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一、Explain-the-fllowing-terms

1． subordination

【答案】 Subordination refers to the process or result of linking linguistic units so that they have different syntactic status, one being dependent upon the other, and usually a constituent of the other. Thus the subordinate constituents are words which modify the Head. Consequently, they can be called modifiers. In the phrase swimming in the lake , swimming is the head and in the lake are the words modifying the head.

2． Stem

A stem is a morpheme or combination of morphemes to which an inflectional affix can be 【答案】

added. For example, “friend-” in friends, and “friendship-” in friendships are both stems. The former shows that a stem can be equivalent to a root, whereas the latter shows that a stem may contain a root and a derivational affix.

3． 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.

4． Distinctive features of speech sounds

【答案】 The distinctive feature is a property which distinguishes one phoneme from another. For example , “voicing” is a distinctive feature, since it plays an important role in distinguishing obstruents in English.

5． Gradable antonym

【答案】 Gradable antonym. Gradable antonyms are antonyms that are gradable because there are often intermediate forms between the two members of a pair. For example, cold and warm constitute a pair of gradable antonyms.

6． 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.

7． Morpheme

【答案】 Morpheme is the smallest unit of language in terms of relationship between expression and content , a unit that cannot be divided into further smaller units without destroying or drastically altering the meaning , whether it is lexical or grammatical. For example , in boys , there are two morphemes : “boy” and “-s”； in international, there are three morphemes: “inter-” “nation” and “-al”.

8． Duality

【答案】Duality refers to the fact that in all languages so far investigated there are two levels of structure or patterning. At the first , higher level , language is analyzed in terms of combinations of meaningful units ; at the second, lower level, it is seen as a sequence （such as morphemes, words etc.）

of segments which lack any meaning in themselves, but which combine to form units of meaning. For example , a syllable is the smallest unit that is normally spoken by itself, and scores of syllables become the carriers of hundreds of meaningful segments of words that are called morphemes.

9． Contrastive analysis

【答案】 Contrastive analysis is an approach to analysis of second language acquisition, based on a belief that a more effective teaching pedagogy would come out when the similarities and differences between native language and target language are taken into consideration. By such an analysis , it is supposed that some leaning difficulties could be predicted in terms of language transfer.

10．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.

二、Short-answer-questions

11．Produce surface structures from the following deep structures without going through the process of transformations.

（1）Neg she past work last week

（2）Tag you past meet him

（3）the students I pres be+ing help the students I

（4）policemen past be+en beat John

（5）Q the professor pres be angry SOME REASON

（6）SOMEONE past be+ing be+en beat Joseph hard

（7）Q he past do SOMETHING

（8）Imp you pres will wash you

（9）[ Neg Mary past go to the bookstore] [Neg Lisa past go to the bookstore]

（10）the girl [the girl pres be beautiful]pres be from China

【答案】（1） She didn't work last week.

（2）You met him, didn't you?

（3）The students are helping themselves.

（4）The policemen were beaten by John.

（5）Why is the professor angry?

（6）He / She was being beaten hard by Joseph.

（7 ） What did he do?

（8）Wash yourself.

（9）Mary didn‟t go to the bookstore. Lisa didn‟t go to the bookstore either.

（10）The girl who is beautiful is from China.

12．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.

13．What are theme and rheme?

【答案】 Some linguists, who devoted considerable attention to problems of analyzing sentences from a functional point of view , believe that a sentence contains a point of departure and a goal of discourse. The point of departure is equally present to the speaker and to the hearer ——it is their starting point, the ground on which they meet. This is called the theme. The goal of discourse presents the very information that is to be imparted to the hearer. This is called the rheme. For example, in the sentence The man is coming, The man is the theme, and is coming is the rheme.

14．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.

15．How is language related to society?

【答案】 （1） While language is principally used to communicate meaning, it is also used to