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一、Explain-the-fllowing-terms

1． phoneme

Phoneme is a basic unit of phonological study, and it is an abstract collection of phonetic 【答案】

features which can distinguish meaning. For example, in English, is described as a phoneme.

2． Lexical relations

【答案】 There are several types of lexical relations concerning the sense of the words. Those are synonymy , antonymy, hyponymy, polysemy, homonymy, and so on. （a ） Synonymy refers to the sameness relation ; “autum”, and “full ” are synonyms , for example , （b ） Antonymy refers to the oppositeness relation ; for example , “buy” and “sell ” are antonyms , （c ） Hyponymy refers to the inclusiveness relation; for example, “apple” is a hyponym of “fruit”, （d ） Polysemy means one word that has more than one related meaning ，and “bank”，as an example , is a polysemous word. （e ） Homonymy refers to the relation of two different words which are identical either in sound, or spelling, or both, such as “bow” （bau ） and “bow” （b əu ）.

3． 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.

4． 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.

5． Entailment

【答案】 It refers to the relation between propositions one of which necessarily follows from the other. If X is true, Y is necessarily true，and if X is false, Y may be true or false. For example, the sentence “He has been to France” entails “He has been to Europe”.

6． grammatical word

【答案】 It refers to those which mainly work for constructing group , phrase , clause , clause complex , or even text , such as , conjunctions , prepositions , articles , and pronouns. Grammatical words serve to link together different content parts. So they are also known as Function Words.

7． Open-class words

【答案】 Open-class words refer to words whose membership is in principle infinite or unlimited and with the emergence of new ideas , inventions , and so on ; new expressions are continually and constantly being added to the lexicon. For example , nouns , verbs , and adjectives all belong to this class.

8． Ferdinand de Saussure

【答案】 Ferdinand de Saussure is a Swiss linguist who is often described as “father of modem linguistics”. The great work , Course in General Linguistics , which was based on his lecture notes , marked the beginning of modem linguistics. Saussure^ idea on the arbitrary nature of sign , one the relational nature of linguistic units , on the distinction of langue and parole and of synchronic and diachronic linguistics, etc. pushed linguistics into a brand new stage.

9． Concatenation

【答案】 What makes a word separate from other words is that all the letters are lined up together with no intervening spaces. That is, in a word, all letters are concatenated. Sometimes new words can be made by concatenating two existing words—for example, “airline” is a concatenation of the words “air” and “line” into a new word.

10．Endocentric construction

【答案】 Endocentric construction : An endocentric construction is one whose distribution is functionally equivalent, or approaching equivalence, to that of one or more of its constituents, i.e. a word or a group of words , which serves as a definable center , or head. Hence an endocentric construction is also known as a headed construction. Noun phrases like “Lovely Lucy” are typical endocentric constructions.

二、Short-answer-questions

11．How well, in your opinion, does the word “communication ” represent the function of human language?

【答案】 We use language for an almost infinite number of purposes , from writing letters to gossiping with our friends , making speeches and talking to ourselves in the mirror. But the primary function of language is to transmit information and to convey commands, feelings and emotions. That is, language is a tool of communication. The term “communication” can be used to cover much of th e function of language. This function can be further divided into more specific functions, such as phatic function/communion, directive function , informative function , interrogative function , expressive function , evocative function, performative function etc.

12．What is the distinction between inflectional affixes and derivational affixes?

【答案】 The distinction between inflectional morphemes and derivational morphemes could be illustrated in the following four aspects.

Inflectional affixes very often only add a minute or delicate grammatical meaning to the stem, for instance , those inflectional affixes in words such as toys, walks, John's, etc. Therefore, they serve to produce different forms of a single word. In contrast , derivational affixes often change the lexical meaning , e.g. cite, citation; generate, generation.

Inflectional affixes do not change the word class of the word they attach to，such as flower, flowers ; whereas derivational affixes might or might not, such as the relation between small and smallness for the former, and that between brother and brotherhood for the latter.

Very often inflectional affixes are conditioned by non-semantic linguistic factors outside the word they attach to but within the phrase or sentence. Whereas, derivational affixes are more often based on simple meaning distinctions.

In English, inflectional affixes are mostly suffixes, which are always word final. But derivational affixes can be prefixes or suffixes.

13．Analyze the following dialogue with reference to Grice’s Cooperative Principle

A : Oh I like this popular song so much How about you?

B : I often hear classical music, especially, the symphonies composed by Beethoven His Symphony No.9 is my favorite.

【答案】 B has obviously violated Maxim of Relation: A was asking B‟s opinion about a particular popular song , but B‟s response was actually about classical music. By such a violation , B probably wanted to imply that he did not like that popular song.

14．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.

15．What is the difference between meaning, concept, connotation, and denotation?

【答案】 Meaning refers to the association of language symbols with the real world. There are many types of meanings according to different approaches. Concept is the impression of objects in peopled mind ; connotation , meaning the properties of the entity a word denotes , is the implied meaning , similar to implication and implicature ; denotation , like sense , is not directly related to objects , but makes the abstract assumption of the real world. For example, the denotation of human is any person such as John and Mary, and its connotation is “biped‟‟ „„featherless‟‟ „„rational‟‟ etc.

16．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】