当前位置：问答库＞考研试题

一、Explain-the-fllowing-terms

1． Corpus

【答案】 Corpus is a collection of linguistic data , either compiled as written texts or as a transcription of recorded speech. The main purpose of a corpus is to verify a hypothesis about language~~for example , to determine how the application of a particular sound , word , or syntactic construction varies.

2． Foregrounding

【答案】 This term is meant for what is unusual, attractive, unconventional, salient. In literature, foregrounding is often achieved through unconventional expressions which attract the readers9 attention. The main manifestations of foregrounding are deviation and parallelism.

3． 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.

4． bound root

Bound root refers to the base form of a word that cannot further be analyzed without total 【答案】

loss of identity, and this base form could not occur alone, such as “-ceive” in “receive”.

5． Compound

【答案】 Compound refers to those words that consist of more than one lexical morpheme, or the way to join two separate words to produce a single form, such as the compound words “blackboard” and “well-known”.

二、Short-answer-questions

6． What makes language unique to human beings?

The design features of language which refer to the defining properties of human language 【答案】

tell the difference between human language and any system of animal communication.Arbitrariness is a core feature of language, which means that there is no logical connection between meanings and sounds. Duality , which means the property of having two levels of structures, such that units of the primary level are composed of elements of the secondary level and each of the two levels has its own principles of organization. Creativity means language is resourceful because of its duality and its recursiveness. Because of duality the speaker is able to combine the basic linguistic unites to form an infinite set of sentences , most of which are never heard before. Displacement means that language can be used to refer

to things which are present or not present, real or imagined matters, in the past, present, or future, or in far-away places. So all these features make language unique to human beings.

7． What is the relationship between linguistics and behaviorism according to Bloomfield?

【答案】 For Bloomfield, linguistics is a branch of the positivistic brand of psychology known as “behaviourism”. When the behaviourist methodology entered linguistics via Bloomfield, s writings, the popular practice in linguistic studies was to accept what a native speaker says in his language and to discard what he says about it. This is because of the belief that a linguistic description was reliable when based on observation of unstudied utterances by speakers; it was unreliable if the analyst had resorted to asking speakers questions such as “Can you say ... in your language?”

8． 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.

9． What are the criteria used in phonetic description of vowels?

【答案】 As the vowels can not be described in the same way as the consonants , a system of cardinal vowels has been suggested to get out of this problem. The cardinal vowels are a set of vowel qualities arbitrarily defined , fixed and unchanging , intended to provide a frame of reference for the description of the actual vowels of existing languages. The cardinal vowels are abstract concept. The cardinal vowel diagram is a set of hypothetical positions for vowels used as reference points.

The description of English vowels needs to fulfill four basic requirements : （1） the height of tongue raising ; the position of the highest part of the tongue （high , middle or low）（2）（front , central, back ） ; the length or tenseness of the vowel （tense vs. lax or long vs. short） ; （4） lip-rounding （3）

（rounded vs. unrounded） . For example, [i:]: high, front, tense, unrounded vowel.

[u]: high, back, lax, rounded vowel.

三、Synthesis

10．Can you mention some typical expressions of phatic communion in Chinese? There is the dialogue between Ms. P and Ms. Q. on p.12. When someone sneezes violently, do you say anything of the nature of phatic communion ’！ Have you noticed your parents or grand-parents say something special on such an occasion?

Some of the typical phatic expressions in Chinese are:吃了吗? 家里都好吧？这是去哪里【答案】

呀？最近都挺好的？

If someone is sneezing violently, maybe your parents and grandparents may say:? “ Are you ok?”? “Do you need to see a doctor?”，“Do you need some water?”, “Do you need a handkerchief?”，“Do you have a cold?” “or something like these to show their concerns.”

11．How is behaviourist psychology related to linguistics?

For Bloomfield, linguistics is a branch of psychology, and specifically of the positivistic 【答案】

brand of psychology known as “behaviourism”. Behaviourism is a principle of scientific method, based on the belief that human beings cannot know anything they have not experienced. Behaviourism in linguistics holds that children learn language through a chain of “stimulus response reinforcement”，and the adult’s use of language is also a process of “stimulus response”. When the hehaviuurist methodology entered linguistics via Bloomfield’s writings , the popular practice in linguistic studies was to accept what a native speaker says in his language and to discard what he says about it. This is because of the belief that a linguistic description was reliable when based on observation of unstudied utterances by speakers ; it was unreliable if the analyst had resorted to asking speakers questions such as uCan you say in your language?”

12．What different forms of sound patterning can you find in the first stanza of the poem, “Easter Wings ’’，by George Herbert （1593—1663） ?

Lord , who createdst man in wealth and store,

Though foolishly he lost the same,

Decaying more and more,

Till he became

Most poore,

With thee

O let me rise

As larks, harmoniously,

And sing this day thy victories:

Then shall the fall further the flight in me.

【答案】 Alliteration : store/same; Lord/lost; this/thy/then/the; fall/further/ flight; more/me Assonance : Lord/store/fall; Though/most; same/decaying

Consonance : man/in

Rhyme : more/poore/store; became/same; thee/me/harmoniously

Half-rhyme : rise/victories Repetition: more/more; me/me

（Thomborrow and Wareing 1998/2000: 218）

13．Use examples to illustrate different ways to extend syntactic constituents.

【答案】 In this chapter , several ways to extend syntactic constituents are brought under the category of recursiveness , including coordination and subordination , conjoining and embedding , hypotactic and paratactic and so on. Coordination and conjoining are the different names for the same linguistic phenomenon , that is , to use and , but or or to join together syntactic constituents with the same function. For instance, the sentence A man got into the car could be extended into a sentence like this “[NP A man , a woman , a boy , a cat and a dog] got into the car”. While subordination and embedding can be understood as the extension of any syntactic constituent by inserting one or more syntactic elements with different functions, into another. I saw the man who had visited you last year is an extended sentence by changing the independent clause The man had visited you last year into a dependent element （here a relative clause）.

However , hypotaxis and parataxis are the two traditional terms for the description of syntactic relations between sentences. In the examples below , the former is hypotactic , while the latter is