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一、Explain-the-fllowing-terms

1． 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.

2． 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.

3． Categorization

Categorization is the process of classifying our experiences into different categories based 【答案】

on commonalities and differences. There are three levels in categories: the basic level，the superordinate level ，and the subordinate level.

4． CMC

【答案】 It is computer-mediated communication , distinguished by its focus on language and language use in computer networked environments, and by its use of methods of discourse analysis to address that focus.

二、Essay-question

5． MORPHEME is defined as the smallest unit in terms of relationship between expression and content. Then is morpheme a grammatical concept or a semantic one? What is its relation to phoneme? Can a morpheme and a phoneme form an organic whole?

【答案】 As a matter of fact, morpheme is both a grammatical concept and a semantic one. for instance , we can recognize that English word-forms such as talks , talker , talked and talking must consist of one element talk , and a number of other elements such as -s , -er , -ed , -ing. All these elem ents are described as morphemes. The definition of morpheme is “the smallest unit of language in terms of the relationship between expression and content”. We would say that the word reopened in the sentence The pglice reopened the investigation consists of three morphemes. One minimal unit of meaning is open, another minimal unit of meaning is re- （meaning again） , and a minimal unit of

grammatical function is -ed （indicating past tense） . Therefore, we are in a position to conclude that those which can stand by themselves as single words , e.g. open , are semantic concepts , and those which cannot normally stand alone, but which are typically attached to another form, e.g. re-, -ist, -ed, -s , are grammatical concepts.

As we know , each one of the meaning-distinguishing sounds in a language is described as a phoneme. An essential property of a phoneme is that it functions contrastively. If we substitute one sound for another in a word and there is a change of meaning, then the two sounds represent different phonemes.

The relation between morpheme and phoneme is also of two fold feature , viz. one-to-one , one-to-more. As with the former type, one-to-one, re- is the kind of morpheme that always consists of two phonemesas for the latter type, one-to-more relation, a typical example would be the plural morpheme that follows a noun or a

verb. after a noun can be pronounced in three ways ,

viz. and as in locks, bags, and watches; after a verb can also be pronounced in three ways,

viz. and as in stops, drags, and catches.

Seen from an integrative perspective, a morpheme and a phoneme, indeed, can form an organic whole , as the number of the sound of each morpheme cannot be unlimited.

6． Advantages and Disadvantages of Componential Analysis.

【答案】 The componential analysis is a way to analyze the lexical meaning , which treats the meaning of a word as a composite of some smaller semantic units , which are called semantic components , or semantic features.

One advantage of componential analysis is that by specifying the semantic features of certain words, it will be possible to show how these words are related in meaning. For example，the two words “man” and “woman” share the features of +HUMAN, + ADULT, and + ANIMATE, but differ in the features of MALE. Additionally , the sense relations could be better accounted for. Two words , or two expressions , which have the same semantic components, will be synonymous with each other; words which have a contrasting component are antonyms; and words which have all the semantic components of another are hyponyms of the latter.

The semantic components are also able to explain sense relations between sentences, for example, the contradictory relationship, and the entailing relationship.

However , as have been found, there are also difficulties in the approach to analyze the meaning of a word in terms of semantic components. First, many words are polysemous. They have more than one meaning ; consequently they will have different sets of semantic components. Second, some semantic components are seen as binary taxonomies. However , sometimes the distinction to differentiate two semantic components such as “ADULT” and “YOUNG”, is rather vague. Third, apart from the neatly organized parts of the vocabulary, there are words whose semantic components are difficult to ascertain. For example, the semantic components themselves, like HUMAN, ADULT, are not ordinary words of English ; they belong to a meta-language. To someone who does not know the meta-language , the semantic components explain nothing.

7． Explain this statement and give at least two examples of it: “In studying other cultures，we do so from the perspective of our own culture.”

【答案】 Culture is a semiotic meaning system in which symbols function to communicate meaning from one mind to another. It is related to language in such a way that language is a part of culture and a part of human behavior, and also the primary medium for transmitting much of culture. Therefore , without language, culture would not be possible. Consequently, when studying a culture,

we often rely on the language. Therefore, we may use our own language to describe the target culture, which may be the one interpretation of the statement 6tIn studying other cultures, we do so from the perspective of our own culture”.

What s more , when studying other cultures , we will definitely come across the differences between the target culture and our own culture. We will subconsciously compare the two different cultures. Seeing from the perspective of our own culture, we find how the target culture is different from our own culture, and this makes the target culture more distinctive from our own.