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一、Explain-the-fllowing-terms

1． Textual function

【答案】 Textual function : The textual function is one of the three meta-functions language is composed of. It refers to the fact that language has mechanisms to make any stretch of spoken or written discourse into a coherent and unified text and make a living message different from a random list of sentences.

2． Cognition

【答案】 Cognition is, in psychology, used to refer to the mental processes of an individual, with particular relation to a concept which argues that the mind has internal mental states （such as beliefs, desires and intentions ） and can be understood as information processing , especially when much abstraction or concretization is involved , or processes such as involving knowledge , expertise or learning for example are at work. Another definition of “cognition” is the mental process or faculty of knowing , including aspects such as awareness, perception, reasoning, and judgment.

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． 1-narrator

【答案】 The person who tells the story may also be a character in the fictional world of the story, relating the story after the event. In this ease the critics call the narrator a FIRST-PERSON NARRATOR or I- NARRATOR because when the narrator refers to himself or herself in the story the first person pronoun I is used. First-person narrators are often said to be “limited” because they don‟t know all the faces or “unreliable” because they trick the reader by withholding information or telling untruths. This often happens in murder and mystery stories.

5． Design features

【答案】 Design features : It refer to the defining properties of human language that tell the difference between human language and any system of animal communication.

6． 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.

7． 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.

8． Duality

【答案】Duality refers to the fact that in all languages so far investigated there are two levels of structure or patterning. At the first , higher level , language is analyzed in terms of combinations of meaningful units ; at the second, lower level, it is seen as a sequence （such as morphemes, words etc.）

of segments which lack any meaning in themselves, but which combine to form units of meaning. For example , a syllable is the smallest unit that is normally spoken by itself, and scores of syllables become the carriers of hundreds of meaningful segments of words that are called morphemes.

9． cohort model

【答案】 The cohort model is a supposed doctrine dealing with the spoken word recognition postulated by Marslen-Wilson and Welsh in 1990. It is suggested that the first few phonemes of a spoken word activate a set or cohort of word candidates that are consistent with the input. These candidates compete with one another for activation. As more acoustic input is analyzed , candidates that are no longer consistent with the input drop out of the set. This process continues until only one word candidate matches the input- the best fitting word may be chosen if no single candidate is a clear winner.

10．Transformational-Generative grammar

【答案】 Transformational-generative grammar is proposed by Noam Chomsky. He postulated a syntactic base of language （called deep structure ） , which consists of a series of phrase-structure rewrite rules, i.e., a series of （possibly universal） rules that generates the underlying phrase-structure of a sentence. The end result of a transformational-generative grammar is a surface structure that is identical to an actual sentence of a language , after the mediating of a series of rules （called transformations ） that act upon the deep structures.

二、Short-answer-questions

11．Conversational implicature is comparable to illocutionary force in speech act theory in that they are both concerned with the contextual side of meaning, or言外之意 in Chinese.

【答案】 We may summarize conversational implicature as a type of implied meaning. It could be inferred only by the dependence on the context of the utterance and shared knowledge between the speaker and listener. Illocutionary force , on the other hand , refers to speaker^ meaning , contextual meaning , or extra meaning, that is, the meaning the speaker wants to convey in a specific context. By an illocutionary force, we can say “What does he mean by saying that?” In this sense, implicature is comparable to illocutionary force in speech act theory in that they are both concerned with the contextual

side of meaning, or 言外之意 in Chinese.

12．What distinguishes prescriptive studies of language from descriptive studies of language?

【答案】 The distinction lies in prescribing how things ought to be and describing how things are. To say that linguistics is a descriptive science is to say that the linguist tries to discover and record the roles to which the members of a language-community actually conform and does not seek to impose upon them other rules, or norms, of correctness, which are in the scope of prescriptive linguistics.

13．Why is Saussure hailed as the father of modem linguistics?

【答案】 Saussure was the first to notice the complexities of language. He believed that language is a system of signs. To communicate ideas, signs must be part of a system of signs, called conventions. He held that the sign is the union of a form （signifier ） and an idea （signified ） , and it is the central fact of language.

By providing answers to questions concerning many aspects of language, Saussure made clear the object of study for linguistics as a science. His ideas on the arbitrary nature of sign, on the relational nature of linguistic units , on the distinction of langue and parole and of synchronic and diachronic linguistics , etc. pushed linguistics into a brand new stage.

14．cinched 18. played 19. hated 20. branded

is found

after

and occurs

【答案

】appears after these sounds

:

afteri The general factor to determine

whether , or is used is the distinctive feature of voicing. Therefore, occurs after a voiceless sound, exceptoccurs after a voiced sound, except

and occurs after either the consonantor

15．How do the three branches of phonetics contribute to the study of speech sounds?

【答案】 Phonetics looks at speech sounds from three distinct but related points of view. First, it studies t he sounds from the speaker‟s point of view , i.e. ，how a speaker uses his speech organs to articulate the sounds. Then, it looks at the sounds from the hearer s point of view, i.e., how the sounds are perceived by the hearer. Lastly, it studies the way sounds travel by looking at the sound waves, the physical means by which sounds are transmitted through the air from one person to another. These three branches of phonetics are labeled articulatory phonetics , auditory phonetics , and acoustic phonetics respectively.

16．What is your opinion on “true synonymy is non-existent”？

【答案】 Generally speaking , synonyms are the words which have different forms but similar meaning. There are several types of synonyms: dialectal synonyms, such as lift/elevator, flat/apartment; synonyms of different styles , as shown in gentleman/guy; synonyms of different registers , such as salt/sodium chloride ; synonyms differing in affective meaning , such as attract/seduce; synonyms differing in collocation, such as beautiful/handsome, able/capable.

三、Essay-question