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一、Explain-the-fllowing-terms

1． 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.

2． Linguistic determinism

【答案】 Linguistic determinism , is one of the two points of Sapir-Whorf hypothesis , and has developed into the strong version of this hypothesis. It could be summarized as follows: （1） One‟s thinking is completely determined by his native language because one cannot but perceive the world in terms of the categories and distinctions encoded in the language. （2） The categories and distinctions encoded in one language system are unique to that system and incommensurable with those of other systems. Therefore , the following statement could represent this hypothesis 4tIf Aristotle had spoken Chinese , his logic would have been different”.

3． IC analysis

【答案】 IC analysis: IC analysis （immediate constituent analysis） refers to the analysis of a sentence in terms of its immediate constituents---word groups （or phrases ） , which are in turn analyzed into the immediate constituents of their own , and the process goes on until the ultimate constituents are reached. In practice, for the sake of convenience, we usually stop at the level of word.

4． Textual function

【答案】 Textual function : The textual function is one of the three meta-functions language is composed of. It refers to the fact that language has mechanisms to make any stretch of spoken or written discourse into a coherent and unified text and make a living message different from a random list of sentences.

5． Interlanguage

【答案】 It refers to the type of language constructed by second or foreign language learners who are still in the process of learning a language. It‟s a language system between the target language and the learner‟s native language, and imperfect compared with the target language, but not mere translation from the learner^ native language. For example, when the Chinese student is learning English, he may make errors like “to touch the society”.

6． Concordance

【答案】 The computer has the ability to search for a particular word , sequence of words , or perhaps even a part of speech in a text. The computer can also retrieve all examples of a particular word.

It can also calculate the number of occurrences of a certain word so that information on the frequency of the word may be gathered. We may also be interested in sorting the data in some way—for example, alphabetically on words occurring in the immediate context of the word. This is usually referred to as concordance.

7． 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/.

8． 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.

二、Essay-question

9． What is the relationship between speech event and speech act? （Explain with an example）.

【答案】 Speech act refers to an utterance as a functional unit in communication. There are many kinds of speech acts, such as requests, orders, commands, complaints, and promises. A speech act that is performed indirectly is sometimes known as an indirect speech act. Speech event refers to a particular instance when people exchange speech , e.g. an exchange of greetings , an enquiry , a conversation. Speech events are governed by the rules and norms for the use of speech, which may be different in different communities. The structure of speech events varies considerably according to the genre they belong to.

Both speech act and speech event are concerned about the actual utterance of sentences. But speech act deals with a particular utteranceh that has locutionary act, illocutionary act and perlocutionary act. Speech event is related to certain speech situations that are composed of many utterances, though may be not speech act.

For example, when you ask for the time at a bus stop with the sentence, “What time is it?” your meaning is that you want to know the time. This speech act takes place within a speech event, which could be called asking for the time. Such an event is very brief and usually has three speech acts: asking the time, giving the time, and thinking.

Speech events usually take place within the larger context of speech situations. Based on the differences between speech act and speech event, the former is usually studied in pragmatics while the latter is the focus of socio-linguistics.

10．In informal speech , people often omit sentence subjects because they are commonly understood. What are the omitted subjects in the following two sentences? Why do people know that these are the correct subjects?

a.Hope you like everything here.

b.Just imagine what has just happened here.

【答案】 The omitted subject in sentence a is “I ” and the omitted subject in sentence b is usually “You”. This is a matter of sentence comprehension in language comprehension. Psycholinguists have proposed principles interpreting sentence comprehension with respect to the grammatical constraints. The most popular principle is “Minimal attachment” which defines “structurally simpler”，and it claims that structural simplicity guides all initial analyses in sentence comprehension.

In this view , the sentence processor constructs a single analysis of a sentence and attempts to interpret it. The first analysis is the one that requires the fewest applications of grammatical rules to attach each incoming word into the structure being built; it is the automatic consequence of an effort to get some analysis constructed as soon as possible. In the first sentence, when “hope” as a verb is used to express the speaker‟s desire and expectation for something to happen, it conveys the will of the speaker. So , the subject of “hope” is usually the speaker her/himself and can be omitted when the two are talking to each other. When the speaker is making a statement and using “hope” to express other‟s will , the subject will not be omitted.

Therefore , according to “minimal attachment” principle, when the hearer interprets this sentence, they automatically interpret “I”—the speaker, as the subject of “hope”. Sentence b can be said to be an imperative sentence which is a sentence that gives advice or instructions or that expresses a request or a command. This instruction or request is always aimed to the hearer or the reader, so the subject of an imperative is always “you”. When the hearer interpret this sentence , he/she will interpret the verb “imagine”, as a request or advice through which the speaker tries to make he/she involved in this action, so it is easier for he/she to consider “you” as the subject.

Context is another important factor for people to understand the subjects. The subjects will be more clear in particular context although they are omitted.

11．What do you think are the similarities and dissimilarities between learning a first and a second language?

【答案】 Similarities between first and second language acquisition:

（1） Both LI and L2 are constructed from prior conceptual knowledge. Language emerges as a procedural acquisition to deal with events that the child already understands conceptually and to achieve communicative objectives that the child can realize by the other means.

（2）Second language learners seem to use similar strategies to those learning their first language.

（3）Overgeneralization and transfer are used by both LI and L2 learner as the result of a necessity to reduce language to the simplest possible system, as an effort to lessen the cognitive burden involved in trying to master something as complex as language.

（4）The L2 learner, like the first, attempts to “regularize, analogize, and simplify” in an effort to communicate.

（5）Speech addressed to children （motherese ） and speech addressed to foreigners （foreign talk） present similarities : shorter sentences , high-frequency vocabulary , “here and now” times , indirect correction , frequent gesture， lack of overt attention to form.

（6） A reasonable hypothesis is that the brain and nervous system are biologically programmed to acquire language （LI and L2） in a particular sequence and in a particular mode （silent period）.

（7）Both groups are probably using the same learning process. For example, the L2 sequence for English grammatical morphemes was similar , though not identical , to that found in LI acquisition. Other similar sequences of syntactic acquisition have been found in LI and L2 learning. L2 learners such