第4章英语语言结构（I）课后习题详解Check your understanding.State whether each of the following statements is True or False.(1) Word order plays an important role in the organization of English sentences. 【答案】T(2) All ambiguous sentences result from our failure to use proper organization. 【答案】F(3) With transformations, we can organize a sentence the way we like.【答案】F(4) Like English, modern Chinese is a SVO language.【答案】TIn-Class Activities1. Natural language is said to differ from animals’ communication systems along many lines. For example, it is characterized by its recursive property; in other words, there is no limit to the potential length of sentences, and the set of sentences of any language is infinite. There are a variety of means that enable recursion. Here are the illustrations for some of them in English:a. Jane visited John’s brother’s wife’s mother’s father’s cousin’s friend’sstore. (NP recursion)b. The very seedy battered rundown old red wooden shack fell down. (AP recursion)c. Jane wants to begin to try to learn to write novels in English. (VP recursion)d. John likes the brightness of the coloring of the lettering on the cover of Jane’s report. (PP recursion)Ask(1) Can you think of other modes of recursion?Key: Relative-clause recursion.(2) Give one example of VP recursion.Key: Begin planning to learn to swim.2. The sentence Jane made John a good husband because she made him a good wife looks interesting because the two parts of the sentence linked by “because”seem to share the same surface structure but differ in their deep or underlying structure.Ask(1) Paraphrase the two parts of the sentence before and after “because”.Key: Under Jane’s influence, John became a good husband.She serves as a good wife for John.(2) Which sentence patterns do the two parts belong to?Key: VOC; VOO(3) Can you find more verbs like “make” in English?Key: Leave, allow, etc.3. Like “make”, “leave” is another potent verb in English because it can be used in different sentence patterns. Look at the public sign below.(1) Is the sign ambiguous? If so, use paraphrases to show the different readings.Key: a. Do not let such situation happen that no one attends the valuables.b. Do not go away from the valuables that are not attended.(2) Is the ambiguity involved the same kind as that in “The mother of the boy and the girl arrived”?Key: No. Ambiguity in the latter case arises from coordination as shown by the use of “and”.(3) Newspaper headlines and advertisements often deliberately employ ambiguityto attract customers or readers. How are the following ambiguous?1) A New Model for Getting Rich Online2) Two Philippine Ships Collido-One Dies.3) Eye Drops off Shelf.4) Wanted: A man to Wash Dishes and Two Young Waitresses.Key: (a) A New Model For Getting Rich Online. “Online” may modify both “model” and “getting rich”.(b) Two Philippine ships collide-one dies. “One” may refer to both passengers and one of the ships.(c) Eye drops off shelf.a. An eye of somebody’s drops off shelf.b. Eye drops (as a kind of medicine) are off shelf (i.e., out of sale).(d) Wanted: A man to wash dishes and two young waitresses.a. Wasted: a man to wash both dishes and two young waitresses.b. Wanted: two young waitresses and a man whose job is to wash dishes.(4) Is the following public sign ambiguous?Key: No. “Dog Free Park” means “a park where dogs are not allowed”.4. In the text, seven basic sentence patterns, were introduced in English. Now consider the following sentences:a. There will be a discussion this afternoon.b. It is surprising that you should arrive so late.Ask(1) Are these sentence patterns found in English but not in Chinese?Key: Yes. English employs some formal subject like “there” and “it”. Chinese may allow subject less sentences.(2) Can you think of any other sentence patterns in English that are not shared by Chinese?Key: Fancy meeting you here!No wonder you were so angry.5. There are many sorts of discontinuous organization in English. For instance, in the sentence “I want to see with my own eyes the new changes that have taken place there”, the object of “see” is delayed by “with my own eyes”. Another type of discontinuous structuring results from what is called particle movement. For example, we may say both “look up a word” and “look a word up”, in which “up” is a particle rather than a preposition. In “look a word up”, “up”is moved away from the verb and becomes discontinuous. Note that particle movement is obligatory in some special condition in English. Look at the following data:a. John wrote down the number. /John wrote the number down.John wrote down it.b. Jane stood up John. /Jane stood John up.Jane stood up him.c. John kicked out Jane. /John kicked Jane out.John kicked out her.Ask:(1) What similarities do those sentences in the second category share?Key: The object is pronominal.(2) What is the special condition that necessitates particle movement?Key: When the verb phrase takes a pronoun as its object, particle movement is a must. Thus, we must say “look it up” instead of “look up it”.6. In the early version of Chomsky’s TG Grammar, it was claimed that transformation does not result in any change of the meaning of the sentence. However, this may not be true. Often, transformation is motivated rather than arbitrary. Compare the following pairs of sentences that are transformationally related:A. a. John did not sell many books.b. Many books were not sold by John.B. a. Jane kissed John.b. John Jane kissed.(1) Is there any difference in meaning between the sentences in the first pair?Key: (a) It is possible that only a small numbers of books were sold out.(b) It is likely that a large number of books were sold out, although John did。