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 ofa 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 andstandard”behaviour in using language, i.e. to tell people what they shouldday and what they should not say, it is said to be prescriptive.Descriptive: Prescriptive and descriptive represent two different types of linguistic study. If a linguistic study aims to describe and analyze the language peopleactually use, it is said to 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 facialexpression. Do body 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 and understand 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 social factors. 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 resemblinga 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 thetask 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 ina 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 bythe bold type:a) John want ed to do this today. b) John wanted to do this today. c) John wantedto do this to 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 relationshipbetween expression and content. Then is morpheme a grammatical conceptor a semantic 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 wordsin a syntactic relationship should agree with each other in terms of somecategoriesSyntagmatic 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 presentand 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 relationsbetween its different constituentsSurface structure: is the final stage in the syntactic derivation of a construction, which closely corresponds to the structural organization of aconstruction people actually produce and 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 syntaxgmaticand paradigmatic 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 only a 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 treediagram 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 in particular.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 entitya 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 thesame, 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 aresynonymous 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 maynot be considered 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 sidewalkis 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 toa 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 asentence with determinate sense 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 guidingprinciple the Cooperative Principle, CP for short.. It runs as follows:"make your conversational contribution such as is required, at thestage at which it occurs, by the accepted purpose or direction of thetalk exchange in which you are engaged.”Conversational implicature: the extra meaning not contained in the literal utterances,understandable to the listener only when he shares the speaker’sknowledge or knows why and how he violates intentionally one ofthe four maxims of the Cooperative Principle (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 actuallydo 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.。
