当前位置：问答库＞考研试题

一、Explain-the-fllowing-terms

1． distinctive features

a means of working out a set of phonological contrasts or oppositions to capture particular 【答案】

aspects of language sounds , first suggested by Roman Jacobson in the 1940s and then developed by numerous other people.

2． Endocentric construction

【答案】 Endocentric construction : An endocentric construction is one whose distribution is functionally equivalent, or approaching equivalence, to that of one or more of its constituents, i.e. a word or a group of words , which serves as a definable center , or head. Hence an endocentric construction is also known as a headed construction. Noun phrases like “Lovely Lucy” are typical endocentric constructions.

3． Conceptualism

It is the view which holds that there is no direct link between a linguistic form and what it 【答案】

refers to; rather, in the interpretation of meaning they are linked through the mediation of concepts in the mind.

4． Presupposition

【答案】 A presupposition is a proposition （expressed in a sentence） that is assumed to be true in order to judge the truth or falsity of another sentence. For example , John didn't pass chemistry presupposes that John took chemistry.

5． 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）

二、Fill-in-the-blanks

6． ______is an approach that stresses the relationships of elements in a sentence. It is a type of generative grammar developed by C J. Fillmore.

【答案】Case Grammar

【解析】格语法是美国语言学家菲尔墨在60代中期提出来的，它是着重探讨句法结构与语义之间关系的一种 语法理论和语义学理论。

7． In English, the two words cut and gut differ only in their initial sounds and the two sounds are two different and the two words are a_____pair.

【答案】phonemes ; minimal

【解析】/k/、/g/在cut 和gut 是两个不同的音位，这两个词，除了出现在同一位置上的一个音外，其余的音 都一样，因此这两个词就构成了一个最小的对立体。

8． Human languages enable their users to symbolize objects, events and concepts which are not present （in time andspace） at the moment of communication. This quality is labeled as_____.

【答案】Displacement

【解析】移位性是指人类语言可以让使用者在交际时用语言符号代表时间和空间上不可及的物体、事件和观点。

9． There are two fields of morphology: the study of_____and the study of_____.

【答案】inflectional ; derivational

【解析】在形态学中，有两大主要研究方面，一是词的屈折变化，一是词的派生。

10．_____ is the technical name for thesameness relation.

【答案】Synonymy

【解析】同义关系是相同关系的专业术语，完全的同义关系是很少的。所谓的同义词都是依赖语境的，它们总 是在这方面或那方面有所不同。

11．Any discourse can be seen as a configuration of field, mode and_____.

【答案】tenor

【解析】话语包括语场、语式、语旨三个方面。

三、Short-answer-questions

12．Why do people take duality as one of the important design features of human language? Can you tell us what language will be if it has no such design feature?

【答案】 Duality makes our language productive. A large number of different units can be formed out of a small number of elements——for instance, tens of thousands of words out of a small set of sounds. And out of the huge number of words, there can be astronomical number of possible sentences and phrases, which in turn can combine to form unlimited number of texts. Most animal communication systems do not have this design feature of human language.

If language had no such design feature , then it would be like animal communicational system which consists of only a number of basic sounds and this would be highly limited. Then we would not be able to produce a very large number of sound combinations （e.g. words ） , which are distinct in meaning. In other words, the number of messages one can send would be restricted to the number of basic sounds.

13．What is assimilation? Is it similar to coarticulation? What dose it include?

【答案】 Assimilation is a process by which one sound takes on some or all the characteristics of a neighbouring sound. It is often used synonymously with coarticulation. Nasalization, dentalization and velarization are all instances of assimilation. There are two possibilities of assimilation: if a following sound is influencing a preceding sound, it is regressive assimilation; the converse process, in which a preceding sound is influencing a following sound, is known as progressive assimilation.

14．What is the cognitive interpretation of image schema?

【答案】 Image schema is a recurring, dynamic pattern of our perceptual interactions and motor programs that gives coherence and structure to our experience.

Image schema exists at a level of abstraction, operates at a level of mental organization between propositional structures and concrete image , and it can be subdivided into the following items : a center-periphery schema , a continent schema ，a cycle schema ，a force schema ，a link schema ，a part-whole schema，a path schema，a scale schema and a vertical schema.

15．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.

16．Explain with an example that the evaluation of language is social rather than linguistic.

【答案】 As a social phenomenon, language is closely related to the structure of the society in which it is used, and the evaluation of a linguistic form is entirely social.

To a linguist , all language forms and accents are equally good as far as they can fulfill the communication functions they are expected to fulfill. Therefore, judgments concerning the correctness and purity of linguistic varieties are social rather than linguistic.

A case in point is the use of the postvocalic [r]. While in England accents without postvocalic [r] are considered to be more correct than accents with it, in New York city, accents with postvocalic [r] enjoys more prestige and considered more correct than without it.

四、Essay-question

17．How do you understand the role of linguistic research in social and economic development?

【答案】 To see the role linguistics plays in social and economic development , we could specifically consider the integration of linguistic research with other fields of social life , such as computational linguistics, psycholinguistics, applied linguistics, anthropological linguistics.

As to the applied linguistics , it is undeniable that linguistic research has greatly influenced the language teaching and learning. For example , various linguistic schools have shed insight into the methodology of language teaching , especially foreign language teaching. Those different models of language teaching are all aimed at a more successful and effective language teaching.

As is known , for a human being in the society , communication is very important. In the social