语言学习题答案

1. Q: What is the scope of linguistics?

The scope of linguistics can be illustrated as:

1) General linguistics: the study of language as whole. It deals with

the basic concepts, theories, descriptions, models and methods applicable in any linguistic study.

2) Phonetics: the study of sounds used in communication.

3) Phonology: the study about how sounds are put together and used to convey meaning in communication.

4) Morphology: the study of the way in which symbols/morphemes

are arranged to form words.

5) Syntax: the study of the rules about the combination of words to form permisible sentences.

6) Semantics: the study of meaning.

7) Pragmatics: the study of meaning in the context of use.

And the Interdisciplinary branches.

1) Sociolinguistics

2) Psycholingu istics ……………

2. Q: What makes modern linguistics different from traditional grammar?

Modern linguistics differs from traditional grammar in several basic ways: firstly, modern linguistics is descriptive, it describes the language as it is; while traditional grammar is prescriptive, it

prescribes the way language should be used. Secondly, modern linguistics regards the spoken language as primary, not the written. Then, modern linguistics differs from traditional grammar also in that

it does not force languages into a latin-based framework.

3. Q: What is a phone? How is it different from a phoneme? How are allophones related to a phoneme?

A phone is a phonetic unit or segment.

A phoneme is a phonological unit; it is a unit that is of distinctive value. It is an abstract unit. It is not any particular sound.

The different phones which can represent a phoneme in different phonetic environments are called the allophones of that phoneme.

4. Q:Explain with examples the sequential rule, the assimilation rule and the deletion rule?

into all possible 1) Sequential rules form the letters as “k, h ,l ,j”　

words in English. We might order them as: blik, klib, bilk, kilb. without other orders. So it indicates that there are rules that govern

the combination of sounds in a particular language. One special sequential rule that……

2) Assimilation rule: it assimilates one sound to another by copying

a feather of a sequential phoneme, thus making the two phones similar. For example: “illegal”, inlegal

3) Deletion rule: It can be stated as: delete a [g] when it occurs before

a final nasal consonant. for example: “designation”，

the [g]

, while in the word “sign”. represented by the letter “g” is pronounced

/g/ sound is deleted, because it is followed by and ended with the nasal consonant /n/.

5. Q: What are the major types of synonyms in English?

There are five types of synonyms in English. They are dialectal synonyms--synonyms used in different regional dialects; stylistics synonyms –synonyms differing in style; synonyms that differ in their emotive or evaluative meaning; collocational synonyms; semantically different synonyms.

6. Q: Explain with examples “Homonymy”, “Polysemy”, and “Hyponymy”？

Homonymy (定义) … . It includes homophones(定义) (piece\peace) , homographs (定义) (bow v.\ bow n.) and complete homonyms (定义) (scale n.\scale v.) .

Polysemy means that the same one word may have more that one meaning. For example: “table”, has at least seven meanings. Hyponymy means that the sense relation between a more general, more inclusive word and a more specific word. For example: is super-ordinate, its hyponyms are bed, table, desk, “furniture”　

dresser, wardrobe, settee……

7. Q: How can words opposite in meaning be classified? To which

category does each of the following pairs of antonyms belong?

There are three types oppositions in meaning. They are gradable antonyms, complementary antonyms and relational opposites. “north\south”, “wide\narrow”and “poor\rich”belong to gradable antonyms; “vacant\occupied”and “literate\illiterate”belong to

and complementary antonyms; “above below”, “doctor p atient”　“father d aughter” belong to relational opposites.

8. Q: How are sentence meaning and utterance meaning related, and how do they differ?

The meaning of a sentence is abstract, and de-contextualized, that of an utterance is concrete, and context-dependent. The meaning of an utterance is based on sentence meaning; it is the realization of the abstract meaning of a sentence in a real situation of communication,

or simply in a context.

Difference: Sentence meaning includes locutionary act, but it doesn include illocutionary act and perlocutionary act.

9. Q: According to Austin, what are the three acts a person is possibly performing while making an utterance. Give an example?

They are locutionary act, illocutionary act and perlocutionary act. For

“open”! The

“door”　example: someone utters “you”　

“have”　

locutionary act expresses what the words literally mean. The

: asking someone to illocutionary act expresses the speaker’s intention

message and sees that close the door. T he hearer gets the speaker’s

the speaker means to tell him to close the door, and then the hearer closes the door. Therefore, the utterance gets the effect of losing the door. And this is the perlocutionary act.

10. Q: What are the four maxims of the CP? Try to give your own examples to show how flouting these maxims gives rise to conversational implicature?

They are the maxim of quantity(具体说明其内容)…

the maxim of quality…

the maxim of relation…

and the maxim of manner….

For example:

A: When is J erry’s birthday party?

B: Sometime next month.

t wish to tell you when J erry’s birthday party is going to So, B doesn’

be held.

A: Would you like to attend our traveling at weekend?

B: I’m afraid I have got an invitation at weekend.

want to attend your traveling.

So, B doesn’ｔ

A: Shall we get something for our brother?

B: Yes. But I veto G-U-N.

So, B doesn’t want their brother to know they are talking about

getting them a gun.

11. Q: Cite with examples the changes in English Language?

[maus];

1) sound change: “mouse”[mu:s]—

2) morphological change: greenen—green;

3) syntactic change: you can speak, can’t you?

You speak, speak not you ?

4) lexical change: wot—to know, ASPCA, math—mathematics;

English, but today it

5) semantic change: “silly” means happy in old

means foolish; “aunt” means father’s sister before, but today it also means mother’s sister.

12. Q:What are the main social dialects? How do they jointly determine idiolect?

They are Gender variation, Age variation, Ethnic dialect, Stylistic variation, Register.

Idiolectal variation is determined by many factors. The different backgrounds of different people influence their choice of linguistic forms, and the linguistic features of the language they use reveal their indentities.

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13. Q: What peticuliar features does a Pidgin have?

Any dialects have native speakers, except pidgin.

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