当前位置：问答库＞考研试题

一、Explain-the-fllowing-terms

1． Phonetics

Phonetics is the study of how speech sounds are produced, transmitted, and perceived. It 【答案】

can be divided into three main areas of study articulatory phonetics , acoustic phonetics and perceptual/auditory phonetics.

2． Relational opposites

【答案】 This is a type of antonymy , in which the members of a pair do not constitute a positive-negative opposition. They show the reversal of a relationship between two entities. For example, “buy/sell” is such a pair. X buys something from Y means Y sells something from X.

3． Gradable antonym

【答案】 Gradable antonym. Gradable antonyms are antonyms that are gradable because there are often intermediate forms between the two members of a pair. For example, cold and warm constitute a pair of gradable antonyms.

4． bound root

Bound root refers to the base form of a word that cannot further be analyzed without total 【答案】

loss of identity, and this base form could not occur alone, such as “-ceive” in “receive”.

5． 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

6． Speech community

【答案】 Speech community is a group of people who share a set of norms and expectations regarding the use of language. Speech communities can be members of a profession with a specialized jargon , distinct social groups like high school students or hip-pop fans. In addition, online and other mediated communities, such as many internet forums, often constitute speech communities. Members of speech communities will often develop slang or jargon to serve the group's special purposes and priorities.

7． subordination

【答案】 Subordination refers to the process or result of linking linguistic units so that they have different syntactic status, one being dependent upon the other, and usually a constituent of the other. Thus the subordinate constituents are words which modify the Head. Consequently, they can be called modifiers. In the phrase swimming in the lake , swimming is the head and in the lake are the words modifying the head.

8． Componential analysis

【答案】 It refers to a semantic approach which defines the meaning of a lexical element in terms of semantic components , or semantic features. For example , the meaning of the word boy may be analyzed into three components: HUMAN, YOUNG and MALE.

二、Essay-question

9． What is the difference between pidgins and creoles?

【答案】 A pidgin is a special language variety that mixes or blends languages and it is used by people who speak different languages for restricted purposes such as trading. The term is believed to have originated from the pronunciation of the English word„„business‟‟in Chinese Pidgin English.

Pidgins arose from a blending of several languages such as Chinese dialects and English, African dialects and French, African dialects and Portuguese. Usually a European language serves as the basis of the pidgin in the sense that some of its grammar and vocabulary is derived from the European language used by traders and missionaries in order to communicate with peoples whose languages they did not know.

Pidgins typically have a limited vocabulary and a very reduced grammatical structure characterized by the loss of inflections，gender and case. The“simplified‟‟variety performs its functions as trading and employment.

When a pidgin has become the primary language of a speech community, and is acquired by the children of that speech community as their native language , it is said to have become a creole. The structure of the original pidgin is expanded to enable it to fulfill its new functions. The vocabulary is vastly enriched , and new syntactic-semantic concepts developed. Notable examples of Creole are the English-based Creole of Jamaica, and the French-based Creole of Haiti.

10．Use examples to illustrate different ways to extend syntactic constituents.

【答案】 In this chapter , several ways to extend syntactic constituents are brought under the category of recursiveness , including coordination and subordination , conjoining and embedding , hypotactic and paratactic and so on. Coordination and conjoining are the different names for the same linguistic phenomenon , that is , to use and , but or or to join together syntactic constituents with the same [unction. For instance, the sentence A man got into the car could be extended into a sentence like this “[NP A man , a woman , a boy , a cat and a dog] got into the car”. While subordination and embedding can be understood as the extension of any syntactic constituent by inserting one or more syntactic elements with different functions, into another. I saw the man who had visited you last year is an extended sentence by changing the independent clause The man had visited you last year into a dependent element （here a relative clause）.

However , hypotaxis and parataxis are the two traditional terms for the description of syntactic relations between sentences. In the examples below , the former is hypotactic , while the latter is paratactic :

We live near the sea. So we enjoy a healthy climate. He dictated the letter. She wrote it.

11．In interpreting utterances such as（1）and （2），the hearer generally treats the events described in the two sentences in each group as causally related even though such relationship is not encoded in the meanings of the sentences. That is . the hearer tends to think that Helen fell on the ground because of Torn's pushing and that the vase broke because it was dropped. Explain why.

（1）Tom pushed Helen. Helen fell on the ground.

（2）Peter dropped the vase. It broke.

【答案】 The phenomenon described can be illustrated by the theory of cohesion and coherence in discourse analysis , especially the conjunctive kind of cohesive relation. Text processing requires inferences for establishing coherence between successive sentences. The achievement of coherence partly relies on the cohesive relationships within and between the sentences. Cohesion occurs where the interpretation of some elements in the discourse is dependent on that of another.

It is realized partly through grammatical device and partly through lexical cohesion. Conjunction is one of the grammatically cohesive relations. It is based on the assumption that there are forms of systematic relationships between sentences in the linguistic system. Conjunction can be realized by some conjunctive words and some adverbs , such as so , but , furthermore , and so on. But in fact , the conjunctive relation between the discourses need not be realized by conjunctive words, as can be seen in these two examples.

Yet it is not enough for the text to have connections between elements, there is also the coherence which distinguishes connected texts which make sense from those which do not. It enables people to make sense of what they read and hear, and then try to arrive at an interpretation which is in line with their experience of the way the world is. In fact, our ability to make sense of what we read is probably only a small part of that general ability we have to make sense of what we experience or perceive in the world.

Therefore , by the coherence which helps us to connect the discourse with the world we experience, we the hearers will tend to make the discourse fit some situation which could accommodate all the details , and just as in the two examples, the causal conjunctive relations are established.

12．MORPHEME is defined as the smallest unit in terms of relationship between expression and content. Then is morpheme a grammatical concept or a semantic one? What is its relation to phoneme? Can a morpheme and a phoneme form an organic whole?

【答案】 As a matter of fact, morpheme is both a grammatical concept and a semantic one. for instance , we can recognize that English word-forms such as talks , talker , talked and talking must consist of one element talk , and a number of other elements such as -s , -er , -ed , -ing. All these elements are described as morphemes. The definition of morpheme is “the smallest unit of language in terms of the relationship between expression and content”. We would say that the word reopened in the sentence The pglice reopened the investigation consists of three morphemes. One minimal unit of meaning is open, another minimal unit of meaning is re- （meaning again） , and a minimal unit of grammatical function is -ed （indicating past tense） . Therefore, we are in a position to conclude that those which can stand by themselves as single words , e.g. open , are semantic concepts , and those which cannot normally stand alone, but which are typically attached to another form, e.g. re-, -ist, -ed, -s , are grammatical concepts.

As we know , each one of the meaning-distinguishing sounds in a language is described as a phoneme. An essential property of a phoneme is that it functions contrastively. If we substitute one sound for another in a word and there is a change of meaning, then the two sounds represent different phonemes.