语言学题目

Comments on Arbitrariness(1)Arbitrariness at different levelsLanguage is arbitrary. There is no intrinsic connection between meanings and sounds.1.Arbitrariness at the morpheme level:Arbitrary relationship between the sound of a morpheme and its meaning, with the exception of onomatopoeic words, whose sound resembles its natural sound in reality. In different languages, the same idea is expressed by different forms. As Shakespeare says: A rose by any other name still smells as sweet as ever. Even for onomatopoeia, its sound varies from language to language.2. Arbitrariness at the syntactic levelThe order of elements in a sentence follows certain rules and there is a certain degree of correspondence between the sequence of clauses and the real happenings, though conjunctions can be used to changes the structure of a sentence while making it basically the same in meaning. So sentences enjoy less freedom or arbitrariness.(2)Arbitrariness and conventionalityIn principle, we can use any sound to stand for any idea we intend. But in reality, language is conventional at the same time. Words are associated with certain objects, actions, events or ideas. If language were entirely arbitrary in reality, communication would be impossible.Arbitrariness of language makes it potentially creative and conventionality makes learning a language laborious.(3)Arbitrariness and motivationThere is an arbitrary relationship between the sound of a morpheme and its meaning. In different languages, the same idea is usually expressed by different linguistic forms, e.g. the concept “书” is realized in English as book and书(shu) in Chinese.As for derivatives and compounds, their creation is based on words already existing, so there is a certain motivation behind their creation. For example, the meaning of simplify is derived from the word simple, and the meaning of classroom is based on the meanings of class and room.Chapter1 ：Body language doesn’t possess all of the design features of human language.The design features of human language includes Arbitrariness,Duality,Productivity and Displacement.Firstly,Arbitrariness means the sound doesn’t have logical relationship with the meaning.For example,a book wasn’t called “book” at first.The reason why we say it is a book is that we set the sound “book” as this thing’s name.This sound has no direct or meaningful connection with the thing.When we are using body language, the actions in different situations may mean totally opposite meanings.Different countries,different cultural backgrounds will influence the actions’ expression to a great extent.So arbitrariness also can be found in body language.Secondly,Duality means language is a system which consists of two sets of structures,one of sound and the other of meaning.It means that meaningless sounds can be combined into meaningful words.Sounds and meanings are two units.But body language only have primary units,which means it can only deliver meanings,but can’t be d ivided into elements.A action has its own meaning,however,it wasn’t composed of smaller elements.Thus,duality is the unique feature of human language.Thirdly,Productivity means the language is creative.Human language is resourceful because of its duality.The fundamental elements,such as different sounds or words can be used in new ways to create new meanings.As for body language,people can also create new actions to voicetheir thoughts,but the actions we can do are very limited.The movements we produce are not as various and changeable as human language.Lastly,Displacement means human languages enable their users to refer to objects,events and concepts which are not present at the moment of ing human language to express meanings in the future or in the past is a piece of cake due to the existence of tense.Referring to body language, the displacement of body language can only be reflected in the aspect of space.When we are pointing at something which are not in front of us,it’ll be easy for us to understand this gesture means “that thing”.However,the movements can only be used to describe things right now rather than in other times.Therefore,body language doesn’t possess all of design features of human language.Chapter2 What does phonetics differ from phonology?It is known to us that Phonetics is the study of speech sounds that the human voice is capable of creating whereas phonology is the study of a subset of those sounds that constitute language and meaning. So from the definition, we can know that phonetics focuses more on language’s general nature. It is interested in all the speech sounds used in all human languages: how they are produced and how they differ from each other, what phonetic features they possess, how they can be classified. But phonology is more interested in the system of sounds of a particular language, aiming at discover how speech sounds are used to convey meaning in linguistic communication. In the conclusion, they both study speech sounds, but they differ in their approach and focus.Phonetics is more like a description, for it is strictly about audible sounds and the things that happen in our mouth, throat, nasal and sinus cavities, and lungs to make those sounds. It has nothing to do with its meaning. So it only deals with the process physically without any meanings. However, phonology explores the differences between sounds that change the meaning of an utterance and the speech sounds which distinguish meaning. So phonology is both physical and meaningful compared with phonetics. For example, the difference between [p] and [f] in “pork” and “fork” is the concern of phonology instead of the difference between two [p]s in “pot” and “spot”.Chapter3 Functions of Intonation(ⅰ) Attitudinal functionIntonation expresses emotions, feelings and attitudes of the speaker. A falling intonation is often associated with completeness and definiteness, for instance, /p I’ll NEver do it a↘GAIN/. The rising intonation is often associated with incompleteness, uncertainty, questioning or encouragement, like /r It’ll be all ↗RIGHT/. The falling-rising is to express feelings of hesitation, contrast, reservation or doubt, like /It’s↘↗MINE/. The rise-fall tone can be used to express surprise, for example, /SHE won the ↗↘RPIZE/.The same sentence can be said in different ways, which might be labeled “bored”, “enthusiastic”, “sarcastic” and so on, as shown in the interpretation of the utterance /What a gorgeous girl/ :(a) /WHAT a GORgeous ↘GIRL/(b) /WHAT a GORgeous ↗GIRL/(c) /WHAT a GORgeous ↗↘GIRL/Simple fall pattern of intonation used in (a) shows that the sentence is uttered in a matter-of -fact way, without much interest, attention or feelings. Rising intonation used in (b) indicates thatthe sentence is said enthusiastically. Rise-fall intonation used in (c) suggests that the sentence is spoken sarcastically.(ⅱ) Accentual functionThe placement of the tonic syllable is of considerable linguistic importance. It is most common for the last word to bear the tonic stress. But for the purposes of contrast or emphasis, may any word be accentuated. In the following examples, sentence (a) represents the normal placement of the tonic stress while sentence (b) shows contrast as in the first example or emphasis as in the last two examples.Eaxmple (A)(a) /p I don't care what he does outside↘ CLASS/(b) /p I don't what he does ↘OUTside class/pI want to know what he does↘IN class/Example (B)(a) /p She was very res↘PONsible/(b) /p She was ↘VERY responsible/Example (C)(a) /p You can't stand↘HERE/(b) /pYou↘CAN'T stand here/(ⅲ) Grammatical functionIntonation becomes an important part of grammatical realization of an utterance. Different intonation patterns may indicate different sentence types. The following utterancecan be taken for a statement, a question or an exclamation, depending on different intonation patterns:/p She’s studying in ↘SINgapore/ (a pure statement)/r She’s studying in ↗SINgapore/ (a question)/p She’s↘STUdying/p in↘SINgapore/(an exclamation)(ⅳ) Discourse functionIntonation indicates the distribution of information in utterances. So the placement of the tonic stress depends on the “information content”. In general, a falling tone is used to indicate new information and a rising tone (including fall-rise) “shared” or “given” information. Look at the following examples:/p John was REAding a↘NOvel/ (normal placement of the tonic stress)/p↘JOHN was reading a novel/ (It’s John, not somebody else.)/p John was↘REAding a novel/ (What John was doing is reading not writing a novel.)/p John was reading a↘ Novel/ (What John was reading is a novel not a magazine.)Chapter 4 Factors Account for the Diverse Ways of Word FormationThereare various ways of word formation:compounding,derivation,conversion,blending,clipping,acronymy,back-formation,sound reduplication,commonization of proper names,analogical creations and borrowing.Then what factors can be considered for the diverse ways of word formation?To make out the question,we will go further discussion next.Firstly,in view of language itself,one of its design features is the creativity.There are numerous examples to illustrate that words can be used in new ways to mean new things,and can be instantly understood by people who never come across that usage before.Because language is created and used by people who are creative creatures.Secondly,the society we live change moment by moment in every field.Words increase innumber and vary on types with the economy development,technological progress and culture creation.For example,Chinese comprehensive national power has been gradually strengthened in recent years and Chinese culture has more influence over the world,Chinese language like Wenyen,Taikonaut and so on are produced.Thirdly,cro-communications take the active role in ways of word formation.Especially after the industrial revolution,interpersonal communication between regions and countries become more and more frequent.While people communicate across culture,they need interlanguage to establish an bridge between native language and foreign language.Accordingly,new words are formed.To sum up,we can account three factors for the diverse ways of word formtion:creativity of language,changes of the society and frequent cro-communication.Chapter 5 syntaxI think syntax has many functions in a language, and I will show them in the following passage. First, syntactic knowledge can decide which strings are grammatical and which are not, from which we are able to know which phrase or certain words are grouped together and have a good understanding of word order., For example, “She works hard” is a correct sentence, but if someone says “Works she hard”, nobody will understands it and thinks it right. What is more , syntax can sometimes has ambiguous meanings.For example, “a beautiful girl picture”can be understood that a beautiful girl’s picture or a beautiful picture of a girl.Second, syntactic knowledge also enables us to determine the grammatical relations on a sentence, such as subject and direct object, and how they are to be understood.Consider the following sentence:Mary like Bill. From this sentence,we can know that “Mary” is a subject and “Bill” is direct object.Third,syntax shows creative aspect in a language.After grasping the syntactic rules clearly, speakers can produce and understand a limitless number if sentences never produced or heard before.For example,if the word “Apple” is used, we can produce many sentences according to syntactic rules ,such as “The apple is red”., ,“My favorite fruit is the apple”, and “ Shangdong is famous for producing apples”.All in all, syntax has three major functions ,and they are the grouping of words in order, grammatical relations and creativity in a language.Chapter 6 Comments on the Referential TheoryThe Referential Theory have contributed greatly to the development of semantics. It also helps us to understand how can people use language to describe the word, or how can people convey meaning to a listener about what is going on in the real world.In the Referential Theory, the semantic triangle shows out that the relation between a word and thing it refers to is not direct. It is mediated by concept. In the diagram, wordrefers to the linguistic elements (words), the thing refers to the object in the world of experience, and concept refers to the meaning of the word. Thus the symbol of a word signifies "things" by virtue of the concept associated with the form of the word in the mind of the speaker of the language; and the concept looked at from this point of view is the meaning of the word. For example, when we heard the sentence" There is a dog at the school gate", we shall firstly connect the word "dog" with the existed imagine of a dog in our head. The image of the dog could be a small furry being with a cute tail, thus we pictured the dog at the school gate with relative similar features.However, the Referential theory also has some limitations and problems.First, the theory seems to predict that every word has a referent. But, there are many words that is very difficult to find a exact referent. For example, "ghost" and "dragon", "is" and "are", "play" and "jump" etc. For those words that have no concrete entities, the theory does not make any sense then.Second, according to the theory, a sentence is a list of names. But a mere list of names can mean nothing. For example, "Susan Mary Mike Jack" , this cannot be used to assert anything.Third, there are linguistic phenomena that seem to show that there is more to meaning than reference. For example, in synonyms, two terms can share their reference but differ in meaning--" Luke Jackson" and "the basketball player".To conclude, the Referential theory contributed greatly to the semantic research but also has some limitations need to be considered.Chapter 7 Sentence Meaning vs.Utterance MeaningThe difference of semantics and pragmatics lies in the consideration of context. If it is not considered, it is traditional semantics. Or it's being carried out in the area of pragmatics. Sentence meaning is the meaning of a sentence, which is studied as abstract, intrinsic property of the sentence, abstract, and decontextualized. Utterance meaning is concrete and contextualized, on the basis of sentence meanings. It is the realization of the abstract meaning of a sentence in a real situation of communication, or simply a context.The sentence meaning in semantics is related to the meanings of the words used in it. It just talks about the sentence itself, without basing on concrete context. But the sentence meaning is not simply the sum total of the word meaning. Sentences using the same words may mean quite differently if they are arranged in different orders. For example," The man chased the dog" and "The dog chased the dog",two sentences have the same words but their subjects and objects are opposited.So they mean quite differently. When we analyze the sentence meaning in semantics, we are just talking on the basis of the sentence itself from different sides.However, when we talk about the utterance meaning in pragmatics, we usually put the sentence in concrete context and try to consider more than what the speaker says. For example, if it's cold in the dormitory and your roommate open the window, you may say "Are you cold?"It seems that you are caring about her in the area of semantics. But if you think a while, you ask her the question and she will think "I'm ok, and you ?"Then she knows you are cold, why?-she open the window. Consequently, she will realize that she should close the window. This is a common phenomenon in the world. We often express our idea friendly not to take a straight way.What's more, the same sentence has different utterance meanings in pragmatics but it just has one meaning in semantics. For example, "Would you like a cup of coffee? Coffee will keep me awake". If it's asked in the morning and you are sleepy, you mean that you want. But if it's asked in the midnight and you are going to sleep, you mean you don't want it. This is also different. It just means the influence of coffee toward you in semantics.In a word, whether considering the context is the difference between the sentence meaning in semantics and utterance meaning in pragmatics.。