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一、Explain-the-fllowing-terms

1． 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.

2． Duality

【答案】Duality refers to the fact that in all languages so far investigated there are two levels of structure or patterning. At the first , higher level , language is analyzed in terms of combinations of meaningful units ; at the second, lower level, it is seen as a sequence （such as morphemes, words etc.）

of segments which lack any meaning in themselves, but which combine to form units of meaning. For example , a syllable is the smallest unit that is normally spoken by itself, and scores of syllables become the carriers of hundreds of meaningful segments of words that are called morphemes.

3． IPA

【答案】 IPA is the abbreviation of International Phonetic Alphabet , which is devised by the International Phonetic Association in 1888. IPA is a set of symbols which can be used to represent the phones and phonemes of natural languages.

4． Category

Category refers to a group of linguistic items which fulfill the same or similar functions in 【答案】

a particular language such as a sentence, a noun phrase or a verb.

5． Design features

【答案】 Design features : It refer to the defining properties of human language that tell the difference between human language and any system of animal communication.

6． Textual function

【答案】 Textual function : The textual function is one of the three meta-functions language is composed of. It refers to the fact that language has mechanisms to make any stretch of spoken or written discourse into a coherent and unified text and make a living message different from a random list of sentences.

7． functional morpheme

【答案】 This is a subtype of free morphemes, which one consists largely of the functional words in language such as conjunctions, prepositions, articles and pronouns, for example, “and, about when on , near, the” an so on.

8． Transformational-Generative grammar

【答案】 Transformational-generative grammar is proposed by Noam Chomsky. He postulated a syntactic base of language （called deep structure ） , which consists of a series of phrase-structure rewrite rules, i.e., a series of （possibly universal） rules that generates the underlying phrase-structure of a sentence. The end result of a transformational-generative grammar is a surface structure that is identical to an actual sentence of a language , after the mediating of a series of rules （called transformations ） that act upon the deep structures.

二、Essay-question

9． Explain this statement and give at least two examples of it: “In studying other cultures，we do so from the perspective of our own culture.”

【答案】 Culture is a semiotic meaning system in which symbols function to communicate meaning from one mind to another. It is related to language in such a way that language is a part of culture and a part of human behavior, and also the primary medium for transmitting much of culture. Therefore , without language, culture would not be possible. Consequently, when studying a culture, we often rely on the language. Therefore, we may use our own language to describe the target culture, which may be the one interpretation of the statement 6tIn studying other cultures, we do so from the perspective of our own culture”.

What s more , when studying other cultures , we will definitely come across the differences between the target culture and our own culture. We will subconsciously compare the two different cultures. Seeing from the perspective of our own culture, we find how the target culture is different from our own culture, and this makes the target culture more distinctive from our own.

10．Read the following quote from Chomsky. What do you think about Chomsky^ criticism and the revival of corpus linguistics?

It seems clear that the description which is of greatest psychological relevance is the account of competence , not that of performance, for anyone concerned with intellectual processes, or any question that goes beyond mere data arranging, it is the question of competence that is fundamental. ...

These rather obvious comments apply directly to study of language, child or adult. This it is absurd to attempt to construct a grammar that describes observed linguistic behaviour directly ，…a direct record —an actual corpus —is almost useless as it stands , for linguistic analysis of any but the most superficial kind. ...

【答案】 Regarding linguistics as a branch of psychology, Chomsky insisted that what should be studied is linguistic competence , not performance. As he has claimed , the description of language performance only tells what is there, and is very inadequate in telling why language performs in the way as it does, or rather, how the intellectual processes affects it.

What ＇s more, language performance is more than often degenerated; there are false statements, hesitations , and so on. Therefore, the corpus linguistics which is based on the language performance is somewhat distorted from the goal of linguistics. Because , according to Chomsky , what linguistics is aimed for , should be the discovering of the constants , the general principle which all languages are constructed and operated as systems of communication in societies in which they are used.

Therefore , he suggested the construction of universal grammar, which is the ideal knowledge of language , is what linguists should be concerned with , and the postulation of grammar based on the

observed behavior is also a distortion.

11．What is the difference between pidgins and creoles?

【答案】 A pidgin is a special language variety that mixes or blends languages and it is used by people who speak different languages for restricted purposes such as trading. The term is believed to have originated from the pronunciation of the English word„„business‟‟in Chinese Pidgin English.

Pidgins arose from a blending of several languages such as Chinese dialects and English, African dialects and French, African dialects and Portuguese. Usually a European language serves as the basis of the pidgin in the sense that some of its grammar and vocabulary is derived from the European language used by traders and missionaries in order to communicate with peoples whose languages they did not know.

Pidgins typically have a limited vocabulary and a very reduced grammatical structure characterized by the loss of inflections，gender and case. The“simplified‟‟variety performs its functions as trading and employment.

When a pidgin has become the primary language of a speech community, and is acquired by the children of that speech community as their native language , it is said to have become a creole. The structure of the original pidgin is expanded to enable it to fulfill its new functions. The vocabulary is vastly enriched , and new syntactic-semantic concepts developed. Notable examples of Creole are the English-based Creole of Jamaica, and the French-based Creole of Haiti.

12．Discuss the following advertisement extensively: “ 你不理财，财不理你”.

【答案】 This advertisement is an interesting one, for its witty use of pun words. There are two places of punning. First , “理财” could be interpreted in two different ways : one is “to manage one‟s money‟‟，the other is “not to ignore money”. Second, in the second part of the sentence, “财 ” is punned through homophony: it could be interpreted as “财 ”，therefore , the whole part “财不理你” could mean “fortune will ignore you‟‟，or rather，“fortune will pass you away”. This character could also interpreted as “才”，therefore , the whole part “财不理你” could mean “I will ignore you”，or rather, “I will show you my cold shoulder” （Here UF, refers to the company which put out this advertisement）.

Therefore , this utterance could be possibly interpreted in the following ways. 1） If you do not handle your money in a proper way, then money will pass you by. 2 ） If you do not handle your money properly , then I won‟t take care of any of your business. 3 ） If you ignore money, and do not pay any attention to it, then money will pass you by. 4） If you ignore money, then I will ignore you, too, and I won5t take care of any of your business. In these four interpretations, it is clear to see that in 1 and 4, the advertiser conveyed the messages to the readers as if he was having a face-to-face talk to a friend. This has in some way made the piece of ad interesting to read.

It is known the punning is by nature ambiguous. Therefore, according to Grice, the advertisement has violated the principle of avoiding ambiguity under Manner Maxim. By such a violation , the advertiser has possibly intended to make the potential consumers pay more attention to it, and spend more time on it, since it is known that ambiguity will increase the time for processing the sentence; and by interpreting it in additional ways, the readers are also expected to get another interesting message from this ad. All of these could eventually come to a higher memorability of the advertisement.