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一、Explain-the-fllowing-terms

1． Language Acquisition Device （LAD ）

【答案】 Language Acquisition Device: LAD refers to an innate faculty of language in general with which children are bom. It is posited by Chomsky , who argues that LAD probably consists of three elements : a hypothesis-maker, linguistic universal, and an evaluation procedure.

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． 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.

4． Assimilation

【答案】 It is a process by which one sound takes on some or all the characteristics of a neighboring sound. It is often used synonymously with coarticulation. Nasalization, dentalization and，velarization are all instances of assimilation. There are two possibilities of assimilation: if a following sound is influencing a preceding sound, it is regressive assimilation;

the converse process, in which a preceding sound is influencing a following sound, is known as progressive assimilation. For example, in “mink”，“n”，which is originally pronounced aswill be velarized by the following “k”/k/，and therefore the word will be pronounced as

5． Lexical word

【答案】 Lexical word, lexical words are also called content words, referring to those which have lexical meanings, that is, those which refer to substance, action and quality, such as nouns, verbs, adjectives , and adverbs.

6． Lexical relations

【答案】 There are several types of lexical relations concerning the sense of the words. Those are synonymy , antonymy, hyponymy, polysemy, homonymy, and so on. （a ） Synonymy refers to the

sameness relation ; “autum”, and “full ” are synonyms , for example , （b ） Antonymy refers to the oppositeness relation ; for example , “buy” and “sell ” are antonyms , （c ） Hyponymy refers to the inclusiveness relation; for example, “apple” is a hyponym of “fruit”, （d ） Polysemy means one word that has more than one related meaning ，and “bank”，as an example , is a polysemous word. （e ） Homonymy refers to the relation of two different words which are identical either in sound, or spelling, or both, such as “bow” （bau ） and “bow” （b əu ）.

7． Diglossia

【答案】 When two languages or language varieties exist together in a community and each one is used for different purposes, this is called diglossia. Usually, the more standard variety can be called the high variety or H-variety , which is used in government , the media , education , and for religious services. The other one is usually a non-prestige variety, the low variety or L-variety used in the family, with friends, when shopping, etc.

8． Applied linguistics

【答案】 It is a branch of linguistics which studies the application of linguistics in reality. For example , there are studies on multilingualism, language acquisition, first and second language teaching and learning.

9． Polysemy

【答案】 Polysemy means a single word having several or many meanings. According to Crystal: Polysemy is a term used in semantic analysis to refer to a lexical item which has a range of different meanings. Polysemic words are signs of an advanced culture. Polysemy is also an essential feature of a language‟s economy and efficiency.

10．Gradable antonym

【答案】 Gradable antonym. Gradable antonyms are antonyms that are gradable because there are often intermediate forms between the two members of a pair. For example, cold and warm constitute a pair of gradable antonyms.

二、Short-answer-questions

11．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

12．The following is a statement by a Japanese businessman: “You buy in your own language, but you sell in your customer’s language.” How do you understand it?

【答案】 This reflects some features of pidgin which is a special language variety that mixes or blends languages and it id used by people who speak different languages for restricted purposes such as trading. And also, it reflects the tendency of intercultural communication from the aspect of language.

13．Why do we say language is primarily vocal?

Language is system of arbitrary vocal symbols used for human communication. Language 【答案】

is primarily vocal, because sound or speech is the primary medium for all human languages, developed or 6'new, 5. Writing systems came much later than the spoken forms. The fact that small children learn and can only learn to speak （and listen ） before they write （and read） also indicates that language is primarily vocal , rather than written. The term “human” in the definiti on is meant to specify that language is human specific.

14．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.

15．Explain three levels of categorization.

【答案】 Three levels of categorization

（1） Superordinate levels mean higher levels or more general levels. Furniture and animal are examples of superordinate category levels.

（2）Basic-level categories are more specific , but not too specific. Chair is an example of basic-level categories.

（3）Subordinate levels mean lower levels or more specific categories. Desk chair is an example of subordinate categories.

16．Illustrate the relationship between morpheme and allomorph by examples.

【答案】 Morpheme is the smallest meaningful linguistic unit of language , not divisible or analyzable into smaller forms. What is usually considered a single word in English may be composed of one or more morphemes. Take disagreeable for example, it contains three morphemes, dis-, agree and -able. A morpheme may take various shapes or forms. For instance, -ion, -tion, -sion and -ation are the positional variants of the same suffix. They do not differ in meaning or function but show a slight difference in sound depending on the final phoneme of the preceding verb. They are called allomorphs. So an allomorph is any of the variant forms of a morpheme as conditioned by position or adjoining sounds.

三、Essay-question