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一、Explain-the-fllowing-terms

1． Phatic function （ communion ）

【答案】 Phatic function: The phatic function of language refers to the use of the language which often consists of small , seemingly meaningless expression for setting up a certain atmosphere or maintaining social contacts rather than for exchanging information or ideas. For example , greetings , farewells , and comments on the weather in English could serve this function.

2． Metonymy

【答案】 Metonymy is a figure of speech used in rhetoric in which a thing or concept is not called by its own name, but by 也e name of something intimately associated with that thing or concept. For instance , “Washington ”，as the capital of the United States, can be used as a metonym （an instance of metonymy） for the United States government.

3． Cognition

【答案】 Cognition is, in psychology, used to refer to the mental processes of an individual, with particular relation to a concept which argues that the mind has internal mental states （such as beliefs, desires and intentions ） and can be understood as information processing , especially when much abstraction or concretization is involved , or processes such as involving knowledge , expertise or learning for example are at work. Another definition of “cognition” is the mental process or faculty of knowing , including aspects such as awareness, perception, reasoning, and judgment.

4． Interlanguage

【答案】 It refers to the type of language constructed by second or foreign language learners who are still in the process of learning a language. It‟s a language system between the target language and the learner‟s native language, and imperfect compared with the target language, but not mere translation from the learner^ native language. For example, when the Chinese student is learning English, he may make errors like “to touch the society”.

5． Polysemy

【答案】 Polysemy means a single word having several or many meanings. According to Crystal: Polysemy is a term used in semantic analysis to refer to a lexical item which has a range of different meanings. Polysemic words are signs of an advanced culture. Polysemy is also an essential feature of a language‟s economy and efficiency.

6． Achievement test

【答案】 Achievement test is a test which measures how much of a language someone has learned with reference to a particular course of study or program of instruction.

7． Embedding

【答案】 It refers to the inclusion of a clause within a phrase or another clause, or of a phrase into another phrase. An example of embedded clauses is: What I do is none of your business. （Nominal clause embedded as subject of another clause）

8． Assimilation

【答案】 It is a process by which one sound takes on some or all the characteristics of a neighboring sound. It is often used synonymously with coarticulation. Nasalization, dentalization and，velarization are all instances of assimilation. There are two possibilities of assimilation: if a following sound is influencing a preceding sound, it is regressive assimilation;

the converse process, in which a preceding sound is influencing a following sound, is known as progressive assimilation. For example, in “mink”，“n”，which is originally pronounced aswill be velarized by the following “k”/k/，and therefore the word will be pronounced as

9． Speech community

【答案】 Speech community is a group of people who share a set of norms and expectations regarding the use of language. Speech communities can be members of a profession with a specialized jargon , distinct social groups like high school students or hip-pop fans. In addition, online and other mediated communities, such as many internet forums, often constitute speech communities. Members of speech communities will often develop slang or jargon to serve the group's special purposes and priorities.

10．CMC

【答案】 It is computer-mediated communication , distinguished by its focus on language and language use in computer networked environments, and by its use of methods of discourse analysis to address that focus.

二、Short-answer-questions

11．Why do people take duality as one of the important design features of human language? Can you tell us what language will be if it has no such design feature?

【答案】 Duality makes our language productive. A large number of different units can be formed out of a small number of elements——for instance, tens of thousands of words out of a small set of sounds. And out of the huge number of words, there can be astronomical number of possible sentences and phrases, which in turn can combine to form unlimited number of texts. Most animal communication systems do not have this design feature of human language.

If language had no such design feature , then it would be like animal communicational system which consists of only a number of basic sounds and this would be highly limited. Then we would not be able to produce a very large number of sound combinations （e.g. words ） , which are distinct in

meaning. In other words, the number of messages one can send would be restricted to the number of basic sounds.

12．Explain with an example that the evaluation of language is social rather than linguistic.

【答案】 As a social phenomenon, language is closely related to the structure of the society in which it is used, and the evaluation of a linguistic form is entirely social.

To a linguist , all language forms and accents are equally good as far as they can fulfill the communication functions they are expected to fulfill. Therefore, judgments concerning the correctness and purity of linguistic varieties are social rather than linguistic.

A case in point is the use of the postvocalic [r]. While in England accents without postvocalic [r] are considered to be more correct than accents with it, in New York city, accents with postvocalic [r] enjoys more prestige and considered more correct than without it.

13．Produce surface structures from the following deep structures without going through the process of transformations.

（1）Neg she past work last week

（2）Tag you past meet him

（3）the students I pres be+ing help the students I

（4）policemen past be+en beat John

（5）Q the professor pres be angry SOME REASON

（6）SOMEONE past be+ing be+en beat Joseph hard

（7）Q he past do SOMETHING

（8）Imp you pres will wash you

（9）[ Neg Mary past go to the bookstore] [Neg Lisa past go to the bookstore]

（10）the girl [the girl pres be beautiful]pres be from China

【答案】（1） She didn't work last week.

（2）You met him, didn't you?

（3）The students are helping themselves.

（4）The policemen were beaten by John.

（5）Why is the professor angry?

（6）He / She was being beaten hard by Joseph.

（7 ） What did he do?

（8）Wash yourself.

（9）Mary didn‟t go to the bookstore. Lisa didn‟t go to the bookstore either.

（10）The girl who is beautiful is from China.

14．What are phonologically conditioned and morphologically conditioned form of morphemes?

Some phonological factors can affect the appearance of morphemes, namely, the form of 【答案】

a morpheme; and there could be assimilation, and dissmilation. For example, the negative morpheme