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一、Explain-the-fllowing-terms

1． Linguistic determinism

【答案】 Linguistic determinism , is one of the two points of Sapir-Whorf hypothesis , and has developed into the strong version of this hypothesis. It could be summarized as follows: （1） One‟s thinking is completely determined by his native language because one cannot but perceive the world in terms of the categories and distinctions encoded in the language. （2） The categories and distinctions encoded in one language system are unique to that system and incommensurable with those of other systems. Therefore , the following statement could represent this hypothesis 4tIf Aristotle had spoken Chinese , his logic would have been different”.

2． Cognition

【答案】 Cognition is, in psychology, used to refer to the mental processes of an individual, with particular relation to a concept which argues that the mind has internal mental states （such as beliefs, desires and intentions ） and can be understood as information processing , especially when much abstraction or concretization is involved , or processes such as involving knowledge , expertise or learning for example are at work. Another definition of “cognition” is the mental process or faculty of knowing , including aspects such as awareness, perception, reasoning, and judgment.

3． Locutionary Act, Illocutinary Act and Perlocutionary Act

【答案】 According to Austin , a speaker might be performing three acts simultaneously when speaking.

A locutionary act is the uttering of words, phrases, and clauses, which conveys meaning by giving out meaningful sounds. Therefore, when somebody says „„Morning‟‟，we can ask a question like “What did he do?‟‟，and the answer could be “He offered a greeting.”

An illocutionary act is the act of expressing the speaker‟s intention; it is the act performed in saying something. Therefore, for the same example，we can say “He meant it as a greeting”.

A perlocutionary act is the effect of the utterance. Thus，by saying “Morning!” the speaker has made it clear that he wants to keep friendly relations with the hearer.

4． Construal and construal operations

【答案】Construal is the competence to conceive and portray the same situation in alternate ways through specificity, different mental scanning, directionality, vantage point, figure-ground segregation etc. Construal operations are conceptualizing processes applied in language process by human beings. That is, construal operations are the underlying psychological processes and resources employed in the interpretation of linguistic expressions.

5． Polysemy

【答案】 Polysemy means a single word having several or many meanings. According to Crystal: Polysemy is a term used in semantic analysis to refer to a lexical item which has a range of different

meanings. Polysemic words are signs of an advanced culture. Polysemy is also an essential feature of a language‟s economy and efficiency.

6． Assimilation

【答案】 It is a process by which one sound takes on some or all the characteristics of a neighboring 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. For example, in “mink”，“n”，

which is originally pronounced aswill be velarized by the following “k”/k/，

and therefore the word will be pronounced as

7． Stylistics

【答案】 Stylistics is a branch of linguistics studies the features of situationally distinctive uses （varieties ） of language , and tries to establish principles capable of accounting for the particular choices made by individual and social groups in their use of language.

8． 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”.

二、Essay-question

9． Chomsky sets up three different targets to aim at : observational adequacy , descriptive adequacy and explanatory adequacy. Define and discuss them.

【答案】 According to Chomsky , observational adequacy requires a grammar to be able to produce correct explanations for raw linguistic data ; that is , it should be able to capture speakers intuitions about grammaticality.

On the second level , that is , on the level of descriptive adequacy , a grammar should not only produce correct explanations for raw linguistic data , but also produce correct explanations for the linguistic competence of the speaker and hearer; that is, it should reflect speakers5 competence.

On the third , and the highest , level , i.e. explanatory adequacy , a grammar that is sufficiently described should reveal linguistic competence and then relate it with universal grammars in order to be related to the initial state of the human mind for the purpose of revealing human cognitive systems; that is , it should account for the leamability of language.

In Chomsky‟s point of view , it is far from adequate for a grammar to merely distinguish those strings of words which are sentences of the language from those which are not sentences of the language in question. Neither is it for a grammar to assign structures to sentences that match native speaker‟s intuition about structure and meaning. However , this is where the Structuralistic approach stops. Therefore , Chomsky argues for a generative grammar since it is able to explain how the facts are the

way they are and how they arise in the mind of the speaker and hears. And it is after successful descriptions of many languages and subsequent generalizations of universal features of human language that it is possible to explore the initial state of the human mind that contains universal grammars.

10．Consider the following sentence, and then, answer questions （1） to （3） . The boy saw the man with the telescope.

（1）Is this sentence ambiguous? If so, describe the ambiguity briefly in your own words.

（2）Draw the constituent structure trees for each possible interpretation.

（3）What can be known about tree diagrams from （1） and （2） ?

Yes , this is an ambiguous sentence. This is a structurally ambiguous sentence, which 【答案】（1）

can be rewritten in two ways as follows:

a.The boy saw the man. The man had a telescope.

b.Using the telescope, the boy saw the man.

Since the sentence is an ambiguous one, which has two ways of interpretation, there are two （2）

ways of drawing constituent structure trees for it.

（3） Tree diagrams are more advantageous and informative than linear structure analysis. In addition to revealing a linear order, a constituent structure tree has a hierarchical structure that groups words into structural constituents and shows the syntactic category of each structural constituent, and consequently , can truthfully illustrate the constituent relationship among linguistic elements.

11．Explain speech act theory and list the different kinds of speech acts with examples for each.

【答案】 The speech act theory was proposed by John Austin. According to this theory, we are performing various kinds of acts when we are speaking. Actions performed through utterances are generally called speech acts. An utterance can perform different speech acts depending on the context and that one speech act can be performed by more than one utterances.

According to Searle, speech acts all into five general categories. Specific acts that fall into each