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一、Explain-the-fllowing-terms

1． Polysemy

【答案】 Polysemy means a single word having several or many meanings. According to Crystal: Polysemy is a term used in semantic analysis to refer to a lexical item which has a range of different meanings. Polysemic words are signs of an advanced culture. Polysemy is also an essential feature of a l anguage‟s economy and efficiency.

2． Locutionary Act, Illocutinary Act and Perlocutionary Act

【答案】 According to Austin , a speaker might be performing three acts simultaneously when speaking.

A locutionary act is the uttering of words, phrases, and clauses, which conveys meaning by giving out meaningful sounds. Therefore, when somebody says „„Morning‟‟，we can ask a question like “What did he do?‟‟，and the answer could be “He offered a greeting.”

An illocutionary act is the act of expressing the speaker‟s intention; it is the act performed in saying something. Therefore, for the same example，we can say “He meant it as a greeting”.

A perlocutionary act is the effect of the utterance. Thus，by saying “Morning!” the speaker has made it clear that he wants to keep friendly relations with the hearer.

3． Phatic function （ communion ）

【答案】 Phatic function: The phatic function of language refers to the use of the language which often consists of small , seemingly meaningless expression for setting up a certain atmosphere or maintaining social contacts rather than for exchanging information or ideas. For example , greetings , farewells , and comments on the weather in English could serve this function.

4． Displacement

Language can be used to refer to what is present, what is absent, what happens at present, 【答案】

what happened in the past, what will happen in the future or what happens in a far-away place. This property of language enables language users to overcome the barriers caused by time and place. For example , we can talk about Sapir, who is already dead; we can even talk about next week, which is in the future.

5． Compound

【答案】 Compound refers to those words that consist of more than one lexical morpheme, or the way to join two separate words to produce a single form, such as the compound words “blackboard” and “well-known”.

6． CAI and CAL

【答案】 Computer-assisted instruction （CAI ） means the use of a computer in a teaching program. This includes:

a. A teaching program which is presented by a computer in a sequence. The student responds on the computer , and the computer indicates whether the responses are correct or incorrect.

b. The use of computers to monitor student progress, to direct students into appropriate lessons, material , etc. This is also called computer-managed instruction.

Parallel to CAI , there is CAL （Computer-Assistant Learning ） . The former aims at seeing educational problems on the part of the teacher, whereas the latter emphasizes the use of a computer in both teaching and learning in order to help the learner achieve educational objectives. The first kind of CAL programs which were developed reflected principles similar to programmed instruction. The computer leads the student through learning task step-by-step, asking questions to check comprehension. Depending on the studenfs response, the computer gives the student further practice or progresses to new material （see branching ）. In more recent CAL courseware students are able to interact with the computer and perform higher-level tasks while exploring a subject or problem.

7． Corpus

【答案】 Corpus is a collection of linguistic data , either compiled as written texts or as a transcription of recorded speech. The main purpose of a corpus is to verify a hypothesis about language~~for example , to determine how the application of a particular sound , word , or syntactic construction varies.

8． 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.

二、Essay-question

9． Research has found that two-year-old English children produce negative sentences such as a） tod ） , but note）:

a ）He doesn‟t like cabbage.

b ）Doesn‟t like cabbage.

c ）Him no like cabbage.

d ）No like cabbage.

e ）*Him doesn‟t like cabbage.

How can you account for this?

【答案】 This founding firstly demonstrates one point that the acquisition of auxiliary verbs comes later than that of comparatively “simpler” morphemes such as pronouns. Therefore, it is unUkely for children to make mistakes as shown in e） . The reason for this phenomenon could be explained by the fact that in the early stage of children^ language acquisition, the speech at first only contains content words and lacks the function elements.

This founding also shows that children have a certain process of learning the negative form. There are generally three stages.

1） At first, the negative element is not part of the structure of the sentences. It is simply attached to the beginning, as shown in d）.

2 ） The negative element is inserted into the sentence. The additional negative forms don't and can't are used, and with no and not, begin to be placed in front of the verb rather than at the beginning, as shown in c ）.

3） Children begin to produce the appropriate part of do, be or the model verbs, to suit the person or tense, as shown in b） and a）.

10．Disambiguate the following sentences, using the tree diagram with labels or analyzing their syntactic structures.

（1）Times flies like an arrow.

（2）We got down from the duck.

（3）Old men and women will be served first.

（4）John passed the hammer and saw through the window.

（5）Who would you like to visit?

【答案】（1）

（2）

（a ）The word “down” could be seen as an adverbial, which means “from the higher position to a lower one”.

（b ）The word “down” could be also seen as a noun, which means “the fluffy feathers forming the first plumage of a young bird”.

（3）

（4）