普通语言学

1.What do the barking of dogs, the mcowing of cats, and the singing of birds have in common with human language? What are some of the basic differences? Language is a means of verbal communication. Animals follow an elaborate rountine too. Symbolic and systematic.human language has these design fetures: 1.abitrariness, signs bear no natural relationship to its meaning. 2. Duality. The 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. Creativity. Language is resourceful because of its duality and its recursiveness. Its potential to create endless sentences. 4. Displacement. It enable their users to symbolic objects, events and concepts which are not present at the moment of communication. It giving them the power to handle generalization and abstraction.2.Consider this two ststements: I learn a new word today , I learn a new sentence today, do you think the two sentences are equally probable? And if not, why not?They have the same sentence structure, so they can be said the same from the linguistic perspect.3.Note some instances of slang in your speech and that of your friends and see if older speakers know what the slang means and also how they react to it? How would you feel about older speakers using such expressions?You can you up, no can no BB. 十动然拒，累觉不爱，然并卵。

They feel confused about them and do not know their meanings.It would be funny for older speakers using such expressions, but it shows that catchwords have becoming more and more popular. The youth culture plays an important role in soceiety.4.Children learn demostrative words such as this, that, these, those; temporal terms such as now , then , tomorrow, and spatial terms such as here, there, right, behind relatively late. What do all these words have in common? Why might that factor delay their acquisition?In principle, no human brain can store all the words and expressions of a language. What happens is that when processing the language they hear, children construct the grammar and make sense of the expressions according to the grammar. When producing utterances, they follow the internalized grammatical rules. Without the knowledge of the productive rules, it would be impossible for language users to produce and understand an unlimited number of sentences which they have never heard before.1.word recognition. 25.What is the fundemental difference between computer “languages”(which are of course constructed) and a constructed language such as interlingua? What are some of the linguistics applications of computers?Interlanguage consists of a series of interlocking and approximate linguistic systems in-between and yet distinct from the learner's native and target languages.CAI: computer-assisted instructionCAL: computer-assisted learningCALL: deal with language teaching and learning.6. Why Sussure called father of modern linguistics?He was the first to notice the complexities of language. He believed that language is a system of signs. To communicate ideas, signs must be part of a system of signs called conventions. He held that the sign is the union of a form (signifier) and an idea (signified), and it is the central fact of language. By providing answers to questions concerning many aspects of language, he made clear the object of study for linguistics as a science. His ideas on the arbitrary nature of sign, on the relational nature of linguistic units, on the distinction of langue and parole and of synchronic and diachronic linguistics, etc. pushed linguistics into a brand new stage.7.What is Sapir-Whorf hypothesis? Do you agree with them or not?why?Our language helps mould our way of thinking and consequently different languages may probably express speaker’s unique ways of understanding the world. Followingthis argument, two important points can be captured in this theory. On the one hand, language may determine our thinking pattern; on the other hand, similarity between languages is relative. For two different speech communities, the greater their structural differentation is, the more diverse their conceptualization of the world will be.There are two versions of the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis: a strong version and a weak version. Although part of the controversy surround the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis, the hypothesis is important to linguistics because it acknowledges the relationship between thought and language, which may partially give stability to the cognitive claim that language use reflects conceptualization and that different conceptualizations are reflected in different linguistic organizations.8.What are Chomsky’s major contribution to modern linguistics?He established the well-known TG grammar. The publication of his syntactic structure marked the beginning of the Chomskyan revolution.9.Briefly expound the relationship between linguistics and anthropology人类学. Sociology社会. Philosophy哲学. Literature文学. Language teaching教学and communication engineering通讯工程.1.A story by Robert contains the sentence “As the night fell, the wind rose”. Could this be expressed as “ As the wind rose, the night fell” if not ,why? Does this indicate a degree of non-arbitrariness about the word order?2. You maybe familiar with the following proverbs. How do you perceive them according to the arbitrariness and conventonality惯例of language.The proof of the pudding is in the eating.Let sleeping dogs lie.You can not make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.Roman was not built in a day.When in roman, do as the romans do.All roads lead to roman.3.Morpheme is defined as the smallest unit in terms of relationship between expression and content. Then is morpheme a grammatical concept or a semantic one?what is the relation to phoneme? Can a morpheme and a phoneme from an organic whole?Since morpheme is defined as the smallest unit in terms of relationship between expression and content, at the same time, it covers the grammatical and semantic aspect of the 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, ie, an independent free morpheme , but the phonemes are4.Cut the following into immediate constituents by putting a slash (/) where the cut should be made in each sentence.Eg. I rode back /when it was dark.A.The boy was crying.B.The pretty little girl in a clean white dress has been talking since she came into the room.C.Shut the door.D.Open the door quickly.5.For each of the underlined constructions or word groups. do the following :--state whether it is headed or non-headed.---if headed, state its headword.---name the type of constructions.Eg. His son will be keenly competing.Answer : headed, headword--competing: verbal groupA . ducks quack6.Does the traffic light system have duality? Can you explain by drawing a simple graph?No , no discrete units on the first level that can be combined freely in the second level to form meaning. There ia only one -one simple relationship between signs and meaning. Namely, red- stop; green-on; yellow-get ready to go or stop.7.The recursive nature of language provides a theoretical basis for the creativity of language?Yes.8.Do you agree with the view that no language is especially simple?Yes , all human languages are complicated systems of communication. It is decided by their shared design features.9.The following are some well-known ambiguous sentences in syntactic studies of language. Can you disambiguate them? The chicken is too hot to eat. Flying planes can be dangerous.10.Some people maintain that there are no ture synonyms. If two words mean really the same. One of them will definately die out. An example often quoted is the disuse of the word “ wireless” 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 that they have the same conceptual meaning.Semantic features can clarify how certain words relate to other words.西红柿---番茄青霉素---盘尼西林11.Demonstrate agents. Patients....with examples.。