语言学期末考试试卷
大连理工城市学院吧-妇联工作职责
1. 围绕SFL,TG Grammar, FSP, Saussure
四个知识点，结合课本367及368页相关问答题准
备复习。
2．理解并一定识记以下相关概念和名词：
categorization
，interpersonal
function，duality，semantics，recursiveness，language
linguistics，image
schema，competence，allophone，inflection，syntax
3. 会自己分析诸如课本368页22题，367页14题的题型
。
4.其他参见老师最后一次课梳理的内容。
1. Why is
Saussure hailed as the father of modern
linguistics?
Saussure was the first to notice
the complexities of language. He believed that
language is a
system of signs. To communicate
ideas, signs must be part of a system of signs,
called conventions.
He held that the sign is
the union of a form (signifier) and an idea
(signified), and it is the central
fact of
language. By providing answers to questions
concerning many aspects of language,
Saussure
made clear the object of study for linguistics as
a science. His ideas on the arbitrary
nature
of sign, on 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.
2. What are the three important points of the
Prague School?
First, it stressed that the
synchronic study of language is fully justified as
it can draw on complete
and controllable
material for investigation. Second, it emphasized
the systemic character of
language, arguing
that no element of any language can be
satisfactorily analyzed or evaluated if
viewed
in isolation. In other words, elements are held to
be in functional contrast or opposition.
Third, it looked on language as a tool
performing a number of essential functions or
tasks for the
community using it.
3. What
is the Prague School best known for?
The
Prague School is best known and remembered for its
contribution to phonology and the
distinction
between phonetics and phonology. Following
Saussure’s distinction between langue
and
parole, Trubetzkoy argued that phonetics belonged
to parole whereas phonology belonged to
langue. On this basis he developed the notion
of “phoneme” as an abstract unit of the sound
system as distinct from the sounds actually
produced. In classifying distinctive features, he
proposed three criteria: (1) their relation to
the whole contrastive system; (2) relations
between the
opposing elements; and (3) their
power of discrimination. These oppositions can be
summarised as:
a) bilateral opposition; b)
multilateral opposition; c) proportional
opposition; d) isolated
opposition; e)
privative opposition; f) gradual opposition; g)
equippolent opposition; h)
neutralisable
opposition; and i) constant opposition.
4.
What is the essence of Functional Sentence
Perspective (FSP)? FSP is a theory that refers to
a
linguistic analysis of utterances (or texts)
in terms of the information they contain. The
principle is
that the role of each utterance
part is evaluated for its semantic contribution to
the whole. From a
functional point of view,
some Czechoslovak linguists believed that a
sentence contains a point of
departure and a
goal of discourse. The point of departure is
equally present to the speaker and to
the
hearer – it is their rallying point, the ground on
which they meet. This is called the Theme.
The
goal of discourse presents the very information
that is to be imparted to the hearer. This is
called the Rheme. It is believed that the
movement from the Theme to the Rheme reveals the
movement of the mind itself. Language may use
different syntactic structures, but the order of
ideas remains basically the same. Based on
these observations, they created the notion of
Functional Sentence Perspective (FSP)
to describe how information is distributed in
sentences.
FSP deals particularly with the
effect of the distribution of known (or given)
information and new
information in discourse.
The known information refers to information that
is not new to the
reader or hearer, and the
new information is what is to be transmitted to
the reader or hearer. 5.
What is the tradition
of the London School? The London School has a
tradition of laying stress on
the functions of
language and attaching great importance tocontexts
of situation and the system
aspect of
language. It is these features that have made this
school of thought known as systemic
linguistics and functional linguistics. It is
an important and admirable part of the London
School
tradition to believe that different
types of linguistic description may be appropriate
for different
purposes. 6. What is the
difference between Malinowski and Firth on context
of situation?
Malinowski distinguished three
types of context of situation: situations in which
speech
interrelates with bodily activity,
narrative situations, and phatic situations. Firth
defined the
context of situation as including
the entire cultural setting of speech and the
personal history of the
participants rather
than as simply the context of human activity going
on at the moment.
Recognising that sentences
can vary infinitely, Firth used the notion of
“typical context of
situation”, meaning that
social situations determine the social roles
participants are obliged to play;
since the
total number of typical contexts of situation they
will encounter is finite, the total
number of
social roles is also finite. He put forward the
idea that in analysing a typical context of
situation, one has to take into consideration
both the situational context and the linguistic
context
of a text. 7. What is important about
Firth’s prosodic analysis? Prosodic analysis, or
prosodic
phonology, is Firth’s second
important contribution to linguistics. Since any
human utterance is a
continuous speech flow
made up of at least one syllable, it cannot be cut
into independent units.
Phonological
description only deals with paradigmatic
relations, leaving syntagmatic relations out
of consideration. Firth pointed out that in
actual speech, it is not phonemes that make up the
paradigmatic relations, but phonematic units.
There are fewer features in phonematic units than
in
phonemes, because some features are common
to phonemes of a syllable or a phrase (even a
sentence). When these features are considered
in syntagmatic relations, they are all called
prosodic
units, which include features such as
stress, length, nasalisation, palatalisation, and
aspiration. In
any case, these features cannot
be found in one phonematic unit alone.
8. What is the relation between Systemic
Grammar and Functional Grammar?
Systemic
Grammar and Functional Grammar are two inseparable
components for an
integral framework of
Systemic-Functional linguistic theory. Systemic
Grammar aims to
explain the internal relations
in language as a system network, or meaning
potential. 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 position
that language system
and the forms that make
it up are inescapably determined by the uses or
functions which they
serve. Systemic Grammar
contains a functional component, and the theory
behind
Functional Grammar is systemic.
.9What is special about Systemic-Functional
linguistics?
Systemic-Functional linguistics
aims to provide taxonomy for sentences, a means of
descriptively classifying particular
sentences. Although it may not seem as influential
as
Chomsky’s transformational-generative
theory in some parts of the world, it is much more
relevant to the needs of various groups of
people who deal with language. Halliday believes
that language is what it is because it
has to serve certain functions. In other words,
social
demand on language has helped to shape
its structure. Systemic-Functional linguistics is
based on two facts: (1) language users are
actually making choices in a system of systems
and trying to realise different semantic
functions in social interaction; and (2) language
is
inseparable from social activities of man.
Thus, it takes actual uses of language as the
object
of study, in opposition to Chomsky’s
approach that takes the ideal speaker’s linguistic
competence as the object of study.
11. (1) she (Person: third person; Number:
singular) (2) we (Person: first person; Number:
plural) (3) always (Modality: frequency) (4)
a perception process (Transitivity: mental
process:
internalized process) (5) an action
process (Transitivity: material process)
12.
Analyze the following Relational-process sentences
according to their mode and type. (1)
Linguistics is a difficult course. (Type:
intensive; Mode: attributive) (2) This laptop is
Professor
Huang’s. (Type: possessive; Mode:
identifying)
15. What are the special
features of American structuralism? American
Structuralism is a branch
of synchronic
linguistics that developed in a very different
style from that of Europe. While
linguistics
in Europe started more than two thousand years
ago, linguistics in America started at
the end
of the nineteenth century. While traditional
grammar plays a dominating role in Europe, it
has little influence in America. While many
European languages have their own historical
traditions and cultures, English is the
dominating language in America, where there is no
such a
tradition as in Europe. In addition,
the pioneer scholars in America were faced with
the urgent task
of recording the rapidly
perishing native American Indian languages because
there was no written
record of them. However,
these languages were characterised by features of
vast diversity and
differences which are
rarely found in other parts of the world. To
record and describe these exotic
languages, it
is probably better not to have any presuppositions
about the nature of language in
general. This
explains why there was not much development in
linguistic theory during this period
but a lot
of discussion on descriptive procedures.
Structuralism is based on the assumption that
grammatical categories should be defined not
in terms of meaning but in terms of distribution,
and
that the structure of each language should
be described without reference to the alleged
universality of such categories as tense, mood
and parts of speech. Firstly, structural grammar
describes everything that is found in a
language instead of laying down rules. However,
its aim is
confined to the description of
languages, without explaining why language
operates the way it
does. Secondly, structural
grammar is empirical, aiming at objectivity in the
sense that all
definitions and statements
should be verifiable or refutable. However, it has
produced almost no
complete grammars
comparable to any comprehensive traditional
grammars. Thirdly, structural
grammar examines
all languages, recognising and doing justice to
the uniqueness of each
language. But it does
not give an adequate treatment of meaning. Lastly,
structural grammar
describes even the smallest
contrasts that underlie any construction or use of
a language, not only
those discoverable in
some particular use.
16. How is behaviourist
psychology related to linguistics? For Bloomfield,
linguistics is a branch
of psychology, and
specifically of the positivistic 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
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
youlanguage?” 17. What is Harris’s most important
contribution to linguistics?
Harris’s Methods
in Structural Linguistics (1951) makes the
maturity of American descriptive
linguistics,
for he gave the fullest and most interesting
expression of the “discovery procedure”
approach characterised by accurate analytical
procedures and high degree of formalisation. He
formulated a set of strict descriptive
procedures which took the logic of distributional
relations as
the basis of structural analysis.
This method has greatly influenced American
descriptive
linguistics and Harris is
therefore regarded as one of the most
distinguished linguists in the
post-
Bloomfieldian era. 18. What is the theoretical
importance of Tagmemics? Tagmemics is a
special name for the technique of linguistic
analysis developed by Pike, the most significant
figure
in continuing the structuralist
tradition. For Pike, a language has its own
hierarchical systems
independent of meaning.
Not only are there hierarchies in language, but
that everything in the
world is hierarchical,
consisting of different layers in the system from
small to big, from bottom to
top, from simple
to complex, from part to whole. The ultimate aim
of tagmemics is to provide a
theory which
integrates lexical, grammatical, and phonological
information. This theory is based
on the
assumption that there are various relations in
language, and these relations can be analysed
into different units. However, to believe that
language is part of human behaviour, one needs to
recognise that language cannot be strictly
formalised. Since no representational system can
account for all the relevant facts of
language, tagmemics accepts various different
modes of
representation for different
purposes, and does not insist that there is only
one correct grammar or
linguistic theory.
19. What are the main features of Stratificational
Grammar? Lamb’s Stratificational Grammar
consists of three levels: phoneme, morpheme,
and morphophoneme. It sees the complex
relationship in language as series of
connected stratal systems on the assumption that
while the
system of relationships are not
directly observable, it is generalizable. In this
grammar, there is no
direct relation between a
concept and its sounds, and that there are various
strata that make up a
number of stratal
systems. Among these, the four principal ones are
the sememic, lexemic,
morphemic, and the
phonemic, from top to bottom.
20. How many
stages of development has Chomsky’s TG Grammar
undergone?
Chomsky’s TG Grammar has seen five
stages of development. The Classical Theory aims
to
make linguistics a science. The Standard
Theory deals with how semantics should be studied
in a
linguistics theory. The Extended Standard
Theory focuses discussion on language universals
and
universal grammar. The Revised Extended
Standard Theory (or GB) focuses discussion on
government and binding. The latest is the
Minimalist Program, a further revision of the
previous
theory. The development of TG
Grammar can be regarded as a process of constantly
minimalising theories and controlling the
generative powers. Although TG Grammar has
involved
putting forward, revising, and
cancelling of many specific rules, hypotheses,
mechanisms, and
theoretical models, its aims
and purposes have been consistent, i.e. to explore
the nature, origin
and the uses of human
knowledge on language.
21. What does Chomsky
mean by Language Acquisition Device? Chomsky
believes that language
is somewhat
innate, and that children are born with what he
calls a Language Acquisition Device
(LAD),
which is a unique kind of knowledge that fits them
for language learning. He argues the
child
comes into the world with specific innate
endowment, not only with general tendencies or
potentialities, but also with knowledge
25. What is special about TG Grammar?
The
starting point of Chomsky’s TG Grammar is his
innateness hypothesis, based on his
observations that some important facts can
never be otherwise explained adequately. Chomsky’s
TG Grammar has the following features. First,
Chomsky defines language as a set of rules or
principles. Second, Chomsky believes that the
aim of linguistics is to produce a generative
grammar which captures the tacit knowledge of
the native speaker of his language. This concerns
the question of learning theory and the
question of linguistic universals. Third, Chomsky
and his
followers are interested in any data
that can reveal the native speaker’s tacit
knowledge. They
seldom use what native
speakers actually say; they rely on their own
intuition. Fourth, Chomsky’s
methodology is
hypothesis-deductive, which operates at two
levels: (a) the linguist formulates a
hypothesis about language structure – a
general linguistic theory; this is tested by
grammars for
particular languages, and (b)
each such grammar is a hypothesis on the general
linguistic theory.
Finally, Chomsky follows
rationalism in philosophy and mentalism in
psychology.