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一、Explain-the-fllowing-terms

1． Predication analysis

【答案】 Predication analysis is an important step in the analysis of sentential meaning. The predication is the common category shared by propositions, questions, commands, etc. Such analysis is to break down the sentence into its smaller constituents: argument and predicate. The predicate is the major or pivotal element governing the argument. The argument is the logical participant.

2． MT

【答案】 It refers to machine translation, the use of machine （usually computers） to translate texts from one natural language to another

3． Broad and narrow transcription

【答案】 Broad and narrow transcription: In broad transcription, one letter symbol is used for one sound. In narrow transcription , there are diacritics added to the one letter symbols to show the finer differences between sounds.

4． Lexical relations

【答案】 There are several types of lexical relations concerning the sense of the words. Those are synonymy , antonymy, hyponymy, polysemy, homonymy, and so on. （a ） Synonymy refers to the sameness relation ; “autum”, and “full ” are synonyms , for example , （b ） Antonymy refers to the oppositeness relation ; for example , “buy” and “sell ” are antonyms , （c ） Hyponymy refers to the inclusiveness relation; for example, “apple” is a hyponym of “fruit”, （d ） Polysemy means one word that has more than one related meaning ，and “bank”，as an example , is a polysemous word. （e ） Homonymy refers to the relation of two different words which are identical either in sound, or spelling, or both, such as “bow” （bau ） and “bow” （b əu ）.

5． inflectional morpheme

【答案】 Inflectional morpheme: It is also called inflectional affixes, which attaches to the end of words. Inflectional affixes only add a minute or delicate grammatical meaning to the stem. The plural suffix is a typical example of this kind.

6． Endocentric construction

【答案】 Endocentric construction : An endocentric construction is one whose distribution is functionally equivalent, or approaching equivalence, to that of one or more of its constituents, i.e. a word or a group of words , which serves as a definable center , or head. Hence an endocentric

construction is also known as a headed construction. Noun phrases like “Lovely Lucy” are typical endocentric constructions.

7． Metonymy

【答案】 Metonymy is a figure of speech used in rhetoric in which a thing or concept is not called by its own name, but by 也e name of something intimately associated with that thing or concept. For instance , “Washington ”，as the capital of the United States, can be used as a metonym （an instance of metonymy） for the United States government.

8． CAI and CAL

【答案】 Computer-assisted instruction （CAI ） means the use of a computer in a teaching program. This includes:

a. A teaching program which is presented by a computer in a sequence. The student responds on the computer , and the computer indicates whether the responses are correct or incorrect.

b. The use of computers to monitor student progress, to direct students into appropriate lessons, material , etc. This is also called computer-managed instruction.

Parallel to CAI , there is CAL （Computer-Assistant Learning ） . The former aims at seeing educational problems on the part of the teacher, whereas the latter emphasizes the use of a computer in both teaching and learning in order to help the learner achieve educational objectives. The first kind of CAL programs which were developed reflected principles similar to programmed instruction. The computer leads the student through learning task step-by-step, asking questions to check comprehension. Depending on the studenfs response, the computer gives the student further practice or progresses to new material （see branching ）. In more recent CAL courseware students are able to interact with the computer and perform higher-level tasks while exploring a subject or problem.

9． phoneme

Phoneme is a basic unit of phonological study, and it is an abstract collection of phonetic 【答案】

features which can distinguish meaning. For example, in English, is described as a phoneme.

10．Homonymy

【答案】 In any language there are words which have the same linguistic form but are different in meaning. These words are called homonyms. For example, bank （of a river） , and bank （financial institution ）.

二、Short-answer-questions

11．Explain with an example that the evaluation of language is social rather than linguistic.

【答案】 As a social phenomenon, language is closely related to the structure of the society in which it is used, and the evaluation of a linguistic form is entirely social.

To a linguist , all language forms and accents are equally good as far as they can fulfill the communication functions they are expected to fulfill. Therefore, judgments concerning the correctness and purity of linguistic varieties are social rather than linguistic.

A case in point is the use of the postvocalic [r]. While in England accents without postvocalic [r] are

considered to be more correct than accents with it, in New York city, accents with postvocalic [r] enjoys more prestige and considered more correct than without it.

12．What are closed-class words and open-class words?

A word that belongs to the closed-class is one whose membership is fixed or limited. New 【答案】

members are not regularly added. Therefore, pronouns, prepositions, conjunctions, articles, etc., are all closed items.

The open-class is one whose membership is in principle infinite or unlimited. With the emergence of new ideas , inventions , etc. , new expressions are continually and constantly being added to the lexicon. Nouns, verbs, adjectives and many adverbs are all open-class items.

However , the distinction between closed-class words and open-class words is not quiet as clear-cut as it seems. Preposition，though a closed-class，is relatively open one in English. Expressions such as “regarding”，“throughout”， “out of” are now recognized as prepositions or complex prepositions. In respect of open-class items，auxiliary verbs，which used to be ranked as open-class words, are relatively closed in number.

13．What distinguishes prescriptive studies of language from descriptive studies of language?

【答案】 The distinction lies in prescribing how things ought to be and describing how things are. To say that linguistics is a descriptive science is to say that the linguist tries to discover and record the roles to which the members of a language-community actually conform and does not seek to impose upon them other rules, or norms, of correctness, which are in the scope of prescriptive linguistics.

14．One of the design features of human language is creativity. What is it? And what makes it possible?

【答案】 The creativity of language means that users can understand and produce sentences they have never heard before. Creativity is a property unique to human language. It is one of design features that only human language has.

Human language is resourceful because of its duality and its recursiveness. The speaker is able to combine the basic linguistic units to form all infinite sets of sentences, most of which are never before produced or heard. The fact that human language is recursive could be shown in that words can be used in new ways to mean new things , and can be instantly understood by people who have never come across that word before. For example, I could make a sentence like The old lady who is waiting for the girl who is talking to the boy who is playing with a basketball is my grandma.

Recursiveness also includes coordination and subordination , conjoining and embedding , hypotactic and paratactic. recursiveness, together with openness , is generally regarded as the core of creativity of language.

15．Why do we say language is primarily vocal?

【答案】 Language is a system of arbitrary vocal symbols used for human communication. Language is primarily vocal, because sound or speech is the primary medium for all human languages, developed or “new”. 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.