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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． Locutionary Act, Illocutinary Act and Perlocutionary Act

【答案】 According to Austin , a speaker might be performing three acts simultaneously when speaking.

A locutionary act is the uttering of words, phrases, and clauses, which conveys meaning by giving out meaningful sounds. Therefore, when somebody says „„Morning‟‟，we can ask a question like “What did he do?‟‟，and the answer could be “He offered a greeting.”

An illocutionary act is the act of expressing the speaker‟s intention; it is the act performed in saying something. Therefore, for the same example，we can say “He meant it as a greeting”.

A perlocutionary act is the effect of the utterance. Thus，by saying “Morning!” the speaker has made it clear that he wants to keep friendly relations with the hearer.

3． Speech and thought presentation

【答案】 Speech and thought presentation: These two terms are used for the language in fiction, referring to the presenting forms for indicating the narrator‟s speech or thought. The speech presentation may have the following four possibilities : direct speech , indirect speech , narrat or‟s representation of speech acts, and narrator‟s representation of speech. The Thought presentation can also be categorized into : narrator‟s representation of thought , narrator‟s representation of thought acts , indirect thought , free indirect thought, and direct thought.

4． Performatives

【答案】 Performatives are sentences that do not state a fact or describe a state. They cannot be said to be true or false. The uttering of these sentences is, or is part of, the doing an action. The judge‟s imprisonment sentence, the president‟s war or independence declaration, etc., are performatives.

5． Homonymy

【答案】 In any language there are words which have the same linguistic form but are different in meaning. These words are called homonyms. For example, bank （of a river） , and bank （financial institution ）.

6． computational linguistics

【答案】 Computational linguistics is a branch of applied linguistics , dealing with computer processing of human language, h includes programmed instruction, speech synthesis and recognition, automatic translation, and computer mediated communication.

7． division of pragmatic labor

【答案】 Horn observes that the Q-based and R-based principles often directly collide and suggests the resolution comes from a division of pragmatic labor，which reads “The use of a marked （relatively complex and/or prolix） expression when a corresponding unmarked （simpler ，less “effortful”）alternate expression is available tends to be interpreted as conveying a marked message （one which the unmarked alternative would not or could not have conveyed） .

8． Meaning shift

Meaning shift: In a narrow sense, meaning shift is used to refer to the change of meaning 【答案】

that has nothing to do with generalization or restriction such as broadening or narrowing of meaning.

9． 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.

10．CAI and CAL

【答案】 Computer-assisted instruction （CAI ） means the use of a computer in a teaching program. This includes:

a. A teaching program which is presented by a computer in a sequence. The student responds on the computer , and the computer indicates whether the responses are correct or incorrect.

b. The use of computers to monitor student progress, to direct students into appropriate lessons, material , etc. This is also called computer-managed instruction.

Parallel to CAI , there is CAL （Computer-Assistant Learning ） . The former aims at seeing educational problems on the part of the teacher, whereas the latter emphasizes the use of a computer in both teaching and learning in order to help the learner achieve educational objectives. The first kind of CAL programs which were developed reflected principles similar to programmed instruction. The computer leads the student through learning task step-by-step, asking questions to check comprehension. Depending on the studenfs response, the computer gives the student further practice or progresses to new material （see branching ）. In more recent CAL courseware students are able to interact with the computer and perform higher-level tasks while exploring a subject or problem.

二、Short-answer-questions

11．What is the definition of cognitive linguistics?

【答案】 Cognitive linguistics is a newly established approach to the study of language that

emerged in the 1970s as a reaction against the dominant generative paradigm which pursues an autonomous view of language. Cognitive linguistics is based on human experiences of the world and the way they perceive and conceptualize the world.

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．How to understand a sentence?

【答案】 Besides decoding sounds and lexical meanings, comprehension also includes untangling the meaning of sentences. There are a few elements influencing the comprehension of sentences. The first is that the ambiguity of word meaning leads to difficulties in sentence understanding. The more complex information the word has , the more difficult the sentence is to be understood. The second factor is that the linguistic structure of the sentence affects the processing time. Psycholinguists have addressed th phenomena of sentence comprehension in different ways. Firstly , serial models propose that the sentence comprehension system continually and sequentially follows the constraints of a language‟ s grammar with remarkable speed. Secondly, parallel models emphasize the comprehension system is sensitive to a vast range

14．Identify the type of trope employed in the following examples.

1）The boy was as cunning as a fox.

2）…the innocent sleep the death of each day‟s life, …（Shakespeare ）

3）Buckingham Palace has already been told the train may be axed when the rail network has been privatised. （Daily Mirror, 2 February 1993）

4）Ted Dexter confessed last night that England are in a right old spin as to how they can beat India this winter. （Daily Mirror, 2 February 1993）

【答案】 1） simile 2 ） metaphor 3 ） metonymy 4 ） synecdoche

15．It is claimed in sociolinguistics that you are what you say. How would you comment on this theoretical claim?

【答案】 Everyone speaks differently. A personal dialect of an individual speaker combines elements regarding regional, social, gender, and age variations. In other words, an individual speaker^ regional and social back ground, his/her gender and age jointly determine the way he/she talks. From this point, we can claim that44You are what you say99.

Following this claim , we may expand the scope of our observation by introducing some social factors that are believed to influence our language behavior in a social context. Among these factors, some major ones include a） class ; b） gender ; c ） age ; d） ethnic identity; e） education background, f ） occupation , and g ） religious belief. In our daily speaking, the potential selection of linguistic forms can reflect the above factors, which determine our identities.

For example , women use more “fancy” color terms such as “mauve” and “beige”； use less powerful curse words; use more intensifiers such as “terrible” and “awful ”； use more tag questions. On