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一、Explain-the-fllowing-terms

1． 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.

2． 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.

3． Linguistic determinism

【答案】 Linguistic determinism , is one of the two points of Sapir-Whorf hypothesis , and has developed into the strong version of this hypothesis. It could be summarized as follows: （1） One‟s thinking is completely determined by his native language because one cannot but perceive the world in terms of the categories and distinctions encoded in the language. （2） The categories and distinctions encoded in one language system are unique to that system and incommensurable with those of other systems. Therefore , the following statement could represent this hypothesis 4tIf Aristotle had spoken Chinese , his logic would have been different”.

4． Predication analysis

【答案】 Predication analysis is an important step in the analysis of sentential meaning. The predication is the common category shared by propositions, questions, commands, etc. Such analysis is to break down the sentence into its smaller constituents: argument and predicate. The predicate is the major or pivotal element governing the argument. The argument is the logical participant.

5． 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.

6． 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.

7． figure-ground alignment

【答案】 Figure-ground alignment seems to apply to space with the ground as the prepositional object and the preposition expressing the spatial relational configuration. It also applies to human perception of moving objects. Since the moving object is typically the most prominent one, because it is moving , it is typically the figure, while the remaining stimuli constitute the ground.

8． 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.

二、Essay-question

9． What is communicative competence?

【答案】 Communicative competence includes:

（1）Knowledge of the grammar and vocabulary of the language;

（2）knowledge of rules of speaking （e.g. knowing how to begin and end conversations, knowing what topics may be talked about in different types of speech events , knowing which address forms should be used with different persons one speaks to and in different situations ）;

（3）knowing how to use and respond to different types of speech acts, such as requests, apologies, thanks , and invitations;

（4）knowing how to use language appropriately.

When someone wishes to communicate with others, they must recognize the social setting, their relationship to the other person （s ） , and the types of language that can be used for a particular occasion. They must also be able to interpret written or spoken sentences within the total context in which they are used, or marked expression without reason; on the hearer‟s side, if the speaker used a prolix or marked expression, he did not mean the same as he would have had he used the unmarked expression. That is to say, in the normal situation, in a bus stop as the example above has shown, the intention of that the speaker asks others whether they wear the watch or not is not merely to care about the recipient has a watch or not, but has some other reason, because it would be bizarre to ask a stranger in the bus stop about such a personal staff.

Therefore , the hearer has to assume that the expression is related to the situation , and this expression is not what it literally means. Following this, the hearer reaches a connection between the bus stop and the watch, which is the time. As a consequence, he knows what the speaker intends is the inquiring of the time.

10．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.

11．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,