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一、Explain-the-fllowing-terms

1． Denotation

【答案】 The core sense of a word or a phrase that relates it to phenomena in the real world. In the case of linguistic signs, the denotative meaning is what the dictionary attempts to provide. It is the literal meaning of a word, the dictionary meaning, opposite to connotation.

2． Foregrounding

【答案】 This term is meant for what is unusual, attractive, unconventional, salient. In literature, foregrounding is often achieved through unconventional expressions which attract the readers9 attention. The main manifestations of foregrounding are deviation and parallelism.

3． The London School of Linguistics

【答案】 The London School generally refers to the kind of linguistic scholarship in England. The man who turned linguistics proper into a recognized distinct academic subject in Britain was J.R. Firth.

4． figure-ground alignment

【答案】 Figure-ground alignment seems to apply to space with the ground as the prepositional object and the preposition expressing the spatial relational configuration. It also applies to human perception of moving objects. Since the moving object is typically the most prominent one, because it is moving , it is typically the figure, while the remaining stimuli constitute the ground.

5． Phonetics

Phonetics is the study of how speech sounds are produced, transmitted, and perceived. It 【答案】

can be divided into three main areas of study articulatory phonetics , acoustic phonetics and perceptual/auditory phonetics.

6． Inflection

【答案】 Inflection is the manifestation of grammatical relationship through the addition of inflectional affixes , such as number , person , finiteness , aspect and case , which do not change the grammatical class of the stems to which they are attached. For example, the past form of the verb work is realized by the addition of the inflectional suffix: „„-ed‟‟； the plural form of the noun child is realized by the inflectional suffix: „„-ren‟‟.

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． 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”.

9． 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.

10．Presupposition

【答案】 A presupposition is a proposition （expressed in a sentence） that is assumed to be true in order to judge the truth or falsity of another sentence. For example , John didn't pass chemistry presupposes that John took chemistry.

二、Short-answer-questions

11．What is the relationship between tree diagrams and structural ambiguity?

【答案】 In a theory of syntax using tree diagrams （phrase markers ） to represent syntactic structure , the explanation of the phenomenon of structural ambiguity is straightforward : whereas an unambiguous sentence is associated with just one basic tree diagram, a structurally ambiguous sentence is associated with more than one basic tree diagram.

12．It is claimed in sociolinguistics that you are what you say. How would you comment on this theoretical claim?

【答案】 Everyone speaks differently. A personal dialect of an individual speaker combines elements regarding regional, social, gender, and age variations. In other words, an individual speaker^ regional and social back ground, his/her gender and age jointly determine the way he/she talks. From this point, we can claim that44You are what you say99.

Following this claim , we may expand the scope of our observation by introducing some social factors that are believed to influence our language behavior in a social context. Among these factors, some major ones include a） class ; b） gender ; c ） age ; d） ethnic identity; e） education background, f ） occupation , and g ） religious belief. In our daily speaking, the potential selection of linguistic forms can reflect the above factors, which determine our identities.

For example , women use more “fancy” color terms such as “mauve” and “beige”； use less

powerful curse words; use more intensifiers such as “terrible” and “awful ”； use more tag questions. On the other hand, your way of speaking, to some extent, reflect your identity.

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 definition is meant to specify that language is human specific.

14．Cite an example to explain synchronic linguistics.

Synchronic Linguistics is the description of a language at some point of time in history. It 【答案】

focuses on the characteristics of the language at a certain time. For example, when we study English, we learn about the vocabulary, the language points and oral English etc. At this time, we are learning English of current time in synchronic method.

15．Explain the characteristic of arbitrariness. What are the relationships between arbitrariness & onomatopoeic words and arbitrariness convention?

【答案】 Arbitrariness refers to the fact that the forms of linguistic signs bear no natural relationship to their meaning. Onomatopoeic words are the words that sound like the sounds they describe. Only when people know the meaning can they infer that the linguistic sign is appropriate for the exact sound. Arbitrariness of language makes it potentially creative, and conventionality of language makes a language be passed from generation to generation.

16．Identify the type of trope employed in the following examples.

1）The boy was as cunning as a fox.

2）…the innocent sleep the death of each day‟s life, …（Shakespeare ）

3）Buckingham Palace has already been told the train may be axed when the rail network has been privatised. （Daily Mirror, 2 February 1993）

4）Ted Dexter confessed last night that England are in a right old spin as to how they can beat India this winter. （Daily Mirror, 2 February 1993）

【答案】 1） simile 2 ） metaphor 3 ） metonymy 4 ） synecdoche

三、Essay-question

17．What is the relationship between language and literature?

【答案】 Literature is closely related to language. Generally speaking, it is marked by careful use of language, such as creative metaphors, elegant syntax, and so on. It reaches to human beings mostly via language. It could be seen as a language in use. The existence of literature owes a lot to language. The language used in literature is quite often different from language used in other fields , such as everyday use.

In linguistics, the term “genre” is used to refer not only to types of literary works but also to any