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一、Explain-the-fllowing-terms

1． Category

Category refers to a group of linguistic items which fulfill the same or similar functions in 【答案】

a particular language such as a sentence, a noun phrase or a verb.

2． Speech Act Theory

【答案】 Speech act theory was proposed by J. L. Austin and has been developed by J. R. Searle. Basically , they believe that language is not only used to inform or to describe things, it is often used to “do things”，and to perform acts.

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． Back-formation

【答案】 Back formation refers to an abnormal type of word formation where a shorter word is derived by deleting an imagined affix from a longer form already in the language. For example , the word “television” appeared before “televise”，and so does “editor” to “edit”.

5． 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.

6． 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.

7． Predication analysis

【答案】 Predication analysis is an important step in the analysis of sentential meaning. The predication is the common category shared by propositions, questions, commands, etc. Such analysis is to break down the sentence into its smaller constituents: argument and predicate. The predicate is the

major or pivotal element governing the argument. The argument is the logical participant.

8． Morpheme

【答案】 Morpheme is the smallest unit of language in terms of relationship between expression and content , a unit that cannot be divided into further smaller units without destroying or drastically altering the meaning , whether it is lexical or grammatical. For example , in boys , there are two morphemes : “boy” and “-s”； in international, there are three morphemes: “inter-” “nation” and “-al”.

二、Essay-question

9． Explain one of the teaching approaches that you’re familiar with and discuss its advantages and disadvantages.

【答案】 The functional language teaching, which emerged during the 70s, is a reaction against both the structurally and situationally based approaches to language teaching. Its main feature is that we should teach people what functions the various linguistic forms fulfill. We should teach people not only what the language is but what the language does. Linguistic forms should not be presented as abstract structures but should always be presented as fulfilling a particular language function. For example, if the simple present tense is to be taught, it should not just be a matter of learning to accurately repeat the structure , but also a matter of knowing what the structure is actually used for.

Organizing language teaching functionally emphasizes what we can do with language. The basic units of language are seen as short exchanges. Linguistic forms are presented and learned in close relation to their function. Such teaching encourages appropriateness of language in terms of the respective roles of speaker and hearer and also in terms of the topic of conversation. Fluency is stressed and developed.

The teaching of language functions also presents problems. For example , what is exactly a language function? How many functions are there? In what order should they be taught?

While functions are a very significant aspect of language use, too great an emphasis on them may ignore other aspects of language, not least its structure. There is also no rigid correspondence between function and form, so some people object that we lose too much control over grammatical complexity if the syllabus is entirely organized on the basis of functions. What?s more, some argue that fluency and appropriate use of language may be encouraged but this should not be achieved at the cost of formal accuracy.

10．How much does our language influence the way we think? How deeply do language and culture interpenetrate and influence one another? These questions about language have fascinated thinkers throughout the ages. For example, Johann Gottfried Herder and Wilhelm von Humboldt in the German Romantic tradition regarded language as a prisma or grid spread over things in the world so that each language reflects a different worldview. Write a short essay to explain your position on this view.

【答案】 Humans have a unique linguistic system for communication that serves as the primary vehicle for expressing thoughts. Language and thought may be viewed as two independent circles that develop along two different routes but overlap in some parts, where language and thought are consistent with each other. But language is not the only means of expressing thought. As for the relationship between language and the thought , we think that language does not determine the way we think but influence the way we perceive the world and recall things, and affects the ease with which we perform mental tasks. That is, language may be used to provide new ideas, bring about a change in beliefs and values , solve problems，and keep track of things in memory. For example, a well-developed vocabulary may well assist us in learning the concepts the lexis covers. We recall things more easily when they

correspond to readily available words or phrases. It is certainly easier for us to make a conceptual distinction if it neatly corresponds to a particular lexical item available in our language. When we label our experience with linguistic symbols, our language will influence how we remember and think about those experiences ; otherwise the relationship between language and perception , memory or thinking will be greatly reduced.

In terms of relationship between language and culture , we can infer that a language not only expresses facts, ideas, or events that represent similar world knowledge by its people, but also reflects the people‟s attitudes, beliefs， world outlooks, and etc. Language expresses cultural reality. On the other hand, as peopled language uses express their culture represented by its social conventions, norms and social appropriateness, the culture both emancipates and constrains people socially, historically and metaphorically. Sharing a same community culture, people have acquired common ways of viewing the world through their speech interactions with other members of the same group. Although language and culture are inextricably intertwined , culture is a wider system that completely includes language as a subsystem. The knowledge and beliefs that constitute a people‟s culture are habitually encoded and transmitted in the language of the people. Language as an integral part of human being, permeates his thinking and way of viewing the world, language both expresses and embodies cultural reality.

As for the relationship between language and world views , the language system does not necessarily provide specifics of one‟s world view. All humans share a general conceptualizing capacity; Speakers of different languages are capable of distinguishing and recognizing experiences according to their respectively different linguistic coding systems for the same objective world. On the one hand , people speaking the same language may have different world views , including political , social , religious , scientific and philosophical views. On the other hand , people speaking different languages may share similar world views on above aspects. Moreover, one language can describe many different worldviews , as is evident in the case of successful translation.

According to the theories shown above, we can infer that Johann Gottfried Herder and Wilhelm von Humboldt^ view has both merits and limitations. First , they see clearly that there exists a relationship between language and thoughts. Second, they assume that language influences so much the way people think that people who think in different ways will have different world views. Based on the theoretical views above we think this view is not rational in this aspect.

11．The roles of Transformational-Generative linguistics and Functional linguistics in language teaching and learning.

【答案】 （1） In the framework of Transformational-Generative linguistics, language is not learnt by innate. While

acquiring his mother tongue , he compares his innate language system with that of his native language and modifies his grammar. Therefore, language learning is an activity of building and testing hypothesis.

Although the influence of such a formal and abstract grammar remains limited in the field of language education , there are still various attempts to apply TG grammar to language teaching. In designing teaching materials , for example , sentence patterns with the same deep structure can be closely related, such as the active and the passive. Transformational rules may assist the teacher in the teaching of complex sentence construction. In the teaching of literature, TG grammar provides a new instrument for stylistic analysis.

（2） The Functional linguistics sees language learning from a semantic-sociolinguistic perspective. In particular, Systemic-Functional linguistics, which was proposed by Halliday, sees the formal system of language as a realization of functions of language in use.

Its scope is broader than that of formal linguistic theories. In the field of language teaching, it leads to the development of notion/function-based syllabuses, which have attracted increasing attention.