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一、Explain-the-fllowing-terms

1． Slang :

【答案】 It refers to casual , very informal speech , using expressive but informal words and expressions.

For some people , slang is equivalent to colloquial speech but for others , it means “undesirable speech”. Usually , “colloquial speech” refers to a speech variety used in informal situations with colleagues , friends or relatives ，and “slang” is used for a very informal speech variety which often serves as an “in-group” language for a particular set of people such as teenagers , army recruits , pop-groups etc. Most slang is rather unstable as its words and expressions can change quite rapidly, for example , “Beat it!” “Scram!”，and “Rack off!” for “leave”.

2． Semantic field

【答案】 It is the organization of related words and expressions into a system which shows their relationship to one another. For example, kinship terms such as father, mother, brother, sister, uncle, aunt belong to a semantic field whose relevant features include generation , sex , membership of the father's or mother's side of the family.

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． 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.

5． computational linguistics

【答案】 Computational linguistics is a branch of applied linguistics , dealing with computer processing of human language, h includes programmed instruction, speech synthesis and recognition, automatic translation, and computer mediated communication.

6． Textual function

【答案】 Textual function : The textual function is one of the three meta-functions language is

composed of. It refers to the fact that language has mechanisms to make any stretch of spoken or written discourse into a coherent and unified text and make a living message different from a random list of sentences.

7． Conceptualism

It is the view which holds that there is no direct link between a linguistic form and what it 【答案】

refers to; rather, in the interpretation of meaning they are linked through the mediation of concepts in the mind.

8． 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 repres entation 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.

二、Essay-question

9． Categorize the following pairs: child-kid, alive-dead, big-small, husband-wife.

【答案】 Child-kid can be categorized under synonymy , alive-dead complementary antonymy , old-young gradable antonymy, and husband-wife converse antonymy.

Synonymy is the technical term for the sameness relation.

The members of a pair of complementary antonymy are complementary to each other. They divide up the whole of a semantic field completely, which means not only the assertion of one means the denial of the other, and the denial of one also means the assertion of the other.

Pairs of words of gradable antonymy have three characteristics :（1） they are gradable —the members of a pair differ in terms of degree. As such, they can be modified by “very”. And they may have comparative and superlative degrees. （2） Antonyms of this kind are graded against different norms. The criterion varies with the object described.One member of a pair, usually the term for the （3）

higher degree, serves as the cover term.

Converse antonymy shows the reversal of a relationship between two entities. It is the same relationship seen from two different angles, and there is always two entities involved, which makes the major difference between this type and the above two types of antonymy.

10．In informal speech , people often omit sentence subjects because they are commonly understood. What are the omitted subjects in the following two sentences? Why do people know that these are the correct subjects?

a.Hope you like everything here.

b.Just imagine what has just happened here.

【答案】 The omitted subject in sentence a is “I ” and the omitted subject in sentence b is usually “You”. This is a matter of sentence comprehension in language comprehension. Psycholinguists have proposed principles interpreting sentence comprehension with respect to the grammatical constraints. The most popular principle is “Minimal attachment” which defines “structurally simpler”，and it claims that structural simplicity guides all initial analyses in sentence comprehension.

In this view , the sentence processor constructs a single analysis of a sentence and attempts to

interpret it. The first analysis is the one that requires the fewest applications of grammatical rules to attach each incoming word into the structure being built; it is the automatic consequence of an effort to get some analysis constructed as soon as possible. In the first sentence, when “hope” as a verb is used to express the speaker‟s desire and expectation for something to happen, it conveys the will of the speaker. So , the subject of “hope” is usually the speaker her/himself and can be omitted when the two are talking to each other. When the speaker is making a s tatement and using “hope” to express other‟s will , the subject will not be omitted.

Therefore , according to “minimal attachment” principle, when the hearer interprets this sentence, they automatically interpret “I”—the speaker, as the subject of “hope”. Sentence b can be said to be an imperative sentence which is a sentence that gives advice or instructions or that expresses a request or a command. This instruction or request is always aimed to the hearer or the reader, so the subject of an imperative is al ways “you”. When the hearer interpret this sentence , he/she will interpret the verb “imagine”, as a request or advice through which the speaker tries to make he/she involved in this action, so it is easier for he/she to consider “you” as the subject.

Context is another important factor for people to understand the subjects. The subjects will be more clear in particular context although they are omitted.

11．Advantages and Disadvantages of Componential Analysis.

【答案】 The componential analysis is a way to analyze the lexical meaning , which treats the meaning of a word as a composite of some smaller semantic units , which are called semantic components , or semantic features.

One advantage of componential analysis is that by specifying the semantic features of certain words, it will be possible to show how these words are related in meaning. For example，the two words “man” and “woman” share the features of +HUMAN , + ADULT, and + ANIMATE, but differ in the features of MALE. Additionally , the sense relations could be better accounted for. Two words , or two expressions , which have the same semantic components, will be synonymous with each other; words which have a contrasting component are antonyms; and words which have all the semantic components of another are hyponyms of the latter.

The semantic components are also able to explain sense relations between sentences, for example, the contradictory relationship, and the entailing relationship.

However , as have been found, there are also difficulties in the approach to analyze the meaning of a word in terms of semantic components. First, many words are polysemous. They have more than one meaning ; consequently they will have different sets of semantic components. Second, some semantic components are seen as binary taxonomies. However , sometimes the distinction to differentiate two semantic components such as “ADULT” and “YOUNG”, is rather vague. Third, apart from the neatly organized parts of the vocabulary, there are words whose semantic components are difficult to ascertain. For example, the semantic components themselves, like HUMAN, ADULT, are not ordinary words of English ; they belong to a meta-language. To someone who does not know the meta-language , the semantic components explain nothing.

12．Describe the process of language perception, comprehension and production.

【答案】 From the perspective of psycholinguistic analysis, language use in terms of perception, comprehension and production follows a certain pattern which involves the coordination of various language centers.

When we speak , words are drawn from Wernicke's area and transferred to Broca's area , which determines the details of their forms and pronunciation. The appropriate instructions are then sent to the motor area which controls the vocal tract to physically articulate the words.