语言学大题

32. What is the function of context in communication? Try to explain the

following utterances rather than just state facts.

(1) The room is messy. (2) It would be good if she had a green

skirt on.

Context is essential to the pragmatic study of language. It is generally

considered as constituted by the knowledge shared by both the speaker and the

hearer, such as cultural background, situation (time, place, manner, etc.), the

relationship between the speaker and the hearer, etc.

Context determines the speaker’s use of language and also hearer’s

interpretation of what is said to him. The context often helps in understanding the

particular meaning of the word, phrase, etc. It may also be the broader social

situation in which a linguistic item is used.

(1) a. A mild criticism of someone who should have cleaned the room.

b. In a language class where a student made a mistake, for he intended to

say “tidy.”

c. The room was wanted for a meeting.

(2) a. A mild way to express disagreement with someone who has

complimented on a lady’s appearance.

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b.A regret that the customer had not taken the dress.

she wore a red shirt was not in agreement with the custom on the

occasion.

Suprasegamental feature(definition, category)

Suprasegmental features are the phonemic features that occur above the

level of the segments. They include stress, tone, intonation, pitch etc.

⑴

syllable

Stress: definition is the intensity or prominence given to a

at the word level right (argument; Example; explain how)

at the sentence level peter left direction for mary to follow

peter left direction for mary to follow (argument; Example; explain how)

(The more important words such as nouns, verbs adjectives, adverbs, etc. are

pronounced with greater force and made more prominent. But to give special

emphasis to a certain notion, a word in sentence that is usually unstressed can be

stressed to achieve different effect.(argument) Take the sentence “He is driving

MY car.” for example. To emphasize the fact that the car he is driving is not his, or

yours, but mine, the speaker can stress the possessive pronoun “my”, which

under normal circumstances is not stressed. (explain how)

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⑵ Pitch: (definition; argument; Example; explain how)

⑶ Tone: Tones are pitch variations, which are caused by the differing rates

of vibration of the vocal cords. (definition; argument; Example; explain how)

⑷ (definition; argument; Example; explain how)

⑸ Intonation:When pitch, stress and sound length are tied to the sentence

rather than the word in isolation, they are collectively known as intonation

The location of stress in English distinguishes meaning, such as `import and

im`port. The similar alternation of stress also occurs between a compound noun

and a phrase consisting of the same elements. A phonological feature of the

English compounds, is that the stress of the word always falls on the first element

and the second element receives secondary stress, for example: `blackbird is a

particular kind of bird, which is not necessarily black, but a black `bird is a bird that

is black.

2) The more important words such as nouns, verbs adjectives , adverbs,etc

are pronounced with greater force and made more prominent. But to give special

emphasis to a certain notion, a word in sentence that is usually unstressed can be

stressed to achieve different effect. Take the sentence “He is driving my car.” for

example. To emphasize the fact that the car he is driving is not his, or yours, but

mine, the speaker can stress the possessive pronoun

my

, which under normal

circumstances is not stressed.

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3) English has four basic types of intonation, known as the four tones:

When spoken in different tones, the same sequence of words may have different

meanings. Generally speaking, the falling tone indicates that what is said is a

straight-forward, matter-of-fact statement, the rising tone often makes a question

of what is said, and the fall-rise tone often indicates that there is an implied

message in what is said.

. What are the main features of the English compounds?

Compound 定义 Compounding can be viewed as the combination of two

or sometimes more than two words to create new words.

Orthographically, a compound can be written as one word，

two separate words with or without a hyphen in between.

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Syntactically, the part of speech of a compound is determined by

the last element.

Semantically, the meaning of a compound is idiomatic， not

calculable from the meanings of all its components. French leave 不辞而

别 spanish athlete 吹牛者 chinese copy 中国的复制品(example)

Phonetically, the word stress of a compound usually falls on

the first element. (example)blackhorse black horse

Discuss the types of morphemes with examples.

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Morpheme定义It is the smallest meaningful unit of language

Free morphemes： They are the independent units of meaning and can b

e used freely all by themselves， for example， “book-” in the word “boo

kish”.

Lexical morphemes…the free morphemes which carry the content of mes

sages we convey eg Modernize

Functional morphemes…consist of the functional words in the language.

e.g. Conj. (and, but) Article (the)

Prep. (in, on, above)

Bound morphemes： They are those that cannot be used independently

but have to be combined with other morphemes， either free or bound， to

form a word such as “-ish” in “bookish”.

Bound morphemes can be subdivided into bound roots and affixes. A b

ound root is seen as part of a word； it can never stand by itself although i

t has a clear and definite meaning， such as “gene-” in the word “generat

e”. Affixes are of two types： inflectional and derivational.

Inflectional affixes manifest various grammatical relations or grammatical

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categories such as “-s” in the word “books” to indicate plurality of nouns.

Derivational affixes are added to an existing form to create a word such

as “mis-” in the word “misinform”. Derivational affixes can also be divide

d into prefixes and suffixes.

Prefixes occur at the beginning of a word such as “dis- ” in the word

“dislike”， while suffixes occur at the end of a word such as “-less” in the

word “friendless”.

1. Explain functions of language, using examples. (30’)

Here some major categories

2. Phatic: to establish an atmosphere or maintaining social hello

3. Directive: to get the hearer to do

4. Informative: to tell sth., to give information or to reason things road

closed

5. Interrogative: to ask for information from others.

6. How old are you

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7. Expressive: to reveal the speaker’s attitudes and feelings. My god

8. Evocative: to create certain feelings in the to the last drop

9. Performative: to do things, to perform actions. I declare the meeting open

10. Recreational: to entertain the user.

11. Metalingual: certain kinds of linguistic signs or terms for the analysis and

description of particular studies

12. Saussure’s distinction between langue and parole seems similar to

Chomsky’s distinction between competence and performance. What do you

think are their major differences? (20’)

Saussure’s distinction between langue and parole seems similar to Chomsky’

s distinction between competence and performance. What do you think are their

major differences?

Although Saussure’s distinction and Chomsky’s are very similar, they differ at

least in that Saussure took a sociological view of language and his notion of

langue is a mater of social conventions, and Chomsky looks at language from a

psychological point of vies and to him, competence is a property of the mind of

each individual.

1. What are the major differences between phonology and phonetics? (20’)

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Definitions of phonology and phonetics respectively;

The study of the speech sounds that occur in human languages is called

phonetics.

Phonology is the description of the systems and patterns of speech sounds in

a language .

They differ in their approach and focus.

Phonetics is of a general nature; it is interested in all the speech sounds

used in all human languages: how they are produced, how they differ from each

other, what phonetic features they possess, how they can

Phonology, on the other hand, is interested in the system of sounds of a

particular language; it aims to discover how speech sounds in a language form

patterns and how these sounds are used to convey meaning in linguistic

communication…

Example. leap peel

E.g.

Phonetic & phonological perspectives of the [ l ] sound?

Phonetically, a clear [ l ] in leap and a dark [ ł ] in peel.

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Phonologically, why a clear [ l ] and dark [ ł ] ? Any rules?

clear [ l ] & dark [ ł ] = / l /

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