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一、Explain-the-fllowing-terms

1． 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.

2． Textual function

【答案】 Textual function : The textual function is one of the three meta-functions language is composed of. It refers to the fact that language has mechanisms to make any stretch of spoken or written discourse into a coherent and unified text and make a living message different from a random list of sentences.

3． Concatenation

【答案】 What makes a word separate from other words is that all the letters are lined up together with no intervening spaces. That is, in a word, all letters are concatenated. Sometimes new words can be made by concatenating two existing words—for example, “airline” is a concatenation of the words “air” and “line” into a new word.

4． Denotation

【答案】 The core sense of a word or a phrase that relates it to phenomena in the real world. In the case of linguistic signs, the denotative meaning is what the dictionary attempts to provide. It is the literal meaning of a word, the dictionary meaning, opposite to connotation.

5． Coarticulation

Coarticulation refers to the phenomenon of sounds continually show the influence of their 【答案】

neighbors. For example , as in lamb , when a is followed by m , the velum will begin to lower itself during the articulation of a so that it is ready for the following nasal. When such simultaneous or overlapping articulations are involved, we call the process coarticulation. If the sound becomes more like the following sound, it is known as anticipatory coarticulation. If the sound displays the influence of the preceding sound, it is preservative coarticulation.

二、Short-answer-questions

6． Identify the type of trope employed in the following examples.

1）The boy was as cunning as a fox.

2）…the innocent sleep the death of each day‟s life, …（Shakespeare ）

3）Buckingham Palace has already been told the train may be axed when the rail network has been privatised. （Daily Mirror, 2 February 1993）

4）Ted Dexter confessed last night that England are in a right old spin as to how they can beat India this winter. （Daily Mirror, 2 February 1993）

【答案】 1） simile 2 ） metaphor 3 ） metonymy 4 ） synecdoche

7． What do you think of the cognitive approach to literature?

【答案】 The linguistic and cognitive approaches to literature are complementary. The cognitive approach can augment the overall quality, depth and value of the linguistic approach. （Burke , 2005）

8． For the following words, state the conditions under which the different forms of the past tense appear. What determines

whether

or is used? What distinctive features define conditioning environment?

【答案】

9． Explain three levels of categorization.

【答案】 Three levels of categorization

（1） Superordinate levels mean higher levels or more general levels. Furniture and animal are examples of superordinate category levels.

（2）Basic-level categories are more specific , but not too specific. Chair is an example of basic-level categories.

（3）Subordinate levels mean lower levels or more specific categories. Desk chair is an example of subordinate categories.

三、Essay-question

10．What are the major types of semantic Changes?

There are mainly three kinds of semantic changes, namely, broadening, narrowing, and 【答案】

meaning shift. Class shift and folk etymology also contribute to change in meaning.

（1）Broadening

Broadening is a process to extend or elevate the meaning from its originally specific sense to a relatively general one. For instance , the word holiday used to mean“holy day‟‟in religious English. Today it means“a day for rest‟‟regardless of its religious nature.

（2）Narrowing

Contrary to broadening, the original meaning of a word can be narrowed or restricted to a specific sense. A typical example is the word meat which originally meant “ food”. In the course of time, the range of meaning was narrowed to mean specifically “ the flesh of animals used as food”.

（3 ） Meaning shift

All semantic changes involve meaning shift. Yet, in its narrow sense, meaning shift refers to the change of meaning, which has nothing to do with generalization or restriction. What makes the meaning of a word different is its departure from its original domain as a result of its metaphorical usage. For instance , the word bead originally means “prayer”, but later it refers to “the prayer bead”, the visible

manifestation of a prayer, finally “small, ball-shaped piece of glass, metal or wood”.

（4）Class shift

By shifting the word class one can change the meaning of a word from a concrete entity or notion to a process or attribution. This process of word formation is also known as zero-derivation, or conversion. The word engineer as a noun means “a person trained in a branch of engineering”，but it means “to act as an engineer” or “to plan, to maneuver” when used as a verb.

（5）Folk etymology

It refers to a change in form of a word or phrase resulting from an incorrect popular notion of the origin or meaning of the term or from the influence of more familiar terms mistakenly taken to be analogous. As a result of this modification, the word sparrowgrass in English derived from asparagus; the Spanish cucaracha changed into English cockroach.

11．Categorize the following pairs: child-kid, alive-dead, big-small, husband-wife.

【答案】 Child-kid can be categorized under synonymy , alive-dead complementary antonymy , old-young gradable antonymy, and husband-wife converse antonymy.

Synonymy is the technical term for the sameness relation.

The members of a pair of complementary antonymy are complementary to each other. They divide up the whole of a semantic field completely, which means not only the assertion of one means the denial of the other, and the denial of one also means the assertion of the other.

Pairs of words of gradable antonymy have three characteristics :（1） they are gradable —the members of a pair differ in terms of degree. As such, they can be modified by “very”. And they may have comparative and superlative degrees. （2） Antonyms of this kind are graded against different norms. The criterion varies with the object described.One member of a pair, usually the term for the （3）

higher degree, serves as the cover term.

Converse antonymy shows the reversal of a relationship between two entities. It is the same relationship seen from two different angles, and there is always two entities involved, which makes the major difference between this type and the above two types of antonymy.

12．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