英语语言学复习整理
三明学院网-鸿门宴读后感
1. Language and Linguistics
1.
What are design features of language? (P 2-P 12)
a. language is systematic
b. language is
symbolic
c. language is arbitrary
d.
language is primarily vocal
e. language is
human specific
f. language is used for
communication
2. What are general functions of
language? Please illustrate your point with
examples.
(P 14-P 17)
a. physiological
function
b. phatic function
c. recording
function
d. identifying function
e.
communicating function
f. pleasure function
g. reasoning function
3. Distinctions
between Langue and Parole (P 29)
langue
the abstract system
a collective body of
knowledge
a kind of common reference manual
acquired by all members of a community of
speakers.
parole
the particular
actualities of individual
utterance
the
contingent executive side of things
the
relatively superficial behavioral reflexes
of
knowledge
the use of language of utterances.
4. Distinctions between synchronic and
diachronic (P 30)
a. The diachronic study
refers to the description of the historical
development of a
language.
b. The
synchronic study refers to the description of a
particular state of a language at a
single
point of time. It is necessary for the
synchronic description to find out these
systematic rules as they operate in the
language at a particular time.
5. Distinctions
between competence and performance (P 33)
a.
Competence refers to the know that native speakers
have of their language as system of
abstract
formal relations.
b. Performance refers to
what we do when we speak or listen, that is, the
infinite varied
individual acts of verbal
behavior with their irregularities,
inconsistences, and errors.
2. Phonetics
and Phonology
1. What is phonetics and
its three subdivisions? (P 43)
a. Phonetics is
the scientific study of speech and is concerned
with defining and
classifying speech
sounds.
b. Articulatory phonetics
Acoustic
phonetics
Auditory phonetics
2.
Distinctions among bilabial, dental, alveolar,
labiodental, velar sounds. (P 47-P 49)
a.
Bilabial are articulations made with the upper and
lower lips brought together.
p,b,m.
b.
Dentals are produced by the front of the tongue
touching the back of the upper front
teeth.
th→ð,ø.
c. Labiodentals are articulations
produced with the lower lip approximating to the
underside of the upper front teeth. f,v.
d. Alveolars are sounds produced by the tip
andor blade of the tongue touching or nearly
touching the gum ridge behind the upper teeth.
t,d,n,s,z,l.
e. Velar sounds are produced with
the back of the tongue dorsum raised up to the
soft
palate (or velum) at the back of the
mouth. k,g,w.
What is phonology? (P 56)
Phonology is the study of the sound patterns
in human language. (The term phonology is
used
in two ways, either as the study of the sound
patterns in language or as the sound
patterns
of a language.)
Distinctions between phonemes
(P 56) and allophones (P 58).
a. The segments
of an underlying representation are called
phonemes.
Phoneme is the minimum phonetic unit
that is not further analyzable into smaller units.
Phoneme is the abstract set of units as the
basis of our speech.
Phonemes are said to be
the distinctive sounds.
A phoneme may have its
variants.
b. There is only one phoneme between
two words and it turns up in two variant forms in
these two words. These phonetics variants of
phoneme are called allophones.
What are
minimal pairs? (P 58)
a. A pair of phonemes is
also known as a minimal pair.
b. When two
different forms are identical in every way except
for one sound segment that
occurs in the same
place in the string, the two words are called
minimal pairs.
What are components of a
syllable? (P 66)
Structurally, the syllable
may be divided into three parts: the onset, the
peak, the coda.
3.
4.
5.
6.
3. Morphology and Lexicon
1. What is
morphology? (P 73)
Morphology studies
morphemes and their different forms and the way
they combine in word
formation.
2.
Distinctions between word (P 74)morpheme (P
81)lexeme (P 91).
a. Word is the smallest form
that can occur by itself. (“a minimum free
form”—Bloomfield)
A word is a sound or
combination of sounds which we produce voluntarily
with our vocal
equipment.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
A word is symbolic, i.e.
it stands for something else, such as objects,
happenings, or
ideas.
Words are part of
the large communication system we call language.
Words help human beings interact culturally
with one another.
b. A morpheme is a smallest
linguistic unit that carries grammatical andor
semantic
meaning. That means it cannot be
further divided into smaller grammatical units.
A morpheme may undergo certain phonetic
changes when combined with the base
word.
c. A lexeme is referred to the smallest unit
in the meaning system of a language that can be
distinguished from other smaller units.
A
lexeme is an abstract unit and may occur in many
different forms in actual spoken or
written
texts.
Collocation is an important feature in
the combination of lexemes.
What are open-
class words? (P 79)
We can add new words to
these classes of nouns, verbs, adjectives, and
adverbs.
What are closed-class words? (P 79)
It is not easy to think of new pronouns,
determiners, conjunctions, or prepositions that
enter
the language recently.
Distinctions
between bound morpheme and free morpheme. (p 83)
a. If a morpheme can constitute a word by
itself, it is called a free morpheme, like room,
bottle, stand, large.
b. If a morpheme has
meaning only connected with at least another
morpheme, it is called
bound morpheme, like
un- in unlucky, and the plural –s in bags.
A
bound morpheme is also called an affix in the
sense that it is always added to another
morpheme. Affix can be divided into prefixes,
suffixes and infixes.
Distinctions between
inflectional morpheme and derivative morpheme (P
84)
a. Bound morphemes can be divided into two
types according to whether they provide the
lexical item to which they are added any
further grammatical meaning andor lexical
meaning.
b. An inflectional morpheme
provides further grammatical information about an
existing
lexical item. English inflectional
morphemes are largely in the form of suffix. Only
in
some few irregular plurals can we identify
the existence of infixes.
c. A derivative
morpheme refers to one that creates an entirely
new word. It may take the
form of a prefix or
a suffix.
Distinctions between prefixes and
suffixes. (P 83)
a. A prefix is one that added
to the beginner of the stem, like un- in unlucky,
in- in
inappropriate, dis- in disorder.
Prefixes generally do not change the
grammatical categories of the stem. They only add
some lexical meanings to the stem.
b. A
suffix is one that is added to the end of the
stem, like –ing in waiting, -ful in useful,
-less in meaningless.
Most suffixes have
two functions: (1) to add some grammatical
meanings to the stem or
(2) to change its
grammatical categories.
Sometimes suffixes do
not change the grammatical categories of the stem.
8. What are major processes of word-
formation? Give each one or two examples. (P 86)
a. Compounding (refers to the process of
conjoining two or more free morphemes to
form
a new word. The new word form is called a
compound.
i.e. fifteen, Sunday, Monday.
b.
Derivation i.e. antislavery, deprogram,
disapprove, robotics.
c. Conversion i.e.
n.→v. elbow → to elbow
v.→n. to
doubt → doubt
.→v. dry → to dry
adj. →n. native → two natives
d. Abbreviation i.e. bicycle → bike
gymnasium → gym
omnibus →
bus
UN
WTO
e. Back formation i.e. to audit ←
audition
to donate ←
donation
to enthuse ←
enthusiasm
f. Neologism i.e. moonwalker,
software, internet
g. Borrowing i.e. paper
tiger, moonrise, cold war
4. Syntax
1. What are constituents in syntactic
analysis? (P 98)
Constituents are structural
units, i.e. any linguistic form, such as words or
word groups.
When constituents are considered
as part of the successive unraveling of a
sentence, they
are known as its immediate
constituents.
2. What is immediate Constituent
Analysis? (P 98)
The segmentation of the
sentence up into its immediate constituents by
using binary cuttings
until its ultimate
constituents are obtained is an important
approached to the realization of
the nature of
language, called Immediate Constituent Analysis
(IC Analysis). The analysis can
be carried out
in ways of tree diagrams, bracketing, or any
other.
3. According to their structures and
forms, what are major types of English sentences?
According to their structures and forms,
sentences can be divided into simple sentences,
coordinate sentences, and complex sentences.
(P 100)
a. A simple sentence is a group of
words which expresses a single independent
thought.
b. A coordinate sentence or compound
sentence is a group of words which expresses two
or more connected and coordinate thoughts.
c. A complex sentence is a group of words
which expresses two or more unified thoughts,
one of which is the main or principle thought
dependent on it one or more subordinate
thoughts.
4. According to functional
approach, what are major types of English
sentences? List them
with examples. (P 101)
a. declarative
Pauline gave Mary a
digital watch for her birthday.
b.
interrogative
Did Pauline give Tom a digital
watch for his birthday?
c. imperative
Give
me a digital watch for my birthday.
d.
exclamatory
What a fine watch he received for
his birthday!
5. Semantics
1.
What is semantic field? (P 134)
Semantic field
refers to the organization of related lexemes into
a system which shows their
relationship to one
another.
2. Distinctions between conceptual
meaning and associative meaning. (P 126)
a.
Conceptual meaning refers to the definition given
in the dictionary.
It is widely assumed to be
the central factor in linguistic communication and
is integral to
the essential functioning of
language.
b. Associative meaning refers to the
meaning associated with the conceptual meaning,
which can be further divided into following
five types:
Connotative meaning
Social
meaning
Affective meaning
Reflected
meaning
Collocative meaning
3.
Distinctions among synonymy (P 136), antonym (P
138), meronymy (P 140), hyponymy
(P 140).
a. Words or expressions with the same or
similar meaning are said to be synonymous.
Synonyms are words or expressions that share
common semantic features.
Synonyms can be used
as a rhetorical device to make the expressions
coherent, varied
andor more colorful.
b.
Antonymy is the relationship of oppositeness of
meaning.
Antonyms can be used as a rhetorical
device to make the expressions more contrastive
and impressive.
c. Meronymy is a term used
to describe a part-whole relationship between
lexical items.
Meronymy reflects hierarchical
classifications in the lexicon.
d. Hyponymy is
used to refer to a specific-general semantic
relationship between lexical
items.
A word
may be the meronymy of one term but the hyponymy
of another. Hyponymy
differs from meronymy in
transitivity. Hyponymy is always transitive in the
sense that
there is a hierarchical relation
between different terms. In contrast, meronymy may
or
may not be hierarchical. Meronymy and
hyponymy are important routes of semantic
relations along which lexical-semantic changes
occur. Meronymy and hyponymy are
among the
widely used rhetorical devices to make the
expressions more varied and
colorful.
4. Distinctions between sentence meaning and
utterance meaning (P 132)
a. sentence meaning
is directly predictable from the grammatical
meaning and utterance
features of the
sentence.
b. Utterance meanings may not be
directly related with them. You have to depend on
various contextual factors to comprehend the
utterance meaning.
5. Distinctions between
lexical meaning and grammatical meaning. (P130)
a. lexical meaning is expressed by those
“meaningful” parts of speech, such as noun. verb,
adjectives, and adverbs, and is given in the
dictionary.
b. Grammatical meaning is
expressed by such syntactic categories as the
distinction
between the subject and the object
of a sentence, oppositions of definiteness, tense
and
number, and function words and intonation.
c. The total meaning constitute the linguistic
meanings, not the total meaning. The total
meaning of our utterance consists always of
the linguistic meanings plus the
social-
cultural meanings.
6. Pragmatics and Text
Analysis
1. What is the cooperative
principle? Please give some examples flouting
these four maxims
which may cause the
conversational implicature. (P 169)
a.
According to the cooperative principle, the
participants in a conversation normally
communicate in a maximally efficient, rational
and cooperative way. They should speak
sincerely, relevantly, and clearly, while
providing sufficient information.
b. The maxim
of quality
c. The maxim of quantity
d. The maxim of relevance
e. The
maxim of manner
2. Identify the cohesive
ties (grammatical devices or lexical ones) in a
discourse. 如课后练习
会找出语篇中的衔接手段 (P 184)
7. Language and Social Culture
1.
What is dialect? (P 204) (regional (P 206), social
(P 207), ethnic (P 209))
a. Dialect refers to
any regional, social, or ethic variety of a
language.
The dialects of a single language
may be defined as mutually intelligible forms of a
language that differ in systematic ways from
each other.
b. Regional dialect refers to the
language variety used in a geographical region.
c. Social dialect is used to describe
differences in speech associated with various
social
groups or classes.
d. Ethnic
varieties are used by ethnic groups and regarded
as social dialect.
2. Features of Black
English. (P 210)
a. Consonant deletion rule is
used.
b. In syntax, the frequent absence of
various forms of “be” is one of its prominent
syntactic
features.
c. Another syntactic
feature of black English is the systematic use of
the expression “it is”
where Standard English
uses “there is” in the sense of “there exists”.
d. Another syntactical feature of black
English is the use of double negation
constructions.
3. Shifts of meaning (P
219) and syntactical change (P 222) in language
change process.
a. More productive as a way
enlarging the vocabulary than borrowing and
creating new
words from native elements is
expanding the meaning of word that already exists
in the
language.(by amelioration; the opposite
of amelioration; through generalization; through
specialization and refer to a smaller class of
objects; through all of these.)
b. Some
differences between the sentence structures in Old
English and those in Modern
English involve
word order. (the loss of a large number of
inflectional affixes from many
part of speech;
the loss, the addition, and the modification of
rules; the syntactic
behavior of auxiliary
verbs and negation.)
8. Language
Acquisition and Thought
1. Can you
identify two major causes for learners’ errors in
second or foreign language
learning? Please
illustrate with examples when necessary.(P 271)
a. Interlingual transfer.
b. Intralingual
transfer
2. What are three major syllabuses
for foreign language teaching? (classification and
definition) (P 254—P 257)
a. Grammatical
syllabus takes grammar as the basis for (foreign)
language teaching. To the
advocates of this
syllabus, grammar is primary in the study of a
foreign language, and the
study of grammar is
not only beneficial to the learner’s comprehension
and translation
of the target language but
also to the development of the learner’s
intelligence.
b. Situational syllabus refers
to a syllabus in which the instruction of language
teaching is
planned around the situations in
which the linguistic forms to be taught are
normally
used. It has sociolinguistics as its
theoretical basis.
c. Communicative syllabus
focuses language teaching on the development of
the learner’s
communicative competence. The
communicative syllabus is based on the assumption
that language is used for communication, and
that learning a language is learning to
communicate.