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一、Explain-the-fllowing-terms

1． Phonetics

Phonetics is the study of how speech sounds are produced, transmitted, and perceived. It 【答案】

can be divided into three main areas of study articulatory phonetics , acoustic phonetics and perceptual/auditory phonetics.

2． phoneme

Phoneme is a basic unit of phonological study, and it is an abstract collection of phonetic 【答案】

features which can distinguish meaning. For example, in English, is described as a phoneme.

3． Inflection

【答案】 Inflection is the manifestation of grammatical relationship through the addition of inflectional affixes , such as number , person , finiteness , aspect and case , which do not change the grammatical class of the stems to which they are attached. For example, the past form of the verb work is realized by the addition of the inflectional suffix: „„-ed‟‟； the plural form of the noun child is realized by the inflectional suffix: „„-ren‟‟.

4． Open-class words

【答案】 Open-class words refer to words whose membership is in principle infinite or unlimited and with the emergence of new ideas , inventions , and so on ; new expressions are continually and constantly being added to the lexicon. For example , nouns , verbs , and adjectives all belong to this class.

5． Hyponymy

Hyponymy. It refers to the sense relationship between a more general, more inclusive and 【答案】

a more specific word. The word which is more general in meaning is called the superordiante, and the more specific words are called its hyponyms. For example , the hyponymy relationship could be established between “animal” and “rabbit”.

二、Short-answer-questions

6． What are the four obvious barriers to adult L2 acquisition?

【答案】 A variety of explanations have been put forward for the apparent decline in adults:

Physical factors such as the loss of “plasticity” in the brain and “lateralization” of the brain; social factors such as the different situations and relationships that children encounter compared to adults ; cognitive factors such as the interference with natural language learning by the adulfs more abstract

mode of thinking; and input factors that adults spend only a few hours each week of school time, rather than via the constant interaction experienced by a child, with a lot of other occupations.

7． The following is a statement by a Japanese businessman: “You buy in your own language, but you sell in your customer’s language.” How do you understand it?

【答案】 This reflects some features of pidgin which is a special language variety that mixes or blends languages and it id used by people who speak different languages for restricted purposes such as trading. And also, it reflects the tendency of intercultural communication from the aspect of language.

8． plowed 14. climbed 15. singed 16. hanged

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9． Why is Saussure hailed as the father of modem linguistics?

【答案】 Saussure was the first to notice the complexities of language. He believed that language is a system of signs. To communicate ideas, signs must be part of a system of signs, called conventions. He held that the sign is the union of a form （signifier ） and an idea （signified ） , and it is the central fact of language.

By providing answers to questions concerning many aspects of language, Saussure made clear the object of study for linguistics as a science. His ideas on the arbitrary nature of sign, on the relational nature of linguistic units , on the distinction of langue and parole and of synchronic and diachronic linguistics , etc. pushed linguistics into a brand new stage.

10．Why is Saussure hailed as the father of modem linguistics?

【答案】 Saussure was the first to notice the complexities of language. He believed that language is a system of signs. To communicate ideas, signs must be part of a system of signs, called conventions. He held that the sign is the union of a form （signifier ） and an idea （signified ） , and it is the central fact of language.

By providing answers to questions concerning many aspects of language, Saussure made clear the object of study for linguistics as a science. His ideas on the arbitrary nature of sign, on the relational nature of linguistic units , on the distinction of langue and parole and of synchronic and diachronic linguistics , etc. pushed linguistics into a brand new stage.

三、Essay-question

11．How do you compare the traffic light system with a human linguistic system?

【答案】 Both the traffic light system and human linguistic system can symbolize some information in communication whereas the linguistic system is more complicated. However , the linguistic system has several distinctive features no other systems have , including the traffic light system.

（1）Language is arbitrary which means that there is no logical connection between meanings and sounds. But in traffic light system , there are direct logical connections between the light signals and their meanings.

（2）Language is hierarchical, thafs to say linguistic system has two levels of structures, such that units of the primary level are composed of elements of the secondary level and each of the two levels has

its own principles of organization. However, the traffic light system has no hierarchical system and the structure is composed by a single level.

（3）Language is productive. By creativity we mean language is resourceful because of its duality and its excursiveness. Because of duality, speaker is able to combine the basic linguistic units to form an infinite set of sentences, most of which are never before produced or heard. But there is no recursive nature in traffic light system which means that it can not produce new meaning.

12．Discuss the following advertisement extensively: “ 你不理财，财不理你”.

【答案】 This advertisement is an interesting one, for its witty use of pun words. There are two places of punning. First , “理财” could be interpreted in two different ways : one is “to manage one‟s money‟‟，the other is “not to ignore money”. Second, in the second part of the sentence, “财 ” is punned through homophony: it could be interpreted as “财 ”，therefore , the whole part “财不理你” could mean “fortune will ignore you‟‟，or rather，“fortune will pass you away”. This character could also interpreted as “才”，therefore , the whole part “财不理你” could mean “I will ignore you”，or rather, “I will show you my cold shoulder” （Here UF, refers to the company which put out this advertisement）.

Therefore , this utterance could be possibly interpreted in the following ways. 1） If you do not handle your money in a proper way, then money will pass you by. 2 ） If you do not handle your money properly , then I won‟t take care of any of your business. 3 ） If you ignore money, and do not pay any attention to it, then money will pass you by. 4） If you ignore money, then I will ignore you, too, and I won5t take care of any of your business. In these four interpretations, it is clear to see that in 1 and 4, the advertiser conveyed the messages to the readers as if he was having a face-to-face talk to a friend. This has in some way made the piece of ad interesting to read.

It is known the punning is by nature ambiguous. Therefore, according to Grice, the advertisement has violated the principle of avoiding ambiguity under Manner Maxim. By such a violation , the advertiser has possibly intended to make the potential consumers pay more attention to it, and spend more time on it, since it is known that ambiguity will increase the time for processing the sentence; and by interpreting it in additional ways, the readers are also expected to get another interesting message from this ad. All of these could eventually come to a higher memorability of the advertisement.

13．In interpreting utterances such as（1）and （2），the hearer generally treats the events described in the two sentences in each group as causally related even though such relationship is not encoded in the meanings of the sentences. That is . the hearer tends to think that Helen fell on the ground because of Torn's pushing and that the vase broke because it was dropped. Explain why.

（1）Tom pushed Helen. Helen fell on the ground.

（2）Peter dropped the vase. It broke.

【答案】 The phenomenon described can be illustrated by the theory of cohesion and coherence in discourse analysis , especially the conjunctive kind of cohesive relation. Text processing requires inferences for establishing coherence between successive sentences. The achievement of coherence partly relies on the cohesive relationships within and between the sentences. Cohesion occurs where the interpretation of some elements in the discourse is dependent on that of another.

It is realized partly through grammatical device and partly through lexical cohesion. Conjunction is one of the grammatically cohesive relations. It is based on the assumption that there are forms of systematic relationships between sentences in the linguistic system. Conjunction can be realized by some