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2018年天津大学外国语言与文学学院847外国语言学与应用语言学基础之语言学教程考研核心题库

  摘要

一、Explain-the-fllowing-terms

1. Presupposition

【答案】 A presupposition is a proposition (expressed in a sentence) that is assumed to be true in order to judge the truth or falsity of another sentence. For example , John didn't pass chemistry presupposes that John took chemistry.

2. Bound morpheme

【答案】 Bound morphemes refer to those morphemes that can not occur alone and must appear with at least another morpheme. For example , in the word “careless”,“-less” is a bound morpheme since it could not occur by itself as a word.

3. Linguistic relativity

【答案】 This is one of two points in Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. It states that similarity between languages is relative , the greater their structural differentiation is , the more diverse their conceptualization of the world is. For example, not every language has the same set of words for the colors ; in Spanish there is no word that corresponds to the English meaning of “blue”.

4. Register

【答案】 It is a speech variety used by a particular group of people , usually sharing the same occupation (e.g. doctors, lawyers) or the same interests. A particular register often distinguishes itself from others by having a number of distinctive words, by using words or phrases in a particular way, and sometimes by special grammatical constructions (e.g. legal language).

5. Entailment

【答案】 It refers to the relation between propositions one of which necessarily follows from the other. If X is true, Y is necessarily true,and if X is false, Y may be true or false. For example, the sentence “He has been to France” entails “He has been to Europe”.

二、Short-answer-questions

6. How to distinguish root and stem?

【答案】 Root is that part of a word-form that remains when all the inflectional and derivational affixes have been removed. Thus in the word undesirables , the root is desire. Stem is the part of a word-form that remains when all inflectional affixes have been removed. So in the word undesirables, the stem is undesirable. The stem of a word may be: a) a simple stem consisting of only one morpheme

or root , e.g. work ; b ) a root plus a derivational affix , e.g. worker ; c ) two or more roots , e.g. workshop.

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

【答案】

8. What is reference?

Reference means what a linguistic form refers to in the real, physical world; it deals with 【答案】

the relationship between linguistic elements and non-linguistic world of experience.

Reference in its wider sense would be the relationship between a word or phrase and an entity in the external world. For example, the word tree refers to the object “tree”.

Reference in its narrower sense is the relationship between a word or phrase and a specific object, e.g. a particular tree or a particular animal. For example, Peter's horse would refer to a horse which is owned , ridden by, or in some way associated with Peter.

9. How are affixes classified?

【答案】 Considering the free and bound morpheme, affix is the collective term for the type of formative that can be used only when added to another morpheme, so it is naturally bound.

Depending on their position with reference to the root or stem of the word, affixes are generally classified into three subtypes , namely , prefix , suffix , and infix. For examples , “para-” as prefix ,“-tion” as suffix, and “-bloomingly-” in word “abso-bloomingly-luty” as infix.

Affix can also be classified depending on the distinction between inflectional affixes and derivational affixes. The former often only add a minute grammatical function to the stem and do not change the word class of the word they attach to; while the latter are very productive in making new words and often change the lexical meaning. For instances, “-s” in words “toys”,“walks” and “John‟s” is inflectional affixes, while “-tion” is a derivational affix in word “recitation”.

三、Essay-question

10.It has been observed that women tend to approximate more closely to the standard language than men do. Why do you think this is so?

【答案】 Language is a social, value-loaded practice, which reflects an intricate network of social, political , cultural, and age relationships within a society.

Women‟s speech closely approaches the standard variety than the speech of men , this has been explained in terms of a greater consciousness of status on the part of women. Women are more usually more status-conscious than men in the English-speaking world , they are aware of their low status in society and, as a result, use more standard speech forms in their attempt to claim equality or achieve high social status. In a sense , they are up in arms against men's society. The status of men has been traditionally defined by their occupation and wealth , while women have had to find other ways of establishing their position and one of these has been their speech.

A second explanation relates to the ways in which society treats women. Women are expected to behave better than men, traditionally, just as society has been harsher on women with regard to such vices as promiscuity and drunkenness,a better standard of language may have been required.

A third explanation is that, by using standard or polite forms, a woman is trying to protect her face. In other words , a woman claims more status in society. Her greater use of standard forms may also imply that she does not attend solely to her own face needs but also to those of the people she is

interacting with, thus avoiding disagreement and seeking agreement and rapport.

11.A speech act consists of three related acts according to J. L. Austin’s Speech Act theory. What are they? Analyze the following conversation in the light of Speech Act theory.

Customer : Waiter! There's a fly in my soup.

Waiter : Don‟s worry, there's no extra charge.

【答案】 A speech act consists of three related acts according to J. L. Austin‟s Speech Act theory, namely , locutionary act, illocutionary act and perlocutionary act. The locutionary act is the ordinary act we perform when we speak. It is the act of saying. The illocutionary act is the act performed in the performing of a locutionary act , that may said to be the extra meaning of the utterance ; while perlocutionary act concerns the consequential effects of a locution upon the hearer , depending on specific circumstances. Austin suggests that the three kinds of acts are performed simultaneously when a speaker saying something.

In this conversation , by saying “Waiter! There‟s a fly in my soup”,the locutionary act of this utterance is that the customer produces a number of sounds with its literal meaning that there is a fly in his/her soup. The illocutionary act is that the customer intends not to just review the information to the waiter , but might express his feelings and expect the waiter to do something. It might be a complaint, a warn , a criticism, or a threaten, but whatever it might be, it is no doubt a force, making the waiter to change soup or give some compensation. The perlocutionary act of the utterance here is the waiter‟s doing nothing but giving a strange respond.

As to the waiter^ responding, by saying that he not only produces a number of sounds to state that there is no extra charge , but also shows his possible misinterpretation or his sense of humor or his indirect refusal.

12.Some comments on the following statement based on your own experience:

There exists a close relationship between language and culture. In other words, a successful master of a given language has much to do with an understanding of that culture.

【答案】 Language use is heavily tinted with its culture. A language does not only expresses facts, ideas , or events which represent similar world knowledge by its people, but also reflects the peopled attitudes , beliefs, world outlook, and so on. In a word, language expresses cultural reality. To dig it further , a language, as a system of signs with their own cultural substances and values, may be viewed as a symbol of social identity. People are identified via their use of language. In this sense, language symbolizes cultural reality.

On the other hand , as people‟s language uses express the culture ,to be more specific , their community culture represented by its social conventions, norms and social appropriateness, the culture both emancipates and constrains people socially, historically and metaphorically.

Historically , each culture has its past and tradition. A culture consists both of its ways how a social group represents itself, its technological achievements, monuments and works of art and of its historical identity recorded and passed down by the pop culture. It is language that has played a major role in socializing the people and in perpetuating culture, especially in print form.

In addition , culture also affects its peopled imagination or common dreams which are mediated through the language and reflected in their life. Language is not only intrinsically related to what the culture is and what it was, but also related to the culture of imagination governing people‟s decisions as well as actions. The interplay between language and culture may result in various forms of socialization and people with different cultures may be socialized in different ways with different acculturation.

Although language and culture are inextricably intertwined , this relationship is not analogous to that of structures and processes. Rather, culture is a wider system that completely includes language as a