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一、Explain-the-fllowing-terms

1． Lingua franca

【答案】 It is language that is used for communication between different groups of people, each speaking a different language , lhe lingua franca could be an internationally used language of communication （e. g. English） , it could be the native language of one of the groups, or it could a language which is not spoken natively by any of the groups but has a simplified sentence structure and vocabulary and is often a mixture of two or more languages.

2． Ferdinand de Saussure

【答案】 Ferdinand de Saussure is a Swiss linguist who is often described as “father of modem linguistics”. The great work , Course in General Linguistics , which was based on his lecture notes , marked the beginning of modem linguistics. Saussure^ idea on the arbitrary nature of sign , one 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.

3． 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.

4． Minimal pairs

The two words which are identical in every way except for one sound segment that occurs 【答案】

in the same place in the string. For example，the English words bear and pear constitute a minimal pair as they differ in meaning and in their initial phonemes /b/ and /p/.

5． Glottal Stop

【答案】 V ocal tract is composed of oral cavity, nasal cavity and pharynx. When the vocal folds are totally closed, no air can pass between them. The result of this gesture is the glottal stop.

6． Inflection

【答案】 Inflection is the manifestation of grammatical relationship through the addition of inflectional affixes , such as number , person , finiteness , aspect and case , which do not change the grammatical class of the stems to which they are attached. For example, the past form of the verb work is realized by the addition of the inflectional suffix: „„-ed‟‟； the plural form of the noun child is realized by the inflectional suffix: „„-ren‟‟.

7． Register

【答案】 It is a speech variety used by a particular group of people , usually sharing the same occupation （e.g. doctors, lawyers） or the same interests. A particular register often distinguishes itself from others by having a number of distinctive words, by using words or phrases in a particular way, and sometimes by special grammatical constructions （e.g. legal language）.

8． Entailment

【答案】 It refers to the relation between propositions one of which necessarily follows from the other. If X is true, Y is necessarily true，and if X is false, Y may be true or false. For example, the sentence “He has been to France” entails “He has been to Europe”.

9． Semantic field

【答案】 It is the organization of related words and expressions into a system which shows their relationship to one another. For example, kinship terms such as father, mother, brother, sister, uncle, aunt belong to a semantic field whose relevant features include generation , sex , membership of the father's or mother's side of the family.

10．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.

二、Short-answer-questions

11．Please disambiguate the following 5 sentences, using the tree-diagram, or any other means that you think is appropriate.

（1）Jane showed her baby pictures.

（2）The old man is drinking in the air.

（3）We need more realistic officials to handle the economy.

（4）We are sweeping the ground cigarettes on the street.

（5）Tom exchanged the money and fell around the corner.

【答案】（1）

12．How is the illocutionary act different from the perlocutionary act?

【答案】 An illocutionary act is the act of expressing the speaker^ intention; it is the act performed in saying something. Thus, if someone says “Morning”，we can ask questions like “What did he mean?” and the answer could be “He offered a greeting.”

A perlocutionary act, however, is the effect of the utterance. By telling somebody something the speaker may change the opinion of the hearer on something, or mislead him, or surprise him, or induce him to do something, and so on. Therefore，the perlocutionary act of the saying “Morning” could be to keep friendly relations with the hearer.

13．What is concord, and what is government?

【答案】 Concord , also known as agreement, may be defined as the requirement that the forms of two or more words in a syntactic relationship should agree with each other in terms of some categories. For example, in English, the determiner and the noun it precedes should concord in number as in this man , these men; a book, some books. And the form of a subject should agree with that of the verb in terms of number in the present tense as is shown by He speaks English，They speak English.

Government is another type of control over the form 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 form 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.

14．What are the three important points of the Prague School?

【答案】 The Prague School has three points of special importance , First , it stressed that the synchronic study of language is fully justified as it can draw on complete and controllable material for investigation. Second, it emphasised the systemic character of language, arguing that no element of any language can be satisfactorily analysed or evaluated if viewed in isolation. In other words, elements are held to be in functional contrast or opposition. Third , it looked on language as a tool performing a number of essential functions or tasks for the community using it.

15．How would you describe this short exchange in terms of the actions performed by the speakers?

Carol : Are you coming to the party tonight?