山東大學(xué)英語系語言學(xué)答案.doc

1. What is the nature of language?The nature of language is the nature of human thought and human action, for language is neither more nor less than the tool of both of these aspects of human nature. A word is either the shadow of an act or of an idea. Verbal sounds have no meaning in themselves. They are the channels, the media for the expression or communication of that which lies outside of them. Plato has made clear to us how easy it is to deceive ourselves with words, to labor under an impression that just because we can utter a sound we also necessarily know what we are talking about.A language is defined as a systematic means of communicating ideas or feelings by the use of conventionalized signs, sounds gestures or marks having understood meanings., and is a tool for communication. In most common use of language, these signs are the words which we employ in such a way that they may communicate ideas or feelings. Communication, that is, the conveyance of an idea or emotion from one to another, relies largely upon language, and rightly so, as it is a powerful tool when employed correctly. However, misunderstandings in communication occur when two people have a different understanding of their language, or they use language in such a way that it results in communication which is unclear or vague. 2. What are the differences between traditional grammar and modern linguistics?Traditional grammar is prescriptive; it is based on high (religious, literary) written language. It sets grammatical rules and imposes the rules on language users. But Modern linguistics is descriptive; it collects authentic and mainly spoken language data and then it studies and describes the data in an objective and scientific way. Modern linguistic is DESCRIPTIVE (to describe the way people speak), whilst traditional grammar is PRESCRIPTIVE (to prescribe the way people speak, or simply, to tell people how to speak and let people know the correct way of their speaking) Traditional Grammar is a framework used to describe the structural pattern and rules in a language called syntax functions. A language is a composite form of vocal articulation and written form using the sets of rules of that vocalization or written structure of communication in any native language. Tradition grammar pays more attention to the written form of language, while linguistics attaches more importance to speaking than writing. Traditional grammar has been restricted mainly to SYNTAX, that is, the way of words making patterns to form sentences, while linguistics has a boarder scope for researching, e.g. pragmatics, psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics, est. which, accordingly, are out of the scope of traditional grammar.3. How can the speech sounds of the English language be classified?An initial classification will divide the speech sound into two broad categories: vowels and consonants.Vowels may be distinguished as front, central, and back according to which part of the tongue is held highest. To further distinguish members of each group, we need to apply another criterion, the .openness of the mouth. Accordingly, we classify the vowels into four groups: close vowels, semi-close vowels, semi-open vowels and open vowels. A third criterion that is often used in classification of vowels is the shape of the lips. In English, all the front vowels and central vowels are rounded vowels, and all the back vowels are rounded. In English, there are five letters which always represent a vowel when written: a, e, i, o, and u. these five letters represent more than five vowel sounds, however, depending on the word, or if they are combined with other vowels. Compare the letter a in the words hat and hate as one of many examples.In terms of manner of articulation the English consonants can be classified into the following types: stops, fricatives, affricates, liquids, nasals, glides, bilabial, labiodental, dental, alveolar, palatal, velar, glottal.A consonant is a sound in spoken language that is characterized by a constriction or closure at one or more points along the vocal tract. The word consonant comes from Latin meaning sounding with or sounding together, the idea being that consonants dont sound on their own, but only occur with a nearby vowel; this conception of consonants, however, does not reflect a modern linguistic understanding, which defines them in terms of vocal tract constrictions.There are a group of consonants called sonorant that sometimes act as vowels, occupying the peak of a syllable, and sometimes act as consonants. For example, in English, the sound m in mud is a consonant, but in prism, it occupies an entire syllable, as a vowel would.4. What contributions did Saussure make to the development of modern linguistics?Saussure was a noted linguist whose theories on the structure of language had a profound effect on modern linguistics and Literary Theory. His system was based on the concepts of the signifier (sound image or graphic), the referent (object or real thing) and the signified (concept or meaning). He posited that the connection between the signifier and the signified was an arbitrary one based on conventions of politeness. Another key to his theories is the idea of difference: he believed that signification was a function of difference.Saussure is known as the Father of Modern Linguistics Because of his work with Indo-European languages. In Paris and in Geneva, between 1881 and 1891, he studied Sanskrit, comparative languages and linguistics. Three years after his death, his students published his notes on the structure of language which had a profound influence on modern linguistics and Semiology.Itscentralnotionisthatlanguagemaybeanalyzedasaformalsystemofdifferentialelements,apartfromthemessydialecticsofreal-timeproductionandcomprehension.Examplesoftheseelementsincludethenotionofthelinguisticsign,thesignifier,thesignified,andthereferent.5. What is phoneme? How can you determine whether a sound is a phoneme?A phoneme is a member of the set of the smallest units of speech that serve to distinguish one utterance from another in a language or dialect.Its is a set of similar sounds which contrasts with other such sets to differentiate words.A “phoneme” is a phonological unit; it is a unit that is of distinctive value. As an abstract unit, a phoneme is not any particular sound, but rather it is represented or realized by a certain phone in a certain phonetic context. For example, the phonemep is represented differently in pit, tip and spit. In a language or dialect, aphonemeis the smallest segmentalunit of sound employed to form meaningful contrasts between utterances.Thus a phoneme is a group of slightly different sounds which are all perceived to have the same function by speakers of the language or dialect in question. An example of a phoneme is the/k/sound in the wordskitandskill. (In transcription, phonemes are placed between slashes, as here.) Even though most native speakers dont notice this, in most dialects, theksounds in each of these words are actually pronounced differently. The reason why these different sounds are nonetheless considered to belong to the same phoneme in English is that if an English-speaker used one instead of the other, the meaning of the word would not change.6. How can you define meaning?Meaning is central study of communication.Inlinguistics,meaningis what is expressed by the writer or speaker, and what isconveyedto the reader or listener. Meaning isinferredfrom objects orconceptsexpressed by words, phrases or sentences insemantics. Meaning is inferred from the currentcontextas intended by the writer or speaker inpragmatics. Ambiguity in meaning may cause confusion in what is conveyed, and lead to different interpretations of the current context.Pragmatics studies the ways that context affects meaning. The two primary forms of context important to pragmatics are linguistic context and situational context. Pragmatics, then, reveals that meaning is both something affected by and affecting the world. Meaning is something contextual with respect to language and the world, and is also something active toward other meanings and the world.Semantics is the study of meaning as conveyed throughsignsandlanguage. Semantics can refer to the literal or intended meaning of speakers and writers. Semantics is studied in many branches of science and consequently how meaning is studied may vary. Understanding howfacial expressions,body language, andtoneaffects meaning, and how words, phrases, sentences, and punctuation relate to meaning are two examples of what Semanticists study.7. How can you distinguish conceptual meaning and associative meaning?Conceptual meaning (also known as denotative meaning) is the meaning given in the dictionary and forms the core of word meaning. Being constant and relatively stable, conceptual meaning forms the basis for communication as the same word has the same conceptual meaning to all the speakers of the same language. Take The sun rises in the east for example. The word sun here means a heavenly body which gives off light, heat, and energy, a concept which is understood by anyone who speaks English.Associative meaningof an expression has to do with individual mental understandings of the speaker. They, in turn, can be broken up into six sub-types:connotative, collective, social, affective, reflected and thematicTheconnotative meaningsof an expression are the thoughts provoked by a term when in reference to certain entities. Though these meanings may not be strictly implied by relevant definitions, they show up in common or preferred usage regardless. This is not to be confused with what is historically referred to asconnotation, which more closely describes rigid definitions of words. Collocative meaning, or collocation, describes words that regularly appear together in common use (within certain contexts).Social meaning, where words are used to establish relationships between people and to delineate social roles. For example, in Japanese, the suffix -san when added to a proper name denotes respect, sometimes indicating that the speaker is subordinate to the listener; while the suffix -chan denotes that the speaker thinks the listener is a child or childlike (either for purposes of affection or derision).Affective meaninghas to do with the personal feelings or attitudes of the speaker. Reflected meaninghas to do with when one sense of a particular word affects the understanding and usage of all the other senses of the word. Thematic meaningconcerns itself with how the order of words spoken affects the meaning that is entailed.An initial classification will divide the speech sound into two broad categories: vowels and consonats8. Will you please distinguish the following terms: entailment, presupposition, and implicature?.Entailment, as used by philosophers, is a term of art that, unlike logical consequence, lacks a precise definition that is consistently adhered to by those who employ it. Throughout much of the twentieth century, especially its early and middle years, many philosophers connected entailment with analyticity, requiring the material conditional A B to be analytic when A entailed B. In later years, as conceptions of analyticity became less expansive, and philosophical uses of it more restricted, the presumption that entailment was to be understood in terms of analyticity waned. However, the relationship between entailment and necessity has remained robust.A presupposition must be mutually known or assumed by the speaker and addressee for the utterance to be considered appropriate in context. It will generally remain a necessary assumption whether the utterance is placed in the form of an assertion, denial, or question, and can be associated with a specific lexical item or grammatical feature (presupposition trigger) in the utterance.Crucially, negation of an expression does not change its presuppositions: I want to do it again and I dont want to do it again both presuppose that the subject has done it already one or more times; My wife is pregnant and My wife is not pregnant both presuppose that the subject has a wife. In this respect, presupposition is distinguished from entailment and implicature. For example, The president was assassinated entails that The president is dead, but if the expression is negated, the entailment is not necessarily true.Implicature is a technical term in the pragmatics subfield of linguistics, coined by H. P. Grice, which refers to what is suggested in an utterance, even though neither expressed nor strictly implied (that is, entailed) by the utterance.1 For example, the sentence Mary had a baby and got married strongly suggests that Mary had the baby before the wedding, but the sentence would still be strictly true if Mary had her baby after she got married. Further, if we add the qualification not necessarily in that order to the original sentence, then the implicature is cancelled even though the meaning of the original sentence is not altered.9. How can you define sentence meaning?A sentence meaning is often considered as the intrinsic property of the sentence itself in terms of a predication. It is abstract and independent of context. The meaning of an utterance is concrete, and context-dependent. The utterance meaning is based on sentence meaning; it is realization of the abstract meaning of a sentence in a real situation of communication, or simply in a context. For example, “There is a dog at the door”. The speaker could utter it as a matter- of- fact statement, telling the hearer that the dog is at the door. The speaker could use it as a warning, asking the hearer not to approach the door. There are other possibilities, too. So, the understanding of the utterance meaning of “There is a dog at the door” depends on the