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一、Explain-the-fllowing-terms

1． 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 of thought acts , indirect thought , free indirect thought, and direct thought.

2． Slang :

【答案】 It refers to casual , very informal speech , using expressive but informal words and expressions.

For some people , slang is equivalent to colloquial speech but for others , it means “undesirable speech”. Usually , “colloquial speech” refers to a speech variety used in informal situations with colleagues , friends or relatives ，and “slang” is used for a very informal speech variety which often serves as an “in-group” language for a particular set of people such as teenagers , army recruits , pop-groups etc. Most slang is rather unstable as its words and expressions can change quite rapidly, for example , “Beat it!” “Scram!”，and “Rack off!” for “leave”.

3． Meaning shift

Meaning shift: In a narrow sense, meaning shift is used to refer to the change of meaning 【答案】

that has nothing to do with generalization or restriction such as broadening or narrowing of meaning.

4． Foregrounding

【答案】 This term is meant for what is unusual, attractive, unconventional, salient. In literature, foregrounding is often achieved through unconventional expressions which attract the readers9 attention. The main manifestations of foregrounding are deviation and parallelism.

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． Minimal pairs

The two words which are identical in every way except for one sound segment that occurs 【答案】

in the same place in the string. For example，the English words bear and pear constitute a minimal pair as they differ in meaning and in their initial phonemes /b/ and /p/.

7． Register

【答案】 It is a speech variety used by a particular group of people , usually sharing the same occupation （e.g. doctors, lawyers） or the same interests. A particular register often distinguishes itself from others by having a number of distinctive words, by using words or phrases in a particular way, and sometimes by special grammatical constructions （e.g. legal language）.

8． Surface structure

【答案】 It is a term used in generative grammar to refer to the final stage in the syntactic representation of a sentence, which provides the input to the phonological component of the grammar, and which thus most closely corresponds to the structure we articulate and hear. For instance, “John is easy to please.” and “John is eager to please.” are two sentences with the same surface structure.

二、Essay-question

9． Discuss sense, denotation and reference, using Chinese examples to illustrate your points.是古月壮麟《语言学教程》中的概念）

【答案】 Sense is concerned with the inherent meaning of the linguistic expression. It is the collection of all the features of the linguistic form; it is abstract and de-contextualized. It is the aspect of meaning dictionary compilers are interested in. For example , the word “狗” in Chinese is given the definition of “哺乳动物，种类很多，听觉嗅觉都很敏锐， 善于看守门户，有的可以训练成军犬、警犬” .This does not refer to any particular dog that exists in the real world, but applies to any animal that meets the features described in the definition. So this is the sense of the word dog.

Reference means what a linguistic expression refers to in the real, physical world; it deals with the relationship between the linguistic element and the non-linguistic world of experience. If we say “这只

we must be talking about a certain dog existing in the situation; the word “狗” here refers to 狗真可爱”，

a dog known to both the speaker and the hearer. This is the reference of the word “ 狗” in this particular situation.

Denotation refers to the relationship between an expression and its extension. The term extension of an expression is the set of things which could be possibly be the referent of that expression. So the extension of the word “狗” is “所有种类的狗” .Thus, the relationship between the word “狗” and “所有种类的狗” is denotation, that is，the word “狗” denotes “ 所有种类的狗”.

Furthermore , the differences between the three terms are discussed as follows.

Sense and reference are two different but related aspects of meaning. Two expressions may refer to the same referent but have different senses. For example, in sentences “1949 年 10 月 1 日，毛泽东在天安门城楼上宣布： 今天，中华人民共和国成立了! ” and “1949年10月1日，那位伟大的领袖在天安门城楼上宣布：今天，中 华人民共和国成立了! ”，expressions “毛泽东” and “那位伟大的领袖” refer to the same person （have the same referent） but with different senses. There is also another difference between sense and reference. To some extent, all words have senses，but not every word has a referent. Some words like “和”，“但是”，“假如”，“的” do not refer to an^hing. Therefore, the meaning if an expression will arise both from its sense and its reference.

Both reference and denotation refer to the relationship between a linguistic expression and the

world , but there are also differences. Denotation refers to the relationship between a linguistic expression and a set of possible referents of that expression in the world; while reference is used for the relationship between a linguistic expression and a particular entity in the world. For example , in the sentence “一只云鹊飞进了房间”，the expression “一只云鹊” refers to the lark in that particular situation , while denotes to the whole class 66 ^99 . Another difference is that denotation is a stable relationship in a language which is not dependent on any one use of a word. Reference, on the other hand is a moment by moment relationship: what entity somebody refers to by using the word “云雀” depends on the situation.

10．When a teacher says “It ’s so hot in here.” during a class, what does she probably mean? Refer to the theory of pragmatics when you analyze the situation.

【答案】 This utterance would be semantically ambiguous if it was seen isolated without any context of situation. Its interpretation has to rely on the context in which it was uttered.

There could be generally two types of situation in which this utterance could happen. One may be that it is summer; the teacher just came into the class and was sweating heavily. The other may be that in class the students are quite active towards the questions or problems the teacher has posed, for example, discussing in group, or debating in a large scale.

According to the cooperative principle, in our conversation, in order to be cooperative, that is, to make his intentions to be known by the hearer , the speaker will try to make his conversational contribution such as is require, at the stage at which it occurs.

Therefore , according to the third maxim of cooperative principle , RELATION , which says “be relevant”，the utterance could be interpreted differently as follows:

In the first situation, when the students hear the teacher saying “it‟s so hot in here”，they would probably assume that the teacher is obeying the Cooperative Principle, and what he says is relevant to the context, which is that the teacher is sweating, and maybe accompanied by fanning himself with his hand. Therefore, what the teacher means is probably that the temperature is high. What5s more, if the windows in the classroom are closed, this utterance will go further to be an implication of an request for opening the windows.

In the second situation , the students would assume that the teacher should have observed the maxim of relation, since it is under normal circumstances. Given the context in which the students are discussing or debating about certain questions furiously, the hearer would tend to interpret the teacher‟s utterance as: “You are discussing （or debating） so actively.‟‟，which implies a praise for the active participation of the students in class activity.

11．It has been observed that women tend to approximate more closely to the standard language than men do. Why do you think this is so?

【答案】 Language is a social, value-loaded practice, which reflects an intricate network of social, political , cultural, and age relationships within a society.

Women‟s speech clo sely approaches the standard variety than the speech of men , this has been explained in terms of a greater consciousness of status on the part of women. Women are more usually more status-conscious than men in the English-speaking world , they are aware of their low status in society and, as a result, use more standard speech forms in their attempt to claim equality or achieve high social status. In a sense , they are up in arms against men's society. The status of men has been traditionally defined by their occupation and wealth , while women have had to find other ways of establishing their position and one of these has been their speech.

A second explanation relates to the ways in which society treats women. Women are expected to