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一、Explain-the-fllowing-terms

1． Relational opposites

【答案】 This is a type of antonymy , in which the members of a pair do not constitute a positive-negative opposition. They show the reversal of a relationship between two entities. For example, “buy/sell” is such a pair. X buys something from Y means Y sells something from X.

2． distinctive features

a means of working out a set of phonological contrasts or oppositions to capture particular 【答案】

aspects of language sounds , first suggested by Roman Jacobson in the 1940s and then developed by numerous other people.

3． Innateness hypothesis

【答案】 The “Innateness Hypothesis” of child language acquisition was proposed by Noam Chomsky , who states that language are somewhat innate and that children are bom with what he calls a language acquisition device, which is a unique kind of knowledge that fits them for language learning.

4． Displacement

Language can be used to refer to what is present, what is absent, what happens at present, 【答案】

what happened in the past, what will happen in the future or what happens in a far-away place. This property of language enables language users to overcome the barriers caused by time and place. For example , we can talk about Sapir, who is already dead; we can even talk about next week, which is in the future.

5． Audiolingual method

【答案】 Audiolingual method refers to the teaching of a second language through imitation , repetition , and reinforcement. It emphasizes the teaching of speaking and listening before reading and writing and the use of mother tongue in the classroom is not allowed.

6． Corpus

【答案】 Corpus is a collection of linguistic data , either compiled as written texts or as a transcription of recorded speech. The main purpose of a corpus is to verify a hypothesis about language~~for example , to determine how the application of a particular sound , word , or syntactic construction varies.

7． 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”.

8． Distinctive features of speech sounds

【答案】 The distinctive feature is a property which distinguishes one phoneme from another. For example , “voicing” is a distinctive feature, since it plays an important role in distinguishing obstruents in English.

二、Essay-question

9． Read the following quote from Chomsky. What do you think about Chomsky^ criticism and the revival of corpus linguistics?

It seems clear that the description which is of greatest psychological relevance is the account of competence , not that of performance, for anyone concerned with intellectual processes, or any question that goes beyond mere data arranging, it is the question of competence that is fundamental. ...

These rather obvious comments apply directly to study of language, child or adult. This it is absurd to attempt to construct a grammar that describes observed linguistic behaviour directly ，…a direct record —an actual corpus —is almost useless as it stands , for linguistic analysis of any but the most superficial kind. ...

【答案】 Regarding linguistics as a branch of psychology, Chomsky insisted that what should be studied is linguistic competence , not performance. As he has claimed , the description of language performance only tells what is there, and is very inadequate in telling why language performs in the way as it does, or rather, how the intellectual processes affects it.

What ＇s more, language performance is more than often degenerated; there are false statements, hesitations , and so on. Therefore, the corpus linguistics which is based on the language performance is somewhat distorted from the goal of linguistics. Because, according to Chomsky, what linguistics is aimed for , should be the discovering of the constants , the general principle which all languages are constructed and operated as systems of communication in societies in which they are used.

Therefore , he suggested the construction of universal grammar, which is the ideal knowledge of language , is what linguists should be concerned with , and the postulation of grammar based on the observed behavior is also a distortion.

10．List different types of Speech presentation and Thought presentation.

【答案】（1） Speech presentation:

Direct speech （DS ） : With the direct speech, what the character said is in its fullest form and with quotation marks.

Indirect speech （IS ） : The propositional content of what the speaker said is presented, but it is not stated in the original words.

Narrator‟s representation of speech acts （NRSA ） : We don‟t know what the speaker said, and all we know is that he used the speech act of doing something. It can be regarded as a summary of a longer piece of discourse and give more background information than indirect speech.

Narrator‟s representation of speech （NRS ） : It is a sentence which merely tells us that speech occurred , and which does not even specify the speech act involved.

（2） Thought presentation : The categories used by novelists to represent the thoughts of their characters are exactly the same as those used to represent a speech.

Direct thought （DT ） : DT tends to be used for presenting conscious, deliberative thought.

Free indirect thought （FIT ）: It refers to a kind of thought presentation between DT and IT, which is certainly not DT，but takes on some features of the thoughts in the character‟s mind.

11．Discuss the following sentences in terms of violation of maxims in the cooperative principle.

a.I think he was married and had a lioness at home.

b.A : What do you intend to do?

B : I have a terrible headache.

c.A : Where‟ve you been?

B : Out.

【答案】 In sentence a, the speaker has violated the first Quality maxim, which says c'do not say what you believe to be false99. In the literal sense , no human being would marry a lioness , and therefore at this level, it is a false statement. However, the deliberate violation of the maxim will lead us to interpret it as a metaphor, meaning that his wife had a bad temper.

In sequence b, B has flouted the maxim of Relation, since he did not answer A5s question directly. However , assuming that B was co-operative, A was likely to derive the implicature that since B had a terrible headache, he would probably just lie in bed and do nothing.

In exchange c ，a violation of the first Quantity maxim was recognized, which says “make your contribution as informative as is required for the current purposes of the exchange”. B was supposed to provide the specific information of the place he had been to; however，he didn‟t. By such a violation，B probably implied that “I do not want to tell you where I have been”.

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.