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一、Explain-the-fllowing-terms

1． 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.

2． CMC

【答案】 It is computer-mediated communication , distinguished by its focus on language and language use in computer networked environments, and by its use of methods of discourse analysis to address that focus.

3． Allomorph

【答案】 A morpheme may take various shapes or forms, and an allomorph is any of the variant forms of a morpheme as conditioned by position or adjoining sounds. For instance, the morpheme of plurality {-s} has a number of allomorphs in different sound context, as in “cats” /s/, in “bags” /z/，in “matches” /iz/.

4． 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.

5． 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.

6． Ferdinand de Saussure

【答案】 Ferdina nd de Saussure is a Swiss linguist who is often described as “father of modem linguistics”. The great work , Course in General Linguistics , which was based on his lecture notes , marked the beginning of modem linguistics. Saussure^ idea on the arbitrary nature of sign , one the relational nature of linguistic units , on the distinction of langue and parole and of synchronic and diachronic linguistics, etc. pushed linguistics into a brand new stage.

7． 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

8． 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”.

二、Essay-question

9． What , in your view , makes a text a text , rather than a series of unconnected utterances? What are the implications of your answer for second language teaching?

【答案】 The factor to distinguish connected texts which make sense from those which do not is usually described as coherence. Coherence is traditionally described as the relationships that link the ideas in a text to create meaning for the readers, apart from cohesive devices. It should be noticed that cohesion by itself would not be sufficient to enable us to make sense of what read or hear; it is quite easy to create a highly cohesive text which has a lot of connections between the sentences, but which remains difficult to interpret. And coherence , as the invisible net of a text , performs a function of “connectedness” which makes the text interpretable to people.

Regarding the importance of coherence to a whole text, it seems necessary for a teacher of SFL to help students develop coherence in writing. Research has found that in their writing, ESL/EFL students focus almost exclusively on the word and sentence levels rather than the level of the whole discourse, that is , textual coherence. A pedagogical focus on coherence can shift students' attention from sentence-level grammar to discourse features such as textual structuring and propositional unity, which are crucial to creating meaning in texts. Indeed, helping students improve the coherence of their writing ought to be a significant aspect of L2 writing instruction.

To help students focus on coherence in writing , it is essential that teachers have a thorough understanding of what makes a text coherent. As is shown in the composition text books , it seems common to regard coherence simply as connectedness between sentences , use of explicit cohesive devices at the paragraph level, and use of connective devices such as pronouns, repetitive structures, and transitional markers. However , coherence should not be narrowed in terms of sentence-level connectedness and paragraph unity rather than discourse unity.

Thus , to help students create coherence in their writing, it is necessary for teachers to pay more attention in the broader sense of coherence.

10．For each of the following pairs of sentences, discuss how the two sentences are different from each other.

（1）A. His carelessness I can‟t bear.

B. I can‟t bear his carelessness.

（2）A. A dagger killed the tourist.

B. The tourist was killed with a dagger.

（3）A. A hurricane killed eight people.

B. Eight people died in a hurricane.

These two sentences are different in the sense that the thematic structures are different. 【答案】（1）

The theme of a sentence is often the known information, which the sentence is mainly about. Sentence A

provides some information about “his carelessness”, since “his carelessness” serves as the theme. Whereas , Sentence B is a statement about “I ” and from the remainder of the sentence the recipient could know some information about me.

（2）In sentence A，“A dagger” serves as the theme, with which the sentence could be seen as an answer of “What did the dagger do?” In sentence B, “The touris” is treated as the given information, around which the sentence develops ; thus , the corresponding question of this sentence as an answer could be “What happened to the tourist?”

（3）There are still differences of thematic structures between these two sentences, with the first one about “A hurr icane” and the second one about “eight people”. What‟s more, in sentence A, the verb „„kill” emphasizes a direct relationship between the hurricane and the eight people , that is , it is the hurricane that caused the people to die. Whereas, in sentence B, a meaning like above is not entailed.

11．What is the main difference between literal language and figurative language?

【答案】 The first meaning for a word that a dictionary definition gives is usually its literal meaning , while figurative language is not intended to be interpreted in a literal sense.

Appealing to the imagination, figurative language provides new ways of looking at the world. It always makes use of a comparison between different things. Figurative language compares two things that are different in enough ways so that their similarities, when pointed out, are interesting, unique and/or surprising. Figurative language uses “figures of speech” to express something other than the literal meaning of the words, in other words, figurative language cannot be taken literally （or should not be taken literally only） . Simile, metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche, personification, apostrophe, are all forms of figurative language.

For example, the literal meaning of the word “tree ” is “a large plant”. However, once we start talking about a tree in the context of “a family tree” for example, it is no longer a literal tree we are talking about, but a figurative 〇此^ literal use of the word “tree” refers to an organism which has bark, branches and leaves. A “family tree” shares some of these qualities—graphically , a plan of a family and a representation of a tree can look similar, and in a way they are both a process of organic growth, so we use the same term for both. But when we use the term for a plant it is a literal usage and when we use the term to describe our ancestry, it is a figurative usage.

12．Can you make a brief introduction to Systemic-Functional Grammar?

【答案】 Stemming from Firth‟s theories in the London School, Halliday‟s Systemic-Functional （SF ） Grammar is a socially oriented functional linguistic approach and one of the most influential linguistic theories in the 20th century , exerting a strong impact on various disciplines related to language , such as language teaching , sociolinguistics , discourse analysis , stylistics , and machine translation.

It actually has two components : Systemic Grammar and Functional Grammar. They are two inseparable parts for an integral framework in Halliday^ linguistic inquiry. Systemic Grammar aims to explain the internal relations in language as a system network, or meaning potential. And this network consists of subsystems from which language users make choices. Functional Grammar aims to reveal that language is a means of social interaction, based on the assumption that language system and the forms that make it up are inescapably determined by the users or functions which they serve.