当前位置：问答库＞考研试题

一、Explain-the-fllowing-terms

1． 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.

2． Foregrounding

【答案】 This term is meant for what is unusual, attractive, unconventional, salient. In literature, foregrounding is often achieved through unconventional expressions which attract the readers9 attention. The main manifestations of foregrounding are deviation and parallelism.

3． Performatives

【答案】 Performatives are sentences that do not state a fact or describe a state. They cannot be said to be true or false. The uttering of these sentences is, or is part of, the doing an action. The judge‟s imprisonment sentence, the president‟s war or independence declaration, etc., are performatives.

4． Register

【答案】 It is a speech variety used by a particular group of people , usually sharing the same occupation （e.g. doctors, lawyers） or the same interests. A particular register often distinguishes itself from others by having a number of distinctive words, by using words or phrases in a particular way, and sometimes by special grammatical constructions （e.g. legal language）.

5． 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”.

6． Glottal Stop

【答案】 V ocal tract is composed of oral cavity, nasal cavity and pharynx. When the vocal folds are totally closed, no air can pass between them. The result of this gesture is the glottal stop.

7． 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.

8． Paradigmatic relations

【答案】 Paradigmatic relation , Saussure originally called associative , is a relation holding between elements replaceable with each other at a particular place in a structure , or between one element present and the others absent.

9． Syllable

【答案】 Syllable : It refers to a unit of spoken language that is bigger than a speech sound. It consists of one or more vowel sounds alone or of a syllabic consonant alone or of either with one or more consonant sounds preceding or following.

10．Linguistic determinism

【答案】 Linguistic determinism , is one of the two points of Sapir-Whorf hypothesis , and has developed into the strong version of this hypothesis. It could be summarized as follows: （1） One‟s thinking is completely determined by his native language because one cannot but perceive the world in terms of the categories and distinctions encoded in the language. （2） The categories and distinctions encoded in one language system are unique to that system and incommensurable with those of other systems. Therefore , the following statement could represent this hypothesis 4tIf Aristotle had spoken Chinese , his logic would have been different”.

二、Short-answer-questions

11．Language can change through blending, metanalysis and borrowing. Give two English words to illustrate each of them.

【答案】 1） blending : smog, brunch

2）metanalysis : an apron （which was originally “a napron”）； an adder （which was originally “a nadder”）

3）borrowing : tea, encore

12．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.

13．What is register? Use an example to illustrate your idea.

【答案】 There are many social constraints that come into play in controlling which variety from the linguistic repertoire of a speaker is to be used on a particular occasion. The type of language that is selected as appropriate to the type of situation is a register. The register is determined by three social variables : field of discourse, tenor of discourse, and mode of discourse. For example, an appropriate language to an academic lecture in a college should be formal and polite, which is called register.

14．Please explain the original idea in the speech act theory.

Motorist : My car needs new exhaust system.

Mechanic : I‟ll be busy with this other car all day.

【答案】 Speech act theory, originally proposed by Austin, is a philosophical explanation of the nature of linguistic communication.

Austin made a distinction between what he called “constatives” and “performatives”. Constatives were statements that either state or describe, and were thus verifiable; performatives, on the other hand, were sentences that did not state a fact or describe a state, and were not verifiable.

Later on, for a variety of reasons, Austin gave up his initial distinction between constatives and performatives. He set up another model to explain the way acts were performed by means of language. According to his new model, a speaker might be performing three acts simultaneously when speaking: locutionary act, illocutionary act, and perlocutionary act.

15．What are suprasegmental features? How do the major suprasegmental features of English function in conveying meaning?

【答案】 A suprasegmental feature refers to the phonemic features that occur above the level of sound segment. The major suprasegmental features in English include word stress, sentence stress, tone, and intonation. The location of stress in English distinguishes meaning.

For example , a shift of stress may change the part of speech of a word from a noun to a verb although its spelling remains unchanged. Tones are pitch variations, which are caused by the differing rates of vibration of the vocal cords. Pitch variations can distinguish meaning just like phonemes. When pitch , stress and sound length are tied to the sentence rather than the word in isolation , they are collectively known as intonation. Intonation plays an important role in the conveyance of meaning in almost every language, especially in a language like English.

16．deeded 6. bagged 7. killed 8. nabbed

【答案】

三、Essay-question

17．Disambiguate the following sentences, using the tree diagram with labels or analyzing their syntactic structures.

（1）Times flies like an arrow.

（2）We got down from the duck.

（3）Old men and women will be served first.

（4）John passed the hammer and saw through the window.