北京外国语大学中国外语教育研究中心2008年博士生招生考试试卷（A卷）（刘润清）Directions: Answer any FOUR of the following questions, each bearing 25 points out of 100. Your answers will be evaluated in terms of both theircontent and Ian guage. Please write very clearly.I Define TEN of the followi ng terms and the n tran slate them into Chin ese.I.register 2. dialect 3. li nguistic pote ntial 4. critical period hypothesis5. displaceme nt6. duality of structure7. extrapositi on8. gradual adjective9. deducti on 10. idiolect 11. lateralizatio n 12. retrospect ion13. pho neme 14. right branching direct ion 15. rule-gover ned behavior16. speech syn thesis 17. behaviourism 18. null operator moveme nt19. story grammar 20. traditi onal grammarII.Read carefully the followi ng passage take n from Saussure ' Course in GeneralLinguistics and then discuss its importanee in exploring the nature of Ian guage.Lan guage is a system of sig ns that express ideas, and is therefore comparable to a system of writing, the alphabet of deaf-mutes, symbolic rites, polite formulas, military signals, etc. But it is the most importa nt of all these systems.A scie nce that studies the life of sig ns within society is con ceivable; it would be a part of social psychology and con seque ntly of gen eral psychology; I shall call it semiology. Semiologywould show what con stitutes sig ns, what laws gover n them. Since the scie nce does not yet exist, no one can say what it would be; but it has a right to existence, a place staked out in advance. Linguistics is only a part of the general science of semiology; the laws discovered by semiology will be applicable to linguistics, and the latter will circumscribe a well-defined area within the mass of an thropological facts.To determine the exact place of semiology is the task of the psychologist. The task of the lin guist is to find out what makes Ian guage a special system with in the mass of semiological data. This issue will be taken up again later; here I wish merely to call attention to one thing: if I have succeeded in assigning linguistics a place among the science, it is because I have related it to semiology.III.The following passage is taken from Halliday ' An Introduction to FunctionalGrammar. Read it carefully, expla in what every sentence mea ns and the n comme nt on his theory of Ian guage.The basic oppositi on, in grammars of the sec ond half of the twen tieth cen tury, is not that betwee n 'structuralist' and 'generative' as set out the public debates of the 1960s.There are manyvariables in the way grammars are written, and any clustering of these is bound to distort the picture; but the more fundamental opposition is between those that are primarily syntagmatic in orientation (by and large the formal grammars, with their roots in logic and philosophy) and those that are primarily paradigmatic (by and large the functional ones, with their roots in rhetoric and ethnography) The former interpret a language as a list of structures, among which, as a distinct second step, regular relationships may be established (hence the introduction of transformations); they tend to emphasize universal features of language, to take grammar (which they call syntax) as the foundation of language (hence the grammar is arbitrary), and so to be organized around the sentence. The later interpret a language as a network of relations, with structurescoming in as the realization of these relationships; they tend to emphasize variables among differentlanguages, to take semantics as the foundation (hence the grammar is natural) and so to be organized around the text, or discourse, There are many cross-currents, with insights borrowed from one to the other; but they are ideologically fairly different and it is often difficult to maintain a dialogue.IV.The following passage is take from Peter Barb's Word Play: What Happens When People Talk (1973). Read it carefully and then comment on linguistic relativity.Such a connection between language and thought is rooted in common-sense beliefs, but no one gave much attention to the matter before Wilhelm von Humboldt, the 19th century German philologist and diplomat. He statedthat the structure of a language expresses the inner life of its speakers: "Man lives with the world abut him, principally, indeed exclusively, as language presents it." In this century, the case for a close relationship between language and reality was stated by Edward Sapir: "Human beings d not live in the objective world alone, nor alone in the world of social activity as ordinarily understood, but are very much at the mercy of the particular Ianguage which has become the medium for their society. The fact of the matter is that the 'real world' is to a large extent built up on the language habits of the group. No two languages are ever sufficiently similar to be considered as representing the same social reality. The worlds in which different societies live are distinct worlds, not merely the same world with different labels attached."About 1932 one of Sapir's students at Yale, Benjamin Lee Whorf, drew on Sapir's ideas and began an intensive study of the language of the Hopi Indians of Arizona. Whorf's brilliant analysis of Hopi places common-sense beliefs about language and thought on a scientific basis -- and it also seemed to support the view that man is a prisoner of his language. Whorf concluded that language "is not merely a reproducing instrument for voicing ideas but rather is itself the shaper of ideas. … we dissect nature along lines laid down by ourartive Ianguages."V.Please give the main content of Grice's Cooperative Principle with its four maxims explained and then discuss conversational implicatures of Group A (in which no maxim is violated), Group B (in which a maxim is violated), and Group C (in which a maxim is flouted by means ofa figure of speech).VI.The following is a passage by Chomsky. Read it carefully and then discuss th e difference between Chomsky's theory of linguistics and other approaches in linguistics.Generative grammar arose in the context of what is often called “the cognitive revolutionthe 1950s, and was an important factor in its development. Whether or not the term“ revol uappropriate, there was an important change of perspective: from the study of behavior and its products (such as texts), to the inner mechanisms that enter into thought and action. The cognitive perspective regards behavior and its products not as the object of inquiry, but as data that may provide evidence about the inner mechanisms of mind and the ways these mechanisms operate in executing actions and interpreting experience. The properties and patterns that were the focus of attention in structural linguistics find their place, but as phenomena to be explained along with innumerable others, in terms of the inner mechanisms that generate expressions. The approach is“ mentalistic, ” but in what should be an uncontroversial sense. It is concerned with “m of the world, ”which stand alongside its mechanical, chemical, optical, and other aspects. It undertakes to study a real object in the natural world —the brain, its states, and its functions —and thus to move the study of the mind toward eventual integration with the biological science.(Chomsky, N. 2000. New Horizons in the Study of Language and Mind)VII.The following is taken from Bloomfield's Language about the famous story of Jack and Jill which is often quoted to illustrate Bloomfield's behaviorism inlinguistics. Read it carefully and discuss how Bloomfield explains the process of stimulus and response and point out where he is wrong.Suppose that Jack and Jill are walking down a lane. Jill is hungry. She sees an apple in a tree. She makes a noise with her larynx, tongue and lips. Jack vaults the fence, climbs the tree, take the apple, brings it to Jill, and places it in her hand. Jill eats the apple.This succession of events could be studies in many ways, but we, who are studying language, will naturally distinguish between the act of speech and the other occurrences, which we shall call practical events . Viewed in this way, the incident consists of three parts in order of time:A.Practical events preceding the act of speech.B.Speech.C.Practical events following the act of speech.We shall examine first the practical events: A and C. The events in A concern mainly the speaker, Jill. She was hungry; that is, some of her muscles were contracting, and some fluids were being secreted, especially in her stomach. Perhaps she was also thirsty; her tongue and throat were dry. The light-waves reflected from the red apple struck her eyes. She saw Jack by her side. Her past dealings with Jack should now enter into the picture; ket us suppose that they consisted in some ordinary relation, like that of brother and sister or that of husband and wife. All these events, which precede Jill's speech and concern her, we call the speaker's stimulus.We now turn to C, the practical events which came after Jill's speech. These concern mainly the hearer, Jack, and consist of his fetching the apple and giving it to Jill. The practical events which follow the speech and concern the hearer, we call the hearer's response. The events which follow the speech concern also Jill, and this in very important way: she gets the apple into hergrasp and eats it.。