英语语言学概论（自考）

英语语言学概论（自考） 英语语言学概论 1. What are the difference between general linguistics and descriptive linguistics and what sis the relationship between them? (P.1) A: Differences between general and descriptive linguistics: (1) They have different goals: General linguistics deals with language; descriptive linguistics study one particular language; (2) They have different aims: General linguistics aims at developing a theory that describes the rules of human language in general; Descriptive linguistics attempts to establish a model that describes the rules of this particular language. Relationships between general and descriptive linguistics: General and descriptive linguistics depend on each other: (1) General linguistics provides descriptive linguistics with a general framework in which a particular language can be analyzed and described; (2) The resulting descriptions of particular languages supply empirical evidence which may confirm or refute the models put forward by general linguists. 2. What is the nature of language? (P7) Language is a system of arbitrary vocal symbols, which is creative, double-structured and changeable. 3. What is the difference between langue and parole? (P2/P24) a. Langue is the system of language. Parole is the speakers’ speech. b. Langue refers to the abstract system of a language, while parole refers to the concrete act of speaking in a definite time, place and situation. c. Langue underlies parole and parole, in turn, is a manifestation of langue. 4. What is the difference between competence and performance? (P2) a. Competence is the speaker-hearer’s knowledge of his language. b. Performance is the actual use of language in concrete situations. c. Competence is abstract, while performance is concrete. 1 英语语言学概论 5. Why do linguists maintain that language is primarily speech? (P4) Linguists maintain that language is primarily speech, and not the written form. This view may be justified by the following reasons. a. Biologically speaking, children begin to learn to speak much earlier than to learn to read and write. b. Functionally speaking, the spoken form is used more frequently than the written form in our daily life. c. Historically speaking, all human languages were spoken before they were written and there are still many languages in the world today which have not been written down. The emphasis on the spoken form indicates that linguistic study is primarily based on the data collected from living speech. 6. What does it mean by saying that language is arbitrary, creative and double-structured? (P4-5) A. The relationship between the sounds and their meaning is arbitrary. B. Language is creative. a. Every language contains an infinite number of sentences, which, however, are generated by a small set of rules and a finite set of words. b. The length of a sentence has no limit in theory. c. The rules with recursive properly can account for the creative aspect of language. C. Language is double-structured. There are two levels: grammatically-meaningful and sound-meaningless. 7. What features of language can differentiate human languages from animal communicative systems? (P7) Human language is a system of arbitrary vocal symbols, which is creative, double-structured and changeable. Those unique features like creativity, duality of structure and changeability can differentiate human languages from animal communicative systems and enable human languages to be the most efficient, flexible and versatile means of communication in the world. 2 英语语言学概论 8. How many stages does the scientific method have? What are they? (P9) There are four stages of scientific method: a. collecting data, b. forming a hypothesis c. testing the hypothesis d. drawing conclusions 9. What are the three linguistic biases? (P9-10, P7) a. One common linguistic bias is that some languages are primitive and some languages are advanced. b. Another deep-rooted bias is that only the standard variety is the pure form of a language. c. Change is not natural for all living languages and such a language is a sign of corruption and decay. 10. How is a rule constructed? (P15) a. To construct a rule, the linguist starts with collecting data. b. Based on the data collected, he may construct a very simple rule as a tentative version. c. Then he examines the tentative rule against further data. If the additional data do not agree with it, he has to modify it. d. He keeps on testing the rule and, accordingly, revising the rule until the rule can account for all the relevant data collected. Thus, the rule formed is open to further modifications. 11. Give examples to illustrate the two features of an adequate model of competence: explicitness and generativeness. (P15-16/P6) a. By saying a linguistic model is explicit, we mean that the rules the model contains are clearly and precisely defined. Even a computer can produce all and only the grammatical sentences if the rules are fed to the machine. b. By saying the model is generative, we mean that the model contains only a small set of rules which, however, can generate an indefinitely large number of sentences. 3 英语语言学概论 c. For example, “so…that” is explicit, but they can generate infinite sentences. eg. He is so fat that he could not ran fast. He was so lazy that he never washed his clothes. … 12. What are the four types of linguistic knowledge? (P18-19) The four types of linguistic knowledge are phonological, morphological, syntactic and semantic. a. Phonological knowledge is a native speaker’s intuition about the sounds and sound patterns of his language. b. Morphological knowledge is a native speaker’s intuition about how a word is formed. c. Syntactic knowledge is a native speaker’s intuition about whether a sentence is grammatical or not. c. Semantic knowledge is a native speaker’s intuition about the meaning of language. 13. Why is Saussre regarded as the former of modern linguistics? (P21-22) a. The obvious reason is that the book under his name “A Course in General Linguistics” is the first real essay on linguistic theory. b. In this book, quite a few theoretical distinctions introduced have become foundations of linguistic study and exerted great influence on the later development linguistics. c. Chief among them are the distinctions between synchronic and diachronic, syntagmatic and paradigmatic, langue and parole. 14. Give examples to illustrate the difference between synchronic and diachronic. (P22) a. If we study the changes in the Chinese language that took place between the 1940’s and the 1960’s, it would be a diachronic study. b. But if we study the Chinese language in the 1940’s, then it would be a synchronic study. c. The major difference between these two approaches is the former is 4 英语语言学概论 concerned with the historical development of a language and the latter is concerned with the “state” of a language at a particular point of time. 15. Give examples to illustrate the difference between syntagmatic and paradigmatic. (P116-118/P22-23) a. A syntagmatic relation refers to the sequential characteristic of speech. b. A paradigmatic relation is a relation between a linguistic element in an utterance and linguistic elements outside that utterance. c. We can go tomorrow syntagmatic relation She may come soon I will ask next You could sleep now ……… paradigmatic relation 16. What is a consonant and what is a vowel? (P30) a. A consonant is a speech sound where the airstream from the longs is either completely blocked, partially blocked or where the opening is so narrow that the air escapes with audible friction. b. A vowel is a speech sound in which the airstream from the lungs is not blocked in any way in the mouth or throat, and which is usually pronounced with vibrations of the vocal cords. 17. Is the spelling of words a reliable means of describing English sounds? Why or Why not? (P30-31) No, it isn’t. a. Sometimes a single letter may represent different sounds. b. Sometimes, different letters or combinations of letters may r4epresent a single sound. c. The advantage of this system is that within the system, one symbol represents one sound and every symbol has a consistent value. 18. What is the difference between plosives and affricates? (P37) a. Plosives are suddenly separated and the airstream goes out with a plosion. 5 英语语言学概论 b. Affricates are brought together to form a complete closure but not followed by a sudden release, rather by a low release with audile friction. 19. What is the difference between phonetics and phonology? (P20, P53) a. English phonetics is concerned with all speech sounds that occur in the English language. It studies how those sounds are produced, transmitted and perceived, and how they re described and classified. b. Different from English phonetics, English phonology does not deal with the actual production of English sounds, but with the abstract aspects: the function of sounds and their patterns of combination. 20. What are the three conditions of a minimal pair? (P54) a. They are different in meaning b. They differ only in one sound segment. c. The different sounds occur in the same position in strings. 21. Give examples to illustrate the differences between phonemes, phones and allophones. (P90) a. Phonemes are said to be minimal distinctive units in the sound system of a language. b. Phones are the realizations of phonemes. c. Allophones are the realizations of a particular phoneme. d. For example, 22. Give examples to illustrate the differences between contrastive distribution, complementary distribution and free variation. (P59-60) a. If two or more sounds can occur in the same environment and the substitution of one sound for another brings about a change in meaning, they are in contrastive distribution. b. If two or more sounds never appear in the same environment, they are said to be in complementary distribution. 6 英语语言学概论 c. If two or more sounds can occur in the same environment and the substitution of one sound for another does not cause a change in meaning, they are said to be in free variation. d. The sounds either in contrastive distribution or in free variation can occur in the same environment. The difference between them lies in the fact that in the former case, the substitution of one sound for another results in a change in meaning, but this does not happen in the latter case. Complementary distribution is clearly different from the previous two types of distribution. The sounds in complementary distribution never occur in the same environment. 23 What are the 3 principles of identifying phonemes? (P61) a. The sounds that are in contrastive distribution are different phonemes b. The sounds that are always in free variation are allophones of the same phoneme. c. The sounds that are in complementary distribution and also phonetically similar are allophones of the same phoneme. 24. What is the difference between segmental features and suprasegmental features? What are the suprasegmental features? (P69) a. The distinctive features, which can only have an effect on one sound segment, are called segmental features. b. The distinctive features, which can affect more than one sound segment and can also contrast meaning, are called suprasegmental features. 25. What’s the difference between phonemes and morphemes? (P54, P83) a. Phoneme is defined as a minimal distinctive unit in the sound system of a language. b. A morpheme is defined as a minimal meaningful unit in the grammatical system of a language. 26. What are interrelations between semantic and structural classifications of morphemes? (P84, P86) Morphemes can be classified both semantically and structurally. 7 英语语言学概论 a. Semantically, morphemes are grouped into general categories: root morphemes (roots) and affixational morphemes (affixes). b. Structurally, they fall into two classes: free morphemes and bound morphemes. c. All free morphemes are roots, but not all roots are free morphemes. All affixes are bound morphemes, but not all bound morphemes are affixes.. 27. Please explain the difference between inflectional and derivational affixes. (P89) Inflectional Derivational a. mark grammatical relations a. create new words b. never cause a change in Function b. very often cause a change in grammatical class grammatical class c. never create new words prefixes or suffixes; suffixes; always after derivational Position always before inflectional affixes if both are present. suffixes if both are present. 28. How do we judge whether two or more minimal meaningful sequences of phonemes are one morph or different morphs? (P92-93) a. If two or more minimal meaningful sequences of phonemes are identical in both form and meaning, then they are regarded as one morph. b. If two or more minimal meaningful sequences of phonemes are the same in form but different in meaning, then there are as many morphs as there are meanings. c. If two or more minimal meaningful sequences of phonemes are the same in meaning but different in form, then there are as many morphs as there are forms. d. If two or more minimal meaningful sequences of phonemes are different both in form and meaning, there are as many morphs as there different forms and meanings. 29. How do we group morphs into morphemes? (P94) 8 英语语言学概论 If two or more morphs are semantically identical and also in complementary distributing, they are then said to allomorphs of the same morpheme; otherwise, they belong to different morphemes. 30. What is IC analysis? (P99/P126) a. IC analysis simply means that we divide the morphemes of a word into the two groups and then divide each group into subgroups and so on, until we reach single morphemes. b. Labeled IC simply means that we divide the morphemes of a word or the words of a sentence into the two groups and then divide each group into subgroups and so on, until we reach single morphemes of a word on a signal word of a sentence. . 31. What is the difference between an empty morph and a zero morph? (P97-98) a. Empty morph is defined as a morph that has form but no meaning. b. Zero morph is defined as a morph that has no form but has meaning. 32. What are two ways of studying sentences? Explain them. (P116) a. We make structural descriptions of sentences to illustrate the parts of a sentence and the relationships among them, this is called static study. b. We examine the process by which sentences are generated by syntactic rules this is called dynamic study. 33. What are the three syntactic relations? (P116-118) a. Sequential or syntagmatic relations are refers to the linear ordering of the words and the phrases within a sentence. b. Substitutional (paradigmatic) relation is a kind of relation between linguistic forms in a sentence and linguistic forms outside the sentence. c. Hierarchical relation shows us the inner layering of sentences. 34. What are the differences between surface structure and deep structure? (P144) 9 英语语言学概论 a. A surface structure corresponds to the linear arrangement of words; a deep structure corresponds to the meaningful grouping of words. b. A surface structure is relatively concrete, and a deep structure is abstract. c. A surfaces structure gives the form of a sentence; while the deep structure gives the meaning of a sentence. d. A surface structure is pronounceable, but a deep structure is not pronounceable. 35. What are the three kinds of operations performed by T-rules? (P180) a. rearranging the sentence elements; b. adding a new element to the phrase marker; c. deleting an element from the phrase marker. 36. What are the differences between PS rules and T-rules? (P139) a. TG grammar has assumed that to generate sentences, we start with deep structures and then transform them into surface structures. b. Deep structures are generated by phrase structure rules (PS rules), and surface structures are derived from their deep structures by transformational rules (T-rules). 10 英语语言学概论 Phonetics has three sub-branches: (1) articulatory phonetics that is concerned with how a sound is produced by the vocal organs; (2) acoustic phonetics that deals with how a sound is transmitted from the speaker’s mouth to the listener’s ears; (3) auditory phonetics that investigates how a sound is perceived by the listener. 2. Speech organs 1-nasal cavity; 2-lips; 3-teeth; 4-aveolar ridge; 5-hard palate 6-velum (soft palate); 7-uvula; 8-apex (tip) of tongue; 9-blade (front) of tongue; 10-dorsum (back) of tongue; 11-oral cavity;12-pharynx; 13-epiglottis; 14-larynx; 15-vocal cords; 16-trachea; 17-esophagus; 11