语言学课后习题答案

语言学概论作业

Chapter 1

1. How do you interpret the following definition of linguistics: linguistics is the

scientific study of language?

To understand this definition, we should focus on three words in this sentence: scientific, study and language. First of all, scientific here means a study which is based on the systematic investigation of linguistic data, conducted with reference to some general theory of language structure. The linguist studies it to discover the nature and rules of the underlying language system. Secondly, the word study here refers to investigation or examination. Thirdly, Language here is general term. It refers to any human language, Chinese spoken by the Chinese, English by the English people, German by the Germans, or even Esperanto, an artificial language. Language here also means the dialects or variants of a common language such as Cantonese, a variant of Mandarin. Therefore, this whole sentence can be interpreted that linguistics is a language study through the systematic investigation of linguistic data and some general theory of language structure.

2. What are the major branches of linguistics? What does each of them study?

Phonetics: the study of sounds used in linguistic communication.It describes

individual speech sounds and indicates their physical or phonetic properties.

Phonology: it studies the ways in which these sounds form patterns and

systems and how they work to convey meaning in the system of language.

Morphology: a field of linguistics focused on the study of the forms and

formation of words in a language

Syntax: A set of rules that govern how words are combined to form phrases and

sentences.

Pragmatics: the study of the use of language in a social context.

3. In what basic ways does modern linguistics differ from traditional grammar?

① Linguistics is descriptive while traditional grammar is prescriptive. ② Modern linguistics regards the spoken language as primary, not the written. ③ Modern linguistics differs from traditional grammar also in that it does not

force languages into a Latin-based framework.

4. Is modern linguistics mainly synchronic or diachronic? Why?

In modern linguistics, the linguists seem to give priority to synchronic studies other than diachronic ones. Because it is believed that unless the various states of

a language in different historical periods are successfully studied, it would be difficult to describe the changes that have taken place in its historical development. That is to say, the diachronic studies should be based on synchronic ones. Synchronic descriptions are often thought of as being description of a language in its current existence. And most linguistic studies are of this type.

5. For what reasons does modern linguistics give priority to speech rather than to

writing?

①The writing system is invented by its users when needed

②Today there are languages which can only be spoken but not written

③Speech plays a greater role than writing in terms of the amount of information conveyed in daily communication

④Each human being first acquires speech and then learns writing

⑤Modern linguistics tends to pay more attention to authentic speech as spoken language reveals more true features of human speech while written language is only the “revised” record of speech.

6. How is Saussure’s distinction between langue and parole similar to Chomsky’s

distinction between competence and performance?

They are similar in two aspects: the definition and the content of study.

On one hand, Saussure defines langue as the abstract linguistic system shared by all the members of a speech community, and parole as the realization of langue in actual use. Chomsky defines competence as the ideal user’s knowledge of the rules of his language, and performance the actual realization of this knowledge in linguistic communication. We can see that langue and competence both refer to the abstract issue, conventions and knowledge, and parole and performance both are their actual realization, the concrete use.

On the other hand, in Saussure’s opinion, what linguists should do is to abstract langue from parole as parole is too varied and confusing. And this is the same as Chomsky. He thinks linguists should study the ideal speaker’s competence, not his performance, which is too haphazard to be studied.

7. What characteristics of language do you think should be included in a good,

comprehensive definition of language?

The important characteristics which should be included in a good definition of language are separately: systematic, arbitrary and vocal. First of all, language is a system. It has its own set of rules for people to abide by, or people will use the language in a wrong way.

Second, language is arbitrary in the sense that there is no intrinsic connection between a linguistic symbol and what the symbol stands for. The fact that different languages have different words for the same object is a good illustration of the arbitrary nature of languge.

Third, language is vocal because the primary medium for all languages is sound.

8. What are the main features of human language that have been specified by

C.Hockett to show that it is essentially different from animal communication system?

1) Arbitrariness: no natural/motivated/logical relationship between the sign and

what the sign stands for.

2) Productivity: provides opportunities for sending messages that have never

been sent before and for understanding novel messages.

3) Duality: language is a system, which consists of two sets of stuctures, or two

levels.

4) Displacement: can be used to refer to things real or imagined, past, present or future

5) Cultural transmission

9. What are the major functions of language? 1)descriptive function

2)expressive function 3)social function

Chapter 3

1. Divide the following words into their separate morphemes by placing a “+”

between each morpheme and the next: a. microfilm: micro+film

b. bedraggled: be+draggle+ed c. announcement: announce+ment d. predigestion: pre+digest+ion

e. telecommunication: tele+communicate+ion f. forefather: fore+father g. psychophysic: psycho+physic h. mechanist: mechan+ist

2. Think of three morpheme suffixes, give their meaning and specify the types of

stem they may be suffixed to. Give at least two examples of each.

1) suffix: -ing meaning: denoting a verbal action, an instance of this, or its result stem type: added to verbs examples: fighting: denote the action of battle building: denote the action of consruction 2) suffix: -able meaning: able to be stem type: added to verbs examples: avoidable: able to be prevented from calculable: able to be measured or assessed 3) suffix: -ist meaning: denoting a member of a profession or business activity stem type: added to nouns examples: dramatist : a person who writes plays dentist: a person who treats the teeth disease

3. Think of three morpheme prefixes, give their meaning, and specify the types of

stem they may be prefixed to. Give at least two examples of each.

1) prefix: un- meaning: denoting the absence of a quality or state; not stem type: added to nouns examples: unacademic: not adopting or characteristic of a scholarly

approach or language

unhappy: not happy 2) prefix: anti- meaning: opposed to; against stem type: added to nouns examples: anti-abortion: opposing or legislating against medically

induced abortion

anti-art: against the traditional art 3) prefix: re- meaning: once more; afresh; anew stem type: added to verbs examples: restart: start once more reaccustom: accustom (someone) to something again

4. The italicized part in each of the following sentences is an inflectional morpheme.

Study each inflectional morpheme carefully and point out its grammatical meaning.

1)Sue moves in high-society circles in London. The third person singular

2)A traffic warden asked John to move his car. The past tense

3)The club has moved to Friday, February 22nd. The present perfect

4)The branches of the trees are moving back and forth. The present progressive

5. Detemine whether the words in each of the following groups are related to one

another by process of inflection or derivation.

a) go, goes, going, gone

process of inflection

b) discover, discovery, discoverer, discoverable, discoverability

process of derivation

c) inventor, inventor’s inventors, inventors’

process of inflection

d) democracy, democrat, democratic, democratize

process of derivation

6. The following sentences contain both derivational and inflectional affixes.

Underline all of the derivational affixes and circle the inflectional affixes.

a) The farmer’s cows escaped.

Derivational affixes: -er

Inflectional affixes: ?s, -s, -ed b) It was raining.

Derivational affixes:none Inflectional affixes: -ing c) Those socks are inexpensive.

Derivational affixes: in- Inflectional affixes: -s d) Jim needs the newer copy.

Derivational affixes: -er Inflectional affixes: -s

e) The strongest rower continued.

Derivational affixes: -est, -er Inflectional affixes: -ed f) She quickly closed the book.

Derivational affixes: -ly Inflectional affixes: -ed

g) The alphabetization went well.

Derivational affixes:-ion Inflectional affixes: went

Chapter 5

1. What are the major views concerning the study of meaning?

1) The naming theory was proposed by the ancient Greek scholar Plato. The

linguistic forms or symbols, in other words, the words used in a language are taken to be labels of the objects they stand for; words are just names or labels for things. The semantic relationship holding between words and things is the relationship of naming.

2) The conceptualist view: This view holds that there is no direct link between

a linguistic form and what it refers to; rather, in the interpretation of meaning they are linked through the mediation of concepts in the mind. This is best illustrated by the semantic triangle suggested by Ogden and Richards:

3) Contextualism: Representatively proposed by the British linguist J. R. Firth

who had been influenced by the Polish anthropologist Malinowski and the German philosopher Wittgenstein.It holds that meaning should be studied in terms of situation, use, context – elements closely linked with language behavior. ? the meaning of a word is its use in the language.

4) Behaviourism: Based on contextualist view by Bloomfield who drew on

behaviorist psychology in defining “meaning”. Behaviorists attempted to define the meaning of a language from as the “ situation in which the speaker utters it and the response it calls forth in the hearer.” This theory, somewhat close to contextualism, is linked with psychological interest.

2. What are the major types of synonyms in English?

1) dialectal synonyms-----synonyms used in different regional 2) Stylistic synonyms: synonyms differing in style

3) Synonyms that differ in their emotive or evaluative meaning 4) Collocational synonyms: what words they go together with

5) Semantically different synonyms: differ from the words themselves

3. Explain with examples “homonymy”, “polysemy”, and “hyponymy”.

1) Homonymy: Homonymy refers to the phenomenon that words having

different meanings have the same form, i.e., different words are identical in sound or spelling, or in both. When two words are identical in sound, they are homophones. When two words are identical in spelling, they are homographs. When tow words are identical in both sound and spelling, they are complete homonyms. The examples are as followed:

Homophones: rain/reign night/knight piece/peace Homographs: bow v./bow n. tear v./tear n. Complete homonyms: fast adj./fast v.

2) Polysemy: while different words may have the same or similar meaning, the

same one word may have more than one meaning. This is what we call polysemy, and such a word is called a polysemic word. The more commonly used a word is, the more likely it has acquired more than one meaning. For example, the word table has at least six meanings when we look it up in the dictionary:

1. a piece of furniture

2. all the people seated at a table 3. the food that is put on a table

4. a thin flat piece of stone, mental, wood, etc 5. orderly arrangement of facts, figures, etc

6. part of a machine-tool on which the work is put to be operated on

3) Hyponymy refers to the sense relation between a more general, more

inclusive word and a more specific word. The word which is more general in meaning is called the superordinate, and the more specific words are called

its hyponyms. Hyponyms of the same superordinate are co-hyponyms to each other. For example,

Superordiante: flower

Hyponyms: rose, tulip, carnation, lily, morning golory

4. How can words opposite in meaning be classified? To which category does each

of the following pairs of antonyms belong?

①north/south ②vacant/occupied ③literate/illiterate ④above/below ⑤doctor/patient ⑥wide/narrow ⑦poor/rich ⑧father/daughter Gradable antonyms: literate/illiterate wide/ poor/rich Complementary antonyms: vacant/occupied

Relational opposite: north/south dotor/patient father/daughter

5. Identify the relations between the following pairs of sentences:

①Tom’s wife is pregnant. Tom has a wife.

②My sister will soon be divorced. My sister is a married woman. ③He likes seafood. He likes crabs.

④They are going to have another baby. They have a child. X presupposes Y(Y is a prerequisite of X): ①②④ X entails Y(Y is an entailment of X): ③

6. In what way is componential analysis similar to the analysis of phonemes into

distinctive features?

Componential analysis is a way proposed by the structural semanticists to analyze word meaning. The approach is based on the belief that the meaning of a word can be dissected into meaning components, called semantic features. And that is similar to the analysis of phonemes into distinctive features.

7. What is grammaticality? What might make a grammatically meaningful sentence

semantically meaningless?

The grammatical meaning of a sentence refers to its grammaticality, especially its grammatical well-formedness. Selectional restrictions, which means the constraints on what lexical items can go with what others, might make a grammatically meaningful sentence semantically meaningless.

8. Try to analyze the following sentences in terms of predication analysis:

①The man sells ice-cream. ②Is the baby sleeping? ③It is snowing. ④The tree grows well. 1.MAN, ICE-CREAM(SELL) 2.BABY(SLEEP) 3.(BE SNOW) 4.TREE(GROW)

Chapter 6 PRAGMATICS

1. What does pragmatics study? How does it differ from traditional semantics?

答： Generally speaking, pragmatics is the study of meaning in the context. It studies meaning in a dynamic way and as a process. In order to have a successful communication, the speaker and hearer must take the context into their consideration so as to effect the right meaning and intention. The development and establishment pragmatics in 1960s and 1970s resulted mainly from the expansion of the study semantics. However, it is different from the traditional semantics. The major difference between them lies in that pragmatics studies meaning in a dynamic way, while semantics studies meaning in a static way. Pragmatics takes context into consideration while semantics does not. Pragmatics takes care of the aspect of meaning that is not accounted for by semantics.

2. Why is the notion of context essential in the pragmatic study of linguistic communication?

答： The notion of context is essential to the pragmatic study of language. It is generally considered as constituted by the knowledge shared by the speaker and the hearer. Various continents of shared knowledge have been identified, e.g. knowledge of the language they use, knowledge of what has been said before, knowledge about the world in general, knowledge about the specific situation in which linguistic communication is taking place, and knowledge about each other. Context determines the speaker's use of language and also the heater's interpretation of what is said to him. Without such knowledge, linguistic communication would not be possible, and without considering such knowledge, linguistic communication cannot be satisfactorily accounted for in a pragmatic sense. Look at the following sentences:

(1) How did it go? (2) It is cold in hem.

(3) It was a hot Christmas day so we went down to the beach in the afternoon and had a good time swimming and surfing.

Sentence (1) might be used in a conversation between two students talking about an examination, or two surgeons talking about an operation, or in some other contexts; (2) might be said by the speaker to ask the hearer to turn on the heater, or leave the place, or to put on more clothes, or to apologize for the poor condition of the room, depending on the situation of context; (3) makes sense only ii the hearer has the knowledge that Christmas falls in summer in the southern hemisphere.

3. How are sentence meaning and utterance meaning related, and how do they differ?

答： A sentence is a grammatical concept, and the meaning of a sentence is often studied as the abstract, intrinsic property of the sentence itself in terms of predication. But if we think of a sentence as what people actually

utter in the course of communication, it becomes an utterance, and it should be considered in the situation in which it is actually uttered (or used). So it is impossible to tell if “The dog is barking” is a sentence or an utterance. It can be either. It all depends on how we look at it and how we are going to analyze it. If we take it as a grammatical unit and consider it as a self-contained unit in isolation from context, then we are treating it as a sentence. If we take it as something a speaker utters in a certain situation with a certain purpose, then we are treating it as an utterance.

Therefore, while the meaning of a sentence is abstract, and decontextualized, that of an utterance is concrete, and context-dependent. The meaning of an utterance is based on sentence meaning; it is the realization of the abstract meaning of a sentence in a real situation of communication, or simply in a context. Now, take the sentence \analysis of the meaning of the sentence results in the one-place predication BAG (BEING HEAVY). Then a pragmatic analysis of the utterance meaning of the .sentence varies with the context in which it is uttered. For example, it could be uttered by a speaker as a straightforward statement, telling the hearer that his bag is heavy. It could also be intended by the speaker as an indirect, polite request, asking the hearer to help him carry the bag. Another possibility is that the speaker is declining someone's request for help. All these are possible interpretations of the same utterance “My bag is heavy”. How it is to be understood depends on the context in which it is uttered and the purpose for which the speaker utters it.

While most utterances take the form of grammatically complete sentences, some utterances do not, and some cannot even be restored to complete sentences.

4. Try to think of contexts in which the following sentences can be used for other purposes than just stating facts: a) The room is messy. b) Oh, it is raining!

c) The music of the movie is good.

d) You have been keeping my notes for a whole week now. 答：a) A father entered his son’s room and found it is very messy. Then when he said, “The room is messy,” he was blaming his son for not tidying it up. b) A son asked his father to play with him outside. So when the father said, “Oh, it?s raining”, he meant they couldn?t play outside.

c) Two persons just watched a movie and had a discussion of it. One person said, “The story of the movie is very moving”, so when the other person said, “The music of the movie is good”, he meant he didn't think the story of the movie was good.

d) A person wanted his notes back, so when he said, “you have been keeping my notes for a whole week now”, he was demanding the return of his notes.

5. According to Austin, what are the three acts a person is possibly

performing while making an utterance. Give an example.

答： According to Austin's new model, a speaker might be performing three acts simultaneously when speaking: locutionary act, illocutionary act, and perlocutionary act.

A locutionary act is the act of uttering words, phrases, clauses. It is the act of conveying literal meaning by means of syntax, lexicon and phonology. An illocutionary act is the act of expressing the speaker?s intention; it is the act performed in saying something. A perlocutionary act is the act performed by or resulting from saying something; it is the consequence of, or the change brought about by the utterance; it is the act performed by saying something. Let's look at an example: You have left the door wide open.

The locutionary act performed by the speaker is his utterance of the words “you”, “have”, “door”, “open”, etc. thus expressing what the words literally mean.

The illocutionary act performed by the speaker is that by making such an utterance he has expressed his intention of speaking, i.e. asking someone to close the door, or making a complaint, depending on the context.

The perlocutionary act refers to the effect of the utterance. If the hearer gets the speaker's message and sees that the speaker means to tell him to close the door, the speaker has successfully brought about the change in the real world he has intended to; then the perlocutionary act is successfully performed.

6. What are the five types of illocutionary speech acts Searle has specified? What is the illocutionary point of each type?

答：(1) representatives: stating or describing, saying what the speaker believes to be true

(2) directives: trying to get the hearer to do something

(3) commissives: committing the speaker himself to some future course of action

(4) expressives: expressing feelings or attitude towards an existing

(5) declarations: bringing about immediate changes by saying something

The illocutionary point of the representatives is to commit the speaker to something's being the case, to the truth of what has been said, in other words, when performing an illocutionary act of representative, the speaker is making a statement or giving a description which he himself believes to be true. Stating, believing, sweating, hypothesizing are among the most typical of the representatives.

Directives ate attempts by the speaker to get the hearer to do some- thing. Inviting, suggesting, requesting, advising, wanting, threatening and ordering are all specific instances of this class.

Commissives are those illocutionary acts whose point is to commit the speaker to some future course of action, i.e. when speaking the speaker

d) A quaint old house appeared on the grassy hill. InflP(=S)

NP Infl VP

Det A NP Pst V PP

A N P NP Det A N

A quaint old house appeared on the grassy hill

5. The following sentences all contain conjoined categories. Draw a tree structure for each of the sentences.

a) Jim has washed the dirty shirts and pants. InflP(=S)

NP VP

N Aux V NP

Det A NP

N CON N

Jim has washed the dirty shirts and pants

OR

InflP(=S)

NP VP

N Infl V NP

Det A NP

N CON N

Jim has washed the dirty shirts and pants

b) Helen put on her clothes and went out. S

NP VP

N VP CON VP

VP NP V Adv

V P Det N

Helen put on her clothes and went out OR

InflP(=S)

NP Infl VP

N Pst VP CON VP

VP NP V Adv

V P Det N

Helen put on her clothes and went out c) Mary is fond of literature but tired of statistics. S

NP VP

N VP CON VP

VP NP VP NP

V A P N V A P N

Mary is fond of literature but (is) tired of statistics

OR

InflP(=S)

NP Infl VP

N Pres VP CON VP

VP NP VP NP

V A P N V A P N

Mary is fond of literature but (is) tired of statistics

d) The detective went out and the mysterious man came in.

S

S CON S

NP VP NP VP

Det N V Adv Det A N V Adv

The detective went out and the mysterious man came in e) Crusoe knows that spring will come and the snow will melt. S

NP VP

CP

N V C S

S CON S

NP VP NP VP

N Aux V Det N Aux V

Crusoe knows that spring will come and the snow will

melt

6. The following sentences all contain embedded clauses that function as complements of a verb, an adjective, a preposition or a noun. Draw a tree structure for each sentence. a) You know that I hate war.

S

NP VP CP

N V C S

NP VP

NP N V N

You know that I hate war

OR CP

C InflP(=S)

NP Infl VP

CP

N Pres V C S

NP VP

N V NP

N

You know that I hate war

b) He said that Tom asked whether the class was over. S

NP VP

CP N V C S

NP VP N V C S

NP VP

Det N VL A

He said that Tom asked whether the class was over

c) Gerry can’t believe the fact that Anna flunked the English exam. S

NP VP

CP

N VP NP

CP Aux Neg V NP C S

Det N NP VP

N V NP

Det A N

Gerry can not believe the fact thatAnna flunked the English exam d) Chris was happy that his father bought him a Rolls-Royce.

S

NP VP

CP

N VL A C S

NP VP

Det N V NP NP

N Det N

Chris was happy that his father bought him a Rolls-Royce e) The children argued over whether bats had wings. S

NP VP

CP

Det N VP C S

V P NP VP

N V NP

N

The children argued over whether bats had wings

7. Each of the following sentences contains a relative clause. Draw the deep structure and the surface structure trees for each of the sentences. a) The essay that he wrote was too long. Deep structure

CP

C S

NP VP

Det N CP V AP

C S Deg P

NP Infl VP

N V NP

N

The essay he wrote that was too long

Surface Structure

CP

C S

NP VP

Det N CP V AP

C S Deg P

NP NP Infl VP

N N Pst V NP

N

The essay that he wrote e was too long

b) The dog that he keeps bites. Deep structure

CP

C S

NP VP

Det N CP V

C Infl S

Pres NP VP

N V NP

N

The dog he keeps that bites

Surface Structure

CP

C S

NP VP

Det N CP V

C S

NP NP Infl VP

N N Pres V NP

N

The dog that he keeps e bites

c) Herbert found the man she loved. Deep structure

CP

C S

NP VP

N Infl V NP

CP

Det N C S

NP Infl VP

NP N V

N

Herbert found the man she loved who

Surface Structure

CP

C S

NP VP

N Infl V NP

CP

Det N S C

NP Infl VP

NP NP N V

N N Herbert found the man (whom) she loved e

d) The girl whom he often quarrels with majors in linguistics. Deep structure

CP

C S

NP VP

Det N CP V PP P NP C Infl S

N

NP VP

PP

N Qual VP NP V P N

The girl he often quarrels with whom majors in linguistics

Surface Structure

CP

C S

NP VP

Det N CP V PP

P NP C S

N NP NP Infl VP

PP

N N Qual VP NP V P N

The girl whom he often quarrels with e majors in linguistics

8. The derivations of the following sentences involve the inversion transformation. Give the deep structure and the surface structure trees for each of these sentences. a) Would you come tomorrow? Deep structure

CP

C S

VP

NP AdvP N Infl V Adv

you would come tomorrow

Surface structure

CP

C S

VP

NP AdvP Infl N Infl V Adv

would you e come tomorrow

b) Can you pass me the newspaper?

Deep structure

CP

C S

VP

NP NP NP N Infl V N Det N

you can pass me the newspaper

Surface structure

CP

C S

VP

Infl NP NP NP N Infl V N Det N

Can you e pass me the newspaper

c) Should the students report the incident? Deep structure

CP

C S

VP

NP NP

Det N Infl V Det N

the students should report the incident

Surface structure

CP

C S

VP

Infl NP NP Det N Infl V Det N

should the students e report the incident

d) What did you eat for lunch?

Deep structure

CP

C S

VP

NP PP NP NP N Infl V P

N N

you did eat what for lunch

Surface structure

CP

NP C S

VP

Infl NP PP

NP NP N N Infl V P

N N

what did you e eat e for lunch

e) Who should this be reported to ?

Deep structure

CP

C S

VP

NP PP VP NP N Infl V V P

N

this should be reported to whom

Surface structure

CP

NP C S

VP

N Infl NP PP VP NP N Infl V V P

N

whom should this e be reported to e

f) What was Helen bringing to the party?

Deep structure

CP

C S

VP

NP PP

NP NP N Infl V P

N Det N

Helen was bringing what to the party

Surface structure

CP

NP C S

VP

N Infl NP PP

NP NP N Infl V P

N Det N

what was Helen e bringing e to the party

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