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2018年浙江大学外国语言文化与国际交流学院815德语翻译与写作之语言学教程考研核心题库

  摘要

一、Explain-the-fllowing-terms

1. 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.

2. 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/.

3. Speech Act Theory

【答案】 Speech act theory was proposed by J. L. Austin and has been developed by J. R. Searle. Basically , they believe that language is not only used to inform or to describe things, it is often used to “do things”,and to perform acts.

4. Displacement

Language can be used to refer to what is present, what is absent, what happens at present, 【答案】

what happened in the past, what will happen in the future or what happens in a far-away place. This property of language enables language users to overcome the barriers caused by time and place. For example , we can talk about Sapir, who is already dead; we can even talk about next week, which is in the future.

5. 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) .

6. Pidgins and Creoles

【答案】 A pidgin refers to a variety of a language that is not native language of anyone, but is learned on contact situations such as trading. When a pidgin develops beyond its role as a trade language

and becomes the first language of a social community , it becomes a creole. The process by which a pidgin becomes a creole is called creolization.

7. Metonymy

【答案】 Metonymy is a figure of speech used in rhetoric in which a thing or concept is not called by its own name, but by 也e name of something intimately associated with that thing or concept. For instance , “Washington ”,as the capital of the United States, can be used as a metonym (an instance of metonymy) for the United States government.

8. phoneme

Phoneme is a basic unit of phonological study, and it is an abstract collection of phonetic 【答案】

features which can distinguish meaning. For example, in English, is described as a phoneme.

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.Lexical word

【答案】 Lexical word, lexical words are also called content words, referring to those which have lexical meanings, that is, those which refer to substance, action and quality, such as nouns, verbs, adjectives , and adverbs.

二、Short-answer-questions

11.What are the three kinds of antonyms?

【答案】 The three kinds of antonyms are gradable antonyms , complementary antonyms and converse antonyms. Gradable antonyms refer to antonyms that differ in terms of degree. For example, good and bad. Complementary antonyms are a pair of antonyms complementary to each other: not only the assertion of one means the denial of the other; the denial of one also means the assertion of the other, such as male and female. Converse antonyms do not constitute a positive-negative opposition; they only show the reversal of a relationship between two entities, such as husband and wife.

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

【答案】 The Prague School has three points of special importance , First , it stressed that the synchronic study of language is fully justified as it can draw on complete and controllable material for investigation. Second, it emphasised the systemic character of language, arguing that no element of any language can be satisfactorily analysed or evaluated if viewed in isolation. In other words, elements are held to be in functional contrast or opposition. Third , it looked on language as a tool performing a number of essential functions or tasks for the community using it.

13.How would you describe the oddness of the following sentences, using semantic features?

(a )The television drank my water.

(b )His dog writes poetry.

【答案】(a ) The verb drink represents a behavior of the animate beings, therefore, it is required that the subject of this verb should have a semantic feature as (+ANIMATE) , however, the word television , which is in position of subject, has an opposite feature:(-ANIMATE ) . That‟s why such a collocation results in oddness.

(b ) The action of writing poetry is normally one which only human beings could do, therefore, the subject is required to have a semantic feature as (+HUMAN) ; however, the word dog in the subject position is featured as (-HUMAN ) . Therefore, the sentence is odd.

14.What does the concept morphophoneme mean? What is the relationship between phoneme and morphophoneme?

【答案】 Morphophoneme refers to the phoneme (or string of phonemes ) that constitutes the various allomorphs of a morpheme.

Relationship between phoneme and morphophoneme : Generally speaking , the concept of morphophoneme adds a grammatical meaning to the concept of phoneme. For example , as to the phoneme /s/, it is in fact a configuration of allomorphs of different morphemes , such as the plural morpheme and the 3rd person present simple morpheme. Therefore, we would regard this phoneme as a morphophoneme , represented as /s/.

15.In English, the phonemeis pronounced differently in pat, spat, and tap, can you form a rule that can generalize this linguistic phenomenon?

【答案】 In English , there is a rule that a is unaspirated

after but aspirated in other places. So in pat , tap

is aspirated but unaspirated in spat since it is

after To bring out the phonetic difference , an aspirated sound is transcribed with a raised “h” after the symbol of the sound. So a

phonetic transcription for peak isand that for speak isSo are two different phones and are variants of the phonemeSuch variants of a phoneme are called allophones of the same phoneme. The allophones are said to be in complementary distribution because they never occur in the same context :

occurs after

while occurs in other places. We can present this rule as:

elsewhere

(note :

is the position in whichappears. )

In addition, sometimes a phoneme may also have free variants. The final consonant of tap may not be released by some speakers so there is no audible sound at the end of this word. Such phenomenon is called free variation.

16.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.