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一、Explain-the-fllowing-terms

1． Interlanguage

【答案】 It refers to the type of language constructed by second or foreign language learners who are still in the process of learning a language. It‟s a language system between the target language and the learner‟s native language, and imperfect compared with the target language, but not mere translation from the learner^ native language. For example, when the Chinese student is learning English, he may make errors like “to touch the society”.

2． Functional Sentence Perspective （FSP ）

【答案】 It is a theory of linguistic analysis which refers to art analysis of utterances （or texts） in terms of the information they contain. The principle is that the role of each utterance part is evaluated for its semantic contribution to the whole.

3． Conversational implicature

【答案】 Conversational implicature refers to a type of implied meaning, which is deduced on the basis of the conventional meaning of words together with the context, under the guidance of the CP and its maxims. For example, the implicature of He is a tiger could probably be he has some characteristics of a tiger.

4． Speech community

【答案】 Speech community is a group of people who share a set of norms and expectations regarding the use of language. Speech communities can be members of a profession with a specialized jargon , distinct social groups like high school students or hip-pop fans. In addition, online and other mediated communities, such as many internet forums, often constitute speech communities. Members of speech communities will often develop slang or jargon to serve the group's special purposes and priorities.

5． 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.

6． Design features

【答案】 Design features : It refer to the defining properties of human language that tell the difference between human language and any system of animal communication.

7． 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.

8． 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.

二、Essay-question

9． When a teacher says “It ’s so hot in here.” during a class, what does she probably mean? Refer to the theory of pragmatics when you analyze the situation.

【答案】 This utterance would be semantically ambiguous if it was seen isolated without any context of situation. Its interpretation has to rely on the context in which it was uttered.

There could be generally two types of situation in which this utterance could happen. One may be that it is summer; the teacher just came into the class and was sweating heavily. The other may be that in class the students are quite active towards the questions or problems the teacher has posed, for example, discussing in group, or debating in a large scale.

According to the cooperative principle, in our conversation, in order to be cooperative, that is, to make his intentions to be known by the hearer , the speaker will try to make his conversational contribution such as is require, at the stage at which it occurs.

Therefore , according to the third maxim of cooperative principle , RELATION , which say s “be relevant”，the utterance could be interpreted differently as follows:

In the first situation, when the students hear the teacher saying “it‟s so hot in here”，they would probably assume that the teacher is obeying the Cooperative Principle, and what he says is relevant to the context, which is that the teacher is sweating, and maybe accompanied by fanning himself with his hand. Therefore, what the teacher means is probably that the temperature is high. What5s more, if the windows in the classroom are closed, this utterance will go further to be an implication of an request for opening the windows.

In the second situation , the students would assume that the teacher should have observed the maxim of relation, since it is under normal circumstances. Given the context in which the students are discussing or debating about certain questions furiously, the hearer would tend to interpret the teacher‟s utterance as: “You are discussing （or debating） so actively.‟‟，which implies a praise for the active participation of the students in class activity.

10．What kind of linguistic phenomenon can you identify in the following dialogue? Define , analize and explain the phenomenon.

甲：上车请买票。

乙：三张天安门。

甲：您拿好。

【答案】 This conversation consists of the linguistic phenomenon which is called the “Cooperative Principle”，proposed and formulated by P. Grice , based on such a pragmatic hypothesis that the

participants must first of all be willing to cooperate; otherwise, it would not be possible to carry on talk. It goes as follows:

Make your conversational contribution such as required at the stage at which it occurs by the accepted purpose or direction of the talk exchange in which you are engaged. To be more specific, there are four maxims under this general principle:

The maxim of quantity

a ）Make your contribution as informative as is required （for the current purpose of the exchange）. b ）Do not make your contribution more informative than is required.

The maxim of quality

a ）Do not say what you believe to be false.

b ）Do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence.

The maxim of relation

Be relevant.

The maxim of manner

a ）Avoid obscurity of expression.

b ）Avoid ambiguity.

c ）Be brief （avoid unnecessary prolixity） •

d ）Be orderly.

There are circumstances where speakers may not follow the maxims of the cooperative principle. For example , in this conversation , the speaker may violate the maxim expectations by using an expression like “ 三张天安门” in response to a question. Although it is typically “more informative than is required” in the context, it is naturally interpreted as communicating more than is said （i.e. the speaker knows the answer）. This typical reaction （i. e. there must be something “special” here） of listeners to any apparent violation of the maxims is actually the key to the notion of conversational implicature. When we violate any of these maxims, our language becomes indirect. In this way, we can convey more than is literally said.

11．Make comments upon the relationship between arbitrariness, convention, and motivation.

【答案】 Arbitrariness of language makes it potentially creative ; a conventionality of language makes a language be passed from generation to generation, and makes learning a language laborious. The link between a linguistic sign and its meaning is a matter of convention.

The terms motivation and constraint describe the extent to which the signified determines the signifies The form of the signifier of a generalized car or a traffic sign is determined by the convention that is accepted by the users of the code.

Motivated signs are iconic signs; they are characterized by a natural relation between signifier and signified. A portrait or a photograph is iconic , in that the signifier represents the appearance of the signified. The faithfulness or the accuracy of the representation —the degree to which the signified is re-presented in the signifier —is an inverse measure of how conventionalized it is. It is important to recognize that （i ） in signs of high motivation, the signified is the determining influence, and （ii ） in signs of low motivation, convention determines the form of the signifier. Therefore, convention plays a key role in our understanding of any sign. Convention serves as the social dimension of signs. We may not understand the unmotivated verbal sign for car the French use, but we understand the road signs in France in so far as they are iconic.