当前位置：问答库＞考研试题

一、Explain-the-fllowing-terms

1． 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.

2． 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”.

3． Assimilation

【答案】 It is a process by which one sound takes on some or all the characteristics of a neighboring sound. It is often used synonymously with coarticulation. Nasalization, dentalization and，velarization are all instances of assimilation. There are two possibilities of assimilation: if a following sound is influencing a preceding sound, it is regressive assimilation;

the converse process, in which a preceding sound is influencing a following sound, is known as progressive assimilation. For example, in “mink”，“n”，which is originally pronounced aswill be velarized by the following “k”/k/，and therefore the word will be pronounced as

4． Diglossia

【答案】 When two languages or language varieties exist together in a community and each one is used for different purposes, this is called diglossia. Usually, the more standard variety can be called the high variety or H-variety , which is used in government , the media , education , and for religious services. The other one is usually a non-prestige variety, the low variety or L-variety used in the family, with friends, when shopping, etc.

5． IC analysis

【答案】 IC analysis: IC analysis （immediate constituent analysis） refers to the analysis of a sentence in terms of its immediate constituents---word groups （or phrases ） , which are in turn analyzed into the immediate constituents of their own , and the process goes on until the ultimate constituents are reached. In practice, for the sake of convenience, we usually stop at the level of word.

6． Speech and thought presentation

【答案】 Speech and thought presentation: These two terms are used for the language in fiction, referring to the presenting forms for indicating the narrator‟s speech or thought. The speech presentation may have the following four possibilities : direct speech , indirect speech , narrator‟s representation of speech acts, and narrator‟s representation of speech. The Thought presentation can also be categorized

into : narrator‟s representation of thought , narrator‟s representation of thought acts , indirect thought , free indirect thought, and direct thought.

7． 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.

8． MT

【答案】 It refers to machine translation, the use of machine （usually computers） to translate texts from one natural language to another

二、Essay-question

9． What is the relationship between speech event and speech act? （Explain with an example）.

【答案】 Speech act refers to an utterance as a functional unit in communication. There are many kinds of speech acts, such as requests, orders, commands, complaints, and promises. A speech act that is performed indirectly is sometimes known as an indirect speech act. Speech event refers to a particular instance when people exchange speech , e.g. an exchange of greetings , an enquiry , a conversation. Speech events are governed by the rules and norms for the use of speech, which may be different in different communities. The structure of speech events varies considerably according to the genre they belong to.

Both speech act and speech event are concerned about the actual utterance of sentences. But speech act deals with a particular utteranceh that has locutionary act, illocutionary act and perlocutionary act. Speech event is related to certain speech situations that are composed of many utterances, though may be not speech act.

For example, when you ask for the time at a bus stop with the sentence, “What time is it?” your meaning is that you want to know the time. This speech act takes place within a speech event, which could be called asking for the time. Such an event is very brief and usually has three speech acts: asking the time, giving the time, and thinking.

Speech events usually take place within the larger context of speech situations. Based on the differences between speech act and speech event, the former is usually studied in pragmatics while the latter is the focus of socio-linguistics.

10．Shakespeare has Juliet say:

Whats in a name? That which we call a rose.

By any other name would smell as sweet.

What do the above lines say to you about the relationship between the form and meaning （sounds ）

（concept ） of a word in spoken language? Explain with positive evidence as well as exceptions from the English language.

The lines said above show that the relationship between the form （sounds ） and meaning 【答案】

（concept ） of a word in spoken language is arbitrary in nature. That means there is no logical connection between forms （sounds ） and meaning （concept ） . Different sounds are used to refer to the same object in different languages.

Sounds are just symbols; they are associated with objects, actions, ideas, etc. by convention. In this example, the rose can be called by many names in different languages but its smell never changes. Another example, different languages have different forms for referring to “dog” in English, such as Chinese “狗 ”，French “chien （n.m. ） 5”While language is arbitrary by nature, there are some （gou ）

exceptions as well. The best examples in English are the onomatopoetic words and compound words. For example, some onomatopoetic words “rumble”，“ crash”， “crackle” “ bang” are uttered like the sounds they describe, thus seem to have a natural basis. Besides, some compound words are also not entirely arbitrary. For example while “photo” and “copy” are both arbitrary , the compound word “photocopy” is not entirely arbitrary, thus seem to be motivated. Anyhow, non-arbitrary words make up only a small percentage of the vocabulary of a language.

11．Advantages and Disadvantages of Componential Analysis.

【答案】 The componential analysis is a way to analyze the lexical meaning , which treats the meaning of a word as a composite of some smaller semantic units , which are called semantic components , or semantic features.

One advantage of componential analysis is that by specifying the semantic features of certain words, it will be possible to show how these words are related in meaning. For example，the two words “man” and “woman” share the features of +HUMAN , + ADULT, and + ANIMATE, but differ in the features of MALE. Additionally , the sense relations could be better accounted for. Two words , or two expressions , which have the same semantic components, will be synonymous with each other; words which have a contrasting component are antonyms; and words which have all the semantic components of another are hyponyms of the latter.

The semantic components are also able to explain sense relations between sentences, for example, the contradictory relationship, and the entailing relationship.

However , as have been found, there are also difficulties in the approach to analyze the meaning of a word in terms of semantic components. First, many words are polysemous. They have more than one meaning ; consequently they will have different sets of semantic components. Second, some semantic components are seen as binary taxonomies. However , sometimes the distinction to differentiate two semantic components such as “ADULT” and “YOUNG”, is rather vague. Third, apart from the neatly organized parts of the vocabulary, there are words whose semantic components are difficult to ascertain. For example, the semantic components themselves, like HUMAN, ADULT, are not ordinary words of English ; they belong to a meta-language. To someone who does not know the meta-language , the semantic components explain nothing.

12．Krashen ’s Input Hypothesis and Language Learning.

【答案】 Input hypothesis claims that “Human acquire language in only one way~~by understanding messages or by receiving 'comprehensible input,, ?. According to Krashen, input that is useful for L2 acquisition must be neither too difficult nor too easy to understand and ought to be tuned just right to learner 9s current level , represented as i. In the course of acquiring the L2, learners progress from one level to another. The next level is called +Y\ For i +1 to occur, the input has to be slightly beyond the level at which learners are well proficient. The gap between i and / +1 is bridged by comprehensible input , which is the information drawn from the context and previous experience. Comprehensible input is considered both necessary and sufficient for L2 acquisition to occur and output plays little role. In other words, L2 learning takes place because the data to which learners are exposed contain comprehensible input.

According to Krashen's acquisition-learning hypothesis, there are two ways to approach language