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一、Explain-the-fllowing-terms

1． Gradable antonym

【答案】 Gradable antonym. Gradable antonyms are antonyms that are gradable because there are often intermediate forms between the two members of a pair. For example, cold and warm constitute a pair of gradable antonyms.

2． 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”.

3． 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.

4． Morpheme

【答案】 Morpheme is the smallest unit of language in terms of relationship between expression and content , a unit that cannot be divided into further smaller units without destroying or drastically altering the meaning , whether it is lexical or grammatical. For example , in boys , there are two morphemes : “boy” and “-s”； in international, there are three morphemes: “inter-” “nation” and “-al”.

5． figure-ground alignment

【答案】 Figure-ground alignment seems to apply to space with the ground as the prepositional object and the preposition expressing the spatial relational configuration. It also applies to human perception of moving objects. Since the moving object is typically the most prominent one, because it is moving , it is typically the figure, while the remaining stimuli constitute the ground.

6． CAI and CAL

【答案】 Computer-assisted instruction （CAI ） means the use of a computer in a teaching program. This includes:

a. A teaching program which is presented by a computer in a sequence. The student responds on the computer , and the computer indicates whether the responses are correct or incorrect.

b. The use of computers to monitor student progress, to direct students into appropriate lessons, material , etc. This is also called computer-managed instruction.

Parallel to CAI , there is CAL （Computer-Assistant Learning ） . The former aims at seeing educational problems on the part of the teacher, whereas the latter emphasizes the use of a computer in both teaching and learning in order to help the learner achieve educational objectives. The first kind of CAL programs which were developed reflected principles similar to programmed instruction. The computer leads the student through learning task step-by-step, asking questions to check comprehension. Depending on the studenfs response, the computer gives the student further practice or progresses to new material （see branching ）. In more recent CAL courseware students are able to interact with the computer and perform higher-level tasks while exploring a subject or problem.

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． Lexical relations

【答案】 There are several types of lexical relations concerning the sense of the words. Those are synonymy , antonymy, hyponymy, polysemy, homonymy, and so on. （a ） Synonymy refers to the sameness relation ; “autum”, and “full ” are synonyms , for example , （b ） Antonymy refers to the oppositeness relation ; for example , “buy” and “sell ” are antonyms , （c ） Hyponymy refers to the inclusiveness relation; for example, “apple” is a hyponym of “fruit”, （d ） Polysemy means one word that has more than one related meaning ，and “bank”，as an example , is a polysemous word. （e ） Homonymy refers to the relation of two different words which are identical either in sound, or spelling, or both, such as “bow” （bau ） and “bow” （b əu ）.

9． 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.

10．Displacement

Language can be used to refer to what is present, what is absent, what happens at present, 【答案】

what happened in the past, what will happen in the future or what happens in a far-away place. This property of language enables language users to overcome the barriers caused by time and place. For example , we can talk about Sapir, who is already dead; we can even talk about next week, which is in the future.

二、Short-answer-questions

11．How would you describe this short exchange in terms of the ardors performed by the speakers?

Motorist : My car needs new exhaust system.

Mechanic : Fll be busy with this other car all day.

【答案】 In the motorist‟s utterance ，there are two types of speech acts performed , namely representative and directive，and as to the latter one, it is recognized as an indirect speech act, which is performed through the performance of the former one. Thus, by stating that his car needs new exhaust system , the motorist has in fact asked the mechanic to equip a new exhaust system for him.

Similarly ，in the mechanic‟s utterance , there are two types of speech acts performed ; one is representative , the other commissive. The commissive speech act in fact is an indirect one since it is recognized through the performance of representative action. That is to say, by stating that he will be busy with another car all day, the mechanic has in fact told the motorist that he could not repair his car right away.

12．What is the cognitive interpretation of image schema?

【答案】 Image schema is a recurring, dynamic pattern of our perceptual interactions and motor programs that gives coherence and structure to our experience.

Image schema exists at a level of abstraction, operates at a level of mental organization between propositional structures and concrete image , and it can be subdivided into the following items : a center-periphery schema , a continent schema ，a cycle schema ，a force schema ，a link schema ，a part-whole schema，a path schema，a scale schema and a vertical schema.

13．How is the illocutionary act different from the perlocutionary act?

【答案】 An illocutionary act is the act of expressing the speaker^ intention; it is the act performed in saying something. Thus, if someone says “Morning”，we can ask questions like “What did he mean?” and the answer could be “He offered a greeting.”

A perlocutionary act, however, is the effect of the utterance. By telling somebody something the speaker may change the opinion of the hearer on something, or mislead him, or surprise him, or induce him to do something, and so on. Therefore，the perlocutionary act of the saying “Morning” could be to keep friendly relations with the hearer.

14．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