2006年中国人民大学816英语语言学与英语教学考研真题及详解I. Fill in the blanks with the right linguistic concepts (22 points).1. Saussure distinguished the linguistic competence of the speaker and the actual phenomena or data of linguistics (utterances) as (1) and (2) . The former refers to the abstract linguistic system shared by all the members of a speech community, and the latter is the concrete manifestation of language either through speech or through writing.2. (3) grammars attempt to tell what is in the language, while (4) grammars tell people what should be in the language. Most contemporary linguists believe that whatever occurs naturally in the language should be described.3. (5) studies how the speech sounds are made, transmitted, and received, and (6) studies the rules governing the structure, distribution and sequencing of speech sounds and the shape of syllables.4. Words which have different meanings but are written differently and sound alike are called (7) .5. One of the important distinctions in linguistics is (8) and performance.6. There are two fields of morphology: the study of (9) and the study of (10) .7. “The world is like a stage” is an example of(11) , and “All the world isa stage” is an example o-f (12) . They are often used in analyzing features of literary language.8. (13) studies meaning in language, (14) s about principles of forming and understanding correct English sentences, and (15) is concerned with the internal organization of words. They are all among the main branches of linguistics.9. (16) is the study of the language-processing mechanisms. It is concerned with the storage, comprehension, production and acquisition of language; (17) , on the other hand, attempts to show the relationship between language and society. They both belong to branches of macrolinguistics.10. The part of linguistics that studies the language of literature is called (18) . It focuses on the study of linguistic features related to literary style.11. Children frequently say tooths and mouses, instead of teeth and mice. These are examples of (19) .12. (20) is a relatively complex form of compounding in which a new word is formed by joining the initial part of one word and the final part of another word.For example, the English word smog is made from (21) and (22) .答案：(1) langue (2) parole (3) descriptive (4) prescriptive (5) phonetics(6) phonology (7) homophones (8) competence (9) inflectional(10) lexical/derivational (11) simile (12) metaphor (13) semantics (14) syntax(15) morphology (16) psycholinguistics (17) sociolinguistics (18) stylistics(19) overgeneralization (20) blending (21) smoke (22) fogII. Give brief definitions of the following terms (18 points).1. Phoneme2. CALL3. IC analysis4. Linguistic relativity5. Silent period6. Gradable antonym答案：1. Phoneme. It refers to the abstract element of sound, identified as being distinctive in a particular language. For example, in English, /p/ is described as a phoneme.2. CALL. It is the abbreviation of computer-assisted language learning, which refers to the use of a computer in the teaching or learning of a second or foreign language. In this kind of CALL programs, the computer leads the student through a learning task step-by-step, asking questions to check comprehension. Depending on the student’s response, the computer gives the student further practice or progresses to new material.3. IC analysis. IC analysis (immediate constituent analysis) refers to the analysis of a sentence in terms of its immediate constituents---word groups(or phrases),which are in turn analyzed into the immediate constituents of their own, and the process goes on until the ultimate constituents are reached. In practice, for the sake of convenience, we usually stop at the level of word.4. Linguistic relativity. This is one of two points in Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. It states that similarity between languages is relative, the greater their structural differentiation is, the more diverse their conceptualization of the world is. For example, not every language has the same set of words for the colors; in Spanish there is no word that corresponds to the English meaning of “blue”.5. Silent period. It refers to a period in the initial phase of the language acquisition process, during which children acquiring a new language in natural settings are silent and concentrate on comprehension. And they may respond, if necessary, only in a non-verbal way or by making use of a set of memorized phrases. This phenomenon is also observed when we see how children acquire their mother tongue.6. Gradable antonym. Gradable antonyms are antonyms that are gradable because there are often intermediate forms between the two members of a pair. For example, cold and warm constitute a pair of gradable antonyms.III. Give Short answers to the following questions (40 points):1. In what ways do people cooperate in their conversations?答案：In daily conversations people do not usually say things directly but tend to imply them, and according to Grice, they seem to observe willingly or unwillingly certain principle, which is called “cooperative principle”: “Make your conversational contribution such as is required, at the stage at which it occurs，by the accepted purpose or direction of the talk exchange in which you are engaged”. Under this principle, there are four maxims, namely, Quantity, Quality, Relation, and Manner.2. How is the illocutionary act different from the perlocutionary act?答案：An illocutionary act is the act of expressing the speaker’s intention; it is the act performed in saying something. Thus, if someone says “Morning”, we can ask questions like “What did he mean?” and the answer could be “He offered a greeting.”A perlocutionary act, however, is the effect of the utterance. By telling somebody something the speaker may change the opinion of the hearer on something, or mislead him, or surprise him, or induce him to do something, and so on. Therefore, the perlocutionary act of the saying “Morning” could be to keep friendly relations with the hearer.3. Why did Chomsky make the distinction between deep and Surface structures? 答案：In generative grammar, deep structure is the abstract syntacticrepresentation of a sentence, the underlying level of structural organization which specifies all the factors governing the way the sentence should be interpreted. On the other hand, surface structure is the final stage in the syntactic representation of a sentence, which provides the input to the phonological component of the grammar, and which thus most closely corresponds to the structure we articulate and hear.According to Chomsky, it is necessary to make the distinction, since it is helpful to differentiate and analyze syntactic structures such as “John is easy to please”and “John is eager to please”, and also to disambiguate structures like “the shooting of the hunters”. More importantly, it reflects two of the stages of how the language is processed through the generative grammar: the deep structure, which an underlying structure, has to be transformed to the surface structure via a set of transformational rules.4. What are the major concerns of pragmatics?答案：Pragmatics is the study of the language in use. It is mainly about how speakers use language appropriately and effectively in accordance with a given context. It is concerned with the study of meaning as communicated by a speaker (or writer) and interpreted by a listener (or reader). It has more to do with participants of communication and context in which communication takes place. Hence the study of speaker meaning, that of contextual meaning, of what is unsaid but communicated.。