2009上海交通大学英语专业考博语言学试题

2009上海交通大学英语专业考博语言学试题 I.Terms with examples 4x10=40 1. Functional categories: Words which do not denote objects, ideas, etc., are known as function words and they belong to classes known as functional categories. For example, Bill thinks that Tom and Dick have been visiting Harriet to ask for help with one of the assignments which have to be finished for the next morphonolgy class. 2. operator movement: Operator movement involves movement of an operator expression into the specifier position within CP. For instance, in sentence What languages can you speak, the phrase what languages is moved into the specifier position within CP. 3. Null subject parameter: Null-subject parameter determines whether finite verbs and auxiliaries do or don’t license(i.e. allow) null subjects. For example, in Italian: Maria non vuole mangiare. "Maria does not want to eat." Non vuole mangiare. [She] "Does not want to eat." The subject "she" of the second sentence is only implied in Italian. English, on the other hand, requires an explicit subject in this sentence. 4. lexical tone: Lexical tone is the distinctive pitch level carried by the syllable of a word which is an essential feature of the meaning of that word. The pitch of voice is very important in language, and all languages make use of it for some purpose. In some languages different words are distinguished from each other by means of pitch. Here are some Yoruba words The word ti with the mark′over the vowel is pronounced at a higher pitch than the word ti, which is in turn is pronounced at a higher pich than ti.These different pitches are call tones. Some languages distinguish only two levels of tone, while others distinguish up to four levels. When a language distinguishes words from each other using pitch in this way we say that it has lexical tone. 5. onset, necleus and coda: Words like bat, cat, rat, flat and sprat are said to rhyme, this is because they have identical pronunciations after the first consonant or consonant cluster. We can divide a syllable therefore into two halves, the Rhyme and the Onset. We have already referred to the vowel in the middle of the syllable as the Nucleus. The consonant or consonant cluster after the Nucleus will be called Coda. 6. complementizer: A complementizer is a conjunction which marks a complement clause. A complementizer, as used in linguistics (especially generative grammar), is a syntactic category (part of speech) roughly equivalent to the term subordinating conjunction in traditional grammar. For example, the word that is generally called a complementizer in English sentences like Mary believes that it is raining. The term "complementizer" was apparently first used by Rosenbaum (1967). 7. mood: A set of contrasts which are often shown by the form of the verb and which express the speaker’s 1 or writer’s attitude to what is said or written. Three moods have often been distinguished---indicative mood, imperative mood, subjunctive mood. 8. empty category: In syntax, an empty category is a nominal element which does not have any phonological content and is therefore unpronounced; they may also be referred to as covert nouns, in contrast to overt nouns which are prounounced. 9. linguistic determism: one’s thinking is completely determined by his native language because one cannot but perceive the world in terms of the categories and distinctions encoded in that language.The hypothesis my be typically represented by the following statement. “If Aristotle had spoken Chinese, his logic would have been different.” 10. conversational maxisms: A conversational maxim is any of four rules which were proposed by Grice 1975, stating that a speaker is assumed to make a contribution that is adequately but not overly informative (quantity maxim) the speaker does not believe to be false and for which adequate evidence is had (quality maxim) is relevant (maxim of relation or relevance), and is clear, unambiguous, brief, and orderly (maxim of manner) II. Questions 12X5=60 1. According to some linguists, English is a two-tense, two–aspect language? Comment on the claim. Tense, indicating the time at which the activity took place. English has a binary(i.e. two-way) tense system. Although this distinction is traditionally said to be a past/present tense form, many linguists prefer to see it as a past/none-past distinction, since the so-called present tense form can be used with future time-reference(e.g. in sentences such as our guest is arriving at 3 p.m. tomorrow). Aspect is a term used to describe the duration of the activity describled by a verb, e.g. whether the activity is ongoing or completed). The -ing 2. By what criteria can we distinguish between central and peripheral外围的ajectives? Examples We have now looked at the main criteria for the adjective class - gradability, comparative and superlative forms, and the ability to occur attributively and predicatively. Most adjectives fulfil all these criteria, and are known as CENTRAL adjectives. Those which do not fulfil all the criteria are known as PERIPHERAL adjectives. In terms of syntactic function, adjective can be divided into two groups: central adjectives and peripheral adjectives. a. central adjectives Most adjectives can be used both as modifier in a noun phrase and as subject/object complement. These adjectives are called central adjectives. In the following three examples green is a central adjective, 2 functioning as modifier of nouns, subject complement and object complement receptively: Green apples are sour. (modifier in a noun phrase) Those apples are green. (subject complement) They have painted the door green. (object complement) b. peripheral adjectives Peripheral adjectives refer to the few which can not satisfy both requirements. Some peripheral adjectives can only act as pre-modifier, e.g. chief, main, principal, utter, sheer, etc. other peripheral adjectives can only act as complement, e.g. afloat, afraid, asleep, alone, alive, etc. 3. What are the major types of semantic change? What are the possible reasons? Semantic broadening: here the word takes on a wider, more general meaning than it had previously. E.g.The word companion used to mean “someone who eats bread with you”; now it means “someone who is with you” Semmantic narrowing: the word takes on a more restricted meaning than before. In middle english, a girl was a young person of either sex, a boy was a male person of any age and lust simply meant “pleasure”. Pejoration: involves the development of a less favorable meaning or connotation for a particular word. E.g. villains were formerly farm dwellers but are now criminals. Amelioration: the development of more favorable meanings for words, are few in number. Knight which in Old English referred to a boy or servant but now has a more pretigious meaning. Reasons: 1. Most words are polysemic-they have a range of meanings- and over time marginal meanings may take over from central meanings. 2. children do not receive a fully formed grammar and lexicon from their parents, but with help from Universal grammar, have to figure it out for themselves. The child may therefore acquire a slightly different meaning for a word than that understood by its parents. 3. the relationship between concepts and the words which conventionally refer to those concept is arbitrary and so either can vary or change fairly freely through time and across space. 4. Saussure, claims that, dialects and languages have no natural boundaries. How do you understand? (1)The usual conception of dialects nowadays is quite different. They are envisaged as clearly defined linguistic types, determinate in all respects, and occupying areas on a map which are contiguous and distinct. But natural dialect changes give a quite different result. As soon as linguistics began to study each individual feature and establish its geographical distributions, the old notion of a dialect had to be replaced by a new one, which can be defined as follows: there are no natural dialects, but only natural dialect feature. Or- which comes to the same thing---there are as many dialects as there are places. (2) It is difficult to say what the difference is between a language and a dialect. Often a dialect is called a language because it has a literature: that is true of Portuguese and Dutch. The question of intelligibility also plays s part. People who cannot understand one another are generally described as speaking different languages. However, that may be , language which have developed in one continuous area with a settled 3 population exhibit the same phenomena as dialects, but on a larger scale. They show waves of innovation over a territory where a number of different languages are spoken. In the ideal conditions postulated, it is no more feasible to determine boundaries separating related languages than to determine dialect boundaries. The extent of the area involved makes no difference. Just as one cannot say where the High German ends and Low Germans begins, so also it is impossible to establish a line of demarcation between German and Dutch, or between French and Italian.Taking points far enough apart, it is possible to say with certainty “French is spoken here. Italian is spoken there.” But the intervening regions, the distinction becomes blurred. The notion of smaller, compact intermediate zones acting as linguistic areas of transition, for example Proencal as a half-way house between French and Italian , is not realistic either. In any case, it is impossible to imagine in any shape or form a precise linguistic boundary dividing an area covered throughout by evenly differentiated dialects. Language boundaries just like dialect boundaries, get lost in these transitions. Just as dialects are only arbitrary subdivisions of the entire surface covered by a language, so the boundaries held to separate two languages can only be conventional ones. 5. The factor of analogy operate in the process of language change.(you can take sound change, verb forms, syntactic construction in English for example . Analogy refers to the use of one form as an exemplar by which other forms can be similarly constructed. 1) In middle English, a mouse was called a mus[mu:s], and this mus may have lived in someone’s hus [hu:s](house). But now we pronounce mus as [maus] and hus is pronounced as [haus] by analogy. 2) E.g. based on bow/bows, sow/sows, English speaker began to say cows instead of the older kine. 3) By analogy to bake/ baked and ignite/ignited, many children and adults now say I waked last night( instead of woke) and she lighted the bonfire (instead of lit) 4 5