当前位置：问答库＞考研试题

一、Explain-the-fllowing-terms

1． Audiolingual method

【答案】 Audiolingual method refers to the teaching of a second language through imitation , repetition , and reinforcement. It emphasizes the teaching of speaking and listening before reading and writing and the use of mother tongue in the classroom is not allowed.

2． basic level category

【答案】 Basic level category is the most economical level at which you can find the most relevant information. The information on our interactions with objects in the real world are stored at this level. It is at this level that we conjure up the general gestalt of the category.

3． 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.

4． Government

【答案】 Government is another type of control over the forms 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 forms 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.

5． distinctive features

a means of working out a set of phonological contrasts or oppositions to capture particular 【答案】

aspects of language sounds , first suggested by Roman Jacobson in the 1940s and then developed by numerous other people.

二、Short-answer-questions

6． What are vowels glide about? What differentiates pure or monophthong vowel from vowel glides?

【答案】 When pure or monophthongs are pronounced, the quality remains constant throughout the articulatioin. In contrast, those where there is an audible change of quality are called vowel glides. V owel glides are produced by moving from one vowel position to another through intervening positions. If a single movement of the tongue is involved, the glides are called diphthongs. A double movement produces triphthongs.

7． Briefly explain what phonetics and phonology are concerned with and what kind of relationships hold between the two.

【答案】 By definition , phonetics is the study of speech sounds , including the production of speech , while phonology is the study of the rules governing the structure, distribution, and sequencing of speech sounds and the shape of syllables. Both phonetics and phonology are concerned with speech. Phonetics is the study of the production , perception , and physical properties of speech sounds ; phonology attempts to account for how they are combined , organized , and convey meaning in particular languages. Phonetics is the study of actual sounds , that is , the analysis and modeling the speech signal; phonology is concerned with a more abstract description of speech sounds and tries to describe the regularities of sound patterns in different languages or within a language. In this sense , phonetics is concrete, while phonology is abstract. What phonetics studies is the speech sound, namely phone , what phonology studies is phoneme.

8． What makes language unique to human beings?

The design features of language which refer to the defining properties of human language 【答案】

tell the difference between human language and any system of animal communication.Arbitrariness is a core feature of language, which means that there is no logical connection between meanings and sounds. Duality , which means the property of having two levels of structures, such that units of the primary level are composed of elements of the secondary level and each of the two levels has its own principles of organization. Creativity means language is resourceful because of its duality and its recursiveness. Because of duality the speaker is able to combine the basic linguistic unites to form an infinite set of sentences , most of which are never heard before. Displacement means that language can be used to refer to things which are present or not present, real or imagined matters, in the past, present, or future, or in far-away places. So all these features make language unique to human beings.

9． How do you understand syntagmatic and paradigmatic relations?

【答案】 In Saussure’s view, language is a system of signs, each of which consists of two parts: signified and signifier. And the relationships between these two parts are arbitrary. Syntagmatic relation is a relation between elements that form part of the same form , sequence , construction , etc. e.g. between s, p, and r in a form such as spring, or between a subject and a verb in constructions such as Bill hunts. The syntagmatic relation is also called horizontal relation or chain relation. Paradigmatic relation is a relation holding between elements replaceable with each other at a particular place in a structure. The paradigmatic relation is also called vertical relation or choice relation.

三、Essay-question

10．What kind of linguistic phenomenon can you identify in the following dialogue? Define , analize and explain the phenomenon.

甲：上车请买票。

乙：三张天安门。

甲：您拿好。

【答案】 This conversation consists of the linguistic phenomenon which is called the “Cooperative Principle”，proposed and formulated by P. Grice , based on such a pragmatic hypothesis that the participants must first of all be willing to cooperate; otherwise, it would not be possible to carry on talk. It goes as follows:

Make your conversational contribution such as required at the stage at which it occurs by the accepted purpose or direction of the talk exchange in which you are engaged. To be more specific, there are four maxims under this general principle:

The maxim of quantity

a ）Make your contribution as informative as is required （for the current purpose of the exchange）. b ）Do not make your contribution more informative than is required.

The maxim of quality

a ）Do not say what you believe to be false.

b ）Do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence.

The maxim of relation

Be relevant.

The maxim of manner

a ）Avoid obscurity of expression.

b ）Avoid ambiguity.

c ）Be brief （avoid unnecessary prolixity） •

d ）Be orderly.

There are circumstances where speakers may not follow the maxims of the cooperative principle. For example , in this conversation , the speaker may violate the maxim expectations by using an expression like “ 三张天安门” in response to a question. Although it is typically “more informative than is required” in the context, it is naturally interpreted as communicating more than is said （i.e. the speaker knows the answer）. This typical reaction （i. e. there must be something “special” here） of listeners to any apparent violation of the maxims is actually the key to the notion of conversational implicature. When we violate any of these maxims, our language becomes indirect. In this way, we can convey more than is literally said.

11．How many semantic relations are there among sentences? Give examples.

【答案】 There are basically six:

（1）Synonymy , e.g. X: “He was a bachelor all his life." Y: “He never married all his life."

X is synonymous with Y.

（2）Inconsistence , e.g. X: “Mark is married." Y: “Mark is a bachelor.”

X is inconsistent with Y.

（3）Entailment ，e.g. X: “Mark married a blonde heiress:”Y: “Mark married a blonde.”