上海大学08年语言学试题

I define the following terms.(20 points)

1. Register 2. Pigin

3. Communicative competence

4. Sapir-Whorf hypothesis 5 . Lingua franca

6. Diglossia 7 Sociolect

8. Speech community

9. Standard language 10: Speech variety questions.

II. Indicate the following statements true or false. Put a T for true or F for false as a required on the answer sheet following the proper number. (15 points)

1. Children acquiring their first language beyond the critical age hardly successful, such as the case of \"Genie.\"

2. Children acquiring a language simply as internalizing individual expressions of language.

3. In first language acquisition children's grammar models exactly after the grammar of adult language.

4. Modern linguists regard the spoken language as primary, not the written.

5. The presence of a grammatical distinction in a languagethe ease of some cognitive processes, while the absence distinctions prevents these processes.

6. A weak version of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis states that the pre- -?of linguistic categories influences the ease with which va-.?cognitive operations are performed. 7. As a naturally occurring event, parlor refers to the actualized language which is specific to the situation in which it occurs.

8. Chomsky regards competence as the ideal language user's knowledge of the rules of his language, which is often influenced by psychological and social factors.

9. “Domestic bird” is the superordinate, and “chicken”, “duck”, “turkey” and “goose” are co-hyponyms.

10. American descriptive linguistics is empiricist and focuses on diversities of languages.

11. Acoustic phonetics is concerned with the perception of speech sounds.

12. Dialects which identify where a person is in terms of a social scale are called social dialects which are highly stratified in terms of social divisions, such as race, class, professional status, age and sex.

13. Glossematics emphasizes the nature and status of linguistic theory and its relation to description.

14. If two sentences have exactly the same ideational and interpersonal functions, they would be the same in terms of textual coherence.

15. The generic situation of the discourse is often defined in terms of tenor which is the category used to describe what language is being used for in the situation.

III. Complete the following statements. (30 points)

1. (1) means that human languages enable their users to symbolize objects, events and concepts which are not present in time and space at the moment of communication. 2. For many American English speakers, the best example, or the (2), of “bird” is the robin.

3. We describe the relationship or the agreement between boy and his in the sentence the boy liked his dog in terms of (3) (4), mainly derived from a biological distinction between male and female.

4. If someone tells you that Your uncle came back from the United States, there is an obvious (5) that you have an uncle.

5. The children (6) the rule of adding –ed to form the verb past form such as goed. 6. The term (7) refers to the gradual development of ability in a language by using it naturally in communicative situations, while the term (8) applies to a conscious process of accumulating knowledge of the vocabulary and grammar of a language. 7. The combination str is a (9) (10), i.e., it consists of more than one consonant.

8. The phrase “a grief age” by Dylan Thomas breaks the rules of normal use of English. Such abnormal use is called (11).

9. When an individual speaks, what is actually produced is a unique language system of the speaker. Such a personal dialect is referred to as (12).

10. NASA or UNESCO are examples of (13), formed from the initial letters of a set of other words, and typically pronounced as (14) words.

11. The verbs work becomes the noun worker if we add the (15) morpheme –er. 12. The American TOEFL test is an example of (16) test.

13. According to the principle of (17) (18) by George Kingsiey Zipf, language use is characterized by two competing forces: the force of unification, or the speaker's economy, and the force of diversification, or hearer's economy.

14. When learning a second language, the learners will transfer the features of their mother tongue. Such transfer can be (19) when interference occurs and results in (20). 15. The (21) syllabus is a grammar oriented syllabus based on a selection of language items and structures.

16. In the tu/vous distinction, tu was used to signal either (22) or that the speaker was of (23) social status than the addressee.

17. The strong version of (24) Hypothesis emphasizes the dicisive role of language as the shaper of our thinking patterns.

18. Saussure's (25) linguistics is the study of language through the course of its history. “A Grammar of Modern Chinese” will usually claim to be a (26) grammar. 19. We use the (27) to interpret what we experience and what we hear or read about. It is a conventional knowledge structure existing in memory, for example, the conventional supermarket feature includes food displayed on shelves, shopping carts and baskets, check-out counter, and so on.

20. The study of “intended speaker meaning” is called (28).

21. The pairs bank (of a river) and bank (financial institution) are examples of (29). 22. The components of “thin, sharp, steel, instrument” would be a part of the (30) meaning of needle.

IV Read each of the following statements carefully. Decide which one of the four choices best completes the statements. (15 points)

1. English consonants can be classified into stops. fricatives, nasals, etc. , in terms of ( ).

A. manner of articulation B. openness of mouth C. place of articulation D. voicing

2. The study of how words are combined to form sentences is called ( ). A. phonetics B. morphology C. syntax D. semantics

3. According to Chomsky, ( ) is the ideal user’s internalized knowledge of his language.

A. competence B. parole C. performance D. langue

4. “Sweets” and “candy” are used respectively in Britain in and America, but refer to the same thing. The words are ( ) synonyms. A. collocational B. dialectal C. complete D. stylistic

5. Different meanings can be associated with one linguistic form, but there is no basic meaning among them. This is known as ( ). A. homonymy B. hyponymy C. polysemy D. antonymy

6. “How fast did he drive when he ran the red light?” ( ) “He ran the red light”. A. entails B. contradicts C. presupposes D. includes

7. The word “lab” is formed through ( ). A. back formation B. blending C. clipping D. derivation

8. ( ) in the brain fulfills the function of speech production. A. Angular gyrus B. Broca’s area

C. The right hemisphere D. Wernicke’s area

9. When a child uses “mummy” to refer to any woman, most probably his “mummy” means ( ).

A. + Human B. + Human + Adult

C. + Human + Adult – Male D. + Human + Adult - Male + Parent

10. ( ) is not a suprasegmental feature. A. Aspiration B. Intonation C. Stress D. Tone

11.The sentence that has a NP and a VP can be shown in a _______ formula \"S→NP VP\".( )

A.hierarchical B.linear C.tree diagram D.vertical

12.It is the _______ on Case assignment that states that a Case assignor and a Case recipient should stay adjacent to each other.( )

A.Case Condition B.parameter C.Adjacent Condition D.Adjacent Parameter

13.Predication analysis is a way to analyze _______ meaning.

A.phoneme B.word C.phrase D.sentence

14.According to Searle,those illocutionary acts whose point is to commit the speaker to some future course of action are called _______.( )

A.commisives B.directives C.expressives D.declaratives

15.The term _______ linguistics may be defined as a way of referring to the approach which studies language change over various periods of time and at various historical stages.

A.synchronic B.diachronic C.comparative D.historical comparative

V. Briefly answer the following questions. (30 points)

1.What can linguistics do for language learning and teaching? (10 points) 2. 3.

Explain five basic categories of illocutionary acts by Seale with examples. What do you know about the Cooperative Principle and its maxims? VI. Essay questions (about 150 words for each essay) (40points)

1.Why do we say tree diagrams are more advantageous and informative than linear structure in analyzing the constituent relationship among linguistic elements? Support your statement with examples.

2.Describe the process of language perception, comprehension and production