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一、Explain-the-fllowing-terms

1． computational linguistics

【答案】 Computational linguistics is a branch of applied linguistics , dealing with computer processing of human language, h includes programmed instruction, speech synthesis and recognition, automatic translation, and computer mediated communication.

2． 1-narrator

【答案】 The person who tells the story may also be a character in the fictional world of the story, relating the story after the event. In this ease the critics call the narrator a FIRST-PERSON NARRATOR or I- NARRATOR because when the narrator refers to himself or herself in the story the first person pronoun I is used. First-person narrators are often said to be “limited” because they don‟t know all the faces or “unreliable” because they trick the reader by withholding information or telling untruths. This often happens in murder and mystery stories.

3． 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.

4． 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”.

5． Relational opposites

【答案】 This is a type of antonymy , in which the members of a pair do not constitute a positive-negative opposition. They show the reversal of a relationship between two entities. For example, “buy/sell” is such a pair. X buys something from Y means Y sells something from X.

6． Transformational-Generative grammar

【答案】 Transformational-generative grammar is proposed by Noam Chomsky. He postulated a syntactic base of language （called deep structure ） , which consists of a series of phrase-structure rewrite rules, i.e., a series of （possibly universal） rules that generates the underlying phrase-structure of a sentence. The end result of a transformational-generative grammar is a surface structure that is identical to an actual sentence of a language , after the mediating of a series of rules （called transformations ） that act upon the deep structures.

7． Cross-cultural communication

【答案】 Cross-cultural communication is an exchange of ideas , information , etc , between persons from different cultural backgrounds. The cultural conventions of the participants may widely different , and misinterpretation and misunderstanding can easily arise , even leading to a total communication breakdown.

8． Functional Sentence Perspective （FSP ）

【答案】 It is a theory of linguistic analysis which refers to art analysis of utterances （or texts） in terms of the information they contain. The principle is that the role of each utterance part is evaluated for its semantic contribution to the whole.

二、Essay-question

9． Shakespeare has Juliet say:

Whats in a name? That which we call a rose.

By any other name would smell as sweet.

What do the above lines say to you about the relationship between the form （sounds ） and meaning （concept ） of a word in spoken language? Explain with positive evidence as well as exceptions from the English language.

The lines said above show that the relationship between the form （sounds ） and meaning 【答案】

（concept ） of a word in spoken language is arbitrary in nature. That means there is no logical connection between forms （sounds ） and meaning （concept ） . Different sounds are used to refer to the same object in different languages.

Sounds are just symbols; they are associated with objects, actions, ideas, etc. by convention. In this example, the rose can be called by many names in different languages but its smell never changes. Another example, different languages have different forms for referring to “dog” in English, such as Chinese “狗 ”，French “chien （n.m. ） 5”While language is arbitrary by nature, there are some （gou ）

exceptions as well. The best examples in English are the onomatopoetic words and compound words. For example, some onomatopoetic words “rumble”，“ crash”， “crackle” “ bang” are uttered like the sounds they describe, thus seem to have a natural basis. Besides, some compound words are also not entirely arbitrary. For example while “photo” and “copy” are both arbitrary , the compound word “photocopy” is not entirely arbitrary, thus seem to be motivated. Anyhow, non-arbitrary words make up only a small percentage of the vocabulary of a language.

10．Explain speech act theory and list the different kinds of speech acts with examples for each.

【答案】 The speech act theory was proposed by John Austin. According to this theory, we are performing various kinds of acts when we are speaking. Actions performed through utterances are generally called speech acts. An utterance can perform different speech acts depending on the context and that one speech act can be performed by more than one utterances.

According to Searle, speech acts all into five general categories. Specific acts that fall into each type share the same illocutionary point, but differ in their strength.

1）Representatives : the acts of saying what the speaker believes to be true; they include stating, describing , asserting, and so on; such as “It‟s raining”，“They won the game”.

2）Directives : acts of trying to get the hearer to do something. Commands , orders , requests ,

warnings , suggestions, and on so are of this type, as illustrated in “Be quiet!”，“Don‟t touch that!”

3）Commissives : acts of committing the speaker himself to some future course of action. They include promising，vowing , offering，threatening , and so on. Examples are “I‟ll take her to the vet.” and “We won‟t do that.”

4）Expressives : acts of expressing feelings or attitude towards an existing state. They can be statements of pleasure，pain ，likes ，sorrow , and so on. For example，“I‟m sorry to hear that”.

5）Declarations : acts of bringing about immediate changes by saying something. They include resigning , dismissing , naming, appointing, and so on. For example, the priest may say in a wedding “I now pronounce you husband and wife”.

11．Discuss the following advertisement extensively: “ 你不理财，财不理你”.

【答案】 This advertisement is an interesting one, for its witty use of pun words. There are two places of punning. First, “理财” could be interpreted in two different ways : one is “to manage one‟s money‟‟，the other is “not to ignore money”. Second, in the second part of the sentence, “财 ” is punned through homophony: it could be interpreted as “财 ”，therefore , the whole part “财不理你” could mean “fortune will ignore you‟‟，or rather，“fortune will pass you away”. This character could also interpreted as “才”，therefore , the whole part “财不理你” could mean “I will ignore you”，or rather, “I will show you my cold shoulder” （Here UF, refers to the company which put out this advertisement）.

Therefore , this utterance could be possibly interpreted in the following ways. 1） If you do not handle your money in a proper way, then money will pass you by. 2 ） If you do not handle your money properly , then I won‟t take care of any of your business. 3 ） If you ignore money, and do not pay any attention to it, then money will pass you by. 4） If you ignore money, then I will ignore you, too, and I won5t take care of any of your business. In these four interpretations, it is clear to see that in 1 and 4, the advertiser conveyed the messages to the readers as if he was having a face-to-face talk to a friend. This has in some way made the piece of ad interesting to read.

It is known the punning is by nature ambiguous. Therefore, according to Grice, the advertisement has violated the principle of avoiding ambiguity under Manner Maxim. By such a violation , the advertiser has possibly intended to make the potential consumers pay more attention to it, and spend more time on it, since it is known that ambiguity will increase the time for processing the sentence; and by interpreting it in additional ways, the readers are also expected to get another interesting message from this ad. All of these could eventually come to a higher memorability of the advertisement.

12．Describe the process of language perception, comprehension and production.

【答案】 From the perspective of psycholinguistic analysis, language use in terms of perception, comprehension and production follows a certain pattern which involves the coordination of various language centers.

When we speak , words are drawn from Wernicke's area and transferred to Broca's area , which determines the details of their forms and pronunciation. The appropriate instructions are then sent to the motor area which controls the vocal tract to physically articulate the words.

When we hear something and try to comprehend it , the stimulus from the auditory cortex is transmitted to Wernicke's area, where it is then interpreted.

When we perceive a visual image, a message is sent to the angular gyrus, where it is converted into a visual pattern.