英语语言学常考大题(本科、研究生、复试通用)

1、6/61. Language is generally defined as a system of arbitrary vocal symbols used for human munication. Explain it in detail.First of all, language is a system, because elements of language are bined according to rules. Secondly, language is arbitrary because there is no intrinsic connection between f

2、orm and meaning, or between the sign and what it stands for. Different languages have different words for the same object in the world. This fact is a good illustration of the arbitrary nature of language. This also explains the symbolic nature of language: words are just symbols; they are associate

3、d with objects, actions, ideas, etc. by convention . Thirdly, language is vocal because the primary medium is sound for all languages, no matter how well - developed their writing systems are. The term human in the definition indicates that language is possessed by human beings only and is very diff

4、erent from the munication systems of other living creatures. The term munication means that language makes it possible for its users to talk to each other and fulfill their municative needs.2.What are the design features of human language? Illustrate them with examples.1) ArbitrarinessAs mentioned e

5、arlier, the arbitrary property of language means that there is no logical connection between meanings and sounds. For instance, there is no necessary relationship between the word elephant and the animal it symbolizes. In addition, different sounds are used to refer to the same object in different l

6、anguages, and even within the same language, the same sound does not refer to the same thing. However, language is not entirely arbitrary. There are words which are created in the imitation of sounds by sounds, such as crash, bang in English. Besides, some pound words are also not entirely arbitrary

7、. But the non-arbitrary words are quite limited in number. 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 new signals by its

8、users. This is why they can produce and understand an infinitely large number of sentences, including sentences that they have never said or heard before. They can send messages which no one else has ever sent before.Productivity is unique to human language. Most animal munication systems appear to

9、be highly restricted with respect to the number of different signals that their users can send and receive.3) DualityThe duality nature of language means that language is a system, which consists of two sets of structure, or two levels, one of sounds and the other of meanings. At the lower or the ba

10、sic level, there is the structure of sounds, which are meaningless, discrete, individual sounds. But the sounds of language can be bined according to rules into units of meaning such as morphemes and words, which, at the higher level,can be arranged into sentences. This duality of structure or doubl

11、e articulation of language enables its users to talk about anything within their knowledge. No animal munication system has duality or even es near to possessing it.4) DisplacementDisplacement means that language can be used to refer to things which are present or not present, real or imagined matte

12、rs in the past, present, or future, or in far-away places. In other words, language can be used to refer to contexts removed from the immediate situations of the speaker. Animal calls are mainly uttered in response to immediate changes of situation.5) Cultural transmissionHuman beings were born with

13、 the ability to acquire language, but the details of any language are not genetically transmitted or passed down by instinct. They have to be taught and learned,but animal call systems are genetically transmitted.3.How is modern linguistics different from traditional grammar?Traditional grammar is p

14、rescriptive; it is based on high (religious, literary) written language. It sets grammatical rules and imposes the rules on language users. But Modern linguistics is descriptive;it collects authentic, and mainly spoken language data and then it studies and describes the data in an objective and scie

15、ntific way.4.How do you understand the distinction between a synchronic study and a diachronic study?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 l

16、anguage as it is at some particular point in time, while a diachronic study of language is the study of the historical development of language over a period of time.5.Why does modern linguistics regard the spoken form of language as primary, not thewritten?First, the spoken form is prior to the writ

17、-ten form and most writing systems are derived from the spoken form of language.Second, the spoken form plays a greater role than writing in terms of the amount of information conveyed and it serves a wider range of purposesFinally, the spoken form is the medium through which we acquire our mother t

18、ongue.6. What are the major distinctions between langue and parole?The distinction between langue, and parole was made by the famous linguist Ferdinand de Saussure early this century. Langue refers to the abstract linguistic system shared by all the members of a speech munity, and parole refers to t

19、he 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 conventions and the application of the rules. Langue is abstract; it is not the language people actually use, but parole is concrete; it

20、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 situation to situation.7. How do you understand petence and performance?American linguist N. Chomsky in the late 1950s proposed the disti

21、nction between petence and performance. Chomsky defines petence 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 amb

22、iguous. According to Chomsky,performance is the actual realization of this knowledge in linguistic munication. 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. Chomsky b

23、elieves that what linguists should study is the petence, which is systematic, not the performance, which is too haphazard.8. Saussures distinction between langue and parole seems similar to Chomskysdistinctionbetween petence and performance. What do you think are their major differences?Although Sau

24、ssures distinction and Chomskys are very similar, they differ at least in that Saussure took a sociological view of language and his notion of langue is a mater of social conventions, and Chomsky looks at language from a psychological point of vies and to him, petence is a property of the mind of ea

25、ch individual.9.Do you think human language is entirely arbitrary? Why?Language is arbitrary in nature, it is not entirely arbitrary, because there are a limited number of words whose connections between forms and meanings can be logically explained to a certain extent, for example, the onomatopoeia

26、, words which are coined on the basis of imitation of sounds by sounds such as bang, crash,etc. Take pounds for another example. The two elements“photo” and “copy” in “photocopy” are non-motivated, but the pound is not arbitrary.10.Of the two media of language, why do you think speech is more basic

27、than writing?1)In linguistic evolution, speech is prior to writing.2)In everyday munication, speech plays a greater role than writing in terms of the amount of information conveyed.3)Speech is always the way in which every native speaker acquires his mother tongue, and writing is learned and taught

28、later at school.11.What are the major differences between phonology and phonetics?They differ in their approach and focus. Phonetics 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 fe

29、atures they possess, how they can be classified. Phonology, on the other hand, is interested in the system of sounds of a particular language; it aims to discover how speech sounds in a language form patterns and how these sounds are used to convey meaning in linguistic munication.12.Illustrate with

30、 examples how suprasegmental features can affect meaning.1)The location of stress in English distinguishes meaning, such as import andimport. The similar alternation of stress also occurs between a pound noun and a phrase consisting of the same elements. A phonological feature of the English pounds

31、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 black bird is a bird that is black.2)The more important words such as nouns, verbs adjectives,

32、 adverbsetc 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 effect. Take the sentence “He is driving my car.”For example, to emphasize the fact that the car

33、 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 four tones: When spoken in different tones, the same sequence of words may have different meani

34、ngs. 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 indicates that there is an implied message in what is said.13.In what way can we determine wheth

35、er a phone is a phoneme or not?A basic way to determine the phonemes of a language is to see if substituting one sound for other results in a change of meaning. If it does, the two sounds then represent different phonemes.14.What are the main features of the English pounds?Orthographically a pound c

36、an be written as one word, two separate words with or without a hyphen in between. Syntactically, the part of speech of a pound is determined by the last element. Semantically, the meaning of a pound is idiomatic, not calculable from the meanings of all its ponents. Phonetically, the word stress of

37、a pound usually falls on the first element.15. Discuss the types of morphemes with examples.Free morphemes: They are the independent units of meaning and can be used freely all by themselves, for example, “book-” in the word “bookish”.Bound morphemes: They are those that cannot be used independently

38、 but have to be bined with other morphemes, either free or bound, to form a word such as “-ish” in “bookish”. Bound morphemes can be subdivided into roots and affixes. A root is 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

39、word “generate”. Affixes are of two types: inflectional and derivational. Inflectional morphemes manifest various grammatical relations or grammatical categories such as “-s” 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 and suffixes. Prefixes occur at the beginning of a word such as “dis- ” in the word “dislike”, while suffixes occur at