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一、Fill-in-the-blanks

1． Human languages enable their users to symbolize objects, events and concepts which are not present （in time andspace） at the moment of communication. This quality is labeled as_____.

【答案】Displacement

【解析】移位性是指人类语言可以让使用者在交际时用语言符号代表时间和空间上不可及的物体、事件和观点。

2． Corpus linguistics deals with the principles and practice of using_____in language study.

【答案】corpora

【解析】语料库语言学指论述语言研宄中使用语料的原理和实践。

3． Coordination and subordination belong to _____ construction.

【答案】endocentric

【解析】向心结构包含一个作为整体结构的中心或核心的成分，该中心或核心可以在最后，也可以在开头。从 结构上可以划分为两类：主从结构和并列结构。

4． Our language can be used to talk about itself. This is the _____function of language.

【答案】metalingual

【解析】语言的元语言功能是指语言可以用来讨论语言本身。

5． Antonyms like “husband ” v. “wife ” are_____ antonyms.

【答案】converse

【解析】反向反义关系是反义关系的一种特殊类型，典型地表现在两两相对的社会角色、亲属关系、时间和空 间等方面；丈夫与妻子的关系属于此种反义关系。

6． Saussure distinguished the linguistic competence of the speaker and the actual phenomena or data of linguistics （utterances ） as_____ and_____. The former refers to the abstract linguistic system shared by all the members of a speech community , and the latter is the concrete manifestation of language either through speech or through writing.

【答案】langue ; parole

【解析】语言指一个语言集团的所有成员共享的抽象语言系统，言语是指语言在实际使用中

的实现。

二、Explain-the-fllowing-terms

7． distinctive features

a means of working out a set of phonological contrasts or oppositions to capture particular 【答案】

aspects of language sounds , first suggested by Roman Jacobson in the 1940s and then developed by numerous other people.

8． Diglossia

【答案】 When two languages or language varieties exist together in a community and each one is used for different purposes, this is called diglossia. Usually, the more standard variety can be called the high variety or H-variety , which is used in government , the media , education , and for religious services. The other one is usually a non-prestige variety, the low variety or L-variety used in the family, with friends, when shopping, etc.

9． 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.

10．Glottal Stop

【答案】 V ocal tract is composed of oral cavity, nasal cavity and pharynx. When the vocal folds are totally closed, no air can pass between them. The result of this gesture is the glottal stop.

11．Phonetics

Phonetics is the study of how speech sounds are produced, transmitted, and perceived. It 【答案】

can be divided into three main areas of study articulatory phonetics , acoustic phonetics and perceptual/auditory phonetics.

三、Short-answer-questions

12．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.

13．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.

14．What is register? Use an example to illustrate your idea.

【答案】 There are many social constraints that come into play in controlling which variety from the linguistic repertoire of a speaker is to be used on a particular occasion. The type of language that is selected as appropriate to the type of situation is a register. The register is determined by three social variables : field of discourse, tenor of discourse, and mode of discourse. For example, an appropriate language to an academic lecture in a college should be formal and polite, which is called register.

15．For the following words, state the conditions under which the different forms of the past tense appear. What determines

whether

or is used? What distinctive features define conditioning environment?

【答案】