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一、Explain-the-fllowing-terms

1． Conceptualism

It is the view which holds that there is no direct link between a linguistic form and what it 【答案】

refers to; rather, in the interpretation of meaning they are linked through the mediation of concepts in the mind.

2． Idiolect

【答案】 Just as every speech community has a dialect, every speaker has his own pet words and expressions and special way of expressing his ideas in language. This language variety of individual users is called “idiolect”

3． Prefix

【答案】 In linguistics, a prefix is a type of affix that precedes the morphemes to which it can attach. Prefixes are bound morphemes （they cannot occur as independent words ） . While most languages employ both prefixes and suffixes, prefixes are less common. Some languages employ mostly suffixes and almost no prefixes at all. The use of prefixes has been found to correlate statistically with other linguistic features, such as a verb-object word order and the use of prepositions.

4． Back-formation

【答案】 Back formation refers to an abnormal type of word formation where a shorter word is derived by deleting an imagined affix from a longer form already in the language. For example , the word “television” appeared before “televise”，and so does “editor” to “edit”.

5． 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

6． Why do we say language is primarily vocal?

【答案】 Language is a system of arbitrary vocal symbols used for human communication. Language is primarily vocal, because sound or speech is the primary medium for all human languages, developed or “new”. Writing systems came much later than the spoken forms. The fact that small children learn and can only learn to speak （and listen ） before they write （and read） also indicates that language is primarily vocal , rather than written. The term “human” in the definition is meant to

specify that language is human specific.

7． What is your understanding of Systemic Functional Grammar?

【答案】 Systemic functional grammar , developed by M.A.K. Halliday , is a socially oriented functional linguistic approach and one of the most influential linguistic theories in the twentieth century. Systemic functional grammar is based on two facts:

Language users are actually making choices in a set of systems and trying to realize different semantic functions in social interaction.

Language is inseparable from social activities of man. Thus, it takes actual uses of language as the object of study. One point to notice is that it takes clause as the basic unit. It consist of two inseparable parts : systemic grammar and functional grammar.

8． What do you think of the cognitive approach to literature?

【答案】 The linguistic and cognitive approaches to literature are complementary. The cognitive approach can augment the overall quality, depth and value of the linguistic approach. （Burke , 2005）

9． What makes language unique to human beings?

The design features of language which refer to the defining properties of human language 【答案】

tell the difference between human language and any system of animal communication.Arbitrariness is a core feature of language, which means that there is no logical connection between meanings and sounds. Duality , which means the property of having 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. Creativity means language is resourceful because of its duality and its recursiveness. Because of duality the speaker is able to combine the basic linguistic unites to form an infinite set of sentences , most of which are never heard before. Displacement means that language can be used to refer to things which are present or not present, real or imagined matters, in the past, present, or future, or in far-away places. So all these features make language unique to human beings.

三、Synthesis

10．How is behaviourist psychology related to linguistics?

For Bloomfield, linguistics is a branch of psychology, and specifically of the positivistic 【答案】

brand of psychology known as “behaviourism”. Behaviourism is a principle of scientific method , based on the belief that human beings cannot know anything they have not experienced. Behaviourism in linguistics holds that children learn language through a chain of “stimulus response reinforcement”，and the adult’s use of language is also a process of “stimulus response”. When the hehaviuurist methodology entered linguistics via Bloomfield’s writings , the popular practice in linguistic studies was to accept what a native speaker says in his language and to discard what he says about it. This is because of the belief that a linguistic description was reliable when based on observation of unstudied utterances by speakers ; it was unreliable if the analyst had resorted to asking speakers questions such as uCan you say in your language?”

11．Define the following terms.

（1）psycholinguistics （2）language acquisition （3）holophrastic stage （4）two-word stage

（5）three-word utterances （6）connectionism （7）cohort model （8）interactive model （9）

race model （10）serial model （11）parallel model （12）resonance model （13）construal

（14）construal operations （15）figure-ground alignment （16）trajectory （17）landmark （18）basic level category （19）subordinate level （20）image schema （21）metaphor （22）metonymy （23）ontological metaphors （24）structural metaphors （25）generic space （26）blend space

Psycholinguistics is the study of psychological aspects of language; it usually studies 【答案】（1）

the psychological states and mental activity associated with the use of language. As an interdisciplinary academic field based on psychology and linguistics , psycholinguistics investigates the six following subjects : language acquisition , language comprehension , language production , language disorders , language and thought，and cognitive architecture of language, The most important research subjects are acquisition , comprehension and production.

（2） Language acquisition is one of the central topics in psycholinguistics. Acquiring a first language is something every child does successfully, in a matter of a few years and without the need for formal lessons. Four phases are identified and acknowledged in the process of language acquisition : holophrastic stage ， two word stage , three-word utterances , and , fluent grammatical conversation stage.

（3）Holophrastic stage is the first phase of language acquisition. The main linguistic accomplishments during this stage are control of the speech musculature and sensitivity to the phonetic distinctions used in the parents’ language. Shortly before their first birthday , babies begin to understand words, and around that birthday, they start to produce them. At this stage, words are usually produced in isolation; this one-word stage can last from two months to a year. About half the words are for objects: food, body parts, clothing, vehicles, toys, household items, animals. There are words for actions , motions, and routines.

（4）Two-word stage is the second phase of language acquisition. Around 18 months, the child begins to learn words at a rate of one every two waking hours, and keeps learning that rate or faster through adolescence. The primitive syntax begins with two- word strings. Children announce when objects appear, disappear, and move about, point out their properties and owners, comment on people doing things and seeing things, reject and request objects and activities, and ask about who, what, and where. These sequences already reflect the language being acquired : in 95% of them , the words are properly ordered.

Three-word utterances stage is the third phase of language acquisition. Three-word utterances （5）

look like samples drawn from longer potential sentences expressing a complete and more complicated idea. For example, although the children never produced a sentence as complicated as Mother gave John lunch in the kitchen, they did produce strings containing all of its components in the correct order.

（6）With respect to language comprehension , connectionism in psycholinguistics claims that readers use the same system of links between spelling units and sound units to generate the pronunciations of written words and to access the pronunciations of familiar words, or words that are exceptions to these patterns. In this view, similarity and frequency play important roles in processing and comprehending language , with the novel items being processed based on their similarity to the known ones.

（7）The cohort model is a supposed doctrine dealing with the spoken word recognition postulated by Marslen-Wilson and Welsh in 1990. It is suggested that the first few phonemes of a spoken word activate a set or cohort of word candidates that are consistent with the input. These candidates compete with one another for activation. As more acoustic input is analyzed , candidates that are no longer