北京交通大学 2014年硕士研究生入学考试试题
科目代码：621科目名称：语言学基础知识
注意事项：答案一律写在答题纸上，写在试卷上的不予装订和评分！
This exam paper consists of two major parts. You are required to answer the question in Part I in English and the questions in Part Ⅱ in Chinese.
Part Ⅰ: Linguistics (120 points)
There are four sections in this part. You are required to answer the questions in English and write your answer on the ANSWER SHEET.
Ⅰ. Multiple Choice Question (15 points, 1 for each )
Directions: For each sentence there are four choices marked A, B, C and D. Choose the best answer and write the corresponding letter on the Answer Sheet.
1. Among the following, the ________ isn't the organ located in the oral cavity.
A. soft palate
B. teeth ridge
C. uvula
D. glottis
2. Inflectional morphemes manifest the following meanings EXCEPT ________.
A. tone
B. tense
C. number
D. case
3. The word “selfish” contains two ________.
A. phonemes
B. morphs
C. morphemes
D. allomorphs
4. “Tube“ and “subway” are a pair of ________.
A. dialectal synonyms
B. stylistic synonyms
C. collocational synonyms
D. semantically different synonyms
5.Below are the individual differences that affect the second language acquisition, EXCEPT ________.
A. language aptitude
B. motivation
C. learning strategy
D. native language influence
6. Which one of the following methods is not proposed to be used to study language process?
A. Lexical decision
B. The priming experiment
C. Eye movement experiment
D. Autopsy
7. The word camcorder is formed by _________.
A. coinage
B. blending
C. borrowing
D. back-formation
8. Of the following sound combinations, only ________ is permissible according to the sequential rules in English.
A. mibl
B. bmil
C. ilmb
D. ilbm
9. Predication analysis is a way to analyze ___________ meaning.
A. phoneme
B.word
C. phrase
D. sentence
10. The sentence that has a NP and a VP can be shown in a ___ formula “S→NP VP”.
A. hierarchica
B. linear
C. tree diagram
D. vertical
11. Which of the following sounds is voiceless bilabial stop?
A. [p]
B. [m]
C. [b]
D. [t]
12. _______are produced by moving from one vowel position to another through intervening position.
A. Diphthongs
B. Consonants
C. Vowels
D. Individual vowels
13. The semantic component of the word “ man” can be expressed as__________.
A. +animate, +human, +male, -adult
B. +animate, +human, -male, +adult
C. +animate, +human, +male, +adult
D. +animate, +human, -male, -adult
14. Language processing includes the following processing levels EXCEPT _________.
A. phonetic and phonological processing
B. morphological processing
C. syntactic processing
D. mathematical processing
15. ________ refers to the linguistic variety characteristic of a particular social class.
A. Idiolect
B. Sociolect
C. Ethnic dialect
D. Standard dialect
Ⅱ. Terminologies in Linguistics (25 points, 5 for each)
Directions: Define each of the following five terms in English.
1. Duality
2. Phonology
3. Computational linguistics
4. A minimal pair
5. Horizontal relations (or Syntactic relations)
Ⅲ. Short-Answer Questions (30 points)
Directions: Discuss each of the following topics in no less than 300 words.
1. Characteristics of implicature (10 points)
2. Functions of inter-language in language teaching (10 points)
3. Why do we say tree diagrams are more advantageous and informative than linear structure in analyzing the constituent relationship among linguistic elements? Support your statement with examples. (10 points)
Ⅳ. Elaborate on the following two questions in no less than 500 words. (50 points, 25 points for each)
1. Say whatever you know about the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis.
2. Post-Gricean Developments in pragmatics.
参考答案
Ⅰ.
1. D.
A．软腭 B．齿龈 C．小舌 D．声门，属咽喉
2. A.
屈折语素的形态变化能体现时、数、格，但不能体现语气（音系现象），故选A。
3. C.
selfish含两个syllable，两个语素。
4. A.
方言同义词。tube是伦敦方言，subway则是美国人的说法。
5. D.
影响二语习得的因素有语言能力、学习动力、学习策略，而母语影响不是区别个人学习差异的因素。
6. D.
A属音系学，B属语义学，C属语用学，D为尸体解剖，为干扰项。
7. B.
camcorder=camera+recorder属blending。
8. A.
The rule states that, if a word begins with a [l] or a [r], then the next sound must be a vowel, thus C and D can be ruled out. In addition, two bilabial can't be put together.
9. D.
述谓分析是分析句子的方法。
10. B.
S→NP VP是简单的线型示意图
11. A.
[p] bilabial, stop, voiceless; [m] bilabial, nasal, voiced; [b] bilabial, stop, voiced; [t] alveolar, stop, voiceless.
12. A.
双元音，发音时由一个元音平滑过渡到另一个元音。
13. C.
Man表示成年男性。
14. D.
没有数学过程。
15. B.
社会方言是某一特定人群或阶层使用的语言。
Ⅱ. Terminologies in Linguistics
1. Duality: Human operates on two levels of structure. At one level are elements which have no meaning in themselves but which combine to form units at another level which do have meaning. For instances, human language has a number of sound units, or phonemes, but each phoneme is normally meaningless in isolation. It becomes meaningful only when it is combined with other phonemes. That is, sounds such as d, g, f, o, mean nothing separately. They normally take on meaning only when they are combined in certain ways, as in dog, fog, and god. This organization of language into two levels—a level of sounds which combine into a second level of larger units—is called duality or double articulation.
2. Phonology: phonology is the study of sound systems of languages. It is concerned with the linguistic patterning of sounds in human languages, with its primary aim being to discover the principles that govern the way sounds are organized in languages, and to explain the variations that occur.
3. Computational linguistics: It is an interdisciplinary field which centers around the use of computers to process or to produce human language. To this field, linguistics contributes an understanding of the special properties of language date, and provides theories and techniques for designing and implementing computer systems. Some current application areas include translating from one language to another (Machine Translation), storing and finding relevant documents in large collections of text (Corpus linguistics and information retrieval), and carrying out various forms of computer mediated communication.
4. A minimal pair: minimal pairs are two words which are identical in every way except for one sound segment that occurs in the same place in the string. For example, chunk and junk, ban and bin, bet and bat, fan and van, fine and vine, sink and zinc, site and side are minimal pairs in English. Note that seed and soup are not minimal pairs because they differ in two sounds: the vowel and the final consonant; and neither are teach and cheat, because the two consonants compared are not in the same position.
5. Horizontal relations (syntactic relations): Saussure has put forward one pair of concepts: syntagmatic and paradigmatic relations. The former refers to the horizontal relationship between linguistic elements, which form linear sequences. The later means the vertical relationship between forms. Syntagmatic relations are actually positional relations, that is , the sequential arrangement of smaller linguistic forms into larger linguistic forms, e.g. the arrangement of words and phrases into sentences. If words and phrases do not occur in a recognizable order with respect to each other, a sentence will be ungrammatical. For instance, the sentence “love purifies the mind” is grammatical. But the expressions of “purities love the mind” and “mind the purifies love” are ungrammatical.
Ⅲ. Short-answer questions
1. Characteristics of implicature
Conversational implicature is a type of inference, referring to the meaning which a speaker intends to convey, but does not explicitly express. Conversational implicatures have four main identifying features:
a. Calculability. The fact that speakers try to convey conversational implicatures and hearers are able to understand them suggest that implicatures are calculable. They can be worked out on the basis of some previous information.
b. Cancellability. Cancellability is also known as defeasibility. The presence of a conversational implicature relies on a number of factors: the conversational meaning of words used, the CP, the linguistic and the situational contexts, etc. So if any of them changes, the implicature will also change. For example, ex. a usually implicates b. But if the speaker adds “if not more” to a, to change it to c, then the previous implicature b is canceled or defeated. And c means d.
a. John has three cows.
b. John has only three cows.
c. John has three cows, if not more.
d. John has at least three cows.
c. Non-detachability
Non-detachability means that a conversational implicature is attached to the semantic content of what is said, not to the linguistic form. Therefore it is possible to use a synonym and keep the implicature intact. For example, ex. a-d ironically will all implicate ex. e.
a. John's a genius.
b. John's a mental prodigy.
c. John's an enormous intellect.
d. John's a big brain.
e. John's an idiot.
d. Non-conventionality
Conversational implicature is by definition different from the conversional meaning of words. To show the differences more clearly, we can have a look at some examples of entailment. Entailment is a logical relationship between two sentences. For example, ex. a has the entailments as shown in ex. b and c.
a. John has some cows.
b. John has some animals.
c. Somebody has some animals.
As is clear from the examples, entailment is part of the conversational meaning. Part of the meaning of cow is “it refers to an animal”. To know the meaning of John partly means to know “it is a name of a person”, so it can be replaced by somebody. If you don't know the entailment of a word, you simply have to look it up in a dictionary. There is no way to work out an entailment on the basis of the CP and the context.
2. Functions of inter-language in language teaching
The type of language constructed by second or foreign language learners who are still in the process of learning a language is often referred to as interlanguage. Interlanguage is imperfect compared with the target language, but it is not mere translation from the learner's native language either. However, interlanguage should not really be seen as a bridging language between or a mixture of the target language and the native language.
Interlanguage is dynamic language system, which is constantly moving form the departure level to the native-like level. Therefore, “inter” actually means between the beginning stage and the final stage.
Concerning the linguistic features of interlanguage, the following questions can be asked:
1. Linguistically, how is interlanguage in general different from the target language or the native language.
2. In what way is lower level interlanguage different from higher level language.
3. How is the interlanguage system used to convey meaning.
Answers to the above questions will certainly benefit language learning research.
3. Why do we say tree diagrams are more advantageous and informative than linear structure in analyzing the constituent relationship among linguistic elements. Support your statements with examples.
The approach to divide the sentence up into its immediate constituents by using binary cutting until obtaining its ultimate constituents is called immediate constituent analysis. IC analysis is a hierarchical analysis showing the different constituents at different structural levels based on the distribution of linguistic forms.
The best way to show IC structure is to use a tree diagram. The constituent structure of sentence“The man bought a car” can be represented as follows:
In this example, the ICs of “the man bought a car” are the man and bought a car. The ICs of the man are the and man, and so on until no further cuts can be made. Brackets can also be used but are arguably less easy to read. For example:
[[[The][man]] [[bought][[a][car.]]]]
Ⅳ. Elaborate on the following two questions in no less than 500 words. (50 points, 25 points for each)
1. Say whatever you know about the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis.
What Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis suggests is this: our language helps mould our way of thinking and, consequently, different languages may probably express speakers' unique ways of understanding the world. Following this argument, two important points can be captured in this theory. On the one hand, language may determine our thinking patterns; on the other, similarity between languages is relative. For two different speech communities, the greater their structural differentiation is, the more diverse their conceptualization of the world will be. For this reason, this hypothesis has alternatively been referred to as linguistic determinism and linguistic relativity.
What this hypothesis primarily suggests is that our language will mould our view of the world. Nowadays few people would possibly tend to accept the original form of this theory completely.Consequently, two versions of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis have been developed, a strong version and a weak version. The strong version of the theory refers to the claim the original hypothesis makes, emphasizing the decisive role of language as the shaper of our thinking patterns. The weak version of this hypothesis, however, is a modified type of its original theory, suggesting that there is a correlation between language, culture, and thought, but the cross-cultural differences thus produced in our ways of thinking are relative, rather than categorical.
2. Post-Gricean Developments in pragmatics.
Linguistics of the post-Gricean period have sought to boil down the maxims to a set of principle, which are truly indispensable and do not overlap at the same time.
The first one is Relevance theory. It was formally proposed by Sperber and Wilson. They argue that all Gricean maxims, including the CP itself, should be reduced to a single principle of relevance, which is defined as: every act of ostensive communication communicates the presumption of its own optimal relevance. They maintain that inference has only to do with the hearer. From the speaker's side, communication should be seem as an act of making clear one's intention to express something. This act they call ostensive act. By presumption of optimal relevance is meant:
(a) The set of assumptions {I} which the communicator intends to make manifest to the addressee is relevant enough to make it worth the addressee's while to process the ostensive stimulus.
(b) The ostensive stimulus is the most relevant one the communicator could have used to communicate.
The second one is the Q- and R-principles. These two principles are developed by Laurence Horn. Horn proposes to reduce all the Grice's maxims to two principles as follows:
The Q-principle (hearer-based):
Make your contribution sufficient
Say as much as you can
The R-principle (speaker-based):
Make your contribution necessary
Say no more than you must
The third one is the Q-, I-, M-principles. This tripartite model was suggested by Levinson. In essence, Levinson says, the Q-, I- and M-principles are Grice's two maxims of Quantity and a maxim of Manner reinterpreted neo-classically. He renames the second maxim of Quantity the principle of informativeness, I- principle for short; and the first maxim of Quantity the principle of quantity, or Q-principle.
About the M- principle, Levinson draw a distinction between two kinds of minimization: a semantic minimization and an expression minimization. The semantic minimization is equivalent to semantic generality. That is, the more general terms are more minimal in meaning, having more restricted connotation; and the less general, the more specific, are less minimal, more maximal. On the other hand, the expression minimization is some measure of surface length and complexity. It is concerned with the phonetic and morphological make-up of a term. Thus the normally stressed terms are more minimal than their abnormally stressed counterparts. The shorter terms, those consisting of fewer constituents, are more minimal than longer ones, are more minimal than longer ones, those consisting of more constituents, provided they are commeasurable in meaning.