语言学练习题 Chapter 2 Linguistics

Chapter 2 Linguistics语言学2.1 The scope of linguistics:语言学的研究范畴Linguistics is referred to as a scientific study of language.语言学是对语言的科学研究。

It may be a study of the structure of language，the history of language，the functions of language，etc.它可能研究语言的及结构,语言的历史、语言的功能等。

It is a scientific study beacause “it is based on the systematic investigation of linguistic data，conducted with reference to some general theory of language structure”（Dai Wei dong，1988:1）这是一个科学研究因为“这是基于语言数据的系统考察,和语言结构一般理论的研究之上的”2.1.1 Lyons’ distinctions 莱昂斯的区分1) General linguistics and descriptive linguistics. 普通语言学与描写语言学：The former deals with language in general whereas the latter is concerned with one particular language.前者处理一般语言，而后者涉及一个特定的语言。

2) Synchronic linguistics and diachronic linguistics. 共时语言学与历时语言学：Diachronic linguistics traces the historical development of the language and records the changes that have taken place in it between successive points in time. And synchronic linguistics presents an account of language as it is at some particular point in time.历时语言学追溯了语言的历时发展和记录了发生的连续时间点间的变化，共时语言学提供了一个账户的语言，因为它是某个特定的时间点。

语言学作业班级：姓名：Chapter 1 Invitations to LinguisticsI. Please illustrate the following terms.1. Arbitrariness:The forms of linguistic signs bear no natural relationship to their meaning.The different levels of arbitrariness:(1) Arbitrary relationship between the sound of a morpheme and its meaning, even with onomatopoeic words(2) Arbitrariness at the syntactic level: language is not arbitrary at the syntactic level.(3) The link between a linguistic sign and its meaning is a matter of convention.2. DualityThe property of having two levels of structures, such that units of the primary level are composed of elements of the secondary level and each of the two levels has its own principles of organization.3. Phatic communionPhatic communion refers to the social interaction of language.4. Synchronic linguistics:A synchronic description takes a fixed instant (usually, but not necessarily, the present) as its point of observation. Most grammars are of this kind.II. Please distinguish the following terms:1. Langue vs. ParoleLangue refers to the abstract linguistic system shared by all the members of a speech c ommunity, that is, the lexicon, grammar, and phonology implanted in each individual, and it is the linguist’s proper object;Parole refers to the realization of langue, the immediately accessible data. While parole constitutes the immediately accessible data, and it is a mass of confused facts, so it is not suitable for systematic investigation..(1) Langue is abstract, while parole is specific to the situation in which it occurs.(2) Langue is not actually spoken by anyone, while parole is always a naturally occurring event.(3) Langue is relatively stable, systematic and social, while parole is subject to personal, individual and situational constraints.(4) Langue is essential while parole is accessory and accidental.2. Descriptive vs. PrescriptiveThe distinction lies in prescribing how things ought to be and describing howthings are.Traditional grammar was very strongly normative in character.Thegrammarians tried to lay down rules for the correct use of language and settle thedisputes over usage once and for all. That is prescriptive.These attitudes are still with us, though people realize nowadays the facts ofThe nature of linguistics as ausage count more than the authority-made “standards”．science determines its preoccupation with description instead of prescription.3. Synchronic vs. DiachronicSynchronic description takes a fixed instant (usually, but not necessarily, thepresent) as its point of observation. Most grammars are of this kind.Actuallysynchrony is a fiction since any language is changing as the minutes pass.Diachronic linguistics is the study of a language through the course of its history.4. Competence vs. PerformanceAccording to Chomsky:A language user’s underlying knowledge about the system of rules is called hislinguistic competence.Performance refers to the actual use of language or the actual realization of thisknowledge in utterances in concrete situations.competence is stable while his performance is often influenced byA speaker’spsychological and social factors, so a speaker’s performance does not always or equal his supposed competence.He believes that linguists ought to study competence rather than performance.5. Langue vs. CompetenceAccording to Chomsky:Langue is a social product, a systematic inventory of rules of the language, a set ofconventions for a speech community.Competence is defined from the psychological point of view, is deemed as aproperty of the mind of each individuals, or underlying competence as a system ofgenerative processes.According to Hymes:He approaches language from a socio-cultural viewpoint with the aim of studyingthe varieties of ways of speaking on the part of individual and the community.He extended notion of competence, restricted by Chomsky to a knowledge ofgrammar, to incorporate the pragmatic ability for language use. This extended idea ofcompetence can be called communicative competence.III. Answer the following questions in brief:1. The following are some book titles of linguistics. Can you judge the synchronic ordiachronic orientation just from the titles?1) English Examined: Two Centuries of Comment on the Mother Tongue2) Protean Shape: A Study in Eighteenth-century Vocabulary and Usage3) Pejorative Sense Development in English4) The Categories and Types of Present-Day English Word-Formation5) Language in the Inner City: Studies in the Black English Vernacular1) diachronic 2）synchronic 3）diachronic 4）synchronic5）We can’t judge whether it is synchronic or diachronic orientation just from the titles.2. What is language? What is linguistics?Language can be defined as a system of arbitrary vocal symbols used for human communication and interaction.Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. The aims of linguistic theory: 1) what is knowledge of language? (Competence) 2) how is knowledge of language acquired? (Acquisition) 3) how is knowledge of language put to use? (Performance/language processing). Main branches of linguistics:Phonetics, Phonology Morphology, Syntax, Semantics, Pragmatics.3. How do you understand performative function of language?The performative function of language is primarily to change the social status of persons or the situations of events, as in marriage ceremonies, the sentencing of criminals, the blessing of children, the naming of a ship at a launching ceremony, and the cursing of enemies.The kind of language employed in performative verbal acts is usually quite formal and even ritualized.The performative function can extend to the control of reality as on some magical or religious occasions.For example, in Chinese when someone breaks a bowl or a plate the host or the people present are likely to say sui sui ping an as a means of controlling the invisible forces which the believers feel might affect their lives adversely.IV. Discuss the following question in detail.How do you interpret the viewpoint that “arbitrariness is a matter of degree”?1)Arbitrary relationship between the sound of a morpheme and its meaning, even with onomatopoeic words:The dog barks bow wow in English but “汪汪汪”　i n Chinese.2) Arbitrariness at the syntactic level: language is not arbitrary at the syntactic level.He came in and sat down.He sat down and came in.He sat down after he came in.3) The link between a linguistic sign and its meaning is a matter of convention.Arbitrariness of language makes it potentially creative.Conventionality of language makes learning a language—laborious.Chapter 2 Speech SoundsI. Complete the following statements.1. Human language enable their users to symbolize objects, events and conceptswhich are not present (in time and space) at the moment of communication. This quality is labeled as __________.2. The sound [p] can be described with “voiced, __________, stop.”3. The different members of a phoneme, sounds which are phonetically differentbut do not make one word different from another in meaning,, are_________.4. Both semantics and ________ investigate linguistic meaning, but they focus ondifferent aspects.5. If certain linguistics tries to lay down rules for the correct use of language andsettle the disputes over usage once and for all, it is ___________ linguistics.6. Phones that fall into allophones of a phoneme have to satisfy two conditions, oneis they are ___________________, and another is that they should be in _____________________.7. The vowel ________ is high front tense unrounded.8. A dog cannot tell people that its master will be home in a few days, because itslanguage does not have the feature of ___________.9. Computational linguistics often refers to the problems of ________________,information retrieval, and ______________.10. Halliday proposed a theory of metafunctions of language, that is, language has___________, ____________ and _____________ functions.II. Define the following terms.1. Manner of articulation:2. Distinctive features:3. Intonation:4. Assimilation:III. Answer the following questions briefly.1. Specify the difference between each pair of sounds using distinctive features.1) [l] [? ] 2) [p h] [p] 3) [b] [d] 4) [k] [g] 5) [I] [u]2. Work out the features of the following sounds.1) [t h] ________________________________________2) [w] ________________________________________3) [v] ________________________________________4) [e] _________________________________________5) [l] __________________________________________3. In some dialects of English the following words have different vowels, as shownby the phonetic transcription. Based on these data, answer the questions that follow.A B. Cbite [b?i t]bide [baid]tie [tai]rice [r?i s]rise [raiz]by [bai]type [t?i p]bribe [braib] sigh [sai]wife [w?i f]wives [wa ivz]die [dai]tyke [t?i k]time [taim]why [wai]1) What is the difference of the sounds that end the words in columns A and B?2) How do the words in column C differ from those in column A and B?3) Are [?i] and [ai] in complementary distribution? Give your reasons.4) What are the phonetic transcriptions of (a) life and (b) lives?5) What would the phonetic transcriptions of the following words be in the dialectsof English shown in the data?(a) trial (b) bike (c) lice(d) fly (e) mine6) State the rule that will relate the phonemic representations to be phonetictranscriptions of the words given above.IV. Discuss the questions in details.1. Illustrate phoneme, phone and allophone.2. To what extent is phonology related ot phonetics and how do they differ?。

Chapter 2Revision exercises reference1.What are the two major media of communication? Of the two, which one isprimary and why?Refer to section 2.1The two major media of communication are speech and writing. Of the two, speech is considered primary for the following reasons: 1) from the point of view of linguistic evolution, speech is prior to writing. The writing system of any language is always a later invention. 2) In everyday communication, speech conveys a greater amount of information than writing. 3) Speech is always the way in which every native speaker acquires his mother tongue, and writing is learned and taught later as part of formal education.2.What is voicing and how is it caused?Refer to section 2.2.2 (1)V oicing is a phonetic feature of some speech sounds. It is caused by the vibration of the speaker's vocal cords when he produces a certain sound. If a sound bears this feature, it is voiced. If such a feature is absent in the pronunciation of a sound, it is voiceless. All vowels in English are voiced; and some consonants in English are voiced such as [d] and [v] while others are voiceless such as [p] and [s].3.Explain with examples how broad transcription and narrow transcriptiondiffer.Both broad and narrow transcriptions are ways to transcribe speech sounds, i.e.ways of using written symbols to represent speech sounds. In broad transcription, only the letter symbols are used, and the principle is to use one letter for onesound, such as [P] and [I]. In narrow transcription, a set of symbols calleddiacritics are added to the letter symbols to show the finer differences between similar sounds, such as[P h] and [ɫ].4.How are the English consonants classified?As in the pronunciation of consonants the air stream coming from the lungs is somehow obstructed, it is possible and also necessary to classify them in terms of manner of articulation and place of articulation. In terms of manner of obstruction, the consonants are classified into the following groups: stops, fricatives, affricates, liquids, nasals and glides. In terms of place of obstruction, the consonants are classified into the following groups: bilabial, labiodental, dental, alveolar, palatal, velar, and glottal.5.What criteria are used to classify the English vowels?To classify the English vowels, the following criteria can be applied: position of the tongue, openness of the mouth, length of the vowels, and the shape of the lips.According to the position of the tongue, the vowels are classified into front, central and back vowels; according to the openness of the mouth, the vowels are classified into close, semi-close, semi-open, and open vowels; and according to the length of the vowels, they are classified into long vowels and short vowels;and according to the shape of the lips, and the vowels are classified into rounded and unrounded vowels.6.Give the phonetic symbol for each of the following sound descriptions:1)voiced palatal affricate--- [dʒ]2)voiceless labiodental fricative---[f]3)voiced alveolar stop---[d]4)front, close, short---[i]5)back ,semi-open, long ---[ɔ:]6)voiceless bilabial stop---[p]Given the phonetic features of each of the following sounds:1)[d]---voiced alveolar stop2)[l]---voiced alveolar liquid3)[tʃ]---voiceless palatal/alveolar affricate4)[w]---voiced bilabial glide5)[u]---back,close,short(rounded)6)[æ]---front,short,open(unrounded)7.How do phonetics and phonology differ in their focus of study? Who do youthink will be more interested in the difference between, say, [l]and[ɫ], [pʰ]and[P],a phonetician or a phonologist? Why?Refer to section 2.3.1Though both dealing with speech sounds, phonetics and phonology differ in their focus of study in that the former focuses on the speech sounds themselves, their ways of pronunciation, their differences, their classifications, etc., while the latter focuses on the sound system of particular languages and the role sounds play in conveying meaning. Therefore, a phonetician will be more interested in the difference between two sounds.8.What is a phone? How is it different from a phoneme? How are allophonesrelated to a phoneme?Refer to section 2.3.2A phone is simply a speech sound, every actual sound we use or hear inmeaningful linguistic communication. For example, in pronouncing the two words “feel” and “leaf”, we actually use or hear four phones:[f][i:][l]and[~l].A phone differs from a phoneme in that the former is an actual sound we hear andit is the unit of study in phonetics, and the latter is not an audible sound, but an abstract entity, a collection of phonetic features, used as a unit of study in phonology. Take the “feel” and “leaf” example again. While four phones are used or heard in the pronunciation of these two words, only three phonemes are involved, i.e. /f/ /i: / and /l/.A phoneme, though as an abstract entity, is realized as different phones indifferent phonetic contexts. All these different phones are called the allophones of the same one phoneme. For example, the aspirated [pʰ] and the unaspirated [p] are allophones of the same phoneme/p/.9.Explain with examples the sequential rules, the assimilation rule, and thedeletion rule.Sequential rules are rules that govern the combination of sounds in a particular language. For exam ple, why “klib” is a permissible combination of the four sounds in English and why “kbli” is not can only be accounted for by a sequential rule.The assimilation rule assimilates one sound to another by “copying” a feature of a sequential phoneme, thus making the two phones similar. For example, the actual pronunciation of the letter “n” in the word “ incorrect” is not the alveolar [n] but the velar nasal [ŋ] is a manifestation of the assimilation rule at work.The deletion tells us when a sound is deleted although it is orthographically represented. For example, in the pronunciation of such words as sign, design, and paradigm, there is no [g] sound although it is represented in spelling by the letterg. But in their corresponding noun forms signature, designation and paradigmatic,the [g] represented by the letter g is pronounced.10.What are Suprasegmental features? How do the major Suprasegmentalfeatures of English function in conveying meaning?Suprasegmental features refer to those phonological features occurring above the sound segment level. The major Suprasegmental features in English are stress and intonation. The shift of word stress may change the part of speech of words of the same spelling, such as “'progress n.” and “pro'gress v.” , and different stress may cause difference in the meaning of some compound nouns and noun phrases with the same components, such as “'hotdog” and “hot 'dog”. Stressing words that are normally unstressed in a sentence may convey some extra meaning by the speaker.For exam ple, by stressing the pronoun “my” in the sentence “He is driving 'my car” the speaker is emphasizing the fact that the car he is driving is no one else`s but the speaker`s.The three often-used intonations in English are the falling tone, the rising tone, and the fall-rise tone. The basic role they each play is that the falling tone states a fact, the rising tone raises a question, and the fall-raise tone implies some meaning not literally expressed. For example, the same sentence “That`s not the book he w ants” said in the three different intonations convey three different meanings.Supplementary ExercisesI. Decide whether each of the following statements is True or False:1.If two phonetically similar sounds occur in the same environments and they distinguishmeaning, they are said to be in complementary distribution.2. A phone is a phonetic unit that distinguishes meaning.3.English is a tone language while Chinese is not.4.In linguistic evolution, speech is prior to writing.5.In everyday communication, speech plays a greater role than writing in terms of the amountof information conveyed.6.Articulatory phonetics tries to describe the physical properties of the stream of sounds whicha speaker issues with the help of a machine called spectrograph.7.The articulatory apparatus of a human being are contained in three important areas: the throat,the mouth and the chest.8.Vibration of the vocal cords results in a quality of speech sounds called voicing.9.English consonants can be classified in terms of place of articulation and the part of thetongue that is raised the highest.10.According to the manner of articulation, some of the types into which the consonants can beclassified are stops, fricatives, bilabial and alveolar.11.Any sound produced by a human being is a phoneme.12.Distinctive features of sound segments can be found running over a sequence of two or morephonemic segments.II. Fill in each of the following blanks with one word which begins with the letter given:13. A ____ refers to a strong puff of air stream in the production of speech sounds.14.The four sounds /p/,/b/,/m/ and /w/ have one feature in common, i.e., they are all b_______sounds.15.S_________ features are the phonemic features that occur above the level of the segments.They include stress, tone, intonation, etc.16.The rules that govern the combination of sounds in a particular language are called s ____rules.17.P___________ is a discipline which studies the system of sounds of a particular language andhow sounds are combined into meaningful units to effect linguistic communication.18.Depending on the context in which stress is considered, there are two kinds of stress: wordstress and s_________ stress.III. There are four choices following each of the statements below. Mark the choice that can best complete the statement:19.Of all the speech organs, the _______ is/ are the most flexible.A. mouthB. lipsC. tongueD. vocal cords20.__________ is a voiced alveolar stop.A. /z/B. /d/C. /k/D. /b/21.Since /p/ and /b/ are phonetically similar, occur in the same environments and they candistinguish meaning, they are said to be ___________.A. in phonemic contrastB. in complementary distributionC. the allophonesD. minimal pair22. A ____ vowel is one that is produced with the front part of the tongue maintaining the highestposition.A. backB. centralC. frontD. middle23.Distinctive features can be found running over a sequence of two or more phonemicsegments. The phonemic features that occur above the level of the segments are called ____________.A. phonetic componentsB. immediate constituentsC. Suprasegmental featuresD. semantic features24.A(n) ___________ is a unit that is of distinctive value. It is an abstract unit, a collection ofdistinctive phonetic features.A. phoneB. soundC. allophoneD. phoneme。

第一题名词解释1.Linguistics：Linguistics is generally defined as the scientific study of language。

2.Phonetics：The study of sounds which are used in linguistic communication is called phonetics。

3.Phonology：The study of how sounds are put together and used in communication is called phonology。

4.Morpheme：Morpheme is the smallest meaningful unit of language.5.Reference：Reference means what a linguistic form refers to in the real,physical world;it deals with the relationship between the linguistic element and the non—linguistic world of experience.6.Semantics: The study of meaning in language is called semantics.7.Pragmatics ：The study of meaning in context of use is called pragmatics.8.Free morpheme：Free morpheme are the morphemes which are independent units of meaning and can be used freely all by themselves or in combination with other morphemes.ponential analysis：Componential analysis is a way to analyze word meaning.It was proposed by structural semanticists.10.Cooperative principle：It is a general principle which all participants are expected to observe。

《英语语言学概论》配套习题（五）（问答题）Chapter 1 Introduction to Linguistics1.What are design features of language?2.What are the characteristics of human language?3.Explain the characteristic of arbitrariness. What are the relationship betweenarbitrariness and convention?4.What does productivity mean for language?5.What functions does language have?6.Explain the metalingual function of language.7.What is the difference between synchronic linguistics and diachronic linguistics?8.What distinguishes prescriptive studies of language from descriptive studies oflanguage?Chapter 2 Phonology1.What does phonetics concern?2.How do the three branches of phonetics contribute to the study of speech sounds?3.How is the description of consonants different from that of vowels?4.In which two ways may consonants be classified?5.How do phoneticians classify vowels?6.To what extent does phonology differ from phonetics?7.What do minimal pair refer? Give an example to illustrate.8.What kind of phenomenon is complementary distribution?Chapter 3 Morphology1.What is a free morpheme? What is a bound morpheme?2.What is the difference between inflectional affixes and derivational affixes?3.What is compounding?4.What are the criteria of a compound word?5.What is acronymy?6.What is blending?7.Decide which way of word formation is used to form the following words.comsatmotellasememonightmareASEANROMbitbabysitcock-a-doodle-dogrunt8.What are closed-class words and open-class words?Chapter4 Syntax1.What is syntax?2.What is a simple, compound, or complex sentence?3.What is the hierarchical structure?4.How to distinguish immediate constituents from ultimate constituents?5.What are subordinate and coordinate constructions?6.What are deep and surface structures?7.Can you describe the syntactic structure of the sentence “The old tree swayed inthe wind” by using a tree diagram?8.How to reveal the differences in sentential meaning in the sentence “The motherof the boy and the girl will arrive soon” by drawing tree diagrams?Chapter 5 Semantics1.What is a semantic field? Can you illustrate it?2.What are the major types of synonyms in English?3.In what way do the following pairs offer contrast?4.Categorize the following pairs: child-kid, alive-dead, big-small, husband-wife.5.What is hyponymy composed of? Illustrate whether there is always asuperordinate to hyponyms, or hyponyms to a superordinate.6.How is meronymy different from hyponymy?7.Why may a sentence be ambiguous?8.What predication analysis? What is a no-place, one-place, two-place, orthree-place predicate? Give examples.Chapter 6 Pragmatics1.What does pragmatics study? How does it differ from traditional semantics?2.How are sentence meaning and utterance meaning related, and how do they differ?3.What is contextual meaning?4.Explain the meanings of locutionary act, illocutionary act, and perlocutionary actthrough examples.5.What is cooperative principle(CP)?6.What is conversational implicature?7.How does the violation of the maxims of CP give rise to conversationalimplicature?8.What is adjacency pair?Chapter 8 Language and Society1.What is sociolinguistics?2.What is speech community?3.What is dialect?4.What is Sapir-Whorf hypothesis?5.What is speech variety?6.What is standard language?7.What is pidgin?8.What is bilingualism?9.What is multilingualism?Chapter 10-11 Language Acquisition1.What is psycholinguistics?2.What is bottom-up processing and what is top-down processing?3.What are the six major types of speech error? Give examples of each.4.What is the critical period for language acquisition?5.What is language acquisition and what is L2 language acquisition? What is learnerlanguage and what is target language?6.What is interlanguage(IL)?7.What are the different views on language transfer?8.What is the difference between input and intake?。

Exercises to Linguistics外语系黄永亮Chapter 1 Invitation to Linguistics1.Define the following terms:Langue:Langue refers to the abstract linguistic system shared by all the members of a speech community.Parole:parole refers to the realization of langue in actual use.Prescriptive: Prescriptive and descriptive represent two different types of linguistic study. if the linguistic study aims to lay down rules for “correct and standard”behaviour in usinglanguage, i.e. to tell people what they should day and what they should not say, it is saidto be prescriptive.Descriptive: Prescriptive and descriptive represent two different types of linguistic study. If a linguistic study aims to describe and analyze the language people actually use, it is saidto be descriptive;competence: Chomsky defines competence as the ideal user’s knowledge of the rules of his language.Performance: Chomsky defines performance the actual realization of this knowledge in linguistic communication.Synchronic: The description of a language at some point of time in history is a synchronic study;Diachronic: The description of a language as it changes through time is a diachronic study.Linguistics：Linguistics may be defined as the systematic (or scientific) study of language.language：Language is a form of human communication by means of a system of symbols principally transmitted by vocal sounds.”2.Does the traffic light system have duality, why?No. No discrete units on the first level that can be combined freely in the second level to form meaning.There is only simple one to one relationship between signs and meaning, namely, re-stop, green-go and yellow-get ready to go or stop.munication can take many forms, such as sign, speech, body language and facial expression. Dobody language and facial expression share or lack the distinctive properties of human language?Less arbitrary, lack duality, less creative, limited repertoire, emotional-oriented.4.Why is competence and performance an important distinction in linguistics?According to Chomsky, a language user’s underlying knowledge about the system of rules is called his linguistic competence. And performance refers to the actual enables a speaker to produce andunderstand an indefinite numbers of sentences and to recognize grammatical mistakes and ambiguities.A speaker’s competence is stable but his performance is often influenced by psychological and socialfactors. Thus, Chomsky proposed that linguists should focus on the study of competence, not performance. The distinction of the two terms “competence and performance”represents the orientation of linguistic study. So we can say competence and performance is an important distinction in linguistics.5.In what basic ways does modern linguistics differ from traditional grammar?Modern linguistics differs from traditional grammar in the following basic ways:Firstly, priority is given, as mentioned earlier, to spoken language. Secondly, focus is on synchronic study of language, rather than on diachronic study of language. Thirdly, modern linguistics is descriptive rather than prescriptive in nature. Linguists endeavor to state objectively the regularities of a language. They aim at finding out how a language is spoken: they do not attempt to tell people how it should be spoken. Fourthly, modern linguistics is theoretically rather than pedagogically oriented. Modern linguists strive to construct theories of language that can account for language in general. These features distinguished modern linguistics from traditional grammar. The two are complementary. Not contradictory. Knowledge of both is necessary for a language teacher: knowledge of the latter is necessary for a language learner.Chapter 2 Phonetics1. Give the description of the following sound segments in English1)[❆] voiced dental fricative2)[☞] voiceless alveolar fricative3)[☠] velar nasal4)[♎] voiced alveolar stop5)[☐] voiceless bilabial stop6)[ ] voiceless velar stop7)[●] (alveolar) lateral8)[♓] high front lax unrounded vowel9)[◆:] high back tense rounded vowel10)[ ] low back lax rounded vowel2. How is the description of consonants different from that of vowels?Consonants are described according to manner and place of articulation while vowels are described with four criteria: part of the tongue that is raised; extent to which the tongue rises in the direction of the palate; kind of opening made at the lips; position of soft palate.3. Which sound may be described asa voiced bilabial plosive [♌]a voiced labio-dental fricative [❖]a voiceless velar plosive [ ]4. Why might a photographer ask the person she is photographing to say cheese?The vowel of the word cheese [♓:] is produced with the lips spread, this resembling a smile.5.Account for the difference in articulation in each of the following pairs of words:coast ghost; ghost boastboast most; ghost mist;The words coast and ghost are distinguished by the fact that the initial segment is voiceless in the case of the former and voiced in the case of the latter.The word ghost and boast are distinguished by the place of articulation of the initial segment, [♑] being velar while [♌] is bilabial.Boast and most are distinguished by the manner of articulation of the initial segment, [❍] being nasal.Most and mist are distinguished by the fact that the former has a rounded back vowel shile the latter has a spread front vowel.Chapter 3 Phonology1.Define the following termsPhonology: Phonology is concerned with the sound system of languages. It is concerned with which sounds a language uses and how the contribution of sounds to the task of communication.Phone: A phone is a phonetic unit or segment. The speech sounds we hear and produce during linguistic communication are all phonesPhoneme: Phoneme is the abstract element of sound, identified as being distinctive in a particular language.Allophone: Allophone refers any of the different forms of a phoneme is an allophone of it in English.Compare the words peak and speak, for instance. The /☐/ in peak is aspirated; phonetically transcribed as [☐♒] while the /☐/ in speak is unaspirated, phonetically [☐＝]. [☐,☐♒] are two different phones and are variants of the phoneme /☐/. Such variants of a phoneme are called Allophone of the same phoneme.Suprasegmental features:. The phonemic features that occur above the level of the segment are called Suprasegmental features. Suprasegmental features include: stress, tone and intonation.2.Transcribe the realization of the past tense morpheme for each of the following words:Waited waved wiped waded. account for the differences.[id] in “waited”and “waded”follows another alveolar plosive. [d] in “waved”follows voiced consonants.[t] in “wiped” follows voiceless consonants, there being voicing assimilation.3. which of the following would be phonologically acceptable as English words?Thlite grawl dlesher shlink tritch sruck stwondle“grawl” and “tritch”4.Why can we not use the sequence [☠kl] in twinkle as an example of a consonant cluster?The sequence [☠kl] bridges two syllables.5.For each of the following pairs compare the position of the stress. Comment.Economy/economic wonder/wonderfulBeauty/beautiful acid/acidicIn adjectives ending in –ic the stress moves to the following syllable, in adjectives ending in –ful it does not.6.Explain why somebody might choose to stress the following utterances as indicated by the boldtype:a) John want ed to do this today. b) John wanted to do this today. c) John wanted to do thisto day.The first utterance implies that John was unable to do what he wanted.The second implies that he was only able to do something else.The third implies that he was only able to do it some other day.Chapter 4 Morphology1.Define the following terms:Morpheme: the smallest unit of language in terms of relationship between expression and content, a unit that can not be divided into further small units without destroying or drastically altering the meaning, whether it is lexical or grammatical.Compound:Polymorphemic words which consist wholly of free morphemes, such as classroom, blackboard, snowwhite, etc.Allomorph: any of the different form of a morpheme. For example, in English the plural morpheme -‘s but it is pronounced differently in different environments as /s/ in cats,as /z/ in dogs and as /iz/ in classes. So /s/, /z/, and /iz/ are all allomorphs of the plural morpheme.Bound morpheme: an element of meaning which is structurally dependent on the word it is added to,e.g. the plural morpheme in “dogs”.Free morpheme: an element of meaning which takes the form of an independent word.plete the words with suitable negative prefixesa. ir removable g. in humanb. in formal h. ir relevantc. im practicable i. un evitabled. in sensible j. im mobilee. in tangible k. il legalf. il logical l. in discreet3. “Morpheme” is defined as the smallest unit in terms of relationship betweenexpression and content. Then is morpheme a grammatical concept or asemantic one? What is its relation to phoneme?Since morpheme is defined as the smallest unit in terms of relationship between expression and content, it at the same time covers the grammatical and semantic aspect of linguistic unit. A morpheme may overlap with a phoneme, such as I, but usually not, as in pig, in which the morpheme is the whole word, i.e. and independent, free morpheme, but the phonemes are /p/, /i/ and /g/.4. Identify in the following sentence four bound morphemes. State the function ofeach and say whether each is derivational or inflectional.The teacher’s brother considered the project impossible.The –er and the –‘s of teacher’s are bound morphemes, the former being derivational, as it produces a lexeme that denotes the person who does an action, the latter being an inflectional morpheme, as it indicates possession.The –ed of considered is inflectional, indicating that the action took place in the past. The im- of impossible is derivational, producing a new lexeme that denotes the opposite of possible.Chapter 5 Syntax1.Define the following terms:Category: parts of speech and functions, such as the classification of words in terms of parts of speech, the identification of functions of words in term of subject, predicate, etc.Concord:also known as agreement, is the requirement that the forms of two or more words in a syntactic relationship should agree with each other in terms of some categories Syntagmatic relation:. Syntagmatic relation is a relation between one item and others in a sequence, or between elements which are all present.Paradigmatic relation: a relation holding between elements replaceable with each other at a particular place in a structure, or between one element present and the others absent. Deep structure: is defined as the abstract representation of the syntactic properties of a construction, i.e. the underlying level of structural relations between its different constituents Surface structure: is the final stage in the syntactic derivation of a construction, which closely corresponds to the structural organization of a construction people actually produceand receive.Theme: The Theme is the first constituent of the clause.Rheme: All the rest of the clause is simply labeled the Rheme.2.Why is it important to know the relations a sign has with others, such as syntaxgmatic andparadigmatic relations?As the relation between a signifier and signified is arbitrary, the value of a sign can not be determined by itself. To know the identity of a sign, the linguist will have to know the signs it is used together with and those it is substitutable for. The former relation is known as syntagmatic and the latter paradigmatic.3.In what ways is IC analysis better than traditional parsing?In traditional parsing, a sentence is mainly seen as a sequence of individual words, as if it has onlya linear structure. IC analysis, however, emphasizes the hierarchical structure of a sentence,seeing it as consisting of word groups first. In this way the internal of structure of a sentence is shown more clearly, hence the reason of some ambiguities may be revealed.4.What are the problems in IC analysis?There are some technical problems caused by the binary division and discontinuous constituents.But the main problem is that there are structures whose ambiguities cannot be revealed by IC analysis, e.g. the love of God. In terms of both the tree diagram and the label, there is only one structure, but the word God is in two different relations with love, i.e. either as subject or object.5.Clarify the ambiguity in the following sentence by tree diagrams:Old teachers and priests fear blackbirds.SNP VPAdj. NP V NOld fear blackbirds.N Conj. Nteachers and priestsSNP VPNP Conj. N V NAdj. N and priests fear blackbirds.Old teachersChapter 6 Semantics1. defining the following terms:semantics: The subject concerning the study of meaning is called semantics. More specifically, semantics is the study of the meaning of linguistics units, words and sentences inparticular.Denotation: the core sense of a word or a phrase that relates it to phenomena in the real world. Connotation: a term in a contrast with denotation, meaning the properties of the entity a word denotes.Sense: the literal meaning of a word or an expression, independent of situational context. Reference: the use of language to express a proposition, i.e. to talk about things in context. Synonymy: is the technical name for the sameness relation.Antonymy: is the name for oppositeness relation:hyponymy: a relation between two words, in which the meaning of one word (the superordinate) is included in the meaning of another word (the hyponym)semantic component: a distinguishable element of meaning in a word with two values, e.g.[+human].2. Some people maintain that there are no true synonyms. If two words mean really the same,one of them will definitely die out. An example often quoted is the disuse of the word “wireless”, which has been replaced by “radio”. Do you agree? In general what type of meaning we are talking about when we say two words are synonymous with each other?It is true that there are no absolute synonyms. When we say two words are synonymous with each other, we usually mean they have the same conceptual meaning.3. For each of the following pairs of words, state the principal reason why they may not beconsidered to be synonyms:man boy toilet loo determined stubbornpavement sidewalk walk runThe words man and boy are principally distinguished be age, the words walk and run by speed.The principal distinction between the words toilet and loo is one of social register. Determined and stubborn are largely distinguished by attitude—a person reluctant to give up is described as determined by those who sympathize and as stubborn by those who do not. The difference between the words pavement and sidewalk is a matter of geography, the former being used in Britain and the latter in America.Chapter 7 Pragmantics1. defining the following terms:Performative:an utterance by which a speaker does something does something,as apposed to a constative, by which makes a statement which may be true or false.Constative:an utterance by which a speaker expresses a proposition which may be true or false. Locutuonary act: the act of saying something; it’s an act of conveying literal meaning by means of syntax, lexicon, and phonology. Namely, the utterance of a sentence with determinatesense and reference.Illocutuonary act:the act performed in saying something; its force is identical with the speaker’s intention.Perlocutionary act: the act performed by or resulting from saying something, it’s the consequence of, or the change brought about by the utterance.Cooperative principle:in making conversation, there is, as Grice holds, a general principle which all participants are expected to observe. He calls this guiding principle theCooperative Principle, CP for short.. It runs as follows: "make yourconversational contribution such as is required, at the stage at which it occurs, bythe accepted purpose or direction of the talk exchange in which you are engaged.”Conversational implicature: the extra meaning not contained in the literal utterances, understandable tothe listener only when he shares the speaker’s knowledge or knows why andhow he violates intentionally one of the four maxims of the CooperativePrinciple (CP)2. Consider the following dialogue between a man and his daughter. Try to explain the illocutionary force in each of the utterances.[The daughter walks into the kitchen and takes so e popcorn.]Father: I thought you were practicing your violin.Daughter: I need to get the violin stand.Father: Is it under the popcorn?The illocutionary force of “I thought you were practicing your violin” is a criticism of the daughter for her not practicing the violin. That of the daughter’s answer is a defense for herself—I’m going to do that. And that of the father’s retort is a denial of the daughter’s excuse.3.If you ask somebody “Can you open the door?” he answered “Yes” but does not actually do it, what would be your reaction? Why? Try to see it in the light of speech act theory.I would be angry with him. “Can you open the door” is normally a request of the hearer to do it rather than a question about his ability. The fact that he answers “Yes” but does not actually do it shows that he declines my request.4. A is reading the newspaper. When B asks “What’s on television tonight?” he answers “Nothing.”What does A mean in normal situations? Think of two situations in which this interpretation of “Nothing” will be cancelled.Normally “Nothing” here means “Nothing interesting”. If A adds after “Nothing” “The workers are on strike today” or “There’s going to be a blackout tonight”, then the interpretation of “Nothing interesting’will be cancelled.11。

Chapter 1 Introductions to LinguisticsIV. Explain the following terms, using examples.31. Design feature: It refers to the defining properties of human language that tell the difference between human language and any system of animal communication.32. Displacement: It 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.33. Competence: It is an essential part of performance. It is the speaker’s knowledge of his or her language; that is, of its sound structure, its words, and its grammatical rules. Competence is, in a way, an encyclopedia of language. Moreover, the knowledge involved in competence is generally unconscious. A transformational-generative grammar is a model of competence.34. Synchronic linguistics: It refers to the study of a language at a given point in time. The time studied may be either the present or a particular point in the past; synchronic analyses can also be made of dead languages, such as Latin. Synchronic linguistics is contrasted with diachronic linguistics, the study of a language over a period of time.41. Linguistics: Linguistics is generally defined as the scientific study of language.42. Phonology: The study of how sounds are put together and used in communication is called phonology.43. Syntax: The study of how morphemes and words are combined to form sentences is called syntax44. Pragmatics: The study of meaning in context of use is called pragmatics .45. Psycholinguistics: The study of language with reference to the workings of mind is called psycholinguistics.46. Language: Language is a system of arbitrary vocal symbols used for human communication.47. Phonetics: The study of sounds which are used in linguistic communication is called phonetics .48. Morphology: The study of the way in which morphemes are arranged to form words is called morphology.49. Semantics: The study of meaning in lan-guage is called semantics.50. Sociolinguistics: The study of language with reference to society is called sociolinguistics,.51. Applied linguistics: In a narrow sense, applied linguistics refers to the application of linguistic principles and theories to language teaching and learning, especially the teaching of foreign and second languages. In a broad sense, it refers to the application of linguistic findings to the solution of practical problems such as the recovery of speech ability.52. Arbitrariness: It is one of the design features of language. It means that there is no logical connection between meanings and sounds53. Productivity: Language is productive or creative in that it makes possible the con-struction and interpretation of new signals by its users.54. Displacement: Displacement means that language can be used to refer to things which are present or not present, real or imagined matters in the past, present, or future, or in far-away places. In other words, language can be used to refer to contexts removed from the immediate situations of the speaker55. Duality: The duality nature of language means that language is a system, which consists of two sets of structure, or two levels, one of sounds and the other of meanings..56. Design features: Design features refer to the defining properties of human language thatdistinguish it from any animal system of communication57. Competence: Chomsky defines competence as the ideal user's knowledge of the rules of his language,58. Performance: performance is the actual realization of the knowl-edge of the rules in linguistic communication.59. Langue : Langue refers to the abstract linguistic system shared by all the members of a speech community; Langue is the set of conventions and rules which language users all have to follow; Langue is relatively stable, it does not change frequently60. Parole: Parole refers to the realization of langue in actual use; parole is the concrete use of the conventions and the application of the rules; parole varies from person to person, and from situation to situation.V. Answer the following questions.35. Why do people take duality as one of the important design features of human language? Can you tell us what language will be if it has no such design feature?Duality makes our language productive. A large number of different units can be formed out of a small number of elements –for instance, tens of thousands of words out of a small set of sounds, around 48 in the case of the English language. And out of the huge number of words, there can be astronomical number of possible sentences and phrases, which in turn can combine to form unlimited number of texts. Most animal communication systems do not have this design feature of human language.If language has no such design feature, then it will be like animal communicational system which will be highly limited. It cannot produce a very large number of sound combinations, e.g. words, which are distinct in meaning.36. Why is it difficult to define language?It is difficult to define language, as it is such a general term that covers too many things. Thus, definitions for it all have their own special emphasis, and are not totally free from limitations.61. Language is generally defined as a system of arbitrary vocal symbols used for human communication. Explain it in detail.Language is generally defined as a system of arbitrary vocal symbols used for human communication. Explain it in detail.First of all, language is a system, because elements of language are com-bined according to rules. Secondly, language is arbitrary because there is no intrinsic connection between form and meaning, or between the sign and what it stands for. Different languages have different words for the same ob-ject in the world. This fact is a good illustration of the arbitrary nature of language. This also explains the symbolic nature of language: words are just symbols; they are associated with objects, actions, ideas, etc. by conven-tion . Thirdly, language is vocal because the primary medium is sound for all languages, no matter how well - developed their writing systems are.The term "human" in the definition indicates that language is possessed by human beings only and is very different from the communication systems of other living creatures. The term "communication" means that language makes it possible for its users to talk to each other and fulfil their commu-nicative needs.62. What are the design features of human language? Illustrate them with examples.1)ArbitrarinessAs mentioned earlier, the arbitrary property of language means that there is no logical connection between meanings and sounds. For instance, there is no nec-essary relationship between the word elephant and the animal it symbolizes. In addition, different sounds are used to refer to the same object in different languages , and even within the same language, the same sound does not refer to the same thing. However, language is not entirely arbitrary. There are words which are created in the imitation of sounds by sounds, such as crash, bang in English. Besides, some compound words are also not entirely arbitrary. But the non-arbitrary words are quite limited in number.The arbitrary nature of language makes it possible for language to have an unlimited source of expressions.2)ProductivityLanguage is productive or creative in that it makes possible the con-struction and interpretation of new signals by its users. This is why they can produce and understand an infinitely large number of sentences, including sentences that they have never said or heard before. They can send messages which no one else has ever sent before.Productivity is unique to human language. Most animal communication systems appear to be highly restricted with respect to the number of different signals that their users can send and receive.3) DualityThe duality nature of language means that language is a system, which consists of two sets of structure, or two levels, one of sounds and the other of meanings. At the lower or the basic level, there is the structure of sounds, which are meaningless, discrete, individual sounds. But the sounds of language can be combined according to rules into units of meaning such as morphemes and words, which, at the higher level, can be arranged into sentences. This duality of structure or dou-ble articulation of language enables its users to talk about anything within their knowledge. No animal communication system has duality or even comes near to possessing it.4) DisplacementDisplacement means that language can be used to refer to things which are present or not present, real or imagined matters in the past, present, or future, or in far-away places. In other words, language can be used to refer to contexts removed from the immediate situations of the speaker. Animal calls are mainly uttered in response to immediate changes of situation.5) Cultural transmissionHuman beings were born with the ability to acquire language, but the details of any language are not genetically transmitted or passed down by instinct. They have to be taught and learned, but animal call systems are genetically trans-mitted .63. How is modern linguistics different from traditional grammar?Traditional gram-mar is prescriptive; it is based on "high "(religious, literary) written lan-guage . 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.64. How do you understand the distinction between a synchronic study and a diachronic study?The description of a language at some point in time is a Synchronic study; the de-scription of a language as it changes through time is a diachronic study. A synchronic study of languagedescribes a language as it is at some particular point in time, while a diachronic study of language is the study of the historical development of language over a period of time.65. Why does modern linguistics regard the spoken form of language as primary, not the written?First, the spoken form is prior to the writ-ten form and most writing systems are derived from the spoken form of lan-guage.Second, the spoken form plays a greater role than writing in terms of the amount of information conveyed and it serves a wider range of purposesFinally, the spoken form is the medium through which we acquire our mother tongue.66. What are the major distinctions between langue and parole?The distinction between langue, and parole was made by the famous Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure early this century. Langue refers to the abstract linguistic system shared by all the members of a speech community, and parole refers to the realization of langue in actual use. Langue is the set of conventions and rules which language users all have to follow while parole is the concrete use of the conventions and the application of the rules. Langue is abstract; it is not the language people actually use, but parole is concrete; it refers to the naturally occurring language events. Langue is relatively stable, it does not change frequently; while parole varies from person to person, and from situation to situation.67. How do you understand competence and performance ?American linguist N. Chomsky in the late 1950's proposed the distinction between competence and performance. Chomsky defines competence as the ideal user's knowledge of the rules of his language. This internalized set of rules enables the language user to produce and understand an infinitely large number of sentences and recognize sentences that are ungrammatical and ambiguous. According to Chomsky, performance is the actual realization of this knowledge in linguistic communication. Although the speaker's knowledge of his mother tongue is perfect, his performances may have mistakes because of social and psychological factors such as stress, embarrassment, etc.. Chomsky believes that what linguists should study is the competence, which is systematic, not the performance, which is too haphazard.68. 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.69. Do you think human language is entirely arbitrary? Why?Language is arbitrary in nature, it is not entirely arbitrary, because there are a limited number of words whose connections between forms and meanings can be logically explained to a certain extent, for example, the onomatopoeia, words which are coined on the basis of imitation of sounds by sounds such as bang, crash,etc.. Take compounds for another example. The two elements “photo” and “copy” in “photocopy” are non-motivated, but the compound is not arbitrary.VI. Analyse the following situation.37. How can a linguist make his analysis scientific?It should be guided by the four principles of science: exhaustiveness, consistency, economyand objectivity and follow the scientific procedure: form hypothesis – collect data – check against the observable facts – come to a conclusion.Chapter 2 Speech SoundsIV. Explain the following terms, using examples.31. Sound assimilation: Speech sounds seldom occur in isolation. In connected speech, under the influence of their neighbors, are replaced by other sounds. Sometimes two neighboring sounds influence each other and are replaced by a third sound which is different from both original sounds. This process is called sound assimilation.32. Suprasegmental feature: The phonetic features that occur above the level of the segments are called suprasegmental features; these are the phonological properties of such units as the syllable, the word, and the sentence. The main suprasegmental ones includes stress, intonation, and tone. 33. Complementary distribution: The different allophones of the same phoneme never occur in the same phonetic context. When two or more allophones of one phoneme never occur in the same linguistic environment they are said to be in complementary distribution.34. Distinctive features: It refers to the features that can distinguish one phoneme from another. If we can group the phonemes into two categories: one with this feature and the other without, this feature is called a distinctive feature.45. phonology: Phonology studies 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.46. phoneme: The basic unit in phonology is called phoneme; it is a unit of distinctive value. But it is an abstract unit. To be exact, a phoneme is not a sound; it is a collection of distinctive phonetic features.47. allophone: The different phones which can represent a phoneme in different phonetic environments are called the allophones of that phoneme.48. international phonetic alphabet: It is a standardized and internationally accepted system of phonetic transcription.49. intonation: When pitch, stress and sound length are tied to the sentence rather than the word in isolation, they are collectively known as intonation.50. phonetics: Phonetics is defined as the study of the phonic medium of language; it is concerned with all the sounds that occur in the world' s languages51. auditory phonetics: It studies the speech sounds from the hearer's point of view. It studies how the sounds are perceived by the hear-er.52. acoustic phonetics: It studies the speech sounds by looking at the sound waves. It studies the physical means by which speech sounds are transmitted through the air from one person to another.53. phone : Phones can be simply defined as the speech sounds we use when speaking a language.A phone is a phonetic unit or segment. It does not necessarily distinguish meaning.54. phonemic contrast: Phonemic contrast refers to the relation between two phonemes. If two phonemes can occur in the same environment and distinguish meaning, they are in phonemic contrast.55. tone: Tones are pitch variations, which are caused by the differing rates of vibration of the vocal cords.56. minimal pair: When two different forms are identical in every way except for one soundsegment which occurs in the same place in the strings, the two words are said to form a minimal pair.V. Answer the following questions.35. What is acoustic phonetics?Acoustic phonetics deals with the transmission of speech sounds through the air. When a speech sound is produced it causes minor air disturbances (sound waves). Various instruments are used to measure the characteristics of these sound waves.36. What are the differences between voiced sounds and voiceless sounds in terms of articulation?When the vocal cords are spread apart, the air from the lungs passes between them unimpeded. Sounds produced in this way are described as voiceless; consonants [p, s, t] are produced in this way. But when the vocal cords are drawn together, the air from the lungs repeatedly pushes them apart as it passes through, creating a vibration effect. Sounds produced in this way are described as voiced. [b, z, d] are voiced consonants.57. Of the two media of language, why do you think speech is more basic than writing?1) In linguistic evolution, speech is prior to writing.2) In everyday communication, speech plays a greater role than writing in terms of the amount of information conveyed.3) Speech is always the way in which every native speaker acquires his mother tongue, and writing is learned and taught later at school.58. What are the criteria that a linguist uses in classifying vowels?1) Vowels may be distinguished as front, central and back in terms of the position of the tongue in the mouth.2) According to how wide our mouth is opened, we classify the vowels into four groups: close vowels, semi-close vowels, semi-open vowels, and open vowels.3) According to the shape of the lips, vowels are divided into rounded vowels and unrounded vowels.4) The English vowels can also be classified into long vowels and short vowels according to the length of the sound.59. What are the major differences between phonology and phonetics?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 be classified. 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.60. Illustrate with examples how suprasegmental features can affect meaning.1) 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 withgreater 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.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.61. In what way can we determine whether a phone is a phoneme or not?A basic way to determine the phonemes of a language is to see if substituting one sound for another results in a change of meaning. If it does, the two sounds then represent different phonemes.VI. Analyze the following situation.37. Write the symbol that corresponds to each of the following phonetic descriptions; then give an English word that contains this sound. Example: voiced alveolar stop [d] dog.(1) voiceless bilabial unaspirated stop(2) low front vowel(3) lateral liquid(4) velar nasal(5) voiced interdental fricativeChapter 3 Lexicon11.IV. Explain the following terms, using examples.31. Blending: It is a process of word-formation in which a new word is formed by combining the meanings and sounds of two words, one of which is not in its full form or both of which are not in their full forms, like newscast (news + broadcast), brunch (breakfast + lunch)32. Allomorph: It is any of the variant forms of a morpheme as conditioned by position or adjoining sounds.33. Close-class word: It is a word whose membership is fixed or limited. Pronouns, prepositions, conjunctions, articles, etc. are all closed-class words.34. Morphological rule: It is the rule that governs which affix can be added to what type of base to form a new word, e.g. –ly can be added to a noun to form an adjective.31. Morphology: Morphology is a branch of grammar which studies the internal structure of words and the rules by which words are formed.32. inflectional morphology: The inflectional morphology studies the inflections33. derivational morphology: Derivational morphology is the study of word- formation.34. Morpheme: It is the smallest meaningful unit of language.35. free morpheme: Free morphemes are the morphemes which are independent units of meaning and can be used freely all by themselves or in combination with oth-er morphemes.36. bound morpheme: Bound morphemes are the morphemes which cannot be used indepen-dently but have to be combined with other morphemes, either free or bound, to form a word.37. Root: A root is often seen as part of a word; it can never stand by itself al-though it bears clear,definite meaning; it must be combined with another root or an affix to form a word.38. Affix: Affixes are of two types: inflectional and derivational. Inflectional affixes manifest various grammatical relations or grammatical categories, while derivational affixes are added to an existing form to create a word.39. Prefix: Prefixes occur at the begin-ning of a word . Prefixes modify the meaning of the stem, but they usually do not change the part of speech of the original word.40. Suffix: Suffixes are added to the end of the stems; they modify the meaning of the original word and in many cases change its part of speech.41. Derivation: Derivation is a process of word formation by which derivative affixes are added to an existing form to create a word.42. Compounding: Compounding can be viewed as the combination of two or sometimes more than two words to create new words.V. Answer the following questions.35. How many types of morphemes are there in the English language? What are they?36. What are the main features of the English compounds?43. What are the main features of the English compounds?Orthographically a compound can be written as one word, two separate words with or without a hyphen in between. Syntactically, the part of speech of a compound is determined by the last element. Semantically, the meaning of a compound is idiomatic, not calcu-lable from the meanings of all its components. Phonetically, the word stress of a compound usually falls on the first element.44. Discuss the types of morphemes with examples.Free morphemes: They are the independent units of meaning and can be used freely all by themselves, for example, “book-” in the word “bookish”.Bound morphemes: They are those that cannot be used independently but have to be combined w ith other morphemes, either free or bound, to form a word such as “-ish” in “bookish”. Bound morphemes can be subdivided into roots and affixes. A root is seen as part of a word; it can never stand by itself although it has a clear and definite meaning, su ch as “gene-” in the word “generate”. Affixes are of two types: inflectional and derivational. Inflectional morphemes manifest various grammatical relations or grammatical categories such as “-s” in the word “books” to indicate plurality of nouns. Derivati onal affixes are added to an existing form to create a word such as “mis-” in the word “misinform”. Derivational affixes can also be divided 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”.VI. Analyze the following situation.37. Match the terms under COLUMN I with the underlined forms from COLUMN III II(1) acronym a. foe(2) free morpheme b. subconscious(3) derivational morpheme c. UNESCO(4) inflectional morpheme d. overwhelmed(5) prefix e. CalculationChapter 4 SyntaxIV. Explain the following terms, using examples.31. Syntax: Syntax refers to the rules governing the way words are combined to form sentences ina language, or simply, the study of the formation of sentences.32. IC analysis: Immediate constituent analysis, IC analysis for short, refers to the analysis of a sentence in terms of its immediate constituents –word groups (phrases), which are in turn analyzed into the immediate constituents of their own, and the process goes on until the ultimate sake of convenience.33. Hierarchical structure: It is the sentence structure that groups words into structural constituents and shows the syntactic category of each structural constituent, such as NP, VP and PP.34. Trace theory: After the movement of an element in a sentence there will be a trace left in the original position. This is the notion trace in T-G grammar. It’s suggested that if we have the notion trace, all the necessary information for semantic interpretation may come from the surface structure. E.g. The passive Dams are built by beavers. differs from the active Beavers built dams. in implying that all dams are built by beavers. If we add a trace element represented by the letter t after built in the passive as Dams are built t by beavers, then the deep structure information that the word dams was originally the object of built is also captured by the surface structure. Trace theory proves to be not only theoretically significant but also empirically valid.35. syntax: Syntax is a subfield of linguistics. It studies the sentence structure of language. It consists of a set of abstract rules that allow words to be combined with other words to form grammatical sentences.36. Sentence: A sentence is a structurally independent unit that usually comprises a number of words to form a complete statement, question or command. Normally, a sentence consists of at least a subject and a predicate which contains a finite verb or a verb phrase.37. coordinate sentence: A coordinate sentence contains two clauses joined by a linking word called coordinating conjunction, such as "and", "but", "or".38. syntactic categories: Apart from sentences and clauses, a syntactic category usually refers to a word (called a lexical category) or a phrase ( called a phrasal category) that performs a particular grammatical function.39. grammatical relations: The structural and logical functional relations of constituents are called grammatical relations. The grammatical relations of a sentence concern the way each noun phrase in the sentence relates to the verb. In many cases, grammatical relations in fact refer to who does what to whom .40. linguistic competence: Universally found in the grammars of all human languages, syntactic rules comprise the system of internalized linguistic knowledge of a language speaker known as linguistic competence.41. Transformational rules: Transformational rules are the rules that transform one sentence type into another type.42. D-structure: D- structure is the level of syntactic representation that exists before movement takes place. Phrase structure rules, with the insertion of the lexicon, generate sentences at the level of D-structure.V. Answer the following questions.35. What are endocentric construction and exocentric construction?An endocentric construction is one whose distribution is functionally equivalent, or。

Chapter 1 Invitation to Linguistics1.Does the traffic light system have duality, why?2.Why is competence and performance an important distinction in linguistics?3.In what basic ways does modern linguistics differ from traditional grammar?Chapter 2 Phonetics1. How is the description of consonants different from that of vowels?2. Why might a photographer ask the person she is photographing to say cheese?3. Account for the difference in articulation in each of the following pairs of words:coast ghost; ghost boastboast most; ghost mist;Chapter 3 Phonology1. which of the following would be phonologically acceptable as English words?Thlite grawl dlesher shlink tritch sruck stwondle2.Explain why somebody might choose to stress the following utterances as indicated by thebold type:a) John wanted to do this today. b) John wanted to do this today. c) John wanted todo this today.Chapter 4 Morphology1. “Morpheme” is defined as the smallest unit in terms of relat ionship betweenexpression and content. Then is morpheme a grammatical concept or asemantic one? What is its relation to phoneme?2. Identify in the following sentence four bound morphemes. State the function ofeach and say whether each is derivational or inflectional.The teacher’s brother considered the project impossible.Chapter 5 Syntax1. Why is it important to know the relations a sign has with others, such as syntaxgmatic and paradigmatic relations?2.In what ways is IC analysis better than traditional parsing?3.What are the problems in IC analysis?4.Clarify the ambiguity in the following sentence by tree diagrams:Old teachers and priests fear blackbirds.Chapter 6 Semantics1. Some people maintain that there are no true synonyms. If two words mean really the same, oneof them will definitely die out. An example often quoted is the disuse of the word “wireless”, which has been replaced by “radio”. Do you agree? In general what type of meaning we are talking about when we say two words are synonymous with each other?2. For each of the following pairs of words, state the principal reason why they may not beconsidered to be synonyms:man boy toilet loo determined stubbornpavement sidewalk walk runChapter 7 Pragmantics1. Consider the following dialogue between a man and his daughter. Try to explain the illocutionary force in each of the utterances.[The daughter walks into the kitchen and takes so e popcorn.]Father: I thought you were practicing your violin.Daughter: I need to get the violin stand.Father: Is it under the popcorn?2. If you ask somebody “Can you open the door?” he answered “Yes” but does not actually do it, what would be your reaction? Why? Try to see it in the light of speech act theory.3. A is reading the newspaper. When B asks “What’s on television tonight?”he answers “Nothing.”What does A mean in normal situations? Think of two situations in which this interpretation of “Nothing” will be cancelled.。

Linguistics supplementary exercisesChapter 1 IntroductionⅠ. Decide whether each of the following statements is True or False:1. Linguistics is generally defined as the scientific study of language.2. Linguistics studies particular language, not languages in general.3. A scientific study of language is based on what the linguist thinks.4. In the study of linguistics, hypotheses formed should be based on language facts and checked against the observed facts.5. General linguistics is generally the study of language as a whole.6. General linguistics, which relates itself to the research of other areas, studies the basic concepts, theories, descriptions, models and methods applicable in any linguistic study.7. Phonetics is different from phonology in that the latter studies the combinations of the sounds to convey meaning in communication.8. Morphology studies how words can be formed to produce meaningful sentences.9. The study of the ways in which morphemes can be combined to form words is called morphology.10. Syntax is different from morphology in that the former not only studies the morphemes, but also the combination of morphemes into words and words into sentences.11. The study of meaning in language is known as semantics.12. Both semantics and pragmatics study meanings.13. Pragmatics is different from semantics in that pragmatics studies meaning not inisolation, but in context.14. Social changes can often bring about language changes.15. Sociolinguistics is the study of language in relation to society.16. Modern linguistics is mostly prescriptive, but sometimes descriptive.17. Modern linguistics is different from traditional grammar.18. A diachronic study of language is the description of language at some point in time.19. Modern linguistics regards the written language as primary, not the written language.20. The distinction between competence and performance was proposed by F. de Saussure.Ⅱ. Fill in each of the following blanks with one word which begins with the letter given:21. Chomsky defines “competence” as the ideal user’s k__________ of the rules of his language.22. Langue refers to the a__________ linguistic system shared by all the members of a speech community while the parole is the concrete use of the conventions and application of the rules.23. D_________ is one of the design features of human language which refers to the phenomenon that language consists of two levels: a lower level of meaningless individual sounds and a higher level of meaningful units.24. Language is a system of a_________ vocal symbols used for human communication.25. The discipline that studies the rules governing the formation of words into permissible sentences in languages is called s________.26. Human capacity for language has a g_______ basis, but the details of language have to be taught and learned.27. P _______ refers to the realization of langue in actual use.28. Findings in linguistic studies can often be applied to the settlement of some practical problems. The study of such applications is generally known as a________ linguistics. 29. Language is p___________ in that it makes possible the construction and interpretation of new signals by its users. In other words, they can produce and understand an infinitely large number of sentences which they have never heard before.30. Linguistics is generally defined as the s _______ study of language.Ⅲ. There are four choices following each statement. Mark the choice that can best complete the statement:31. If a linguistic study describes and analyzes the language people actually use, it is said to be _______.A. prescriptiveB. analyticC. descriptiveD. linguistic32. Which of the following is not a design feature of human language?A. ArbitrarinessB. DisplacementC. DualityD. Meaningfulness33. Modern linguistics regards the written language as _______.A. primaryB. correctC. secondaryD. stable34. In modern linguistics, speech is regarded as more basic than writing, because _______.A. in linguistic evolution, speech is prior to writingB. speech plays a greater role than writing in terms of the amount of information conveyedC. speech is always the way in which every native speaker acquires his mother tongueD. All of the above35. A historical study of language is a _______ study of language.A. synchronicB. diachronicC. prescriptiveD. comparative36. Saussure took a(n) _______ view of language, while Chomsky looks at language froma ________ point of view.A. sociological…psychologicalB. psychological…sociologicalC. applied…pragmaticD.semantic…linguistic37. According to F. de Saussure, _______ refers to the abstract linguistic system shared by all the mem- bers of a speech community.A. paroleB. performanceC. langueD. Language38. Language is said to be arbitrary because there is no logical connection between _______ and meanings.A. senseB. soundsC. objectsD. ideas39. Language can be used to refer to contexts removed from the immediate situations of the speaker. This feature is called _______,A. displacementB. dualityC. flexibilityD. cultural transmission40. The details of any language system is passed on from one generation to the next through _______, rather than by instinct.A. learningB. teachingC. booksD. both A and BⅣ. Define the following terms:41. Linguistics 42. Phonology 43. Syntax 44. Pragmatics 45.Psycholinguistics46. Language 47. Phonetics 48. Morphology 49. Semantics 50. Sociolinguistics51. Applied Linguistics52. Arbitrariness53. Productivity54. Displacement55. Duality 56. Design Features 57. Competence 58. Performance 59. Langue 60. ParoleⅤ. Answer the following questions as comprehensively as possible. Give examples for illustration if necessary:61. Language is generally defined as a system of arbitrary vocal symbols used for human commu- nication. Explain it in detail.62. What are the design features of human language? Illustrate them with examples.63. How is modern linguistics different from traditional grammar?64. How do you understand the distinction between a synchronic study and a diachronic study?65. Why does modern linguistics regard the spoken form of language as primary, not the written?66. What are the major distinctions between langue and parole?67. How do you understand competence and performance?68. 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?69. Do you think human language is entirely arbitrary? Why?Chapter 2 PhonologyⅠ. Decide whether each of the following statements is True or False: 1. Voicing is a phonological feature that distinguishes meaning in both Chinese and English.2. If two phonetically similar sounds occur in the same environments and they distinguish meaning, they are said to be in complementary distribution.3. A phone is a phonetic unit that distinguishes meaning.4. English is a tone language while Chinese is not.1. 语言的普遍特征：任意性arbitrariness 双层结构duality 既由声音和意义结构多产性productivity移位性displacement:我们能用语言可以表达许多不在场的东西文化传播性cultural transmission2。