and performance an important distinction in linguistics?According to Chomsky, a language users underlying knowledge about t

8、he system of rules is called his linguistic competence. And performance refers to the actual enables a speaker to produce and understand an indefinite numbers of sentences and to recognize grammatical mistakes and ambiguities. A speakers competence is stable but his performance is often influenced b

9、y psychological and social factors. Thus, Chomsky proposed that linguists should focus on the study of competence, not performance. The distinction of the two terms “ competence and performance” represents the orientation of linguistic study. So we can say competence and performance is an important

10、distinction in linguistics.5. In what basic ways does modern linguistics differ from traditional grammar?Modern linguistics differs from traditional grammar in the following basic ways:Firstly, priority is given, as mentioned earlier, to spoken language. Secondly, focus is on synchronic study of lan

11、guage, rather than on diachronic study of language. Thirdly, modern linguistics is descriptive rather than prescriptive in nature. Linguists endeavor to state objectively the regularities of a language. They aim at finding out how a language is spoken: they do not attempt to tell people how it shoul

12、d be spoken. Fourthly, modern linguistics is theoretically rather than pedagogically oriented. Modern linguists strive to construct theories of language that can account for language in general. These features distinguished modern linguistics from traditional grammar. The two are complementary. Not

13、contradictory. Knowledge of both is necessary for a language teacher: knowledge of the latter is necessary for a language learner. Chapter 2 Phonetics1. Give the description of the following sound segments in English1) T voiced dental fricative2) F voiceless alveolar fricative3) N velar nasal4) d vo

14、iced alveolar stop5) p voiceless bilabial stop6) k voiceless velar stop7) l (alveolar) lateral8) i high front lax unrounded vowel9) u: high back tense rounded vowel10) R low back lax rounded vowel2. How is the description of consonants different from that of vowels?Consonants are described according

15、 to manner and place of articulation while vowels are described with four criteria: part of the tongue that is raised; extent to which the tongue rises in the direction of the palate; kind of opening made at the lips; position of soft palate.3. Which sound may be described as a voiced bilabial plosi

16、ve ba voiced labio-dental fricative va voiceless velar plosive k4. Why might a photographer ask the person she is photographing to say cheese?The vowel of the word cheese i: is produced with the lips spread, this resembling a smile.5.Account for the difference in articulation in each of the followin

17、g pairs of words:coast ghost; ghost boastboast most; ghost mist;The words coast and ghost are distinguished by the fact that the initial segment is voiceless in the case of the former and voiced in the case of the latter.The word ghost and boast are distinguished by the place of articulation of the

18、initial segment, g being velar while b is bilabial.Boast and most are distinguished by the manner of articulation of the initial segment, m being nasal.Most and mist are distinguished by the fact that the former has a rounded back vowel shile the latter has a spread front vowel.Chapter 3 Phonology1.

19、 Define the following termsPhonology: Phonology is concerned with the sound system of languages. It is concerned with which sounds a language uses and how the contribution of sounds to the task of communication.Phone: A phone is a phonetic unit or segment. The speech sounds we hear and produce durin

20、g linguistic communication are all phonesPhoneme: Phoneme is the abstract element of sound, identified as being distinctive in a particular language. Allophone: Allophone refers any of the different forms of a phoneme is an allophone of it in English. Compare the words peak and speak, for instance.

21、The /p/ in peak is aspirated; phonetically transcribed as ph while the /p/ in speak is unaspirated, phonetically p . p ,ph are two different phones and are variants of the phoneme /p/. Such variants of a phoneme are called Allophone of the same phoneme.Suprasegmental features:. The phonemic features

22、 that occur above the level of the segment are called Suprasegmental features. Suprasegmental features include: stress, tone and intonation.2. Transcribe the realization of the past tense morpheme for each of the following words:Waited waved wiped waded. account for the differences.id in “waited” an

23、d “waded” follows another alveolar plosive. d in “waved” follows voiced consonants.t in “wiped” follows voiceless consonants, there being voicing assimilation.3. which of the following would be phonologically acceptable as English words?Thlite grawl dlesher shlink tritch sruck stwondle“grawl” and “t

24、ritch”4. Why can we not use the sequence Nkl in twinkle as an example of a consonant cluster?The sequence Nkl bridges two syllables. 5. For each of the following pairs compare the position of the stress. Comment. Economy/economic wonder/wonderfulBeauty/beautiful acid/acidicIn adjectives ending in ic

25、 the stress moves to the following syllable, in adjectives ending in ful it does not.6. Explain why somebody might choose to stress the following utterances as indicated by the bold type:a) John wanted to do this today. b) John wanted to do this today. c) John wanted to do this today.The first utter

26、ance implies that John was unable to do what he wanted.The second implies that he was only able to do something else.The third implies that he was only able to do it some other day.Chapter 4 Morphology1. Define the following terms:Morpheme: the smallest unit of language in terms of relationship betw

27、een expression and content, a unit that can not be divided into further small units without destroying or drastically altering the meaning, whether it is lexical or grammatical.Compound: Polymorphemic words which consist wholly of free morphemes, such as classroom, blackboard, snowwhite, etc.Allomor

28、ph: any of the different form of a morpheme. For example, in English the plural morpheme -s but it is pronounced differently in different environments as /s/ in cats, as /z/ in dogs and as /iz/ in classes. So /s/, /z/, and /iz/ are all allomorphs of the plural morpheme.Bound morpheme: an element of

29、meaning which is structurally dependent on the word it is added to, e.g. the plural morpheme in “dogs”.Free morpheme: an element of meaning which takes the form of an independent word.2. Complete the words with suitable negative prefixesa. ir removable g. in humanb. in formal h. ir relevantc. im pra

30、cticable i. un evitabled. in sensible j. im mobilee. in tangible k. il legalf. il logical l. in discreet3. “Morpheme” is defined as the smallest unit in terms of relationship between expression and content. Then is morpheme a grammatical concept or a semantic one? What is its relation to phoneme?Sin

31、ce morpheme is defined as the smallest unit in terms of relationship between expression and content, it at the same time covers the grammatical and semantic aspect of linguistic unit. A morpheme may overlap with a phoneme, such as I, but usually not, as in pig, in which the morpheme is the whole wor

32、d, i.e. and independent, free morpheme, but the phonemes are /p/, /i/ and /g/.4. Identify in the following sentence four bound morphemes. State the function ofeach and say whether each is derivational or inflectional.The teachers brother considered the project impossible.The er and the s of teachers

33、 are bound morphemes, the former being derivational, as it produces a lexeme that denotes the person who does an action, the latter being an inflectional morpheme, as it indicates possession.The ed of considered is inflectional, indicating that the action took place in the past. The im- of impossibl

34、e is derivational, producing a new lexeme that denotes the opposite of possible.Chapter 5 Syntax1. Define the following terms:Category: parts of speech and functions, such as the classification of words in terms of parts of speech, the identification of functions of words in term of subject, predica

35、te, etc.Concord: also known as agreement, is the requirement that the forms of two or more words in a syntactic relationship should agree with each other in terms of some categoriesSyntagmatic relation:. Syntagmatic relation is a relation between one item and others in a sequence, or between element

36、s which are all present.Paradigmatic relation: a relation holding between elements replaceable with each other at a particular place in a structure, or between one element present and the others absent.Deep structure: is defined as the abstract representation of the syntactic properties of a constru

37、ction, i. e. the underlying level of structural relations between its different constituentsSurface structure: is the final stage in the syntactic derivation of a construction, which closely corresponds to the structural organization of a construction people actually produce and receive. Theme: The

38、Theme is the first constituent of the clause. Rheme: All the rest of the clause is simply labeled the Rheme.2. Why is it important to know the relations a sign has with others, such as syntaxgmatic and paradigmatic relations?As the relation between a signifier and signified is arbitrary, the value o

39、f a sign can not be determined by itself. To know the identity of a sign, the linguist will have to know the signs it is used together with and those it is substitutable for. The former relation is known as syntagmatic and the latter paradigmatic. 3. In what ways is IC analysis better than tradition

40、al parsing?In traditional parsing, a sentence is mainly seen as a sequence of individual words, as if it has only a linear structure. IC analysis, however, emphasizes the hierarchical structure of a sentence, seeing it as consisting of word groups first. In this way the internal of structure of a se

41、ntence is shown more clearly, hence the reason of some ambiguities may be revealed.4. What are the problems in IC analysis?There are some technical problems caused by the binary division and discontinuous constituents. But the main problem is that there are structures whose ambiguities cannot be rev

42、ealed by IC analysis, e.g. the love of God. In terms of both the tree diagram and the label, there is only one structure, but the word God is in two different relations with love, i.e. either as subject or object.5. Clarify the ambiguity in the following sentence by tree diagrams:Old teachers and pr

43、iests fear blackbirds. S NP VP Adj. NP V N Old fear blackbirds. N Conj. N teachers and priests S NP VP NP Conj. N V N Adj. N and priests fear blackbirds. Old teachers Chapter 6 Semantics 1. defining the following terms: semantics: The subject concerning the study of meaning is called semantics. More

44、 specifically, semantics is the study of the meaning of linguistics units, words and sentences in particular. Denotation: the core sense of a word or a phrase that relates it to phenomena in the real world. Connotation: a term in a contrast with denotation, meaning the properties of the entity a wor

45、d denotes. Sense: the literal meaning of a word or an expression, independent of situational context. Reference: the use of language to express a proposition, i.e. to talk about things in context. Synonymy: is the technical name for the sameness relation. Antonymy: is the name for oppositeness relat

46、ion: hyponymy: a relation between two words, in which the meaning of one word (the superordinate) is included in the meaning of another word (the hyponym) semantic component: a distinguishable element of meaning in a word with two values, e.g. +human. 2. Some people maintain that there are no true s

47、ynonyms. If two words mean really the same, one of them will definitely die out. An example often quoted is the disuse of the word “wireless”, which has been replaced by “radio”. Do you agree? In general what type of meaning we are talking about when we say two words are synonymous with each other?

48、It is true that there are no absolute synonyms. When we say two words are synonymous with each other, we usually mean they have the same conceptual meaning. 3. For each of the following pairs of words, state the principal reason why they may not be considered to be synonyms: man boy toilet loo deter

49、mined stubborn pavement sidewalk walk run The words man and boy are principally distinguished be age, the words walk and run by speed. The principal distinction between the words toilet and loo is one of social register. Determined and stubborn are largely distinguished by attitudea person reluctant

50、 to give up is described as determined by those who sympathize and as stubborn by those who do not. The difference between the words pavement and sidewalk is a matter of geography, the former being used in Britain and the latter in America. Chapter 7 Pragmantics1. defining the following terms:Perfor

51、mative:an utterance by which a speaker does something does something, as apposed to a constative, by which makes a statement which may be true or false. Constative:an utterance by which a speaker expresses a proposition which may be true or false. Locutuonary act: the act of saying something; its an

52、 act of conveying literal meaning by means of syntax, lexicon, and phonology. Namely, the utterance of a sentence with determinate sense and reference. Illocutuonary act: the act performed in saying something; its force is identical with the speakers intention. Perlocutionary act: the act performed

53、by or resulting from saying something, its the consequence of, or the change brought about by the utterance. Cooperative principle: in making conversation, there is, as Grice holds, a general principle which all participants are expected to observe. He calls this guiding principle the Cooperative Principle, CP for short. It runs as follows: make your conversational contribution such as is required, at the stage at which it occurs, by the accepted p