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一、Explain-the-fllowing-terms

1． Prefix

【答案】 In linguistics, a prefix is a type of affix that precedes the morphemes to which it can attach. Prefixes are bound morphemes （they cannot occur as independent words ） . While most languages employ both prefixes and suffixes, prefixes are less common. Some languages employ mostly suffixes and almost no prefixes at all. The use of prefixes has been found to correlate statistically with other linguistic features, such as a verb-object word order and the use of prepositions.

2． Performatives

【答案】 Performatives are sentences that do not state a fact or describe a state. They cannot be said to be true or false. The uttering of these sentences is, or is part of, the doing an action. The judge‟s imprisonment sentence, the president‟s war or independence declaration, etc., are performatives.

3． Register

【答案】 It is a speech variety used by a particular group of people , usually sharing the same occupation （e.g. doctors, lawyers） or the same interests. A particular register often distinguishes itself from others by having a number of distinctive words, by using words or phrases in a particular way, and sometimes by special grammatical constructions （e.g. legal language）.

4． Contextual meaning

【答案】 It is also called speaker‟s meaning, or utterance meaning, which is more closely related to the context. For example, when a person says “My bag is heavy”，what he actually means may be asking the hearer to help him carry the bag.

5． Minimal pairs

The two words which are identical in every way except for one sound segment that occurs 【答案】

in the same place in the string. For example，the English words bear and pear constitute a minimal pair as they differ in meaning and in their initial phonemes /b/ and /p/.

6． Speech and thought presentation

【答案】 Speech and thought presentation: These two terms are used for the language in fiction, referring to the presenting forms for indicating the narrator‟s speech or thought. The speech presentation may have the following four possibilities : direct speech , indirect speech , narrator‟s representation of speech acts, and narrator‟s representation of speech. The Thought presentation can also be categorized

into : narrator‟s representation of thought , narrator‟s representation of thought acts , indirect thought , free indirect thought, and direct thought.

7． functional morpheme

【答案】 This is a subtype of free morphemes, which one consists largely of the functional words in language such as conjunctions, prepositions, articles and pronouns, for example, “and, about when on , near, the” an so on.

8． Ferdinand de Saussure

【答案】 Ferdinand de Saussure is a Swiss linguist who is often described as “father of modem linguistics”. The great work , Course in General Linguistics , which was based on his lecture notes , marked the beginning of modem linguistics. Saussure^ idea on the arbitrary nature of sign , one the relational nature of linguistic units , on the distinction of langue and parole and of synchronic and diachronic linguistics, etc. pushed linguistics into a brand new stage.

9． 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‟‟.

10．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”.

二、Short-answer-questions

11．What are the differences between simile and metaphor?

【答案】 Simile is a way of comparing one thing with another, of explaining what one thing is like by showing how it is similar to another thing , and it explicitly signals itself in a text, with the words as or like. For example, the phrase as cold as ice is a common simile.

Although metaphor also makes a comparison between two unlike elements , this comparison is implied rather than stated. That is , it differs from simile in that the words such as like or as do not appear. For example, uThe life is a stage” is a metaphor.

12．How to analyze dramatic language?

【答案】（1） Turn quantity and length

How much a character talks can be indicative either of their relative importance in the play, or of how important they appear to think they are. Generally speaking , central characters have longer and more speeches than minor characters.

（2）Exchange sequence: The patterns of exchange of a dramatic dialogue which are considered appropriate by speakers of English. For example , the two-part exchanges such as greeting-greeting , question-answer.

（3）Production errors: Deliberately used forms such as hesitation to convey something about the character

（4）The cooperative principle : this principle is proposed by Grice. He asserted people used to make sense of their conversation by enabling them to distinguish between sentence meaning and utterance meaning. He also suggested that people actually break these maxims quite often when they talk.

（5）Status marked through language: Many of the properties of language discussed can be used to signal the relative status and changes in status , of characters. Particularly , language can be used to signal to what extent the relationship between an addresser and addressee is based on a social power difference , and to what extent it is based on solidarity.

（6）Register : It is the term used in linguistics to describe the relationship between a particular style of language and its context of use. An example of a linguistic register is legal discourse, we recognize a legal document when we see one, but lawyers are the only people who are trained to produce them using appropriate linguistic choices.

（7）Speech and silence: Concerning female characters in plays, there is evidence that men tend to talk more than women in mixed sex conversations.

13．plowed 14. climbed 15. singed 16. hanged

【答案】

14．What is assimilation? Is it similar to coarticulation? What dose it include?

【答案】 Assimilation is a process by which one sound takes on some or all the characteristics of a neighbouring sound. It is often used synonymously with coarticulation. Nasalization, dentalization and velarization are all instances of assimilation. There are two possibilities of assimilation: if a following sound is influencing a preceding sound, it is regressive assimilation; the converse process, in which a preceding sound is influencing a following sound, is known as progressive assimilation.

15．What are the major concerns of pragmatics?

【答案】 Pragmatics is the study of the language in use. It is mainly about how speakers use language appropriately and effectively in accordance with a given context. It is concerned with the study of meaning as communicated by a speaker （or writer） and interpreted by a listener （or reader） . It has more to do with participants of communication and context in which communication takes place. Hence the study of speaker meaning, that of contextual meaning, of what is unsaid but communicated.

16．Briefly explain what phonetics and phonology are concerned with and what kind of relationships hold between the two.

【答案】 By definition , phonetics is the study of speech sounds , including the production of speech , while phonology is the study of the rules governing the structure, distribution, and sequencing of speech sounds and the shape of syllables. Both phonetics and phonology are concerned with speech. Phonetics is the study of the production , perception , and physical properties of speech sounds ;