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一、Explain-the-fllowing-terms

1． Distinctive features of speech sounds

【答案】 The distinctive feature is a property which distinguishes one phoneme from another. For example , “voicing” is a distinctive feature, since it plays an important role in distinguishing obstruents in English.

2． 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.

3． Syllable

【答案】 Syllable : It refers to a unit of spoken language that is bigger than a speech sound. It consists of one or more vowel sounds alone or of a syllabic consonant alone or of either with one or more consonant sounds preceding or following.

4． 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.

5． Compound

【答案】 Compound refers to those words that consist of more than one lexical morpheme, or the way to join two separate words to produce a single form, such as the compound words “blackboard” and “well-known”.

6． constituent

【答案】 Constituent is a term used in structural sentence analysis for every linguistic unit, which is a part of a larger linguistic unit. Several constituents together form a construction: for example, in the sentence The boy ate the apple, S , the boy , ate the apple , each part is a constituent. （A ）（B ）（C ）

Constituents can be joined together with other constituents to form larger units. If two constituents, in the case of the example above , B （the boy ） and C （ ate the apple ） , are joined to form a hierarchically higher constituent A （“S”，here a sentence） , then B and C are said to be immediate constituents of A.

7． Paradigmatic relations

【答案】 Paradigmatic relation , Saussure originally called associative , is a relation holding between elements replaceable with each other at a particular place in a structure , or between one element present and the others absent.

8． Allomorph

【答案】 A morpheme may take various shapes or forms, and an allomorph is any of the variant forms of a morpheme as conditioned by position or adjoining sounds. For instance, the morpheme of plurality {-s} has a number of allomorphs in different sound context, as in “cats” /s/, in “bags” /z/，in “matches” /iz/.

二、Essay-question

9． What is characteristic of TG grammar?

【答案】 Chomsky‟s TG grammar has the following features.

First , Chomsky defines language as a set of rules or principles.

Secondly , Chomsky believes that the aim of linguistics is to produce a generative grammar which captures the tacit knowledge of the native speaker of his language. This concerns the question of learning theory and the question of linguistic universals.

Thirdly , Chomsky and his followers are interested in any data that can reveal the native speaker^ tacit knowledge. They seldom use what native speakers say; they rely on their own intuition.

Fourthly , Chomsky‟s methodology is hypothesis-deductive , which operates at two levels:（1） The linguist

formulates a hypothesis about language structure —a general linguistic theory ; this is tested by grammars for particular languages. （2） Each such grammar is a hypothesis on the general linguistic theory.

Finally , Chomsky follows rationalism in philosophy and mentalism in psychology.

10．What is the difference between pidgins and creoles?

【答案】 A pidgin is a special language variety that mixes or blends languages and it is used by people who speak different languages for restricted purposes such as trading. The term is believed to have originated from the pronunciation of the English word„„business‟‟in Chinese Pidgin English.

Pidgins arose from a blending of several languages such as Chinese dialects and English, African dialects and French, African dialects and Portuguese. Usually a European language serves as the basis of the pidgin in the sense that some of its grammar and vocabulary is derived from the European language used by traders and missionaries in order to communicate with peoples whose languages they did not know.

Pidgins typically have a limited vocabulary and a very reduced grammatical structure characterized by the loss of inflections，gender and case. The“simplified‟‟variety performs its functions as trading and employment.

When a pidgin has become the primary language of a speech community, and is acquired by the children of that speech community as their native language , it is said to have become a creole. The structure of the original pidgin is expanded to enable it to fulfill its new functions. The vocabulary is vastly enriched , and new syntactic-semantic concepts developed. Notable examples of Creole are the English-based Creole of Jamaica, and the French-based Creole of Haiti.

11．Is English a language that uses a phonetic alphabet system? Explain briefly why or why not with examples.

【答案】 The Phonetic Alphabet is a system of letters and symbols that are used to represent the individual sounds of a language. English is a language that uses a phonetic alphabet system because it is a phonographic language by nature.

There are mainly three types of language concerning its writing system : ideographic language which uses symbols （ideograms ） to represent whole words or concepts （ideas ） , with Chinese as an example ; syllabic language which word or concepts are represented by syllable , with Japanese syllabic system as an example ; phonographic language which uses special alphabetic or other typographical characters to express the sounds of an actual spoken utterance in writing , with many European languages as examples. English uses alphabetic script to represent certain single type sound. For example, the sound which is written sh in English can be expressed by symbols of （ f ） ship ; and the sound that is written in c can be expressed by the symbol of （k ） cup.

12．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 object of study for linguistics as a science. Saussure exerted two kinds of influence on modem linguistics. First , he provided a general orientation , a sense of the task of linguistics which has seldom been questioned. Second, he influenced modem linguistics.

Many of the developments of modem linguistics can be described as his concepts, i. e. his ideas on the arbitrary nature of sign, on the relational nature of linguistic units, on the distinction of langue and parole and of synchronic and diachronic linguistics , etc. Saussure^ fundamental perception is of revolutionary significance, and it is he that pushed linguistics into a brand new stage and all linguistics in the twentieth century is Saussurean linguistics. That‟s why Saussure is considered being the father of modem linguistics.

13．Imagine you were at a bus stop and two people approached you one after the other.

The first said:

“哎，几点了？”

and the second said:

“不好意思，打搅一下，请问您戴表了吗？”

What assumptions would you make if you were addressed in these two ways and why would you make them?

【答案】 As to the first one, an immediate assumption coming to our mind would be the person is asking for the time. The assumption that the hearer gets arises out of the conventional meaning of the expression. The conventional meaning is related to the existing knowledge of the world , and is the meaning that is achieved by the conventions, and is generally accepted by the society. It can be accessed to when we turn to the knowledge towards the world that we have. The expression “几点了” is such a conventional meaning that when it is spoken out，everyone will unexceptionally accept it as a way of