新编简明英语语言学教程第二版 练习题 参考答案

《新编简明英语语言学教程》第二版 练习题 参考答案

《新编简明英语语言学教程》第二版 练习题 参考答案

Chapter 1 Introduction

1. How do you interpret the following definition of linguistics: Linguistics is the scientific study of

language.

答： Linguistics is based on the systematic investigation of linguistic data, conducted with

reference to some general theory of language structure. In order to discover the nature and rules

of the underlying language system, the linguists has to collect and observe language facts first,

which are found to display some similarities, and generalizations are made about them; then he

formulates some hypotheses about the language structure. The hypotheses thus formed have to

be checked repeatedly against the observed facts to fully prove their validity. In linguistics, as in

any other discipline, data and theory stand in a dialectical complementation, that is, a theory

without the support of data can hardly claim validity, and data without being explained by some

theory remain a muddled mass of things.

2. What are the major branches of linguistics? What does each of them study?

答： The major branches of linguistics are:

(1) phonetics: it studies the sounds used in linguistic communication;

(2) phonology: it studies how sounds are put together and used to convey meaning in

communication;

(3) morphology: it studies the way in which linguistic symbols representing sounds are

arranged and combined to form words;

(4) syntax: it studies the rules which govern how words are combined to form grammatically

permissible sentences in languages;

(5) semantics: it studies meaning conveyed by language;

(6) pragmatics: it studies the meaning in the context of language use.

3. In what basic ways does modern linguistics differ from traditional grammar?

答： The general approach thus traditionally formed to the study of language over the years is

roughly referred to as “traditional grammar.” Modern linguistics differs from traditional

grammar in several basic ways.

Firstly, linguistics is descriptive while traditional grammar is prescriptive.

Second, modem linguistics regards the spoken language as primary, not the written. Traditional

grammarians, on the other hand, tended to emphasize, maybe over-emphasize, the importance

of the written word, partly because of its permanence.

Then, modem linguistics differs from traditional grammar also in that it does not force languages

into a Latin-based framework.

4. Is modern linguistics mainly synchronic or diachronic? Why?

答： In modem linguistics, a synchronic approach seems to enjoy priority over a diachronic one.

Because people believed that unless the various states of a language in different historical

periods are successfully studied, it would be difficult to describe the changes that have taken

place in its historical development.

5. For what reasons does modern linguistics give priority to speech rather than to writing?

答： Speech and writing are the two major media of linguistic communication. Modem

linguistics regards the spoken language as the natural or the primary medium of human language

for some obvious reasons. From the point of view of linguistic evolution, speech is prior to writing.

The writing system of any language is always “invented” by its users to record speech when the

《新编简明英语语言学教程》第二版 练习题 参考答案

need arises. Even in today's world there are still many languages that can only be spoken but not

written. Then in everyday communication, speech plays a greater role than writing in terms of

the amount of information conveyed. And also, speech is always the way in which every native

speaker acquires his mother tongue, and writing is learned and taught later when he goes to

school. For modern linguists, spoken language reveals many true features of human speech while

written language is only the “revised” record of speech. Thus their data for investigation and

analysis are mostly drawn from everyday speech, which they regard as authentic.

6. How is Saussure's distinction between langue and parole similar to Chomsky's distinction

between competence and performance?

答： Saussure's distinction and Chomsky's are very similar, they differ at least in that Saussure

took a sociological view of language and his notion of langue is a matter of social conventions,

and Chomsky looks at language from a psychological point of view and to him competence is a

property of the mind of each individual.

7. What characteristics of language do you think should be included in a good, comprehensive

definition of language?

答： First of all, language is a system, i.e., elements of language are combined according to rules.

Second, language is arbitrary in the sense that there is no intrinsic connection between a

linguistic symbol and what the symbol stands for.

Third, language is vocal because the primary medium for all languages is sound.

Fourth, language is human-specific, i. e., it is very different from the communication systems

other forms of life possess.

8. What are the main features of human language that have been specified by C. Hockett to show

that it is essentially different from animal communication system?

答：The main features of human language are termed design features. They include:

1) Arbitrariness

Language is arbitrary. This means that there is no logical connection between meanings

and sounds. A good example is the fact that different sounds are used to refer to the same object

in different languages.

2) Productivity

Language is productive or creative in that it makes possible the construction and

interpretation of new signals by its users. This is why they can produce and understand an

infinitely large number of sentences, including sentences they have never heard before.

3) Duality

Language consists of two sets of structures, or two levels. At the lower or the basic level

there is a structure of sounds, which are meaningless by themselves. But the sounds of language

can be grouped and regrouped into a large number of units of meaning, which are found at the

higher level of the system.

4) Displacement

Language can be used to refer to things which are present or not present, real or imagined

matters in the past, present, or future, or in far-away places. In other words, language can be

used to refer to contexts removed from the immediate situations of the speaker. This is what

“displacement” means.

5) Cultural transmission

While human capacity for language has a genetic basis, i.e., we were all born with the

《新编简明英语语言学教程》第二版 练习题 参考答案

ability to acquire language, the details of any language system are not genetically transmitted,

but instead have to be taught and learned.

9. What are the major functions of language? Think of your own examples for illustration.

答： Three main functions are often recognized of language: the descriptive function, the

expressive function, and the social function.

The descriptive function is the function to convey factual information, which can be asserted or

denied, and in some cases even verified. For example: “China is a large country with a long

history.”

The expressive function supplies information about the user’s feelings, preferences, prejudices,

and values. For example: “I will never go window-shopping with her.”

The social function serves to establish and maintain social relations between people. . For

example: “We are your firm supporters.”

Chapter 2 Speech Sounds

1. What are the two major media of linguistic communication? Of the two, which one is primary

and why?

答： Speech and writing are the two major media of linguistic communication.

Of the two media of language, speech is more primary than writing, for reasons, please

refer to the answer to the fifth problem in the last chapter.

2. What is voicing and how is it caused?

答： Voicing is a quality of speech sounds and a feature of all vowels and some consonants in

English. It is caused by the vibration of the vocal cords.

3. Explain with examples how broad transcription and narrow transcription differ?

答： The transcription with letter-symbols only is called broad transcription. This is the

transcription normally used in dictionaries and teaching textbooks for general purposes. The

latter, i.e. the transcription with letter-symbols together with the diacritics is called narrow

transcription. This is the transcription needed and used by the phoneticians in their study of

speech sounds. With the help of the diacritics they can faithfully represent as much of the fine

details as it is necessary for their purpose.

In broad transcription, the symbol [l] is used for the sounds [l] in the four words leaf [li:f],

feel *fi:l+, build *bild+, and health *helθ+. As a matter of fact, the sound *l+ in all these four sound

combinations differs slightly. The [l] in [li:f], occurring before a vowel, is called a dear [l], and no

diacritic is needed to indicate it; the [1] in [fi:l] and [bild], occurring at the end of a word or

before another consonant, is pronounced differently from the clear *1+ as in “leaf”. It is called

dark [?] and in narrow transcription the diacritic [?] is used to indicate it. Then in the sound

combination *helθ+, the sound *l+ is followed by the English dental sound *θ+, its pronunciation is

somewhat affected by the dental sound that follows it. It is thus called a dental [l], and in narrow

transcription the diacritic [、] is used to indicate it. It is transcribed as [helθ].

Another example is the consonant [p]. We all know that [p] is pronounced differently in the

two words pit and spit. In the word pit, the sound [p] is pronounced with a strong puff of air, but

in spit the puff of air is withheld to some extent. In the case of pit, the [p] sound is said to be

aspirated and in the case of spit, the [p] sound is unaspirated. This difference is not shown in

broad transcription, but in narrow transcription, a small raised “h” is used to show aspiration,

thus pit is transcribed as [ph?t] and spit is transcribed as [sp?t].

《新编简明英语语言学教程》第二版 练习题 参考答案

4. How are the English consonants classified?

答： English consonants can be classified in two ways: one is in terms of manner of articulation

and the other is in terms of place of articulation. In terms of manner of articulation the English

consonants can be classified into the following types: stops, fricatives, affricates, liquids, nasals

and glides. In terms of place of articulation, it can be classified into following types: bilabial,

labiodental, dental, alveolar, palatal, velar and glottal.

5. What criteria are used to classify the English vowels?

答： Vowels may be distinguished as front, central, and back according to which part of the

tongue is held highest. To further distinguish members of each group, we need to apply another

criterion, i.e. the openness of the mouth. Accordingly, we classify the vowels into four groups:

close vowels, semi-close vowels, semi-open vowels, and open vowels. A third criterion that is

often used in the classification of vowels is the shape of the lips. In English, all the front vowels

and the central vowels are unfounded vowels, i. e., without rounding the lips, and all the back

vowels, with the exception of [a:], are rounded. It should be noted that some front vowels can be

pronounced with rounded lips.

6. A. Give the phonetic symbol for each of the following sound descriptions:

1) voiced palatal affricate

2) voiceless labiodental fricative

3) voiced alveolar stop

4) front, close, short

5) back, semi-open, long

6) voiceless bilabial stop

B. Give the phonetic features of each of the following sounds:

1) [ t ] 2) [ l ] 3) [?] 4) [w] 5) [?] 6) [?]

答：A. (1) [?] (2) [ f ] (3) [d ] (4) [ ? ] (5) [ ?:] (6) [p]

B. (1) voiceless alveolar stop (2) voiced alveolar liquid

(3) voiceless palatal affricate (4) voiced bilabial glide

(5) back, close, short (6) front, open

7. How do phonetics and phonology differ in their focus of study? Who do you think will be more

interested in the difference between, say, [l] and [?], [ph] and [p], a phonetician or a phonologist?

Why?

答： (1) Both phonology and phonetics are concerned with the same aspect of language ––

the speech sounds. But while both are related to the study of sounds,, they differ in their

approach and focus. Phonetics is of a general nature; it is interested in all the speech sounds used

in all human languages: how they are produced, how they differ from each other, what phonetic

features they possess, how they can be classified, etc. Phonology, on the other hand, aims to

discover how speech sounds in a language form patterns and how these sounds are used to

convey meaning in linguistic communication.

(2) A phonologist will be more interested in it. Because one of the tasks of the phonologists

is to find out rule that governs the distribution of [l] and [?], [ph] and [p].

8. What is a phone? How is it different from a phoneme? How are allophones related to a

phoneme?

答： A phone is a phonetic unit or segment. The speech sounds we hear and produce during

linguistic communication are all phones. A phoneme is not any particular sound, but rather it is

《新编简明英语语言学教程》第二版 练习题 参考答案

represented or realized by a certain phone in a certain phonetic context. The different phones

which can represent a phoneme in different phonetic environments are called the allophones of

that phoneme. For example, the phoneme /l/ in English can be realized as dark [?], clear [l], etc.

which are allophones of the phoneme /l/.

9. Explain with examples the sequential rule, the assimilation rule, and the deletion rule.

答： Rules that govern the combination of sounds in a particular language are called sequential

rules.

There are many such sequential rules in English. For example, if a word begins with a [l] or

a [r], then the next sound must be a vowel. That is why [lbik] [lkbi] are impossible combinations

in English. They have violated the restrictions on the sequencing of phonemes.

The assimilation rule assimilates one sound to another by “copying” a feature of a

sequential phoneme, thus making the two phones similar. Assimilation of neighbouring sounds is,

for the most part, caused by articulatory or physiological processes. When we speak, we tend to

increase the ease of articulation. This “sloppy” tendency may become regularized as rules of

language.

We all know that nasalization is not a phonological feature in English, i.e., it does not

distinguish meaning. But this does not mean that vowels in English are never nasalized in actual

pronunciation; in fact they are nasalized in certain phonetic contexts. For example, the [i:] sound

is nasalized in words like bean, green, team, and scream. This is because in all these sound

combinations the [i:] sound is followed by a nasal [n] or [m].

The assimilation rule also accounts for the varying pronunciation of the alveolar nasal [n] in

some sound combinations. The rule is that within a word, the nasal [n] assumes the same place

of articulation as the consonant that follows it. We know that in English the prefix in- can be

added to ma adjective to make the meaning of the word negative, e.g. discreet – indiscreet,

correct – incorrect. But the [n] sound in the prefix in- is not always pronounced as an alveolar

nasal. It is so in the word indiscreet because the consonant that follows it, i.e. [d], is an alveolar

stop, but the [n] sound in the word incorrect is actually pronounced as a velar nasal, i.e. [?]; this

is because the consonant that follows it is [k], which is a velar stop. So we can see that while

pronouncing the sound *n+, we are “copying” a feature of the consonant that follows it.

Deletion rule tells us when a sound is to be deleted although it is orthographically represented.

We have noticed that in the pronunciation of such words as sign, design, and paradigm, there is

no [g] sound although it is represented in spelling by the letter g. But in their corresponding

forms signature, designation, and paradigmatic, the [g] represented by the letter g is pronounced.

The rule can be stated as: Delete a [g] when it occurs before a final nasal consonant. Given the

rule, the phonemic representation of the stems in sign – signature, resign – resignation, phlegm –

phlegmatic, paradigm – paradigmatic will include the phoneme /g/, which will be deleted

according to the regular rule if no suffix is added.

10. What are suprasegmental features? How do the major suprasegmental features of English

function in conveying meaning?

答： The phonemic features that occur above the level of the segments are called

suprasegmental features. The main suprasegmental features include stress, intonation, and tone.

The location of stress in English distinguishes meaning. There are two kinds of stress: word stress

and sentence stress. For example, a shift of stress may change the part of speech of a word from

a noun, to a verb although its spelling remains unchanged. Tones are pitch variations which can

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distinguish meaning just like phonemes.

Intonation plays an important role in the conveyance of meaning in almost every language,

especially in a language like English. When spoken in different tones, the same sequence of

words may have different meanings.

Chapter 3 Morphology

1. Divide the following words into their separate morphemes by placing a “+” between each

morpheme and the next:

a. microfile e. telecommunication

b. bedraggled f. forefather

c. announcement g. psychophysics

d. predigestion h. mechanist

答：a. micro + file b. be + draggle + ed

c. announce + ment d. pre + digest + ion

e. tele + communicate + ion f. fore + father

g. psycho + physics h. mechan + ist

2. Think of three morpheme suffixes, give their meaning, and specify the types of stem they may

be suffixed to. Give at least two examples of each.

Model: -or

suffix: -or

meaning: the person or thing performing the action

stem type: added to verbs

examples: actor, “one who acts in stage plays, motion pictures, etc.” translator, “one

who translates”

答：(1) suffix: -able

meaning: something can be done or is possible

stem type: added to verbs

examples: acceptable, “can be accepted”

respectable, “can be respected”

(2) suffix: -ly

meaning: functional

stem type: added to adjectives

examples: freely. “adverbial form of ‘free’ ”

quickly, “adverbial form of 'quick' ”.

(3) suffix: -ee

meaning: the person receiving the action

stem type: added to verbs

examples: employee, “one who works in a company”

interviewee, “one who is interviewed”

3. Think of three morpheme prefixes, give their meaning, and specify the types of stem they may

be prefixed to. Give at least two examples of each.

Model: a-

prefix: a-

《新编简明英语语言学教程》第二版 练习题 参考答案

meaning: “without; not”

stem type: added to adjectives

examples: asymmetric, “lacking symmetry” asexual, “without sex or sex organs” 答：(1) prefix: dis-

meaning: showing an opposite

stem type: added to verbs or nouns

examples : disapprove, “do not approve”

dishonesty, “lack of honesty”.

(2) prefix: anti-

meaning: against, opposed to

stem type: added to nouns or adjectives

examples : antinuclear, “opposing the use of atomic weapons and power”

antisocial, “opposed or harmful to the laws and customs of an organized community. ”

(3) prefix: counter-

meaning: the opposite of

stem type: added to nouns or adjectives.

examples: counterproductive, “producing results opposite to those intended” counteract, “act against and reduce the force or effect of (sth.) ”

4. The italicized part in each of the following sentences is an inflectional morpheme. Study each inflectional morpheme carefully and point out its grammatical meaning.

Sue moves in high-society circles in London.

A traffic warden asked John to move his car.

The club has moved to Friday, February 22nd.

The branches of the trees are moving back and forth.

答：(1) the third person singular

(2) the past tense

(3) the present perfect

(4) the present progressive

5. Determine whether the words in each of the following groups are related to one another by processes of inflection or derivation.

a) go, goes, going, gone

b) discover, discovery, discoverer, discoverable, discoverability

c) inventor, inventor’s, inventors, inventors’

d) democracy, democrat, democratic, democratize

答：(略)

6. The following sentences contain both derivational and inflectional affixes. Underline all of the derivational affixes and circle the inflectional affixes.

a) The farmer’s cows escaped.

b) It was raining.

c) Those socks are inexpensive.

d) Jim needs the newer copy.

e) The strongest rower continued.

《新编简明英语语言学教程》第二版 练习题 参考答案

f) She quickly closed the book.

g) The alphabetization went well.

答：(略)

Chapter 4 Syntax

1. What is syntax?

Syntax is a branch of linguistics that studies how words are combined to form sentences and the rules that govern the formation of sentences.

2. What is phrase structure rule?

The grammatical mechanism that regulates the arrangement of elements (i.e. specifiers, heads, and complements) that make up a phrase is called a phrase structure rule.

The phrase structural rule for NP, VP, AP, and PP can be written as follows:

NP → (Det) N (PP) ...

VP → (Qual) V (NP) ...

AP → (Deg) A (PP) ...

PP → (Deg) P (NP) ...

The general phrasal structural rule ( X stands for the head N, V, A or P):

The XP rule: XP → (specifier) X (complement)

3. What is category? How to determine a word's category?

Category refers to a group of linguistic items which fulfill the same or similar functions in a particular language such as a sentence, a noun phrase or a verb.

To determine a word's category, three criteria are usually employed, namely meaning, inflection and distribution. A word's distributional facts together with information about its meaning and inflectional capabilities help identify its syntactic category.

4. What is coordinate structure and what properties does it have?

The structure formed by joining two or more elements of the same type with the help of a conjunction is called coordinate structures.

Conjunction exhibits four important properties:

1) There is no limit on the number of coordinated categories that can appear prior to the conjunction.

2) A category at any level (a head or an entire XP) can be coordinated.

3) Coordinated categories must be of the same type.

4) The category type of the coordinate phrase is identical to the category type of the elements being conjoined.

5. What elements does a phrase contain and what role does each element play?

A phrase usually contains the following elements: head, specifier and complement. Sometimes it also contains another kind of element termed modifier.

The role of each element

Head:

Head is the word around which a phrase is formed.

Specifier:

Specifier has both special semantic and syntactic roles. Semantically, it helps to make more precise the meaning of the head. Syntactically, it typically marks a phrase boundary.

Complement:

《新编简明英语语言学教程》第二版 练习题 参考答案

Complements are themselves phrases and provide information about entities and locations whose existence is implied by the meaning of the head.

Modifier:

Modifiers specify optionally expressible properties of the heads.

6. What is deep structure and what is surface structure?

There are two levels of syntactic structure. The first, formed by the XP rule in accordance with the head's subcategorization properties, is called deep structure (or D-structure). The second, corresponding to the final syntactic form of the sentence which results from appropriate transformations, is called surface structure (or S-structure).

7. Indicate the category of each word in the following sentences. a) The old lady got off the bus carefully.

Det A N V P Det N Adv

b) The car suddenly crashed onto the river bank.

Det N Adv V P Det N

c) The blinding snowstorm might delay the opening of the schools.

Det A N Aux V Det N P Det N

d) This cloth feels quite soft.

Det N V Deg A

（以下8-12题只作初步的的成分划分，未画树形图, 仅供参考）

8. The following phrases include a head, a complement, and a specifier. Draw the appropriate tree structure for each.

a) rich in minerals

XP(AP) → head (rich) A + complement (in minerals) PP

b) often read detective stories

XP(VP) → specifier (often) Qual + head (read) V + complement (detective stories) NP c) the argument against the proposals

XP(NP) → specifier (the) Det + head (argument) N + complement (against the proposals) PP d) already above the window

XP(VP) → specifier (already) Deg + head (above) P + complement (the window) NP

9. The following sentences contain modifiers of various types. For each sentence, first identify the modifier(s), then draw the tree structures.（划底线的为动词的修饰语，斜体的为名词的修饰语）

a) A crippled passenger landed the airplane with extreme caution.

b) A huge moon hung in the black sky.

c) The man examined his car carefully yesterday.

d) A wooden hut near the lake collapsed in the storm.

10. The following sentences all contain conjoined categories. Draw a tree structure for each of the sentences. （划底线的为并列的范畴）

a) Jim has washed the dirty shirts and pants.

b) Helen put on her clothes and went out.

c) Mary is fond of literature but tired of statistics.

11. The following sentences all contain embedded clauses that function as complements of a verb, an adjective, a preposition or a noun. Draw a tree structure for each sentence. （划底线的为补语从句）

《新编简明英语语言学教程》第二版 练习题 参考答案

a) You know that I hate war.

b) Gerry believes the fact that Anna flunked the English exam.

c) Chris was happy that his father bought him a Rolls-Royce.

d) The children argued over whether bats had wings.

12. Each of the following sentences contains a relative clause. Draw the deep structure and the surface structure trees for each of these sentences. （划底线的为关系从句）

a) The essay that he wrote was excellent.

b) Herbert bought a house that she loved

c) The girl whom he adores majors in linguistics.

13. The derivations of the following sentences involve the inversion transformation. Give the deep structure and the surface structure of each of these sentences.

a) Would you come tomorrow? (surface structure)

you would come tomorrow (deep structure)

b) What did Helen bring to the party? (surface structure)

Helen brought what to the party (deep structure)

c) Who broke the window? (surface structure)

who broke the window (deep structure)

Chapter 5 Semantics

1. What are the major views concerning the study of meaning?

答：(1) The naming theory proposed by the ancient Greek scholar Plato. According to this theory, the linguistic forms or symbols, in other words, the words used in a language are simply labels of the objects they stand for. So words are just names or labels for things.

(2) The conceptualist view has been held by some philosophers and linguists from ancient times. This view holds that there is no direct link between a linguistic form and what it refers to (i. e., between language and the real world); rather, in the interpretation of meaning they are linked through the mediation of concepts in the mind.

(3) The contextualist view held that meaning should be studied in terms of situation, use, context –– elements closely linked with language behaviour. The representative of this approach was J.R. Firth, famous British linguist.

(4) Behaviorists attempted to define the meaning of a language form as the “situation in which the speaker utters it and the response it calls forth in the hearer.” This theory, somewhat close to contextualism, is linked with psychological interest.

2. What are the major types of synonyms in English?

答： The major types of synonyms are dialectal synonyms, stylistic synonyms, emotive or evaluative synonyms, collocational synonyms, and semantically different synonyms.

Examples（略）

3. Explain with examples “homonymy”, “polysemy”, and “hyponymy”.

答：(1) Homonymy refers to the phenomenon that words having different meanings have the same form, i.e., different words are identical in sound or spelling, or in both.

When two words are identical in sound, they are homophones.

When two words are identical in spelling, they are homographs.

When two words are identical in both sound and spelling, they are complete homonyms

(2) While different words may have the same or similar meaning, the same one word may have

《新编简明英语语言学教程》第二版 练习题 参考答案

more than one meaning. This is what we call polysemy, and such a word is called a polysemic word. There are many polysemic words in English, The fact is the more commonly used a word is, the more likely it has acquired more than one meaning.

(3) Hyponymy refers to the sense relation between a more general, more inclusive word and a more specific word. The word which is more general in meaning is called the superordinate, and the more specific words are called its hyponyms. Hyponyms of the same superordinate are co-hyponyms to each other. Hyponymy is a relation of inclusion; in terms of meaning, the superordinate includes all its hyponyms.

Examples（略）

4. How can words opposite in meaning be classified? To which category does each of the following pairs of antonyms belong?

north/south vacant/occupied literate/illiterate above/below

doctor/patient wide/narrow poor/rich father/daughter

答：They can be gradable antonyms, complementary antonyms and relational opposite Gradable antonyms: literate/illiterate wide /narrow poor/rich

Complementary antonyms: vacant/occupied

Relational opposite: north/south, doctor/patient, father/daughter, above/below

5. Identify the relations between the following pairs of sentences:

Tom's wife is pregnant. My sister will soon be divorced'

Tom has a wife. My sister is a married woman.

He likes seafood, They are going to have another baby.

He likes crabs. They have a child.

答： “Tom's wife is pregnant” presupposes “Tom has a wife.”

“My sister will soon be divorced” presupposes “My sister is a married woman.”

“He likes seafood” is entailed by “He likes crabs.”

“They are going to have another baby” presupposes “They have a child.”

6. In what way is componential analysis similar to the analysis of phonemes into distinctive features?

答： They both base on the belief that the meaning of a word can be dissected into meaning components.

7. What is grammaticality? What might make a grammatically meaningful sentence semantically meaningless?

答： Grammaticality refers to the grammatical well-formedness of a sentence. The violation of the selectional restrictions, i.e., constrains on what lexical items can go with what others, might make a grammatically meaningless.

8. Try to analyze the following sentences in terms of predication analysis:

The man sells ice-cream. Is the baby sleeping?

It is snowing. The tree grows well.

答：The man sells ice-cream.

MAN, ICE-CREAM (SELL)

Is the baby sleeping?

BABY (SLEEP)

It is snowing.

(SNOW)

《新编简明英语语言学教程》第二版 练习题 参考答案

The tree grows well.

TREE (GROW)

Chapter 6 PRAGMATICS

1. What does pragmatics study? How does it differ from traditional semantics?

答： Generally speaking, pragmatics is the study of meaning in the context. It studies meaning in a dynamic way and as a process. In order to have a successful communication, the speaker and hearer must take the context into their consideration so as to effect the right meaning and intention. The development and establishment pragmatics in 1960s and 1970s resulted mainly from the expansion of the study semantics. However, it is different from the traditional semantics. The major difference between them lies in that pragmatics studies meaning in a dynamic way, while semantics studies meaning in a static way. Pragmatics takes context into consideration while semantics does not. Pragmatics takes care of the aspect of meaning that is not accounted for by semantics.

2. Why is the notion of context essential in the pragmatic study of linguistic communication?

答： The notion of context is essential to the pragmatic study of language. It is generally considered as constituted by the knowledge shared by the speaker and the hearer. Various continents of shared knowledge have been identified, e.g. knowledge of the language they use, knowledge of what has been said before, knowledge about the world in general, knowledge about the specific situation in which linguistic communication is taking place, and knowledge about each other. Context determines the speaker's use of language and also the heater's interpretation of what is said to him. Without such knowledge, linguistic communication would not be possible, and without considering such knowledge, linguistic communication cannot be satisfactorily accounted for in a pragmatic sense. Look at the following sentences:

(1) How did it go?

(2) It is cold in hem.

(3) It was a hot Christmas day so we went down to the beach in the afternoon and had a good time swimming and surfing.

Sentence (1) might be used in a conversation between two students talking about an examination, or two surgeons talking about an operation, or in some other contexts; (2) might be said by the speaker to ask the hearer to turn on the heater, or leave the place, or to put on more clothes, or to apologize for the poor condition of the room, depending on the situation of context; (3) makes sense only ii the hearer has the knowledge that Christmas falls in summer in the southern hemisphere.

3. How are sentence meaning and utterance meaning related, and how do they differ?

答： A sentence is a grammatical concept, and the meaning of a sentence is often studied as the abstract, intrinsic property of the sentence itself in terms of predication. But if we think of a sentence as what people actually utter in the course of communication, it becomes an utterance, and it should be considered in the situation in which it is actually uttered (or used). So it is impossible to tell if “The dog is barking” is a sentence or an utterance. It can be either. It all depends on how we look at it and how we are going to analyze it. If we take it as a grammatical unit and consider it as a self-contained unit in isolation from context, then we are treating it as a sentence. If we take it as something a speaker utters in a certain situation with a certain purpose, then we are treating it as an utterance.

《新编简明英语语言学教程》第二版 练习题 参考答案

Therefore, while the meaning of a sentence is abstract, and decontextualized, that of an utterance is concrete, and context-dependent. The meaning of an utterance is based on sentence meaning; it is the realization of the abstract meaning of a sentence in a real situation of communication, or simply in a context. Now, take the sentence "My bag is heavy" as an example. Semantic analysis of the meaning of the sentence results in the one-place predication BAG (BEING HEAVY). Then a pragmatic analysis of the utterance meaning of the .sentence varies with the context in which it is uttered. For example, it could be uttered by a speaker as a straightforward statement, telling the hearer that his bag is heavy. It could also be intended by the speaker as an indirect, polite request, asking the hearer to help him carry the bag. Another possibility is that the speaker is declining someone's request for help. All these are possible interpretations of the same utterance “My bag is heavy”. How it is to be understood depends on the context in which it is uttered and the purpose for which the speaker utters it.

While most utterances take the form of grammatically complete sentences, some utterances do not, and some cannot even be restored to complete sentences.

4. Try to think of contexts in which the following sentences can be used for other purposes than just stating facts:

a) The room is messy.

b) Oh, it is raining!

c) The music of the movie is good.

d) You have been keeping my notes for a whole week now.

答：a) A father entered his son’s room and found it is very messy. Then when he said, “The room is messy,” he was blaming his son for not tidying it up.

b) A son asked his father to play with him outside. So when the father said, “Oh, it’s raining”, he meant they couldn’t play outside.

c) Two persons just watched a movie and had a discussion of it. One person said, “The story of the movie is very moving”, so when the other person said, “The music of the movie is good”, he meant he didn't think the story of the movie was good.

d) A person wanted his notes back, so when he said, “you have been keeping my notes for a whole week now”, he was demanding the return of his notes.

5. According to Austin, what are the three acts a person is possibly performing while making an utterance. Give an example.

答： According to Austin's new model, a speaker might be performing three acts simultaneously when speaking: locutionary act, illocutionary act, and perlocutionary act.

A locutionary act is the act of uttering words, phrases, clauses. It is the act of conveying literal meaning by means of syntax, lexicon and phonology. An illocutionary act is the act of expressing the speaker’s intention; it is the act performed in saying something. A perlocutionary act is the act performed by or resulting from saying something; it is the consequence of, or the change brought about by the utterance; it is the act performed by saying something. Let's look at an example:

You have left the door wide open.

The locutionary act performed by the speaker is his utterance of the words “you”, “have”, “door”, “open”, etc. thus expressing what the words literally mean.

The illocutionary act performed by the speaker is that by making such an utterance he has expressed his intention of speaking, i.e. asking someone to close the door, or making a complaint,

《新编简明英语语言学教程》第二版 练习题 参考答案

depending on the context.

The perlocutionary act refers to the effect of the utterance. If the hearer gets the speaker's message and sees that the speaker means to tell him to close the door, the speaker has successfully brought about the change in the real world he has intended to; then the perlocutionary act is successfully performed.

6. What are the five types of illocutionary speech acts Searle has specified? What is the illocutionary point of each type?

答：(1) representatives: stating or describing, saying what the speaker believes to be true

(2) directives: trying to get the hearer to do something

(3) commissives: committing the speaker himself to some future course of action

(4) expressives: expressing feelings or attitude towards an existing

(5) declarations: bringing about immediate changes by saying something

The illocutionary point of the representatives is to commit the speaker to something's being the case, to the truth of what has been said, in other words, when performing an illocutionary act of representative, the speaker is making a statement or giving a description which he himself believes to be true. Stating, believing, sweating, hypothesizing are among the most typical of the representatives.

Directives ate attempts by the speaker to get the hearer to do some- thing. Inviting, suggesting, requesting, advising, wanting, threatening and ordering are all specific instances of this class.

Commissives are those illocutionary acts whose point is to commit the speaker to some future course of action, i.e. when speaking the speaker puts himself under a certain obligation. Promising, undertaking, vowing are the most typical ones.

The illocutionary point of expressives is to express the psychological state specified in the utterance. The speaker is expressing his feelings or attitudes towards an existing state of affairs, e.g. apologizing, thanking, congratulating.

The last class “declarations” has the characteristic that the successful performance of an act of this type brings about the correspondence between what is said and reality.

7. What is indirect language use? How is it explained in the light of speech act theory?

答： When someone is not saying I an explicit and straightforward manner what he means to say, rather he is trying to put across his message in an implicit, roundabout way, we can say he is using indirect language.

Explanation (略) (见教材p.84-85)

8. What are the four maxims of the CP? Try to give your own examples to show how flouting these maxims gives rise to conversational implicature?

答： Cooperative Principle, abbreviated as CP. It goes as follows:

Make your conversational contribution such as required at the stage at which it occurs by the accepted purpose or direction of the talk exchange in which you are engaged.

To be more specific, there are four maxims under this general principle:

(1) The maxim of quantity

① Make your contribution as informative as required (for the current purpose of the exchange).

② Do not make your contribution more informative than is required.

(2) The maxim of quality

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① Do not say what you believe to be false.

② Do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence.

(3) The maxim of relation

Be relevant.

(4) The maxim of manner

① Avoid obscurity of expression.

② Avoid ambiguity.

③ Be brief (avoid unnecessary prolixity).

④ Be orderly.

9. What is pragmatic failure? Try to find instances of pragmatic failure in the English used by Chinese learners of English.

答： The technical term for breakdowns in the course of communication is pragmatic failure. Pragmatic failure occurs when the speaker fails to use language effectively to achieve a specific communication purpose, or when the hearer fails to recognize the intention or the illocutionary force of the speaker’s utterance in the context of communication.

Instances (略) (见教材p.89)

Chapter 7 Language Change

1. The vocabulary of English consists of native and also thousands of borrowed words. Look up the following words in a dictionary which provides the etymologies (history) of words. In each case speculate as to how the particular word came to be borrowed from a particular language. a. size b. skill c. royal

d. ranch e. robot f. potato

g. astronaut h. emerald i. pagoda

j. khaki k. bulldoze 1. hoodlum

答：a. size (< old French)

b. skill (< old Norse)

c. royal (< old French < Latin)

d. ranch (< Spanish < French)

e. robot (< Czech < old Church Slavonic)

f. potato (< Spanish < Taino)

g. astronaut (< French)

h. emerald (< Middle English & old French)

i. pagoda (< Persian < Sanskrit)

j. khaki (< Hindi <Persian)

k. bulldoze (< bull(Botany Bay Slang) < old English)

l. hoodlum (< German)

2. The Encyclopedia Britannica Yearbook has usually published a new word list, which is, in the Britannica’s editor's view, a list of those words that had entered the language during the year. Would you expect a yearbook to publish a “lost-word list” recording the words dropped from the language during the year? Defend your answer.

答：(略)

3. Below is a passage from Shakespeare's Hamlet,

King: Where is Pelonius?

《新编简明英语语言学教程》第二版 练习题 参考答案

Hamlet: In heaven, send thither to see.

If your messenger find him not there, seek him i' the

other place yourself. But indeed, if you find him not

within this month, you shall nose him as you go up the

stairs into the lobby.

Act IV, scene iii

Study these lines and identify every difference in expression between Elizabethan and Modern English that is evident.

答：In modern English, these lines are more likely written as:

King: Where is Pelonius?

Hamlet: In heaven, send to see there. If your messenger cannot find him there, yourself seek him at the other place. But indeed, if you cannot find him within this month, you shall notice him as you go up the stairs into the lobby.

4. Comment with examples on the following statement “Words and expressions will be forced into use in spite of all the exertions of all the writers in the world.”

答： The statement means that when necessary, people will make use of available uses even if there is no writers' efforts. For example, there are more and more new words and expressions which are introduced into language not by writers, e.g., email, hacker, IBM (international big mouth, means a person who acts like a gossip.)

5. Suppose you are outside a government office where doors still bear the notice, “This door must not be left in an open position.” Now try to explain the notice in simple and plain English. 答： “Keep the door dote. ” or “The door must be kept close.”

6. Give at least two examples showing the influence of American English on British English. 答：(略)

7. Find in any books, newspapers, or journals newly coined words in association with social and political needs, internet or computer language.

答： For example: SARS, Golden week, euro, e-mail, bi-media(双媒体的), cybernaut计算机(网络)漫游者, DVD, eyephone(视像耳机), etc．

8. With examples, give some plausible explanations for linguistic change.

答：(略)

Chapter 8 Language and Society

1. How is language related to society?

答： There are many indications of the inter-relationship between language and society. One of them is that while language is principally used to communicate meaning, it is also used to establish and maintain social relationships. This social function of language is embodied in the use of such utterances as “Good morning!”, “Hi!”, “How's your family?”, “Nice day today, isn't it?”. Another indication is that users of the same language in a sense all speak differently. The kind of language each of them chooses to use is in part determined by his social background. And language, in its turn, reveals information about its speaker. When we speak, we cannot avoid giving clues to our listeners about ourselves.

Then to some extent, language, especially the structure of its lexicon, reflects both the