《英语语言学》练习测试题及参考答案本科I. Tick off the correct or the best possible answers:1.One of the properties of language is that a language user can understand and produce sentences he/shehas never heard before. This property of language is called ________.A. dualityB. productivityC. displacementD. arbitrarinessKey: B2.The ______ function refers to the fact that language can be used for establishing a favorable atmosphereor maintaining social contact rather than for exchanging information or ideas.A. phaticB. directiveC. evocativeD. performativeKey: A3.From a functional approach, the _______ meaning of a language use consists of what is communicatedof the feelings and attitudes of the speaker/writer.A. affectiveB. associativeC. stylisticD. collocativeKey: A4.When –ing in ‘gangling’is removed to get a verb ‘gangle’, we call this way of creating words________.A. suffixationB. back-formationC. blendingD. acronymyKey: B5.______ refers to the process by which words rise from humble beginnings to positions of importance.A. DegradationB. SpecializationC. ElevationD. ExtensionKey: C6.As we know, every speaker has his own pet words and expressions and special way of expressing hisideas in language. This language variety of individual users is called ______.A. idiolectB. regional dialectC. temporal dialectD. social dialectKey: A7.When pitch, stress and length variations are tied to the sentence rather than to the word, they arecollectively known as ________.A. intonationB. toneC. phonemeD. sentence stressKey: A8._______ refers to the change of a sound as a result of the influence of an adjacent sound.A. Addition of soundB. Loss of soundC. MetathesisD. AssimilationKey: D9.Basically, all the languages in the world can be classified in terms of language family. Vietnamese andKorean are two languages in the ______ family.A. Indo-EuropeanB. Sino-TibetanC. Hamito-SemiticD. Malayo-Polynesian Key: B10. A _______ is the minimal contrastive unit in the writing system of a language.A. morphemeB. phonemeC. graphemeD. letterKey: C11.All mono-morphemic words are constituted by free morphemes, and those poly-morphemic wordswhich consist wholly of free morphemes are called_________.A. hyponymsB. compoundsC. blendsD. allomorphsKey: Bsyntactic relationship with one another shall also be characterized by the same paradigmatically marked category or categories is called _______.A. concordB. governmentC. recursivenessD. cohesionKey: A13. The formation of new words by combining parts of two words or a word plus a part of another is called_____.A. blendingB. clippingC. acronymyD. compoundingKey: A14. The distinction of ‘linguistic potential’ and ‘actual linguistic behavior’ is proposed by _______.A. N. ChomskyB. F. de SaussureC. M. A. HallidayD. J. AustinKey: C15. The word meaning given in the dictionary is called _____ meaning.A. denotativeB. connotativeC. collectiveD. stylisticKey: A16. When we consider the variation relating to what a user is trying to do with language, we are dealing withaddressee relationship—continually categori zed as “______”.A. tenor of discourseB. mode of discourseC. field of discourseD. idiolectKey: A17. According to words’ structures, Turkish is a typical ______ language.A. isolatingB. fusionalC. analyticD. agglutinativeKey: D18. ______ refer to the fact that one type of utterance is typically followed by a special type of utterance.A. Minimal pairsB. Illocutionary actsC. Social dialectsD. Adjacency pairs Key: D19. The relation between “dead” and “alive” is labele d as ________.A. gradabilityB. complementarityC. hyponymyD. homonymyKey: B20. The words “encore” and “au pair” are loanwords from _______.A. FrenchB. GermanC. ItalianD. SpanishKey: A21. The distinction of langue and parole is proposed by______.a. N. Chomskyb. F. de Saussurec. M. A. Hallidayd. J. AustinKey: b22.Which of the following is the exception to the feature of arbitrariness of language?a. native English wordsb. borrowed wordsc. echoic wordsd. one-syllable wordsKey: c23.Which of the following feature cannot be used to describe the phone [s]?a. voicelessb. oralc. alveolard. lateralKey: d24.In terms of place of articulation, the two consonants [f], [v] are ________.a. dentalb. alveolarc. palatald. labiodentalKey: d25.In terms of manner of articulation, the sounds [p], [b], [t], [d], [k], [g] are ________.a. affricatesb. fricativesc. bilabiald. oral stopsKey: d26.Which of the following statements about allophone is NOT correct?a. Allophones are different forms of the same phonemeb. Allophones of the same phoneme are in complementary distribution.c. Allophones distinguish meaning.d. Allophones are language specific.Key: c27.Which of the following words is not a free morpheme?a. ableb. petc. changed. dustyKey: d28.How many morphemes are there in the word discharged?a. 2b. 3c. 4d. 5Key: b29.Which of the following words is made up of bound morphemes only?a. happinessb. televisionc. ecologyd. teacherKey: c30. Language is passed on from one generation to the next by teaching and learning rather than by instinct.This property of language is called_____.a. interchangeabilityb. productivityc. cultural transmissiond. arbitrarinessKey: c31.The famous quotation from Shakespeare’s play Romeo and Juliet‘A rose by any other name would smellas sweet’ well illustrates _______.A. the conventional nature of languageB. the creative nature of languageC. the universality of languageD. the big difference between human language and animal communicationKey: A32.Of the following sound combinations, only _______ is permissible according to the sequential rules inEnglish.A. kiblB. bkilC. ilkbD. ilbkKey: A33.The sentence that has a NP and a VP can be shown in a _______ formula “S→NP VP”.A. hierarchicalB. linearC. tree diagramD. verticalKey: B34.It is the _______ on Case assignment that states that a Case assignor and a Case recipient should stayadjacent to each other.A. Case ConditionB. Case ParameterC. Adjacent ConditionD. Adjacent Parameter Key: C35. Predication analysis is a way to analyze _______ meaning.A. phonemeB. wordC. phraseD. sentenceKey: D36. According to Searle, those illocutionary acts whose point is to commit the speaker to some future course of action are called _______.A. commisivesB. directivesC. expressivesD. declarativesKey: Alanguage change over various periods of time and at various historical stages.A. synchronicB. diachronicC. comparativeD. historical comparative Key: B38. The way in which people address each other depends on their age, sex, social group, and personal relationship. The English system of address forms frequently used includes first name, last name, title+last name, _______, and kin term.A. title+first nameB. title+titleC. title aloneD. first name+last name+titleKey: C39. Language and thought may be viewed as two independent circles overlapping in some parts. When language and thought are identical or closely parallel to each other, we may regard thought as “subvocal speech,” and speech as “_______”.A. vocal thoughtB. subvocal thoughtC. covert thoughtD. overt thoughtKey: D40.Whcih of the following best states the behaviorist view of child language acquisition?A. Language acquisition is a process of habit formation.B. Language acquisition is the species-specific property of human beings.C. Children are born with an innate ability to acquire language.D. Humans are equipped with the neural prerequisites for language and language use.Key: A41. The words “kowtow” and “tea ” are loanwords from _______.A. ChineseB. GermanC. ItalianD. SpanishKey: A42. The term _______ linguistics may be defined as a way of referring to the approach which studies language change over various periods of time and at various historical stages.A. synchronicB. diachronicC. comparativeD. historical comparative Key: B43. The formation of new words by combining parts of two words or a word plus a part of another is called _____.A. blendingB. clippingC. acronymyD. compoundingKey: A44. According to words’ structures, Latin is a typical ______ language.A. isolatingB. fusionalC. analyticD. agglutinativeKey: B45. The relation between “animal” and “lamb” is labeled as ________.A. gradabilityB. complementarityC. hyponymyD. homonymyKey: C46. One of the property of language is that there is no logical connection between meaning and sounds. This property of language is called________.A. dualityB. productivityC. displacementD. arbitrarinessKey: D47. The________ function refers to the use of language to create certain feelings in the hearer.A. phaticB. directiveC. evocativeD. performativeKey: A48. The _______ meaning of a word consists of the associations it acquires on account of the meanings of words which tend to occur in its environment.Key: D49. When –or in editor is removed to get a verb edit, we call this way of creating words ________.A. suffixationB. back-formationC. blendingD. acronymyKey:50. The relation between “rose” and “flower” is labeled as ________.A. gradabilityB. complementarityC. hyponymyD. homonymyKey: C51. Language can be used to refer to contexts removed from the immediate situations of the speaker. This iswhat we mean by __________.A. dualityB. productivityC. displacementD. arbitrarinessKey: C52. When language is used to get the hearer to do something, then it serves a _______ function.A. directiveB. informativeC. interrogativeD. expressive53. The description of a language at some point in time is a ________ study.A. diachronicB. synchronicC. descriptiveD. prescriptiveKey: B54. The distinction between “competence” and “performance” was made by______ .A. N. ChomskyB. F. de SaussureC. M. A. HallidayD. L. BloomfieldKey: A55. According to the places of articulation, sounds in English such as [t], [l], and[z] can be labeled as_______ ones.A. dentalB. bilabialC. velarD. alveolarKey: D56. According to the morp hological analysis, the underlined part in the word “inter nation alism” should beregarded as a ___________ .A. rootB. stemC. prefixD. suffixKey: B57. Words such as “telex” and “workfare” are created through ___________.A. affixationB. compoundingC. conversionD. blendingKey: D58. According to the syntactic construction analysis, simple sentence such as “John is a student.” belongs to__________construction.A. endocentricB. exocentricC. coordinateD. subordinateKey: B59. The sense relationship between “male” and “female” is _________.A. complementarityB. gradabilityC. relational oppositesD. hyponymyKey: A60. Componential analysis is a method of analyzing________ meaning.A. sentenceB. lexicalC. grammaticalD. utteranceKey: BII. Are the following statements true (T) or false (F)?1. A sentence cannot be a word or a fragment in strict sense, but an utterance can be a word or a fragment ofa sentence. T/FKey: T2.It doesn’t make sense to ask what language a sentence belongs to. T/F3. A stem first of all refers to any morpheme or combination of morphemes, but an affix can be added to it.T/FKey: T4.Every word in a language can find at least one referent in the objective world. T/FKey: F5.In most cases, lexicon means vocabulary and is related to the analysis and creation of words, idioms andcollocations. T/FKey: T6.The use of the term ‘implicature’ is different from ‘implication’ in that it usually indicates a rathernarrowly defined logical relationship between two propositions. T/FKey: F7. A phrase means two or more words in sequence, intended to have meaning, that form a syntactic unit thatis less than a complete sentence. It is actually synonymous with word group. T/FKey: F8.Collocation is a term in lexicology used by some linguists to refer to the habitual co-occurrences ofindividual lexical items, or collocates. This relation of co-occurrence usually cannot be accounted for. T/F Key: T9.In order to understand how conversational principles work, we may consider how each maxim actuallyworks and how people observe these maxims in daily communication. T/FKey: T10.Syntax studies the rules which govern the ways words, word groups and phrases are combined to makegrammatical sentences in a language, i.e. it deals with the relationships between elements in sentence structures. T/FKey: T11.Even in modern society, the primary medium is sound for all languages, and the fact that childrenacquire spoken language first before they can read or write also indicates that language is primarily vocal. Key: T12.The defining properties of human language that distinguish it from any animal system ofcommunication are termed design features.Key: T13.There are other channels, besides language, for communicating our thoughts, so language is only oneaspect of semiotics.Key: T14.Modern linguistics regards the spoken language as primary, written language as secondary.Key: T15.Descriptive linguisti cs aims to lay down rules for ‘correct’ language use, i.e., to tell people what theyshould say and what should not say.Key: F16.Phonology is the branch of linguistics which studies the characteristics of speech sounds and theirpatterns.Key: F17.The case category is used in the analysis of word classes to identify the syntactic relationship betweenwords in a sentence.Key: Tnguage is genetically transmitted.19.The grammar taught today to language learners is still basically descriptive.Key: F20.All the sounds produced by human are speech sounds.Key: F21.Generally speaking, pragmatics can be understood as a branch of linguistic study that deals with thefactors that govern our choice of language in social interaction and the effects of our choice on others. Key: T22.[f], [v], [s], [z], [︒] and [±] are all fricative in English, but [︒] and [±] are alveolar while [f] and [v] aredental.Key: F23.In most cases, sentence is synonymous with utterance.Key: F24.Syntax exclusively deals with the study of the interrelationships between elements in sentence structure,and it has nothing to do with exploring the syntactic relation beyond sentence boundary.Key: F25.The London School proposed a functional approach towards the concept of phoneme, and N.Trubetzkoy made the greatest contribution to the related study.Key: F26.A phoneme in a language is a distinctive sound which is capable of distinguishing one word or oneshape of a word from another.Key: T27.Every language is part of a culture, and it cannot but serve and reflect cultural needs.Key: T28.Sentence can be extended either by conjoining or embedding, and a construction where constituentshave been linked through the use of conjunction indicates a paratactic relation.Key: F29.Both Chinese and English are tone languages.Key: F30.Words are the smallest meaningful units of language.Key: F31.Derivation changes always result in change of the word class of the original words.Key: T32.Pitch variations may be distinctive like phonemes, and in this function they are called tones. Languagesusing tones, like Chinese, are called tone language.Key: T33.The notion of inflection just indicates the manifestation of grammatical relationships, rather than lexicalones, through the addition of inflectional affixes.Key: T34.The same morpheme always takes different forms in different contexts.Key: T35. According to P. Grice, whether a speaker follows or violates the Maxims of the Cooperative Principle, he produces some implicature, i.e. a kind of extra meaning that is not contained in the utterance.Key: T36.In the history of any language the writing system always came into being before the spoken form.T/F37.In English, long vowels are also tense vowels because when we pronounce a long vowel such as/i:/, the larynx is in a state of tension. T/FKey: T38.A compound is the combination of only two words. T/FKey: F39.“The student” in the sentence “The student liked the linguistic lecture”, and “The linguistic lecture” in the sentence “The linguistic lecture liked the student.” belong to the same syntactic category. T/FKey: T40.Linguistic forms having the same sense may have different references in different situations while linguistic forms with the same reference always have the same sense. T/FKey: F41.An important difference between presupposition and entailment is that presupposition, unlike entailment, is not vulnerable to negation. That is to say, if a sentence is negated, the original presupposition is still true. T/FKey: T42.The division of English into Old English, Middle English, and Modern English is non-conventional and not arbitrary. T/FKey: Fnguage reflects sexism in society. Language itself is not sexist, just as it is not obscene; but it can connote sexist attitudes as well as attitudes about social taboos or racism. T/FKey: T44.If a child is deprived of linguistic environment, he or she is unlikely to learn a language successfully later on. T/FKey: T45.When children learn to distinguish between the sounds of their language and the sounds that are not part of the language, they can acquire any sounds in their native language once their parents teach them. T/F Key: F46. Leonard Bloomfield maintained that linguistics should describe instead of prescribe what people actually say and should take a deductive approach in analyzing data.Key: F47. Chomsky believes that linguistic study and research can help explain what happens in the mind, and linguistics should be regarded as a branch of psychology.Key: F48. Halliday claims that if we are given an adequate specification of the semantic properties of the context in terms of field, tenor and mode, we should be able to predict the syntactic properties of texts.Key: F49. Onomatopoeia indicates a non-arbitrary relationship between form and meaning.Key: F50. Traffic light system has the feature of duality.Key: F51. The distinction of ‘linguistic potential’ and ‘actual linguistic behavior’ is proposed by N. Chomsky. Key: F52. In English there are three nasal sounds. They are [m], [n], and [l].Key: T53. A morpheme is the minimal contrastive unit in the writing system of a language.54. According to the functions of affixes, we can put them into groups: inflectional affixes and derivational affixes.Key: T55. Compounding is the formation of new words by joining two or more stems.Key: T56. Metathesis refers to the change of a sound as a result of the influence of an adjacent sound.Key: F57. The requirement that the forms of two or more words of specific word classes which stand in specificsyntactic relationship with one another shall also be characterized by the same paradigmatically marked category or categories is called concord.Key: T58. According to Searle, those illocutionary acts whose point is to commit the speaker to some future course of action are called directivesKey: F59. The term synchronic linguistics may be defined as a way of referring to the approach which studies language change over various periods of time and at various historical stages.Key: F60. In terms of manner of articulation, the sounds [p], [b], [t], [d], [k], [g] are affricatesKey: FIII.Fill in the blanks:1.It is generally believed that J. Austin and _______ made the greatest contribution to the proposition ofSpeech Act Theory, an important theory in pragmatic study.Key: J. Searle2.According to the positions affixes occupy in words, __________ falls into prefixation and suffixation.Key: affixation3.The signs “&”, “@”, “%” and “$” widely used today are examples of ______ wri ting.Key: word4.Two methods can be used to reconstruct an older form of a language: internal reconstruction and the_______ reconstruction.Key: external5.The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis has two major thrusts: linguistic determinism and linguistic _______ .Key: relativity6.In the course of communication, a speaker may change from the standard language to the non-standardlanguage, may shift his subject matter, or may move from one point on the formality scale to another point. This linguistic behavior is referred to as ______.Key: code switch7.The different types of a language as different forms to realize a mere generalization of the language arecalled “sub-languages” or _______.Key: (language) varieties8._________ construction refers to a construction in which the distribution of words is functionallyequivalent to that of one or more of its constituents.Key: Endocentric_Key: human communication10.The degree to which a test measures what it is meant to measure is termed _________ in languagetesting, and that is an important index used to evaluate the quality of a test.Key: validity11.By _______ is meant that language can refer to contexts removed from the immediate situation of thespeaker.Key: displacementnguage is a system of two sets of structures, the structure of sound and the structure of ___________. Key: meaning13.The three branches of phonetics are articulatory phonetics, auditory phonetics, and _________phonetics.Key: acoustic14.There are two kinds of stress in English. They are word stress and ________ stress.Key: sentence15.In English there are three nasal sounds. They are [m], [n], and ________.Key: [ ];16.Morphology is divided in two branches: __________ morphology and derivational morphology. Key: .inflectional17.According to H. Paul Grice’s Cooperative Principle, that one should avoid obscurity and ambiguityaccords with the ________ Maxim.Key: Manner18.The speech sounds in the production of which there is an obstruction of the airstream at some point ofthe vocal tract are called_______.Key: consonants19.A linguistic study is ______ if it tries to lay down rules for the correct use of language.Key: prescriptive20.The sentence “H e married a blonde heiress.” ______ the sentence “He married a blonde.”Key: entaills21.In the course of time, the study of language has come to establish close links with other branchesof ________ studies, such as sociology and psychology.Key: social22. Clear［1］and dark［1］are allophones of the same one phoneme /1/.They never take the same position in sound combinations, thus they are said to be in ________ distribution.Key: complementary23.A ________ is often seen as part of a word, but it can never stand by itself although it bears clear, definite meaning.Key: root24.A ________ sentence contains two or more clauses, one of which is incorporated in the other.Key: complex25.That the denial of one member of two words implies the assertion of the other is the characteristic of ________ antonyms.Key: complementary26.While the meaning of a sentence is abstract and decontextualized, that of an ________ is concrete and context-dependent.Key: utteranceEnglish verb ask was Old English askian, with the /k/ preceding the/s/. Sound change as a result of sound movement is known as ________.Key: metathesis28.In many societies of the world, we find a large number of people who speak more than one language. Asa characteristic of societies, ________ inevitably results from the coming into contact of people with different cultures and different languages.Key: bilingualism29.The brain’s neurological specialization for language is called linguistic ________, which is specific to human beings.Key: lateralization30.In order to acquire a second language, learners will subconsciously use their first language knowledge in learning a second language. This is known as language ________.Key: transfer31. _______ phonetics studies the physical properties of speech sounds when they are transmitted between mouth and ear.Key: Acoustic32. The function of establishing a set of vowels is to facilitate the_______ of vowels of languages.Key: description33. If two sounds occurring in the same environment do not contrast, that is, the substitution of one for the other does not produce a different word form, but merely a different pronunciation of the same word, then the two sounds are in ________variation.Key: free34. The principal _________features are stress, length, pitch and intonation, as all of them can be used to distinguish meaning.Key: suprasegmental35.________is the method of creating words by removing the supposed suffixes.Key: Back-formation36. Pronouns and prepositions are two kinds of ________ words to which new members are not regularly added.Key: closed-class37. The sentence “I promise to come here earlier tomorrow morning.” can be used as an example to indicate the ________ function of language.Key: performative38. A linguistic study is ________ if it tries to lay down rules for the correct use of language.Key: perspective39. The sounds in the production of which no articulators come very close together and the air-stream passes through the vocal tract without _________are called vowels.Key: obstruction40. The word “gentlemanly” consists of 4 syllables and ________morphemes.Key: 341. Positional ______, or word order, refers to the sequential arrangement of words in a language.Key: relation42. English gender contrast can only be observed in pronouns and a small number of nouns, and they are mainly of the _________gender type.Key: natural43. Componential analysis defines the meaning of a lexical element in terms of _______ components.44. ________refers to the process of construction where one clause is included in the sentence (main clause) in syntactic subordination.Key: subordination45. ________ construction refers to a group of syntactically related words where none of the words is functionally equivalent to the group as a whole.Key: exocentric46. The _______function is the use of language to reveal something about the emotions and attitudes of the speaker.Key: expressive47. As language is a product and capacity of the human brain, many psychologists and linguists have tried to examine the relation between language and the brain, developing a new branch of science called________.Key: psycholinguistics48. The production of any speech sound involves the movement of an airstream. The majority of sounds used in languages of the world are produced by ______ egressive airstream mechanism.Key: oral49. Some speech sounds involves the simultaneous use of two places of articulation. For example, the English [w] has both an approximation of the two lips and that of the back of the tongue and the soft palate, and may be termed______.Key: labial-velar50. ________ is used to mean sameness or close similarity of meaning.Key: synonymy51. The ________family includes most of the European languages and marry languages spoken in North India and in the two Americas and Australia.Key: Indo-European52. _________or analytic languages refer to those which depend on invariable roots or stems and word order to indicate their grammatical relations.Key: Isolating53. When we consider the variation relating to what the user is trying to do with language, whether teaching, persuading, advertising or instructing, we are dealing with addressee relationship, contextually categorized as __________.Key: tenor of discourse54. ________means that any human being can be both a producer and a receiver of messages, but the communication systems of certain animals do not have this feature. For instance, some male birds posses calls which female birds do not have.Key: Interchangeability55. ________ refers to the influence exercised by one sound segment upon the articulation of another sound, so that the sounds become less alike.Key: dissimilation56. The __________ is the smallest unit in terms of relationship between expression and content, a unit which cannot be divided without destroying or drastically altering the meaning, whether it is lexical or grammatical.Key: morpheme57. In English, prepositions and verbs determine particular forms of pronouns according to their syntactic relation with them. This requirement is called _______ in linguistics.。
