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一、Explain-the-fllowing-terms

1． cohort model

【答案】 The cohort model is a supposed doctrine dealing with the spoken word recognition postulated by Marslen-Wilson and Welsh in 1990. It is suggested that the first few phonemes of a spoken word activate a set or cohort of word candidates that are consistent with the input. These candidates compete with one another for activation. As more acoustic input is analyzed , candidates that are no longer consistent with the input drop out of the set. This process continues until only one word candidate matches the input- the best fitting word may be chosen if no single candidate is a clear winner.

2． Design features

【答案】 Design features : It refer to the defining properties of human language that tell the difference between human language and any system of animal communication.

3． Displacement

Language can be used to refer to what is present, what is absent, what happens at present, 【答案】

what happened in the past, what will happen in the future or what happens in a far-away place. This property of language enables language users to overcome the barriers caused by time and place. For example , we can talk about Sapir, who is already dead; we can even talk about next week, which is in the future.

4． 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.

5． 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‟‟.

6． Innateness hypothesis

【答案】 The “Innateness Hypothesis” of child language acquisition was proposed by Noam

Chomsky , who states that language are somewhat innate and that children are bom with what he calls a language acquisition device, which is a unique kind of knowledge that fits them for language learning.

7． 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.

8． 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.

9． Applied linguistics

【答案】 It is a branch of linguistics which studies the application of linguistics in reality. For example , there are studies on multilingualism, language acquisition, first and second language teaching and learning.

10．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.

二、Short-answer-questions

11．crushed 2. heaped 3. kicked 4. pitted

【答案】

12．What is blending theory?

【答案】 Fauconnier & Turner proposes and discusses blending or integration theory, a cognitive operation whereby elements of two or more “mental spaces” are integrated via projection into a new, blended space which contains its unique structure. They present examples of blending and analyze the blending process, provide taxonomy of blends, and argue for the ubiquity and importance of blending as a cognitive resource.

Blending operates on two input mental spaces to produce a third space , the blend. The blend inherits partial structure from the input spaces and has emergent structure of its own. There are some conditions needed when two input spaces one and two are blended: cross-space mapping, generic space, blend and emergent structure. The blending theory suggests a new way of thinking about what

constitutes a novel inference. Because the mapping operation involves integrated frames rather than isolated predicates, the choice of one particular framing over another necessarily results in a different set of attendant inferences.

13．Conversational implicature is comparable to illocutionary force in speech act theory in that they are both concerned with the contextual side of meaning, or言外之意 in Chinese.

【答案】 We may summarize conversational implicature as a type of implied meaning. It could be inferred only by the dependence on the context of the utterance and shared knowledge between the speaker and listener. Illocutionary force , on the other hand , refers to speaker^ meaning , contextual meaning , or extra meaning, that is, the meaning the speaker wants to convey in a specific context. By an illocutionary force, we can say “What does he mean by saying that?” In this sense, implicature is comparable to illocutionary force in speech act theory in that they are both concerned with the contextual side of meaning, or 言外之意 in Chinese.

14．What is language variation?

【答案】 It is differences in pronunciation, grammar, or word choice within a language. Variation in a language may be related to region, to social class and/or educational background or to the degree of formality of a situation in which language is used.

For sociolinguists , the most important verity is that a language —any language —is full of systematic variation, variation that can only accounted for by appealing, outside language, to socially relevant force and facts.

Sociolinguistics takes as its primary task to map linguistic variation on to social conditions. This mapping helps understand not just synchronic variation （variation at a single point of time）, but also diachronic variation （variation over time） or language change.

15．Write the international phonetic alphabet for the following words.

（1） hypothesis （2） academician （3）verbatim （4） technique

（5） capacity （6） standardize （7）guarantee （8） paradigm

（9） primarily （10） rhetoric （11）procedure （12） originate

【答案】（1）

（5）

（9） （6） （10） （2） （7） （11

） （3） （8） （12） （4）

16．Why do people take duality as one of the important design features of human language? Can you tell us what language will be if it has no such design feature?

【答案】 Duality makes our language productive. A large number of different units can be formed out of a small number of elements——for instance, tens of thousands of words out of a small set of sounds. And out of the huge number of words, there can be astronomical number of possible sentences and phrases, which in turn can combine to form unlimited number of texts. Most animal communication systems do not have this design feature of human language.

If language had no such design feature , then it would be like animal communicational system which consists of only a number of basic sounds and this would be highly limited. Then we would not be