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一、Explain-the-fllowing-terms

1． Contrastive analysis

【答案】 Contrastive analysis is an approach to analysis of second language acquisition, based on a belief that a more effective teaching pedagogy would come out when the similarities and differences between native language and target language are taken into consideration. By such an analysis , it is supposed that some leaning difficulties could be predicted in terms of language transfer.

2． Categorization

Categorization is the process of classifying our experiences into different categories based 【答案】

on commonalities and differences. There are three levels in categories: the basic level，the superordinate level ，and the subordinate level.

3． 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.

4． 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 o f thought acts , indirect thought , free indirect thought, and direct thought.

5． Foregrounding

【答案】 This term is meant for what is unusual, attractive, unconventional, salient. In literature, foregrounding is often achieved through unconventional expressions which attract the readers9 attention. The main manifestations of foregrounding are deviation and parallelism.

6． Meaning shift

Meaning shift: In a narrow sense, meaning shift is used to refer to the change of meaning 【答案】

that has nothing to do with generalization or restriction such as broadening or narrowing of meaning.

7． Semantic field

【答案】 It is the organization of related words and expressions into a system which shows their relationship to one another. For example, kinship terms such as father, mother, brother, sister, uncle, aunt belong to a semantic field whose relevant features include generation , sex , membership of the father's or mother's side of the family.

8． 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.

9． Distinctive features of speech sounds

【答案】 The distinctive feature is a property which distinguishes one phoneme from another. For example , “voicing” is a distinctive feature, since it plays an important role in distinguishing obstruents in English.

10．Subordinate construction

【答案】 Subordinate constructions are one of the two subtypes of endocentric constructions. Those in which there is only one head , with the head being dominant and the other constituents dependent , are subordinate constructions.

二、Short-answer-questions

11．Why do people take duality as one of the important design features of human language? Can you tell us what language will be if it has no such design feature?

【答案】 Duality makes our language productive. A large number of different units can be formed out of a small number of elements——for instance, tens of thousands of words out of a small set of sounds. And out of the huge number of words, there can be astronomical number of possible sentences and phrases, which in turn can combine to form unlimited number of texts. Most animal communication systems do not have this design feature of human language.

If language had no such design feature , then it would be like animal communicational system which consists of only a number of basic sounds and this would be highly limited. Then we would not be able to produce a very large number of sound combinations （e.g. words ） , which are distinct in meaning. In other words, the number of messages one can send would be restricted to the number of basic sounds.

12．Illustrate the relationship between morpheme and allomorph by examples.

【答案】 Morpheme is the smallest meaningful linguistic unit of language , not divisible or analyzable into smaller forms. What is usually considered a single word in English may be composed of one or more morphemes. Take disagreeable for example, it contains three morphemes, dis-, agree and -able. A morpheme may take various shapes or forms. For instance, -ion, -tion, -sion and -ation are the positional variants of the same suffix. They do not differ in meaning or function but show a slight difference in sound depending on the final phoneme of the preceding verb. They are called allomorphs. So an allomorph is any of the variant forms of a morpheme as conditioned by position or adjoining sounds.

13．What are the criteria used in phonetic description of vowels?

【答案】 As the vowels can not be described in the same way as the consonants , a system of cardinal vowels has been suggested to get out of this problem. The cardinal vowels are a set of vowel qualities arbitrarily defined , fixed and unchanging , intended to provide a frame of reference for the description of the actual vowels of existing languages. The cardinal vowels are abstract concept. The cardinal vowel diagram is a set of hypothetical positions for vowels used as reference points.

The description of English vowels needs to fulfill four basic requirements : （1） the height of tongue raising ; the position of the highest part of the tongue （high , middle or low）（2）（front , central, back ） ; the length or tenseness of the vowel （tense vs. lax or long vs. short） ; （4） lip-rounding （3）

（rounded vs. unrounded） . For example, [i:]: high, front, tense, unrounded vowel.

[u]: high, back, lax, rounded vowel.

14．What is your understanding of Systemic Functional Grammar?

【答案】 Systemic functional grammar , developed by M.A.K. Halliday , is a socially oriented functional linguistic approach and one of the most influential linguistic theories in the twentieth century. Systemic functional grammar is based on two facts:

Language users are actually making choices in a set of systems and trying to realize different semantic functions in social interaction.

Language is inseparable from social activities of man. Thus, it takes actual uses of language as the object of study. One point to notice is that it takes clause as the basic unit. It consist of two inseparable parts : systemic grammar and functional grammar.

15．How do you understand syntagmatic and paradigmatic relations?

【答案】 In Saussure‟s view, language is a system of signs, each of which consists of two parts: signified and signifier. And the relationships between these two parts are arbitrary. Syntagmatic relation is a relation between elements that form part of the same form , sequence , construction , etc. e.g. between s, p, and r in a form such as spring, or between a subject and a verb in constructions such as Bill hunts. The syntagmatic relation is also called horizontal relation or chain relation. Paradigmatic relation is a relation holding between elements replaceable with each other at a particular place in a structure. The paradigmatic relation is also called vertical relation or choice relation.

16．How do the three branches of phonetics contribute to the study of speech sounds?

【答案】 Phonetics looks at speech sounds from three distinct but related points of view. First, it studies the sounds from the speaker‟s point of view , i.e. ，how a speaker uses his speech organs to articulate the sounds. Then, it looks at the sounds from the hearer s point of view, i.e., how the sounds are perceived by the hearer. Lastly, it studies the way sounds travel by looking at the sound waves, the physical means by which sounds are transmitted through the air from one person to another. These three branches of phonetics are labeled articulatory phonetics , auditory phonetics , and acoustic phonetics respectively.

三、Essay-question