精品文档Linguistics:I. Directions: Read each of the following statements carefully. Decide which one of the four choices bestcompletes the statement and put the letter A, B, C or D in the brackets1. ( ) The study of language as a whole is often called __________ linguistics.A. particularB. generalC. ordinaryD. generative2. ( ) __________ can be simply defined as the speech sounds we use when speaking a language.A. PhonesB. SoundsC. PhonemesD. Speech sounds3. ( ) The two clauses in a __________ sentence are structurally equal parts of the sentence.A. simpleB. completeC. complexD. coordinate4. ( ) The goal of __________ is to explore the nature of language variation and language use among avariety of speech communities and indifferent social situations.A. psycholinguisticsB. sociolinguisticsC. historical linguisticsD. general linguistics5. ( ) A __________ vowel is one that is produced with the front part of the tongue maintaining the highestposition.A. backB. centralC. frontD. middle6. ( ) The open, back and long vowel is __________.A.［ɑ：］B.［?：］C.［?：］D.［u:］7. ( ) Language change is universal, continuous and, to a considerable extent __________.A. regular but not systematicB. irregular and systematicC. regular and systematicD. irregular but systematic8. ( ) A scientific study of language is based on the __________ investigation of language data.A. symbolicB. systemicC. systematicD. system9. ( ) __________ are sometimes called “semivowels”.A. vowelsB. fricativeC. glidesD. nasals10. ( ) __________ is a typical tone language.A. EnglishB. ChineseC. FrenchD. American English11. ( ) A sentence is considered __________ when it conforms to the grammatical knowledge in the mind ofnative speakers.A. rightB. wrongC. grammaticalD. ungrammatical12. ( ) The number of the lexical items in the minor lexical categories is __________ and no new membersare allowed for.A. largeB. smallC. limitlessD. fixed13. ( ) Human beings are the only species that learns and acquires language__________ explicit instruction.A. withB. withoutC. withinD. through14. ( ) According to F. de Saussure, __________ refers to the abstract linguistic system shared by allmembers of a speech community.A. paroleB. performanceC. langueD. language15. ( ) Acoustic phoneticians try to describe the __________ properties of the stream of sounds which aspeaker issues.A. oralB. mentalC. physicalD. recorded16. ( ) __________ is concerned with all the sounds that occur in the world's languages.A. PhonologyB. PhoneticsC. MorphologyD. Phonemics17. ( ) __________ transcription is really the transcription required and used by the phoneticians in theirstudy of speech sounds.A. BroadB. DetailedC. WideD. Narrow精品文档．精品文档18. ( ) The word “motel”is formed via word formation rule of __________.A. clippingB. blendingC. acronymD. coinage19. ( ) If a linguistic study aims to lay down rules for “correct”behavior, i.e., to tell people what theyshould say and what they should not say, it is said to be __________.A. productiveB. arbitraryC. prescriptiveD. creative20. ( ) __________, the stress of a compound always falls on the first element, while the second elementreceives secondary stress.A. OrthographicallyB. PhoneticallyC. SemanticallyD. Syntactically21. ( ) __________ is a subfield of linguistics that studies the sentence structure of language.A. MorphologyB. SyntaxC. LexicologyD. Coordination22. ( ) __________ is a kind of abbreviation of otherwise longer words or phrases.A. AbbreviationB. AcronymC. ClippingD. Blending23. ( ) Those that affect the syntactic category and the meaning of the root as well are __________.A. stemsB. affixesC. suffixesD. prefixes.24. ( ) __________ refers to the process by which new words are formed by the addition of affixes to theroots, stems, or words.A. DerivationB. CompoundingC. BlendingD. Back formation25. ( ) Since the phonetic contrast between /k/ in the word “kill”and /k/ in the word “coal”is not adistinctive one, the two /k/-s are only __________.A. phonemesB. phonesC. segmentsD. allophones26. ( ) When /p/ and /b/ occur in the same environments and distinguish meaning, they are in__________.A. minimal pairB. minimal setC. phonemic contrastD. complementary distribution27. ( ) __________ at the end of stems can modify the meaning of the original word and in many caseschange its part of speech.A. RootsB. PrefixesC. SuffixesD. Free morphemes28. ( ) As /k/ in the word “came”and /g/ in the word “game”are said to form a distinctive opposition inEnglish, they are __________.A. soundsB. phonemesC. allophonesD. varieties29. ( ) The sounds produced without the vocal cords vibrating are __________ sounds.A. consonantalB. voicedC. vowelD. voiceless30. ( ) __________ are added to an existing form to create a word, which is a very common way to createnew words in English.A. Inflectional affixesB. Free morphemeC. Derivational affixesD. Stems31. ( ) __________ is a process of semantic change in which a word loses its former meaning and acquires anew, sometimes related meaning.A. Semantic narrowingB. Semantic broadeningC. Semantic borrowingD. Semantic shift32. ( ) __________ studies how sounds are put together to convey meaning in communication.A. PhonologyB. MorphologyC. LexicologyD. Phonetics33. ( ) Stress in English is used to __________ semantically important words.A. signalB. stand outC. identifyD. single34. ( ) __________ refers to the physiological effect of one sound on another.A. Sound assimilationB. Internal borrowingC. ElaborationD. Rule simplification35. ( ) A compound word consists of __________.A. two or more than two wordsB. two morphemesC. two root morphemesD. two or more morphemes精品文档．精品文档36. ( ) Of all the speech organs, the ___ is/are the most flexible.A. mouthB. lipsC. tongueD. vocal cords37. ( ) “alive”and “dead”are ______________.A. gradable antonymsB. relational oppositesC. complementary antonymsD. None of the above38. ( )The meaning carried by the inflectional morpheme is _______.A. lexicalB. grammaticalC. morphemicD. semanticII. Directions: Fill in the blanks in each of the following statements with one word, the first letter of which is already given as a clue. Note that you are to fill in ONE word only, and you are not allowed tochange the letter given.1. English is an i__________ language.2. The affixes occurring at the beginning of a word are called p__________.3. IPA stands for International Phonetic A__________.4. The phonemic features that occur above the level of the segments are called s__________ features.5. C__________ is a process of combining two or more words into one lexical unit.6. P__________ studies language in relation to the mind.7. Human capacity for language has a g______ basis, but the details of language have to be taught and learned.8. If a linguistic study describes and analyzes the language people actually use, it is said to bed__________.9. P__________ is interested in the system of sounds of a particular language.10. F__________ morphemes are independent units of meaning and can be used freely all by themselves.11. B__________ is a process of forming a new word by combining parts of other words.12. An English speaker and Chinese speaker are both able to use a language, but they are not mutually intelligible. This is a case of c__________ transmission.13. C__________ distribution means that the allophones of the same phoneme always occur in differentphonetic environments.14. Affixes like “im-”, “il-”, “un-”, “-tion”, “-or”, “-hood”, are called d______ affixes.15. The two clauses in a complex sentence hold unequal status, one s__________ the other.16. Modern linguistics gives priority to the s__________ form of language.17. A bound r__________ can never stand by itself although it bears clear, definite meaning.18. Language is p_____ in that it makes possible the construction and interpretation of new signals by its users.19. P_________ occur at the beginning of a word and suffixes at the end.20. Historical linguists are concerned with the historical d__________ of languages and the processes involvedin language change.21. Linguistics is generally defined as the s__________ study of language.22. D__________ means that language can be used to refer to things which present or not present, real orimagined matters in the past, present , or future, or in faraway places.23. The sequential order of words in a sentence suggests that the structure of a sentence isl__________.24. Lying across the glottis are the v__________ cords, which are not really cords or strings as the nameindicates, but two membranes.25. S_________ is the sub-discipline of linguistics that studies the social significance of language variation andlanguage use in different speech communities including regional, ethnic and social groups.26 I__________ affixes manifest various grammatical relations or grammatical categories such as number,degree, and case.27. A d__________ study of language is a historical study; it studies the historical development of languageover a period of time.28. In terms of morphemic analysis, c__________ can be viewed as the combination of two or sometimes more精品文档．精品文档than two words to create new words.29. An acronym is a word created by combining the i__________ letters of a number of words.30 The description of a language as it changes through time is a d__________ study.31. The study of all these social aspects of language and its relation with society is known ass__________.32. O__________, a compound can be written as one word with or without a hyphen in between, or as twoseparate words.33. When pitch, stress and sound length are tied to the sentence rather than the word in isolation, they arecollectively known as i__________.34. The long vowels are all t__________ vowels and the short vowels are l__________ vowels.35. A s__________ community is a group of people who form a community and share the same language or aparticular variety of language.36. When two different forms are identical in every way except for one sound segment which occurs in thesame place in the strings, the two words are said to form a m__________ pair.37. Language is a system of a__________ vocal symbols used for human communication.38. Normally a sentence consists of at least a subject and its predicate which contains a f__________ verb or averb phrase.39. Chomsky defines competence as the ideal user's k__________ of the rules of his language.40. The four sounds /p/,/b/,/m/ and /w/ have one feature in common, i.e, they are allb______________ .41. M_____________ is a branch of grammar which studies the internal structure of words and the rules bywhich words are formed.42. S________ can be defined as the study of meaning.43. The conceptualist view holds that there is no d______ link between a linguistic form and what it refers to.44. R______ means what a linguistic form refers to in the real, physical world; it deals with the relationshipbetween the linguistic element and the non-linguistic world of experience.45. Words that are close in meaning are called s________.46. When two words are identical in sound, but different in spelling and meaning, they are calledh__________.47.R_________ opposites are pairs of words that exhibit the reversal of a relationship between the two items.48. A s________ sentence consists of a single clause which contains a subject and a predicate and stands aloneas its own sentence.49. A s______ may be a noun or a noun phrase in a sentence that usually precedes the predicate.Ⅲ. Directions: Judge whether each of the following statements is true or false. Put a T for true or F for false in the brackets in front of each statement.1. ( ) Modern linguistics is mostly descriptive, but sometimes prescriptive.2. ( ) Distinctive features are the same to any language.3. ( ) One of the clauses in a coordinate sentence is subordinate to the other.4. ( ) In English and many other languages, the subject usually follows the verb and the direct object usuallyprecedes the verb.5. ( ) The most vigorous and on going change in the historical development of a language is the change in itsvocabulary.6. ( ) SLA stands for second language acquisition.7. ( ) The writing system of any language is always a later invention, used to record the speech.8. ( ) Both phonology and phonetics are studies of speech sounds.9. ( ) The root of a word is the smallest meaningful unit of language.10. ( ) Historical linguistics studies language change.11. ( ) Language is a social activity carried out in a certain social environment by human beings.12. ( ) A synchronic study of language is a historical study.精品文档．精品文档13. ( ) The structure of words is not governed by rules.14. ( ) Epenthesis is a change that involves the insertion of a consonant or a vowel sound to the middle of aword.15. ( ) Language is vocal because the primary medium is sound for all languages.16 ( ) Phonology is defined as the study of the phonic medium of language; it is concerned with all thesounds that occur in the world's languages.17. ( ) Depending on the context in which stress is considered, there are two kinds of stress: word stress andsentence stress.18. ( ) WH movement is obligatory in English which changes a sentence from affirmative to interrogative.19. ( ) Morphology and syntax study the same aspect of language.20. ( ) Stress is a relative notion; only words with two or more syllables can be said to have word stress, andmonosyllabic words can not be said to have word stress.21. ( ) Free morphemes are the same as bound morphemes.22. ( ) Language change is different from the change in the grammar.23. ( ) An acronym is a shortened form of a word or phrase which represents the complete form.24. ( ) Some languages are more challenging to acquire as a native language.25. ( ) The ultimate objective of language is to create grammatically well formed sentences.26. ( ) Suffixes, in contrast with prefixes, are added to the end of stems.27. ( ) Sound assimilation refers to the physiological effect of one sound on another.28. ( ) It is the property of arbitrariness that provides speakers with an opportunity to talk about a wide rangeof things, free from barriers caused by separation in time and place.29. ( ) When language users use it to convey information, thoughts and feelings from one person to anotheror as an attempt to control each other's behavior, we think that language is now functioning as a means of intrapersonal communication.30. ( ) A scientific study of language is based on what the linguist thinks.31. ( ) The location of one of the suprasegmental features in English —stress does distinguish meaning.32. ( ) Most English words are closed categories because the number of the lexical items in these categoriesis fixed and no new members are allowed for, so they are known as major lexical categories.33. ( ) Language as the most important tool for human communication is both an open system and a closedsystem as well. It is closed because its forms in terms of sentences are regular, stable and context free. It is open because of its being variable, and context sensitive.34. ( ) What any individual speaker says within the same speech community is known as idiolect.35. ( ) A coordinate sentence contains two clauses which hold unequal status, that is, with one subordinatingthe other.36. ( ) It seems that with the help of language people may “think”better, and here it is believed thatlanguage is exerting its function of interpersonal communication.37. ( ) General linguistics studies the basic concepts, theories, descriptions, models and methods applicablein any linguistic study.38. ( ) Languages vary in the order of the subject, the verb and the object.39. ( ) The distinction between Saussure's langue and Chomsky's competence lies in that the former is amatter of social conventions while the latter emphasizes the property of the mind of each individual.40. ( ) Words are the smallest unit of language that can not be broken down into even smaller components.41. ( ) Blending is a process of combining two or more words into one lexical unit.42. ( ) Phonetics deals with how sounds are put together and used to convey meaning.43. ( ) Linguistic performance is essentially a social phenomenon but not a context dependent behavior.44. ( ) There are actually many other communicative systems rather than human language that are also rule精品文档．精品文档governed.45. ( ) Morphology is divided into three sub-branches: inflectional morphology, lexical morphology andderivational morphology.46. ( ) In some sense we may use the term diachronic linguistics instead of historical linguistics.47. ( ) The greatest source of modification of the air stream is found in the oral cavity.48. ( ) Both phonology and phonetics are studies of sound though they have different emphases.49. ( ) Generally speaking, the standard language is more effective in expressing ideas than any other dialectcoexisting with it.50. ( ) Major lexical categories are open categories.51. ( ) The most dramatic morphological loss concerns the loss of gender markings only.52. ( ) In modern linguistic studies, the written form of language is given more emphasis than the spokenform for a number of reasons.53. ( ) V oicing is a phonological feature that distinguishes meaning in both Chinese and English.54. ( ) The compound word ookstore is the place where books are sold. This indicates that the meaning ofa compound is the sum total of the meanings of its components.55. ( ) Dialectal synonyms can often be found in different regional dialects such as British English andAmerican English but cannot be found within the variety itself, for example, within British English or American English.56. ( ) Sense is concerned with the relationship between the linguistic element and thenon-linguistic worldof experience, while the reference deals with the inherent meaning of the linguistic form.57. ( ) Linguistic forms having the same sense may have different references in different situations.58. ( ) In semantics, meaning of language is considered as the intrinsic and inherent relation to the physicalworld of experience.IV. Explain the following terms briefly:1. Design feature: Design features refer to the defining properties of human language that distinguish it from any animal system of communication, such as arbitrariness, duality, creativity, displacement, cultural transmission, etc.2. Synchronic: a kind of description which takes a fixed instant (usually, but not necessarily, the present), as itspoint of observation. Most grammars are of this kind.3. Diachronic: study of a language is carried through the course of its history.4. Prescriptive: a kind of linguistic study in which things are prescribed how ought to be, i.e. laying down rulesfor language use.5. Descriptive: a kind of linguistic study in which things are just described.6. Arbitrariness: one design feature of human language, which refers to the fact that the forms of linguisticsigns bear no natural relationship to their meaning.7. Duality: The duality nature of language means that language is a system, which consists of two sets ofstructure, or two levels, one of sounds and the other of meanings.8. Displacement: one design feature of human language, which means human language enable their users tosymbolize objects, events and concepts which are not present in time and space, at the moment of communication.9. Creativity(创造性): one design feature of human language ,by creativity we mean language is resourcefulbecause of its duality and its reccursiveness.petence: competence means the language user's underlying knowledge about the system of rules.11. Performance: according to Chomsky, performance means the actual use of language in concrete situations.12. Langue: According to Saussure, langue refers to the linguistic competence of the speaker.13. Parole: According to Saussure, parole refers to the actual phenomena or data of linguistics (utterances).精品文档．精品文档14. Consonant: Consonants are sound segments produced by constricting or obstructing the vocal tract atsome place to divert, impede, or completely shut off the flow of air in the oral cavity. 15．Articulatory phonetics: the study of production of speech sounds.16．Coarticulation: a kind of phonetic process in which simultaneous or overlapping articulations are involved..Coarticulation can be further divided into anticipatory coarticulation and perseverative coarticulation. 17．Broad and narrow transcription: the use of a simple set of symbols in transcription is called broad transcription; while, the use of more specific symbols to show more phonetic detail is referred to as narrowtranscription.18. Phone: the speech sounds we hear and produce during linguistic communication are all phones. It's aphonetic unit or segment.19. Phoneme: A sound which is capable of distinguishing one word or one shape of a word from another in agiven language is a phoneme. It's a basic unit in phonological analysis. It is not any particular sound, but anabstract segment. In actual speech, a phoneme is realized phonetically as a certain phone. (the sound type in themind) The phoneme is the smallest meaning-distinguishing unit.20. Allophone: the phones which are versions of one phoneme are referred to as the allophones of that phoneme.21. Minimal pairs: When two different forms are identical in every way except for one sound segment,whichoccurs in the same place in the strings, the two sound combinations are said to form a minimal pair. 22. V owel: are sound segments produced without such obstruction, so no turbulence of a total stopping of theair can be perceived.23. Complementary distribution: the relation between tow speech sounds that never occur in the same environment. Allophones of the same phoneme are usually in complementary distribution.24. Assimilation: a process by which one sound takes on some or all the characteristics of a neighboring sound.There are two possibilities of assimilation: if a following sound is influencing a preceding sound, we call itregressive assimilation; the converse process, in which a preceding sound is influencing a following sound, isknow as progressive assimilation.25. Phonetics: Phonetics is defined as the study of the phonic medium of language; it is concerned with all thesounds that occur in the world's languages. What it studies includes the organs of speech, transcription, classification of speech sounds etc.26. Intonation: When pitch, stress and sound length are tied to the sentence rather than the word in isolation,they are collectively known as intonation. Intonation plays an important role in conveying meaning in almostevery language, especially in a language like English, which has four basic types of intonation known as thefour tones: the falling tone, the rising tone, the fall-rise tone and the rise-fall tone.27. Suprasegmental: aspects of speech that involve more than single sound segments. The principle suprasegmental features are syllable, stress, tone, and intonation.28. Morpheme: The smallest meaningful components at the lowest level of a word are called morphemes, suchas “man”, “-ly”, “teach”“-er”, “dark”, and “-en”in “manly”, “teacher”and “darken”. The meaning morphemesconvey may be of two kinds: lexical meaning such as “man”, “-ly”, “teach”, “-er”and grammatical meaningsuch as “-es”, “-ed”, and “-ing”in “teaches”“played”and “raining”.29. Grammatical words: words expressing grammatical meanings, such conjunction, prepositions, articles andpronouns.30. Open-class: a word whose membership is in principle infinite or unlimited, such as nouns, verbs, adjectives,and many adverbs.31. Affix: the collective term for the type of formative that can be used only when added to another morpheme(the root or stem).32. Root: the base from of a word that cannot further be analyzed without total lass of identity.精品文档．精品文档33. Compounds: Compounds are compound morphemic words which consist wholly of free morphemes, suchas classroom, blackboard, snow-white, etc.34. Bound morpheme: an element of meaning which is structurally dependent on the world it is added to, e.g.the plural morpheme in “dog's”35. Blending: a relatively complex form of compounding, in which two words are blended by joining the initialpart of the first word and the final part of the second word, or by joining the initial parts of the two words.36. Loanword: a process in which both form and meaning are borrowed with only a slight adaptation, in somecases, to the phonological system of the new language that they enter.37. Syntax is the study of how words combine to form sentences and the rules which govern the formation ofsentences.38. Constituent: a term used in structural analysis for every linguistic unit, which is a part of a larger linguisticunit.39. Immediate constituent analysis: the analysis of a sentence in terms of its immediate constituents---wordgroups(or phrases),which are in turn analyzed into the immediate constituents of their own, and the processgoes on until the ultimate constituents are reached.40. Endocentric construction: one construction whose distribution is functionally equivalent, or approachingequivalence, to one of its constituents, which serves as the centre, or head, of the whole. Hence an endocentricconstruction is also known as a headed construction.41. Eexocentric construction: a construction whose distribution is not functionally equivalent to any to any ofits constituents.42. Category: parts of speech and function, such as the classification of words in terms of parts of speech, theidentification of terms of parts of speech, the identification of functions of words in term of subject, predicate,etc.43. Semantics: Semantics can be simply defined as the study of meaning in language.44. Sense: Sense is concerned with the inherent meaning of the linguistic form. It is the collection of all thefeatures of the linguistic form; it is abstract and de -contextualised.45. Reference:Reference means what a linguistic form refers to in the real, physical world; it deals with therelationship between the linguistic element and the non-linguistic world of experience46. Synonymy : Synonymy refers to the sameness or close similarity of meaning.Questions:V.1. What are the major functions of language?Language function means the use of language to communicate, to think, etc. Language functions includeinformative function, interpersonal function, performative function, interpersonal function, performativefunction, emotive function, phatic communion, recreational function and metalingual function.2. Describe the four design features of language with examples.3. State briefly how consonants are classified.Three parameters are involved in classifying a consonant/ Consonants are classified according to the followingthree parameters:①place of articulation: place in the mouth where obstruction occurs: bi-labial, labio-dental, alveolar, etc②manners of articulation: ways in which articulation can be accomplished: plosive, fricative, nasal, etc③state of vocal cords: if the vocal cords vibrate or not: voiced and voiceless consonants.3. How are simple vowels classified?There are four ways to classify simple vowels:①According to the height of tongue raising: high, middle, low②According to the position of the highest part of the tongue: front, central, back③According to the shape of the lips (the degree of lip-rounding): rounded, unrounded精品文档．精品文档④According to the length or tenseness of the vowel : tense vs. lax or long vs. short4. Compare phone and phoneme.we hear and produce during linguistic communication. It's A Phone refers to any of the possible speech soundsa phonetic unit or segment. it is the smallest identifiable unit found in the stream of speech. Phoneme: A sound which is capable of distinguishing one word or one shape of a word from another in a givencontrastive unit in phonological analysis. It is not any particular sound, but language is a phoneme. It's a basican abstract segment. In actual speech, a phoneme is realized phonetically as a certain phone. (the sound type inthe mind) The phoneme is the smallest meaning-distinguishing unit.5. What are the three senses of words?The three senses of words include the followinga. A physically definable unit: word may be seen as a cluster of sound segments or letters between two pausesor blanks.b. Both a general term and a specific term: Word is the common factor underlying a set of forms, a unit ofvocabulary, a lexical item, or a lexeme.。