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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． inflectional morpheme

【答案】 Inflectional morpheme: It is also called inflectional affixes, which attaches to the end of words. Inflectional affixes only add a minute or delicate grammatical meaning to the stem. The plural suffix is a typical example of this kind.

3． Language Acquisition Device （LAD ）

【答案】 Language Acquisition Device: LAD refers to an innate faculty of language in general with which children are bom. It is posited by Chomsky , who argues that LAD probably consists of three elements : a hypothesis-maker, linguistic universal, and an evaluation procedure.

4． Textual function

【答案】 Textual function : The textual function is one of the three meta-functions language is composed of. It refers to the fact that language has mechanisms to make any stretch of spoken or written discourse into a coherent and unified text and make a living message different from a random list of sentences.

5． Denotation

【答案】 The core sense of a word or a phrase that relates it to phenomena in the real world. In the case of linguistic signs, the denotative meaning is what the dictionary attempts to provide. It is the literal meaning of a word, the dictionary meaning, opposite to connotation.

6． Coarticulation

Coarticulation refers to the phenomenon of sounds continually show the influence of their 【答案】

neighbors. For example , as in lamb , when a is followed by m , the velum will begin to lower itself during the articulation of a so that it is ready for the following nasal. When such simultaneous or overlapping articulations are involved, we call the process coarticulation. If the sound becomes more like the following sound, it is known as anticipatory coarticulation. If the sound displays the influence of the preceding sound, it is preservative coarticulation.

7． Government

【答案】 Government is another type of control over the forms of some words by other words in certain syntactic constructions. It differs from concord in that this is a relationship in which a word of a certain class determines the forms of others in terms of certain category. In English, for example, the pronoun after a verb or a preposition should be in the object form as in She gave him a book. She gave a book to him. In other words , the verb , or the preposition , determines , or governs , the form of the pronoun after it.

8． Construal and construal operations

【答案】Construal is the competence to conceive and portray the same situation in alternate ways through specificity, different mental scanning, directionality, vantage point, figure-ground segregation etc. Construal operations are conceptualizing processes applied in language process by human beings. That is, construal operations are the underlying psychological processes and resources employed in the interpretation of linguistic expressions.

9． 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.

10．Duality

【答案】Duality refers to the fact that in all languages so far investigated there are two levels of structure or patterning. At the first , higher level , language is analyzed in terms of combinations of meaningful units ; at the second, lower level, it is seen as a sequence （such as morphemes, words etc.）

of segments which lack any meaning in themselves, but which combine to form units of meaning. For example , a syllable is the smallest unit that is normally spoken by itself, and scores of syllables become the carriers of hundreds of meaningful segments of words that are called morphemes.

二、Short-answer-questions

11．In English, the phonemeis pronounced differently in pat, spat, and tap, can you form a rule that can generalize this linguistic phenomenon?

【答案】 In English , there is a rule that a is unaspirated

after but aspirated in other places. So in pat , tap

is aspirated but unaspirated in spat since it is

after To bring out the phonetic difference , an aspirated sound is transcribed with a raised “h” after the symbol of the sound. So a

phonetic transcription for peak isand that for speak isSo are two different phones and are variants of the phonemeSuch variants of a phoneme are called allophones of the same phoneme. The allophones are said to be in complementary distribution because they never occur in the same context :

occurs after

while occurs in other places. We can present this rule as:

elsewhere

（note :

is the position in whichappears. ）

In addition, sometimes a phoneme may also have free variants. The final consonant of tap may not be released by some speakers so there is no audible sound at the end of this word. Such phenomenon is called free variation.

12．What are the major concerns of the Prague School theory?

【答案】 Three points of the Prague School theory are of special importance.

First , it was stressed that the synchronic study of language is fully justified as it can draw on complete and controllable material for investigation.

Second , there was an emphasis on the systemic character of language.

Third , language was looked on as functional in another sense. Based on these ideas, the Prague School practiced a special style of synchronic linguistics, and made great contribution to phonology and the distinction between phonetics and phonology. Its most important contribution is that it sees language in terms of function.

13．What is entailment? What are the sources of entailment?

Entailment is basically a semantic relation . If sentence A entails 【答案】（or logical implication）

sentence B, it must observe that, in terms of truth value, when sentence A is true, sentence B must be also true; when sentence B is false, sentence A must also be false, and that when sentence B is true, sentence A may be true or false.

The source of entailment may be lexical or syntactical. Lexical source of entailment can be shown in the example like,

（a ）The anarchist assassinated the emperor.

（b ）The emperor died.

The relationship of entailment between and derives from the lexical relationship between （a ）（b ）

assassinate and die. In some sense the meaning of assassinate contains the meaning of die.

Other sources for entailment are syntactic: for example, active and passive versions of the same sentence will entail one another. Sentences below show this well:

（c ）The Etruscans built this tomb.

（d ）This tomb was built by Etruscans.

14．How are the vowels described usually?

【答案】 Usually , the description of the vowels needs to fulfill four basic requirements:

（1）The height of tongue raising （high , mid, low）;

（2）The position of the highest part of the tongue （front , central, back）;

（3）The length or tenseness of the vowel （tense vs. lax or long vs. short） , and

（4）lip-rounding （rounded vs. unrounded）.

15．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）