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一、Explain-the-fllowing-terms

1． 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.

2． subordination

【答案】 Subordination refers to the process or result of linking linguistic units so that they have different syntactic status, one being dependent upon the other, and usually a constituent of the other. Thus the subordinate constituents are words which modify the Head. Consequently, they can be called modifiers. In the phrase swimming in the lake , swimming is the head and in the lake are the words modifying the head.

3． figure-ground alignment

【答案】 Figure-ground alignment seems to apply to space with the ground as the prepositional object and the preposition expressing the spatial relational configuration. It also applies to human perception of moving objects. Since the moving object is typically the most prominent one, because it is moving , it is typically the figure, while the remaining stimuli constitute the ground.

4． Coarticulation

Coarticulation refers to the phenomenon of sounds continually show the influence of their 【答案】

neighbors. For example , as in lamb , when a is followed by m , the velum will begin to lower itself during the articulation of a so that it is ready for the following nasal. When such simultaneous or overlapping articulations are involved, we call the process coarticulation. If the sound becomes more like the following sound, it is known as anticipatory coarticulation. If the sound displays the influence of the preceding sound, it is preservative coarticulation.

5． Stem

A stem is a morpheme or combination of morphemes to which an inflectional affix can be 【答案】

added. For example, “friend-” in friends, and “friendship-” in friendships are both stems. The former shows that a stem can be equivalent to a root, whereas the latter shows that a stem may contain a root and a derivational affix.

6． Embedding

【答案】 It refers to the inclusion of a clause within a phrase or another clause, or of a phrase into another phrase. An example of embedded clauses is: What I do is none of your business. （Nominal clause embedded as subject of another clause）

7． 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.

8． Paradigmatic relations

【答案】 Paradigmatic relation , Saussure originally called associative , is a relation holding between elements replaceable with each other at a particular place in a structure , or between one element present and the others absent.

二、Essay-question

9． Is English a language that uses a phonetic alphabet system? Explain briefly why or why not with examples.

【答案】 The Phonetic Alphabet is a system of letters and symbols that are used to represent the individual sounds of a language. English is a language that uses a phonetic alphabet system because it is a phonographic language by nature.

There are mainly three types of language concerning its writing system : ideographic language which uses symbols （ideograms ） to represent whole words or concepts （ideas ） , with Chinese as an example ; syllabic language which word or concepts are represented by syllable , with Japanese syllabic system as an example ; phonographic language which uses special alphabetic or other typographical characters to express the sounds of an actual spoken utterance in writing , with many European languages as examples. English uses alphabetic script to represent certain single type sound. For example, the sound which is written sh in English can be expressed by symbols of （ f ） ship ; and the sound that is written in c can be expressed by the symbol of （k ） cup.

10．What are the unique features of Halliday’s systemic linguistics?

【答案】 Halliday‟s Systemic Grammar is different from other linguistic theories in the following aspects. First, it attaches great importance to the sociological aspects of language.

Secondly , it views language as a form of doing rather than a form of knowing. It distinguishes linguistic behavior potential from actual linguistic behavior.

Thirdly , it gives a relatively high priority to description of the characteristics of particular languages and particular varieties of languages.

Fourthly , it explains a number of aspects of language in terms of dines （i.e. ungrammatical —>more unusual —> less unusual—>less usual —> grammatical）.

Fifthly , it seeks verification of its hypotheses by means of observation from texts and by means of statistical techniques.

Lastly , it has as its central category the category of the system.

11．Think of the four maxims of the Cooperative Principle proposed by P. Grice, and explain the violation of maxims in the cases below.

1）A : Have you seen my watch?

B : Look in the drawer.

2）A : Reno s the capital of Nevada.

B : Yeah, London s the capital of New Jersey.

3）A : I really liked that dinner.

B : Tm a vegetarian.

4）A : Let‟s dine out with the kids this weekend

B : Okay, but not M-c-D-o-n-a-l-d-s.

【答案】 The four maxims of the Cooperative Principle proposed by P. Grice are the maxim of quantity , the maxim of quality, the maxim of relation and the maxim of manner.

In （1） , B violates the maxim of quantity, for his/her not giving enough information to A9s question. B does not answer “yes” or “no” to a yes-no question，so A doesn‟t know whether B is sure it is in the draw. But B says this way may imply he/she is unsure about it （look at the drawer, maybe it is there ）, or he/she is sure （just go get it, it is in the drawer）.

In （2）, B violates the maxim of quality. Apparently London is not the capital of New Jersey. What

B says is a false statement, and B knows it is false. But B says it to imply that A9s statement is also false, that is, Reno is not the capital of Nevada.

In （3） , B violates the maxim of relations. B does not talk about “that dinner” directly but with “I‟m a vegetarian instead. Although the two utterances are not relevant superficially, yet what B says may imply that "there is meat in that dinner, and I am a vegetarian, so I don‟t like it.” which makes the conversation coherent.

In （4） , B violates the maxim of manners. B may be deliberately obscure by saying in that way so that the children will not be able to understand what they are talking about.

12．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