英语语言学练习题

Chp 1

I. Blank filling

1. Langue refers to the _____ linguistic system shared by all the members of a speech community; parole refers to the _____ of langue in actual use.

2. Chomsky defines competence as the ideal user’s_____ of the rules of his language, and performance, the actual _____ of this knowledge in linguistic communication.

3. “A rose by any other name would smell as sweet”. This quotation from Shakespeare illustrates that language has the design feature of _____.

4. The property of _____ of language provides a speaker with an opportunity to talk about a wide range of things, free from barriers caused by separation in time and place.

5. Language is a system, which consists of two sets of structures, one of_____, and the other of_____. This double articulation of language enables its users to talk about anything within their knowledge. II. T-F choice

1. Linguistics can be defined as the scientific study of a particular language. 2. Language is arbitrary by nature but it is not completely arbitrary.

3. We can use the word “word” to talk about a word, we can talk about “talk”, we can think about “thinking”, this shows that language has a metalingual function. III. Answer questions.

1. What features of human language have been specified by C. Hockett to show that it is essentially different from any animal communication system?

Chp 2

1. The difference between a consonant and a vowel lies in whether there is air _______in the production of them.

2. Vibration of the vocal cords results in a quality of speech sounds called ______, which is a feature of all vowels and some consonants.

3. Two ways to transcribe speech sounds are available, broad transcription and narrow transcription. The major difference between them is with or without_______.

4. The basic unit of phonology is a phoneme. It is an abstract collection of ______ features.

5. When phonemic contrast is mentioned we realize that the two sounds belong to _____phoneme(s), when complementary distribution is discussed, the allophones come from ______phoneme(s). II.

1. Phonology aims to discover how speech sounds of all human languages form patterns and how these sounds are used to convey meaning in linguistic communication.

2. In English, pill and bill form a minimal pair, and so do life and knife, pin and ping.

3. The phoneme /t/ and /d/ can occur in the same position and they distinguish meaning, therefore they are said to be in complementary distribution.

4. The distinctive features in English can apply to the other languages, too. For instance, voicing distinguishes meaning in both English and Chinese.

5. In a standardized English syllable all of the three parts of onset, nucleus and coda are compulsory.

III. Why can a phoneme distinguish meaning?

Chp 3

1. A morpheme must convey a lexical meaning.

2. All words can be said to contain a root morpheme.

3. The word “modernizations” is made up of three morphemes.

4. Derivational morphemes never change the class of the words to which they are attached. 5. The morphological rules can be generalized in spite of some exceptions.

6. It is hard to believe that there is an interface between phonology and morphology. II.

1. Morphology can be subdivided into two branches:______ morphology and______morphology. 2. The phonological and orthographical realizations of a morpheme are termed ______. 3. [-t]、[-d]、[-id] are _______of the morpheme {-ed}.

4. “Careless” is the _______of the word “carelessness”; “Gentle” is the ______ of the word “gentlemanliness”.

5. A morpheme can convey two kinds of meanings:_______ meaning and _______ meaning. 6. Compared with a free phrase, a compound has different phonetic, _______, ________, and syntactic features. III.

1. Analyze and tell how many morphemes each of the following words contain. unselfishness / justifiable / descendent / overdeveloped / naturalistically / friendships / uninvitedly

2. How do you understand that there is an interface between morphology and phonology?

Chp 4

1. The part of a sentence which comprises an infinite verb or an infinite verb phrase is grammatically called a clause.

2. The syntactic rules of a language are finite in number, yet there is no limit to the number of sentences which can be produced.

3. Language is both linearly and hierarchically structured according to the structuralist language view.

4. Phrase structure rules provide explanations on how syntactic categories are formed and sentences generated.

5. UG is a system of linguistic knowledge and a human-specific gift which exists in the mind of a normal human being. II．

1. For any natural language, a set of s______ rules are capable of yielding an endless number of sentences.

2. Normally a sentence consists of at least a subject and a predicate which contains a f_______ verb or a verb phrase.

3. The sequential order of words in a sentence suggests that the structure of a sentence is l_______.

4. The subordinate sentence in a complex is called an e______ clause and the clause into which it is inserted is called a m______ clause.

5. In conducting a tree diagram analysis, the principle we have to stick to is called b______ division. III.

1. Draw a tree diagram for each of the following two sentences to reveal the difference. a. The cat ran up the tree. b. The cat ate up the fish. 2. Why does a sentence have both a linear and a hierarchical structure?

Chp 5

1. In the classic semantic triangle, the symbol is directly related to the referent. 2. Homographs are words which are pronounced alike.

3. The superordinate term is more inclusive in meaning than its hyponyms.

4. In a pair of complementary antonyms, there exist some intermediate forms between the two extremes.

5. All the grammatically well-formed sentences are not necessarily semantically well-formed.

6. One advantage of componential analysis is that by specifying the semantic features of words, it will be possible to show how these words are related in meaning. II．

1. S_____ restrictions are constraints on what lexical items can go with others.

2. There are often intermediate forms between the two members of a pair of g_____ antonyms. 3. The various meanings of a p______ word are related to some extent.

4. Linguistic forms having the same sense may have different r______ in different situations. 5. Hyponymy is the relation of entailment, a superordinate entails all h______. 6. “Buy” and “sell” are a pair of r_______ opposites.

7. In semantic analysis of a sentence, the basic unit is called p_______. III.

1. The classic semantic triangle reflects the ________.

A. naming theory B. conceptual view C. contextualism D. behaviorist theory 2. The noun “tear” and the verb “tear” are _______.

A. homophones B. Homographs C. polysemic word D. complete homonyms 3. The sentence “John gave Mary a present” contains _______arguments.

A. no B. one C. two D. three 4.The meaning relationship between the two words “couch” and “table” is______.

A. synonymy B. polysemy C. hyponymy D. co-hyponym 5. A (n)_______is a logical participant in a predication.

A. argument B. predicate C. subject D. patient IV.

1. Offer respective antonym for each of the following and tell to which category they belong. 1.boy----- ( ) 2.wide------ 3.sell------ 4.thin------

5.interviewer------ 6.teacher----- 7.dead------ 8.lengthy------ 2. Name the category to which each of the following pairs of synonyms belong.

1. lift/elevator 2. kid/child/offspring 3. rotten/addled/sour 4. politician/statesman 5. escape/flee 6. amaze/astoud

3. Identify sense relation between the following pairs of sentences. 1) a. Carl was a bachelor all his life.

b. Carl never married all his life. 2） a. Ted bought two magazines.

b. Ted bought two things. 3) a. He has no sister.

b. His younger sister is beautiful.

Chp 6

1. Pragmatics treats the meaning of language as something intrinsic and inherent. 2. The meaning of a sentence is abstract, but context-dependent. 3. The meaning of an utterance is decontextualized, therefore stable. 4. Utterances always take the form of complete sentences.

5. Perlocutionary act is the act of expressing the speaker’s intention. II.

1. What essentially distinguishes s_______ and pragmatics is whether in the study of meaning the context of use is considered.

2. The notion of c_________ is essential to the pragmatic study of language. 3. The meaning of a sentence is a_______, and decontextualized.

4. C________ were statements that either state or describe, and were thus verifiable.

5. P________ were sentences that did not state a fact or describe a state, and were not verifiable. 6. A l_________ act is the act of uttering words, phrases, clauses. It is the act of conveying literal meaning by means of syntax, lexicon and phonology.

7. An i__________ act is the act of expressing the speaker’s intention; it is the act performed in saying something.

8. A c_________ is commit the speaker himself to some future course of action.

9. There are four maxims under the cooperative principle: the maxim of q_______, the maxim of quality, the maxim of relation and the maxim of manner. III.

1. The meaning of language was considered as something _______ in traditional semantics. A. contextual B. behaviouristic C. intrinsic D. logical

2. A sentence is a _________ concept, and the meaning of a sentence is often studied in isolation. A. pragmatic B. grammatical C. mental D. conceptual 3. Which of the following is true?

A. Utterances usually do not take the form of sentences.

B. Some utterances cannot be restored to complete sentences. C. No utterances can take the form of sentences.

D. All utterances can be restored to complete sentences.

4. A(n)_________ is the act performed by or resulting from saying something; it is the consequence of or the change brought about by the utterance.

A. locutionary act B. illocutionary act C. perlocutionary act D. performative act 5. When any of the maxims under the cooperative principle is flouted, _______ might arise. A. impoliteness B. contradictions C. misunderstanding D. conversational implicatures IV. What does pragmatics study? How does it differ from traditional semantics?

Chp 1

I. 1. abstract, realization 2. knowledge, realization 3. arbitrariness 4. displacement 5. sounds, words (descriptive - prescriptive; synchronic - diachronic) II. 1-3: F T T

Chp 2

I. 1. obstruction 2. voicing 3. diacritics 4. distinctive 5. two, one II. 1-5： F T F F F

# voicing 声带振动/清-浊音: [p] ≠ [b]: “peer” ≠ “beer” # (un-)aspirated 送气: /p/ : spheak = speak

Chp 3

I. 1. F 2. T 3. F 4. F 5.T 6. F

II. 1. inflectional, derivational 2. morphs 3. allomorphs 4. stem, root 5. lexical, grammatical 6. phonetic, orthographic, semantic, syntactic III. 1. number of morphemes

unselfishness (3) / justifiable (3) / descendent (3)/ overdeveloped (3)/ naturalistically (5) / friendships (3) / uninvitedly (4)

Chp 4

I. 1. F 2. T 3. T 4. T 5. T

II． 1. syntactic 2. finite 3. linear 4. embedded, matrix 5.binary

Chp 5

I. 1.F 2.F 3.T 4.F 5.T 6.T

II. 1. selection 2. gradable 3. polysemic 4. reference 5. hyponyms 6. relational 7. predication III. 1.B 2.B 3.D 4.D 5.A IV

1. 1. boy-girl / dead-alive (complementary antonym) 2. wide-narrow / thin-fat / lengthy-short (gradable antonym) 3. sell-buy / teacher-pupil / interviewer-interviewee (relational antonym) 2. 1. dialectal synonym 2. stylistic synonym 3. collocational synonym 4. emotive synonym

5-6. synonyms that differ in semantic shades

3. 1) synonymy 2) entailment 3) contradiction

Chp 6

I. 1-5： all F

II. semantics, context, abstract, Constatives, Performatives locutionary, illocutionary, commissive, quantity III. 1-5: C B B C D

Key to questions:

Chp 1

Design features refer to the defining properties of human language that distinguish it from any animal system communication. A framework was proposed by the American linguist Charles Hockett. He specified twelve design features, five of which will be discussed here.

a) Arbitrariness. This means that there is no logic connection between meanings and sounds. A good example is the fact that different sounds are used to refer to the same object in different languages. b) Productivity. Language is productive in that it makes possible the construction and interpretation of new signals by its users. c) Duality. Language is a system, which consists of two sets of structures, or two levels. d) Displacement. Language can be used to refer to things which are present or not present real or imagined matters in the past, present, or future, or in far-away places. In other words language can be used to refer to contexts removed from the immediate situations of the speaker. e) Cultural transmission. It refers to, on the one hand, human language has a genetic basis, in other words, we are born with the capacity to acquire human language; on the other hand, the details of any human language are passed on from one generation to the next by teaching and learning, rather than by gene.

Chp 2

The reason why a phoneme can distinguish meaning is that a phoneme is a collection of distinctive phonetic features. The sound in any human language has a few features, some of which are distinctive, some of which are not. These features include voicing, nasality, labiality, coronality (teeth range), dorsality(soft palate), aspiration and the others. Among them voicing, for instance, is distinctive, whereas aspiration is not. Because voicing as in the minimal pair “peer” and “beer” can distinguish meaning; while aspiration can only lead to different pronunciations rather than a new word, say, [thip] and [t=ip]. As a result of distinctive features, a phoneme is also distinctive. In a word, the features from which a phoneme is abstracted determine the distinctive quality of the phoneme.

Chp 3 2.

It is true that there is an interface / interdependent and interactional relationship between morphology and phonology. The study on the interface is called morphophonology or morphophonemics, which is a branch of linguistics referring to the analysis and classification of the phonological factors that affect the appearance of morphemes, and the grammatical factors that affect the appearance of phonemes. On the one hand, some allomorphs appear in a particular way which is determined by phonological factors, for instance, the allomorphs [-s] [-iz] of the morpheme {plural}. They are described as the derived forms from [-z] by the application of the assimilation rule and the epenthesis rule. On the other hand, occurrence of the following allomorphs --- [-ai] in mice, [-n] in oxen, [-i:] in geese, sheep is decided mainly by morphological factors.

Chp 4

III. 1.

1a. The cat ran up the tree.

S

NP VP

Det. N V PP

Prep. NP

Det. N The cat ran up the tree. 1b. The cat ate up the fish.

S

NP VP

Det. N V NP

V Prt.Det. N

The cat ate up the fish.

2. linear and hierarchical structures of sentence:

Language is a highly structured system of communication. Sentences are formed by following a set of syntactic rules. When a sentence is uttered or written down, the words of the sentence are produced one after another in a sequence. Meanwhile they are heard or read as arranged one after another in a sequence. Therefore the structure of a sentence is firstly linear, for example, Susan is practising dancing in the hall. However, the superficial arrangement of words in a linear sequence doesn’t entail that sentences are only linearly structured. In fact, sentences are also organized by grouping together words of the same syntactic category, such as NP or VP which can be replaced by another element of the same category. The various syntactic categories in a sequence determine that sentences are also hierarchically structured.

In a word, the two structures which a sentence has are, in nature, decided by the syntagmatic and paradigmatic relations of language system.

Chp 6 V.

Pragmatics studies how meaning is conveyed in the process of communication. The basic difference between pragmatics and traditional semantics is that pragmatics considers meaning in context and traditionally semantics studies meaning in isolation from the context of use.

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