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一、Explain-the-fllowing-terms

1． 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.

2． Government

【答案】 Government is another type of control over the forms of some words by other words in certain syntactic constructions. It differs from concord in that this is a relationship in which a word of a certain class determines the forms of others in terms of certain category. In English, for example, the pronoun after a verb or a preposition should be in the object form as in She gave him a book. She gave a book to him. In other words , the verb , or the preposition , determines , or governs , the form of the pronoun after it.

3． 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.

4． Broad and narrow transcription

【答案】 Broad and narrow transcription: In broad transcription, one letter symbol is used for one sound. In narrow transcription , there are diacritics added to the one letter symbols to show the finer differences between sounds.

5． Concordance

【答案】 The computer has the ability to search for a particular word , sequence of words , or perhaps even a part of speech in a text. The computer can also retrieve all examples of a particular word. It can also calculate the number of occurrences of a certain word so that information on the frequency of the word may be gathered. We may also be interested in sorting the data in some way—for example, alphabetically on words occurring in the immediate context of the word. This is usually referred to as concordance.

6． 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.

7． 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”.

8． 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.

二、Essay-question

9． Imagine you were at a bus stop and two people approached you one after the other.

The first said:

“哎，几点了？”

and the second said:

“不好意思，打搅一下，请问您戴表了吗？”

What assumptions would you make if you were addressed in these two ways and why would you make them?

【答案】 As to the first one, an immediate assumption coming to our mind would be the person is asking for the time. The assumption that the hearer gets arises out of the conventional meaning of the expression. The conventional meaning is related to the existing knowledge of the world , and is the meaning that is achieved by the conventions, and is generally accepted by the society. It can be accessed to when we turn to the knowledge towards the world that we have. The expression “几点了” is such a conventional meaning that when it is spoken out，everyone will unexceptionally accept it as a way of asking for the time.

As to the explanation of the second one, Levinson‟s M-principle could come into use. Considering the context， which is in the bus stop, what it expresses is no longer a conventional one, but rather a conversational implicature. According to M-principle , the speaker normally will not use a prolix , obscure sentence. It is the ability not only to apply the grammatical rules of a language in order to form grammatically correct sentences but also to know when and where to use these sentences and to whom.

10．In what way are language and computer related , and how has their relationship affected language learning?

【答案】 With the development of the computer technology and internet system, more and more people touched upon the computer field. Computer has been used in the classroom for foreign language teaching and learning. CAI stands for computer-assisted instruction, which means the use of a computer in a teaching program. CAL stands for computer-assisted learning, which means the use of computer in both teaching and learning. Following CAI and CAL , CALL , acronym for Computer Assisted Language Learning, refers to the use of a computer in the teaching or learning of a second or foreign language. If CAI or CAL deals with teaching and learning in general, then CALL deals with language teaching and learning in particular. CALL provided a beneficial and convenient approach for language learners to improve their ability. For example, students can gain a quick access to any materials on the internet. The computer is not an individual resource for each student any more, instead, it is a trigger for interaction between the students and it is the focus for group work which allows some activities , such as the activity role-play interaction. The use of multimedia technology enables different information

types to be simultaneously available on the computer, as a result, spoken language and moving video are produced other than mere presentation of written sentences.

11．Is it possible to separate semantics and pragmatics? Why or why not? What are the implications of your answer for second language teaching?

【答案】 Though both semantics and pragmatics have to do with the meaning of language, and link language to the world , we think it is possible to separate semantics and pragmatics in linguistic study. Semantics is the study of literal meaning of linguistic expressions, particularly meaning of words, phrases and sentences. In using the term sense rather than reference, the focus of semantics is on the way people relate words to each other within the framework of their language. Pragmatics starts from the observation that people use language to accomplish many kinds of acts, broadly known as speech acts thus it is the study of how to do things with words or of the meaning of language in context. This kind of meaning in pragmatics usually refers to as speaker‟s meaning , utterance meaning , or contextual meaning. Its interpretation depends more on who the speaker of the sentence is, who the hearer is, when and where it is used. Thus the distinction between semantics and pragmatics is clear: the former is more closely related to the words used , the more constant , inherent side of meanings ; the latter is more closely related to the context, the more indeterminate side, or something extra.

The first implication for second language study involves the appropriate use of the target language. The teaching of a foreign language in a classroom involves two types of instruction: one is informational and analytical and can be diagrammed on the axis of general semantic information about the language. But language learning also has a crucially important skill component, which involves the development of the ability to use the language, actively through speaking and writing and passively through listening and reading. This is the pragmatic turn in second language teaching. The language use should be analyzed in relation to the context of communication, and that language teaching and learning should focus on the appropriate use of the target language, oral and written, according to situational and wider social context.

The second implication is concerned with vocabulary learning and translation. The learning of second language‟s vocabularies involves the understanding and memory of their meanings. Since the differences between the first and second language‟s culture , there may be no corresponding meaning underlying the same sayings. Teachers should explain the different usage or implication of the target language‟s items. This is of much importance for cross-cultural translation practices.

12．Illustrate the ways of lexical change.

【答案】 Lexical change includes invention, blending, abbreviation, acronym, back-formation, analogical creation, borrowing, compound and derivation.

a.Coinage : it is the invention of totally new terms. The most typical sources are invented trade names of one company‟s product that become general terms for any version of that product. Such as Kleenex ，Teflon and Xerox.

b.Borrowing : it is the taking over of words from other languages. The English language has adopted a vast number of words from other languages，such as encore, which is borrowed from French.

c.Compounding : it is the process of a joining of two separate words to produce a single form. For example , “fingerprint” is composed of “finger” and “print”.

d.Blending : blending is typically accomplished by jointing part of one word to the other whole word or other part of the word. For example, the word smog is formed by combing parts of two words “smoke” and “fog”.

e.Clipping : it occurs when a word of more than one syllable is reduced to a shorter form. Common