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一、Explain-the-fllowing-terms

1． Prefix

【答案】 In linguistics, a prefix is a type of affix that precedes the morphemes to which it can attach. Prefixes are bound morphemes （they cannot occur as independent words ） . While most languages employ both prefixes and suffixes, prefixes are less common. Some languages employ mostly suffixes and almost no prefixes at all. The use of prefixes has been found to correlate statistically with other linguistic features, such as a verb-object word order and the use of prepositions.

2． MT

【答案】 It refers to machine translation, the use of machine （usually computers） to translate texts from one natural language to another

3． 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”.

4． 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.

5． 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.

6． Inflection

【答案】 Inflection is the manifestation of grammatical relationship through the addition of inflectional affixes , such as number , person , finiteness , aspect and case , which do not change the grammatical class of the stems to which they are attached. For example, the past form of the verb work is realized by the addition of the inflectional suffix: „„-ed‟‟； the plural form of the noun child is realized by the inflectional suffix: „„-ren‟‟.

7． 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.

8． 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.

二、Essay-question

9． The British linguist F.R. Palmer argues that 44there is no absolute distinction between gradable antonyms and complementary antonyms. ” Do you believe so? Support your view with examples.

【答案】 I would prefer not to agree with this argument that there is no absolute distinction between gradable antonyms and complementary antonyms. The common way to distinguish gradable antonyms and complementary antonyms could be to see the forms they could occur: adjective gradable antonyms could be modified by “very”，and could have comparative forms and superlative forms; while the complementary counterparts could not. For example, we could say “very warm”, “warmer”, but we could not say “very absent ” or “more absent ” （absent here is opposed to present）.

The expressions with “very” or “more” modifying complementary antony ms are in fact not true comparatives and have a clear indication of either this one or the other one in the pair of complementary antonyms. For example, expression like “He is more dead than alive” actually means “It is more correct to say that he is dead than to say he is alive”. And this sentence could only be used when he is still alive; after all, we do not say someone is more dead than other.

10．Discuss the following advertisement extensively: “ 你不理财，财不理你”.

【答案】 This advertisement is an interesting one, for its witty use of pun words. There are two places of punning. First , “理财” could be interpreted in two different ways : one is “to manage one‟s money‟‟，the other is “not to ignore money”. Second, in the second part of the sentence, “财 ” is punned through homophony: it could be interpreted as “财 ”，therefore , the whole part “财不理你” could mean “fortune will ignore you‟‟，or rather，“fortune will pass you away”. This character could also interpreted as “才”，therefore , the whole part “财不理你” could mean “I will ignore you”，or rather, “I will show you my cold shoulder” （Here UF, refers to the company which put out this advertisement）.

Therefore , this utterance could be possibly interpreted in the following ways. 1） If you do not

handle your money in a proper way, then money will pass you by. 2 ） If you do not handle your money properly , then I won‟t take care of any of your business. 3 ） If you ignore money, and do not pay any attention to it, then money will pass you by. 4） If you ignore money, then I will ignore you, too, and I won5t take care of any of your business. In these four interpretations, it is clear to see that in 1 and 4, the advertiser conveyed the messages to the readers as if he was having a face-to-face talk to a friend. This has in some way made the piece of ad interesting to read.

It is known the punning is by nature ambiguous. Therefore, according to Grice, the advertisement has violated the principle of avoiding ambiguity under Manner Maxim. By such a violation , the advertiser has possibly intended to make the potential consumers pay more attention to it, and spend more time on it, since it is known that ambiguity will increase the time for processing the sentence; and by interpreting it in additional ways, the readers are also expected to get another interesting message from this ad. All of these could eventually come to a higher memorability of the advertisement.

11．Which of the following sentences are ambiguous? If you know how, use tree diagrams to show how these sentences are ambiguous.

（1）The children put the toy in tile box.

（2）The professor‟s appointment was shocking.

（3）No smoking section is available.

（4）Jack refused to change his decision. 【答案】

Therefore ,

it could be clear that the sentence is ambiguous.

Thus ,

this sentence is ambiguous.

Thus , this sentence is unambiguous.