当前位置：问答库＞考研试题

一、Fill-in-the-blanks

1． ______，bom in 1928, is all American linguist , educator , and political activist. He is the founder of transformational-generative grammar, a system that revolutionized modem linguistics.

【答案】Norman Chomsky

【解析】乔姆斯基，生于1928年，是美国著名的语言学家，教育家。他是转换生成语法的创始人。

2． When language is used for establishing an atmosphere or maintaining social contact rather than exchanging information or ideas, its function is _____ function.

【答案】Interpersonal

【解析】人际功能是语言最重要的社会功能，人们由此建立和维持他们的身份和社会地位。

3． By duality is meant the property of having two levels of structures , such that units of the _____level are composed of elements of the_____ level and each of the two levels has its own principles of organization.

【答案】primary , secondary

【解析】双重性是指拥有两层结构的这种属性，底层结构是上层结构的组成成分，每层都有自身的组合规则。

4． A_____foot contains two syllables. A stressed syllable comes first, following by an unstressed syllable.

【答案】trochee

【解析】抑抑格音步即重轻格或长短格，其由一重读音节后跟一个轻读音节构成。

5． Affix is the collective term for the type of formative that call be used only when added to another morpheme.Affixes are limited in number in a language, and are generally classified into three subtypes, namely , prefix, suffix , and_____.

【答案】infix

【解析】词缀是那些只能附着于另一个语素（词根或词干）上的一类语素的总称。词缀都是粘着语素，可分 为前缀、中缀和后缀三种。

6． Taboo and_____are two faces of the same communication coin.

【答案】euphemism

【解析】禁忌语是由于宗教、政治或性别原因而避免使用的词汇，通常被委婉语所代替。委

婉语是用一词代替 比较唐突的令人不快的另一词的表达方法。他们是同一交流过程的两个方面。

二、Explain-the-fllowing-terms

7． Corpus

【答案】 Corpus is a collection of linguistic data , either compiled as written texts or as a transcription of recorded speech. The main purpose of a corpus is to verify a hypothesis about language~~for example , to determine how the application of a particular sound , word , or syntactic construction varies.

8． The Innateness Hypothesis

【答案】 The innateness hypothesis was proposed by Chomsky. It says that the ability to acquire a human language is part of the biologically innate equipment of the human being, and that an infant is bom with this knowledge of basic grammatical relations and categories, and this knowledge is universal.

9． Subordinate construction

【答案】 Subordinate constructions are one of the two subtypes of endocentric constructions. Those in which there is only one head , with the head being dominant and the other constituents dependent , are subordinate constructions.

10．Componential analysis

【答案】 It refers to a semantic approach which defines the meaning of a lexical element in terms of semantic components , or semantic features. For example , the meaning of the word boy may be analyzed into three components: HUMAN, YOUNG and MALE.

11．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.

三、Short-answer-questions

12．What are the criteria used in phonetic description of vowels?

【答案】 As the vowels can not be described in the same way as the consonants , a system of cardinal vowels has been suggested to get out of this problem. The cardinal vowels are a set of vowel qualities arbitrarily defined , fixed and unchanging , intended to provide a frame of reference for the description of the actual vowels of existing languages. The cardinal vowels are abstract concept. The cardinal vowel diagram is a set of hypothetical positions for vowels used as reference points.

The description of English vowels needs to fulfill four basic requirements : （1） the height of tongue raising ; the position of the highest part of the tongue （high , middle or low）（2）（front , central, back ） ; the length or tenseness of the vowel （tense vs. lax or long vs. short） ; （4） lip-rounding （3）

（rounded vs. unrounded） . For example, [i:]: high, front, tense, unrounded vowel.

[u]: high, back, lax, rounded vowel.

13．What are theme and rheme?

【答案】 Some linguists, who devoted considerable attention to problems of analyzing sentences from a functional point of view , believe that a sentence contains a point of departure and a goal of discourse. The point of departure is equally present to the speaker and to the hearer ——it is their starting point, the ground on which they meet. This is called the theme. The goal of discourse presents the very information that is to be imparted to the hearer. This is called the rheme. For example, in the sentence The man is coming, The man is the theme, and is coming is the rheme.

14．One of the design features of human language is creativity. What is it? And what makes it possible?

【答案】 The creativity of language means that users can understand and produce sentences they have never heard before. Creativity is a property unique to human language. It is one of design features that only human language has.

Human language is resourceful because of its duality and its recursiveness. The speaker is able to combine the basic linguistic units to form all infinite sets of sentences, most of which are never before produced or heard. The fact that human language is recursive could be shown in that words can be used in new ways to mean new things , and can be instantly understood by people who have never come across that word before. For example, I could make a sentence like The old lady who is waiting for the girl who is talking to the boy who is playing with a basketball is my grandma.

Recursiveness also includes coordination and subordination , conjoining and embedding , hypotactic and paratactic. recursiveness, together with openness , is generally regarded as the core of creativity of language.

15．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.

四、Essay-question

16．A discussion on Saussure 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