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一、Explain-the-fllowing-terms

1． 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.

2． Innateness hypothesis

【答案】 The “Innateness Hypothesis” of child language acquisition was proposed by Noam Chomsky , who states that language are somewhat innate and that children are bom with what he calls a language acquisition device, which is a unique kind of knowledge that fits them for language learning.

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． Linguistic determinism

【答案】 Linguistic determinism , is one of the two points of Sapir-Whorf hypothesis , and has developed into the strong version of this hypothesis. It could be summarized as follows: （1） One‟s thinking is completely determined by his native language because one cannot but perceive the world in terms of the categories and distinctions encoded in the language. （2） The categories and distinctions encoded in one language system are unique to that system and incommensurable with those of other systems. Therefore , the following statement could represent this hypothesis 4tIf Aristotle had spoken Chinese , his logic would have been different”.

5． Sapir-Whorf hypothesis

【答案】 Sapir-Whorf hypothesis consists of two parts : linguistic determinism and linguistic relativity. Linguistic determinism refers to the notion that a language determines certain nonlinguistic cognitive processes. Different languages offer people different ways of expressing around , they think and speak differently. Linguistic relativity refers to the claim that the cognitive processes that are determined are different for different languages. Thus, speakers of different languages are said to think in different ways. The hypothesis is now interpreted mainly in two different ways: a strong version and a weak one. The strong version believes that the language patterns determine peopled thinking and behavior ; the weak one holds that the former influence the later. So far , many researches and

experiments conducted provide support to the weak version.

6． 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”.

7． figure-ground alignment

【答案】 Figure-ground alignment seems to apply to space with the ground as the prepositional object and the preposition expressing the spatial relational configuration. It also applies to human perception of moving objects. Since the moving object is typically the most prominent one, because it is moving , it is typically the figure, while the remaining stimuli constitute the ground.

8． 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.

9． Endocentric construction

【答案】 Endocentric construction : An endocentric construction is one whose distribution is functionally equivalent, or approaching equivalence, to that of one or more of its constituents, i.e. a word or a group of words , which serves as a definable center , or head. Hence an endocentric cons truction is also known as a headed construction. Noun phrases like “Lovely Lucy” are typical endocentric constructions.

10．division of pragmatic labor

【答案】 Horn observes that the Q-based and R-based principles often directly collide and suggests the resolution comes from a division of pragmatic labor，which reads “The use of a marked （relatively complex and/or prolix） expression when a corresponding unmarked （simpler ，less “effortful”）alternate expression is available tends to be interpreted as conveying a marked message （one which the unmarked alternative would not or could not have conveyed） .

二、Short-answer-questions

11．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.

12．Why is Saussure hailed as the father of modem linguistics?

【答案】 Saussure occupies such an important place in the history of linguistics that he is often described as ''father of modem linguistics”：

A. The book Course in General Linguistics （1916），which is the most important source of Saussure‟s ideas, marked the beginning of modem linguistics.

B.Saussure was the first to notice the complexities of language. He believed that language is a system of signs, called conventions. He held that the sign is the union of the signifier and the signified.

C.By providing answers to questions concerning many aspects of language, Saussure made clear the object of study for linguistics as a science. His ideas on the arbitrary nature of sign, on the relational nature of linguistic units , on the distinction of langue and parole and of synchronic and diachronic linguistics , etc. pushed linguistics into a brand new stage.

13．How are affixes classified?

【答案】 Considering the free and bound morpheme, affix is the collective term for the type of formative that can be used only when added to another morpheme, so it is naturally bound.

Depending on their position with reference to the root or stem of the word, affixes are generally classified into three subtypes , namely , prefix , suffix , and infix. For examples , “para-” as prefix ，“-tion” as suffix, and “-bloomingly-” in word “abso-bloomingly-luty” as infix.

Affix can also be classified depending on the distinction between inflectional affixes and derivational affixes. The former often only add a minute grammatical function to the stem and do not change the word class of the word they attach to; while the latter are very productive in making new words and often change the lexical meaning. For instances, “-s” in words “toys”，“walks” and “John‟s” is inflectional affixes, while “-tion” is a derivational affix in word “recitation”.

14．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.

15．What are the three important points of the Prague School?

【答案】 The three important points developed in Prague School are:（a ） It was stressed that the synchronic study of

language is fully justified as it can draw on complete and controllable material for investigation but