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一、Explain-the-fllowing-terms

1． Category

Category refers to a group of linguistic items which fulfill the same or similar functions in 【答案】

a particular language such as a sentence, a noun phrase or a verb.

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． Contextual meaning

【答案】 It is also called speaker‟s meaning, or utterance meaning, which is more closely related to the context. For example, when a person says “My bag is heavy”，what he actually means may be asking the hearer to help him carry the bag.

4． Stylistics

【答案】 Stylistics is a branch of linguistics studies the features of situationally distinctive uses （varieties ） of language , and tries to establish principles capable of accounting for the particular choices made by individual and social groups in their use of language.

5． Cross-cultural communication

【答案】 Cross-cultural communication is an exchange of ideas , information , etc , between persons from different cultural backgrounds. The cultural conventions of the participants may widely different , and misinterpretation and misunderstanding can easily arise , even leading to a total communication breakdown.

6． Concord （or : Agreement）

【答案】 It may be defined as the requirement that the forms of two or more words of specific word classes that stand in specific syntactic relationship with one another shall also be characterized by the same paradigmatically marked category （or categories ） . For example, the syntactic relationship between that girl and she in the following dialogue: A: Who is that girl? B: Oh, she is my sister.

7． 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.

8． The London School of Linguistics

【答案】 The London School generally refers to the kind of linguistic scholarship in England. The man who turned linguistics proper into a recognized distinct academic subject in Britain was J.R. Firth.

9． 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.

10．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.

二、Short-answer-questions

11．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）

12．deeded 6. bagged 7. killed 8. nabbed

【答案】

13．Write the international phonetic alphabet for the following words.

（1） hypothesis （2） academician （3）verbatim （4） technique

（5） capacity （6） standardize （7）guarantee （8） paradigm

（9） primarily （10） rhetoric （11）procedure （12） originate

【答案】（1）

（5）

（9）

（6） （10） （2） （7） （11

） （3） （8） （12） （4）

14．What are suprasegmental features? How do the major suprasegmental features of English function in conveying meaning?

【答案】 A suprasegmental feature refers to the phonemic features that occur above the level of sound segment. The major suprasegmental features in English include word stress, sentence stress, tone, and intonation. The location of stress in English distinguishes meaning.

For example , a shift of stress may change the part of speech of a word from a noun to a verb although its spelling remains unchanged. Tones are pitch variations, which are caused by the differing rates of vibration of the vocal cords. Pitch variations can distinguish meaning just like phonemes. When pitch , stress and sound length are tied to the sentence rather than the word in isolation , they are collectively known as intonation. Intonation plays an important role in the conveyance of meaning in almost every language, especially in a language like English.

15．Is American English superior to African English? Why or why not?

【答案】 American English is not superior to African English. As different branches of English, African English and American English are equal. Similar as they are , they are influenced by their respective cultural context and thus form respective systems of pronunciation, words and even grammar.

16．Why do we say language is primarily vocal?

【答案】 Language is a system of arbitrary vocal symbols used for human communication. Language is primarily vocal, because sound or speech is the primary medium for all human languages, developed or “new”. Writing systems came much later than the spoken f orms. The fact that small children learn and can only learn to speak （and listen ） before they write （and read） also indicates that language is primarily vocal , rather than written. The term “human” in the definition is meant to specify that language is human specific.

三、Essay-question

17．Some comments on the following statement based on your own experience:

There exists a close relationship between language and culture. In other words, a successful master of a given language has much to do with an understanding of that culture.

【答案】 Language use is heavily tinted with its culture. A language does not only expresses facts, ideas , or events which represent similar world knowledge by its people, but also reflects the peopled attitudes , beliefs, world outlook, and so on. In a word, language expresses cultural reality. To dig it further , a language, as a system of signs with their own cultural substances and values, may be viewed as a symbol of social identity. People are identified via their use of language. In this sense, language symbolizes cultural reality.

On the other hand , as people‟s language uses express the culture ，to be more specific , their community culture represented by its social conventions, norms and social appropriateness, the culture both emancipates and constrains people socially, historically and metaphorically.

Historically , each culture has its past and tradition. A culture consists both of its ways how a social group represents itself, its technological achievements, monuments and works of art and of its historical identity recorded and passed down by the pop culture. It is language that has played a major role in socializing the people and in perpetuating culture, especially in print form.

In addition , culture also affects its peopled imagination or common dreams which are mediated through the language and reflected in their life. Language is not only intrinsically related to what the