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一、Explain-the-fllowing-terms

1． IPA

【答案】 IPA is the abbreviation of International Phonetic Alphabet , which is devised by the International Phonetic Association in 1888. IPA is a set of symbols which can be used to represent the phones and phonemes of natural languages.

2． MT

【答案】 It refers to machine translation, the use of machine （usually computers） to translate texts from one natural language to another

3． 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.

4． 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.

5． functional morpheme

【答案】 This is a subtype of free morphemes, which one consists largely of the functional words in language such as conjunctions, prepositions, articles and pronouns, for example, “and, about when on , near, the” an so on.

6． cohort model

【答案】 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 consistent with the input drop out of the set. This process continues until only one word candidate matches the input- the best fitting word may be chosen if no single candidate is a clear winner.

7． bound root

Bound root refers to the base form of a word that cannot further be analyzed without total 【答案】

loss of identity, and this base form could not occur alone, such as “-ceive” in “receive”.

8． subordination

【答案】 Subordination refers to the process or result of linking linguistic units so that they have different syntactic status, one being dependent upon the other, and usually a constituent of the other. Thus the subordinate constituents are words which modify the Head. Consequently, they can be called modifiers. In the phrase swimming in the lake , swimming is the head and in the lake are the words modifying the head.

二、Essay-question

9． In what way are language and computer related , and how has their relationship affected language learning?

【答案】 With the development of the computer technology and internet system, more and more people touched upon the computer field. Computer has been used in the classroom for foreign language teaching and learning. CAI stands for computer-assisted instruction, which means the use of a computer in a teaching program. CAL stands for computer-assisted learning, which means the use of computer in both teaching and learning. Following CAI and CAL , CALL , acronym for Computer Assisted Language Learning, refers to the use of a computer in the teaching or learning of a second or foreign language. If CAI or CAL deals with teaching and learning in general, then CALL deals with language teaching and learning in particular. CALL provided a beneficial and convenient approach for language learners to improve their ability. For example, students can gain a quick access to any materials on the internet. The computer is not an individual resource for each student any more, instead, it is a trigger for interaction between the students and it is the focus for group work which allows some activities , such as the activity role-play interaction. The use of multimedia technology enables different information types to be simultaneously available on the computer, as a result, spoken language and moving video are produced other than mere presentation of written sentences.

10．For each of the following pairs of sentences, discuss how the two sentences are different from each other.

（1）A. His carelessness I can‟t bear.

B. I can‟t bear his carelessness.

（2）A. A dagger killed the tourist.

B. The tourist was killed with a dagger.

（3）A. A hurricane killed eight people.

B. Eight people died in a hurricane.

These two sentences are different in the sense that the thematic structures are different. 【答案】（1）

The theme of a sentence is often the known information, which the sentence is mainly about. Sentence A provides some informa tion about “his carelessness”, since “his carelessness” serves as the theme. Whereas , Sentence B is a statement about “I ” and from the remainder of the sentence the recipient could know some information about me.

（2）In sentence A，“A dagger” serves as the theme , with which the sentence could be seen as an answer of “What did the dagger do?” In sentence B, “The touris” is treated as the given information, around which the sentence develops ; thus , the corresponding question of this sentence as an answer could be “What happened to the tourist?”

（3）There are still differences of thematic structures between these two sentences, with the first one about “A hurr icane” and the second one about “eight people”. What‟s more, in sentence A, the verb

„„kill” emphasizes a direct relationship between the hur ricane and the eight people , that is , it is the hurricane that caused the people to die. Whereas, in sentence B, a meaning like above is not entailed.

11．Why is it important to know the relations a sign has with others , such as syntagmatic and paradigmatic relations?

【答案】 In Saussure‟s view, language is a system of signs, each of which consists of two parts: “signified” （concept ） and “signifier”（sound image） . And the relationship between these two parts is arbitrary. Therefore the linguist cannot attempt to explain individual signs in a piecemeal fashion. Instead he must try to find the value of a sign from its relations to others, or rather, its position in the system.

The two principal types of relations which Saussure identified are Syntagmatic and Paradigmatic relations. The syntagmatic relation is a relation between one item and others in a sequence, or between elements which are all present. The paradigmatic （or associative） relation 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. They can substitute for each other without violating syntactic rules.

The syntagmatic and paradigmatic relations together, like the two axes of a coordinate, determine the identity of a linguistic sign. Syntagms and paradigms provide a structural context within which signs make sense; they are the structural forms through which signs are organized into codes.

12．What are the major types of semantic Changes?

There are mainly three kinds of semantic changes, namely, broadening, narrowing, and 【答案】

meaning shift. Class shift and folk etymology also contribute to change in meaning.

（1）Broadening

Broadening is a process to extend or elevate the meaning from its originally specific sense to a relatively general one. For instance , the word holiday used to mean“holy day‟‟in religious English. Today it means“a day for rest‟‟regardless of its religious nature.

（2）Narrowing

Contrary to broadening, the original meaning of a word can be narrowed or restricted to a specific sense. A typical example is the word meat which originally meant “ food”. In the course of time, the range of meaning was narrowed to mean specifically “ the flesh of animals used as food”.

（3 ） Meaning shift

All semantic changes involve meaning shift. Yet, in its narrow sense, meaning shift refers to the change of meaning, which has nothing to do with generalization or restriction. What makes the meaning of a word different is its departure from its original domain as a result of its metaphorical usage. For instance , the word bead originally means “prayer”, but later it refers to “the prayer bead”, the visible manifestation of a prayer, finally “small, ball-shaped piece of glass, metal or wood”.

（4）Class shift

By shifting the word class one can change the meaning of a word from a concrete entity or notion to a process or attribution. This process of word formation is also known as zero-derivation, or conversion. The word engineer as a noun means “a person trained in a branch of engineering”，but it means “to act as an engineer” or “to plan, to maneuver” when used as a verb.

（5）Folk etymology

It refers to a change in form of a word or phrase resulting from an incorrect popular notion of the origin or meaning of the term or from the influence of more familiar terms mistakenly taken to be analogous. As a result of this modification, the word sparrowgrass in English derived from asparagus;