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一、Explain-the-fllowing-terms

1． 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.

2． Language acquisition

【答案】 It refers to the gradual development of ability in a language by using it naturally in communicative situations.

3． Transformational-Generative grammar

【答案】 Transformational-generative grammar is proposed by Noam Chomsky. He postulated a syntactic base of language （called deep structure ） , which consists of a series of phrase-structure rewrite rules, i.e., a series of （possibly universal） rules that generates the underlying phrase-structure of a sentence. The end result of a transformational-generative grammar is a surface structure that is identical to an actual sentence of a language , after the mediating of a series of rules （called transformations ） that act upon the deep structures.

4． Achievement test

【答案】 Achievement test is a test which measures how much of a language someone has learned with reference to a particular course of study or program of instruction.

5． Audiolingual method

【答案】 Audiolingual method refers to the teaching of a second language through imitation , repetition , and reinforcement. It emphasizes the teaching of speaking and listening before reading and writing and the use of mother tongue in the classroom is not allowed.

6． Hyponymy

Hyponymy. It refers to the sense relationship between a more general, more inclusive and 【答案】

a more specific word. The word which is more general in meaning is called the superordiante, and the more specific words are called its hyponyms. For example , the hyponymy relationship could be established between “animal” and “rabbit”.

7． CALL

【答案】 It is the abbreviation of computer-assisted language learning, which refers to the use of a computer in the teaching or learning of a second or foreign language. In this kind of CALL programs, the computer leads the student through a learning task step-by-step , asking question to check

comprehension. Depending on the student^ response, the computer gives the student further practice or progresses to new material.

8． The London School of Linguistics

【答案】 The London School generally refers to the kind of linguistic scholarship in England. The man who turned linguistics proper into a recognized distinct academic subject in Britain was J.R. Firth.

二、Essay-question

9． Semantic change plays a very important role in widening the vocabulary of a language.

【答案】 Semantic change plays a very important role in widening the vocabulary of a language. Since language is symbolic, each word serves as a symbol in relation to a specific meaning. In this sense, we need infinite numbers of words or symbols to code the physical entities and our experiential concepts. But this is impossible for communication. Therefore, users give a new concept to an old form, thus the meaning of a form is multiplied. There are three kinds of semantic changes , namely , broadening , narrowing , and meaning shift. Class shift and folk etymology also contribute to change in meaning.

Semantic broadening refers to the process in which the meaning of a word becomes more general or inclusive than its historically earlier denotation. For example, the word holiday used to mean “holy day” in religious English. It means “a day for rest” today regardless of its religious nature , and hence its meaning is widened.

Semantic narrowing is a process in which the meaning of a word becomes less general or inclusive than its historically earlier meaning. For example, the Old English word “hund” （“hound”）was once used for any breed of dog; whereas in Modem English its meaning has been narrowed to a particular kind of dog.

Semantic shift is a process of semantic change in which a word loses its former meaning and acquires a new , sometimes related ，meaning. For example , the word “silly” meant “happy” in Old English , and “naive” in Middle English，but “foolish” in Modem English.

10．Describe the process of language perception, comprehension and production.

【答案】 From the perspective of psycholinguistic analysis, language use in terms of perception, comprehension and production follows a certain pattern which involves the coordination of various language centers.

When we speak , words are drawn from Wernicke's area and transferred to Broca's area , which determines the details of their forms and pronunciation. The appropriate instructions are then sent to the motor area which controls the vocal tract to physically articulate the words.

When we hear something and try to comprehend it , the stimulus from the auditory cortex is transmitted to Wernicke's area, where it is then interpreted.

When we perceive a visual image, a message is sent to the angular gyrus, where it is converted into a visual pattern.

11．What is the relationship between language and literature?

【答案】 Literature is closely related to language. Generally speaking, it is marked by careful use of language, such as creative metaphors, elegant syntax, and so on. It reaches to human beings mostly via language. It could be seen as a language in use. The existence of literature owes a lot to language. The language used in literature is quite often different from language used in other fields , such as everyday use.

In linguistics, the term “genre” is used to refer not only to types of literary works but also to any

identifiable type of discourse , whether literary or not. Therefore , literature could be viewed as a particular range of genres or discourse types; that is, as a particular subset of the repertory of genres, existing in a given speech community. For example, written literature is discourse that may be read at a far distance in time a place from its origin. More generally speaking, literary discourse has many other general linguistic characteristics , such as certain kinds of phonological , syntactic , and semantic phenomena , occuring with much greater frequency in literature than in other kinds of discourse.

What‟s more, studying the language of literature text as language can enhance our appreciation of the different systems of language organization, because the literary texts often reveal the nature of the language in which they are written.

12．Words in our mental lexicon are known to be related to one another. Discuss the relationships between words, using examples from the English language.

【答案】 Words are in different sense relations with each other in our mental lexicon. There are generally three kinds of sense relationships recognized , namely , sameness relation , oppositeness relation and inclusiveness relation. Synonymy refers to the sameness or close similarity of meaning, and words that are close in meaning are called synonyms. Total synonymy is rare, generally synonyms can be divided into several groups: dialectal synonyms like British English autumn and American English fall ; stylistic synonyms like child and offspring ; synonyms that differ in their emotive or evaluative meaning like collaborate and accomplices collocational synonyms like accuse and charge; semantically different synonyms like amaze and astound. Antonymy refers to oppositeness of meaning. There are three main sub-types: gradable antonymy in which the members of a pair differ in terms of degree，like long and short ; complementary antonymy which is a matter of either one or the other , like alive and dead ; converse antonymy which shows the reversal of a relationship between two entities，like teacher and student.Hyponymy refers to the sense relation between a more general, more inclusive word and a more specific word. The word that is more general in meaning is called the superordinate, and the more specific words are called its hyponyms. Hyponyms of the same superordinate are co-hyponyms to each other. For example under the superordinate flower there are many hyponyms like rose, tulip, lily, etc. These members of the same flower class are co-hyponyms.

Another common relationship is homonymy which refers to the phenomenon that words having different meaning have the same form, i.e., different words are identical in sound or spelling, or in both. When two words are identical in sound, they are homophones, like knight and night; when two words are identical in spelling, they are homographs, like lead v. and lead n.; when two words are identical in both sound and spelling, they are complete homonyms, \ikt fast adj. mdfast v.

13．Please list and explain the 7 types of meaning recognized by G. Leech.

【答案】 The seven types of meaning were first postulated by G. Leech. They are respectively illustrated as follows:

（1）Conceptual meaning, which refers to logical, cognitive, or denotative content. This type of meaning is “denotative” in that it is concerned with the relationship between a word and the thing it denotes , or refers to.

（2）Connotative meaning, what is communicated by virtue of what language refers to. It refers to some additional, especially emotive, meaning.

（3）Social meaning, referring to what is communicated of the social circumstances of language use.

（4）Affective meaning, which refers to what is communicated of the feelings and attitudes of the