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一、Explain-the-fllowing-terms

1． Lexical relations

【答案】 There are several types of lexical relations concerning the sense of the words. Those are synonymy , antonymy, hyponymy, polysemy, homonymy, and so on. （a ） Synonymy refers to the sameness relation ; “autum”, and “full ” are synonyms , for example , （b ） Antonymy refers to the oppositeness relation ; for example , “buy” and “sell ” are antonyms , （c ） Hyponymy refers to the inclusiveness relation; for example, “apple” is a hyponym of “fruit”, （d ） Polysemy means one word that has more than one related meaning ，and “bank”，as an example , is a polysemous word. （e ） Homonymy refers to the relation of two different words which are identical either in sound, or spelling, or both, such as “bow” （bau ） an d “bow” （b əu ）.

2． Linguistic relativity

【答案】 This is one of two points in Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. It states that similarity between languages is relative , the greater their structural differentiation is , the more diverse their conceptualization of the world is. For example, not every language has the same set of words for the colors ; in Spanish there is no word that corresponds to the English meaning of “blue”.

3． 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.

4． Duality

【答案】Duality refers to the fact that in all languages so far investigated there are two levels of structure or patterning. At the first , higher level , language is analyzed in terms of combinations of meaningful units ; at the second, lower level, it is seen as a sequence （such as morphemes, words etc.）

of segments which lack any meaning in themselves, but which combine to form units of meaning. For example , a syllable is the smallest unit that is normally spoken by itself, and scores of syllables become the carriers of hundreds of meaningful segments of words that are called morphemes.

5． Syllable

【答案】 Syllable : It refers to a unit of spoken language that is bigger than a speech sound. It consists of one or more vowel sounds alone or of a syllabic consonant alone or of either with one or more consonant sounds preceding or following.

6． 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”.

7． 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.

8． Arbitrariness

【答案】 Arbitrariness : Arbitrariness refers to the fact that the forms of linguistic signs have no natural relationship to their meaning. Arbitrariness of language makes it potentially creative , a conventionality of language makes a language be passed from generation to generation. For example, it is unable to explain why a book is called a /buk/ and a pen a /pen/.

二、Essay-question

9． How do you compare the traffic light system with a human linguistic system?

【答案】 Both the traffic light system and human linguistic system can symbolize some information in communication whereas the linguistic system is more complicated. However , the linguistic system has several distinctive features no other systems have , including the traffic light system.

（1）Language is arbitrary which means that there is no logical connection between meanings and sounds. But in traffic light system , there are direct logical connections between the light signals and their meanings.

（2）Language is hierarchical, thafs to say linguistic system has two levels of structures, such that units of the primary level are composed of elements of the secondary level and each of the two levels has its own principles of organization. However, the traffic light system has no hierarchical system and the structure is composed by a single level.

（3）Language is productive. By creativity we mean language is resourceful because of its duality and its excursiveness. Because of duality, speaker is able to combine the basic linguistic units to form an infinite set of sentences, most of which are never before produced or heard. But there is no recursive nature in traffic light system which means that it can not produce new meaning.

10．It has been observed that women tend to approximate more closely to the standard language than men do. Why do you think this is so?

【答案】 Language is a social, value-loaded practice, which reflects an intricate network of social, political , cultural, and age relationships within a society.

Women‟s speech closely approaches the standard variety than the speech of men , this has been explained in terms of a greater consciousness of status on the part of women. Women are more usually more status-conscious than men in the English-speaking world , they are aware of their low status in society and, as a result, use more standard speech forms in their attempt to claim equality or achieve

high social status. In a sense , they are up in arms against men's society. The status of men has been traditionally defined by their occupation and wealth , while women have had to find other ways of establishing their position and one of these has been their speech.

A second explanation relates to the ways in which society treats women. Women are expected to behave better than men, traditionally, just as society has been harsher on women with regard to such vices as promiscuity and drunkenness，a better standard of language may have been required.

A third explanation is that, by using standard or polite forms, a woman is trying to protect her face. In other words , a woman claims more status in society. Her greater use of standard forms may also imply that she does not attend solely to her own face needs but also to those of the people she is interacting with, thus avoiding disagreement and seeking agreement and rapport.

11．List different types of Speech presentation and Thought presentation.

【答案】（1） Speech presentation:

Direct speech （DS ） : With the direct speech, what the character said is in its fullest form and with quotation marks.

Indirect speech （IS ） : The propositional content of what the speaker said is presented, but it is not stated in the original words.

Narrator‟s representation of speech acts （NRSA ） : We don‟t know what the speaker said, and all we know is that he used the speech act of doing something. It can be regarded as a summary of a longer piece of discourse and give more background information than indirect speech.

Narrator‟s representation of speech （NRS ） : It is a sentence which merely tells us that speech occurred , and which does not even specify the speech act involved.

（2） Thought presentation : The categories used by novelists to represent the thoughts of their characters are exactly the same as those used to represent a speech.

Direct thought （DT ） : DT tends to be used for presenting conscious, deliberative thought.

Free indirect thought （FIT ）: It refers to a kind of thought presentation between DT and IT, which is certainly not DT，but takes on some features of the thoughts in the character‟s mind.

12．In what way are language and computer related , and how has their relationship affected language learning?

【答案】 With the development of the computer technology and internet system, more and more people touched upon the computer field. Computer has been used in the classroom for foreign language teaching and learning. CAI stands for computer-assisted instruction, which means the use of a computer in a teaching program. CAL stands for computer-assisted learning, which means the use of computer in both teaching and learning. Following CAI and CAL , CALL , acronym for Computer Assisted Language Learning, refers to the use of a computer in the teaching or learning of a second or foreign language. If CAI or CAL deals with teaching and learning in general, then CALL deals with language teaching and learning in particular. CALL provided a beneficial and convenient approach for language learners to improve their ability. For example, students can gain a quick access to any materials on the internet. The computer is not an individual resource for each student any more, instead, it is a trigger for interaction between the students and it is the focus for group work which allows some activities , such as the activity role-play interaction. The use of multimedia technology enables different information types to be simultaneously available on the computer, as a result, spoken language and moving video are produced other than mere presentation of written sentences.