语言学补充练习(1-3).doc

第一章 语言学入门知识：
I. 名词解释
1．cultural transmission (as a defining property of language)
Answer: While human capacity for language has a genetic basis, the details of any language system are not genetically transmitted, but instead have to be taught and learned. An English speaker and a Chinese speaker are both able to use a language, but they are not mutually intelligible. This shows that language is culturally transmitted. It is passed on from one generation to the next through teaching and learning, rather than by instinct. In contrast, animal call systems are genetically transmitted. They are born with the capacity to produce the set of calls peculiar to their species.
2． descriptive linguistics vs. prescriptive linguistics
Answer: A linguistic study is descriptive if it describes and analyses facts observed; it is prescriptive if it tries to lay down rules for "correct" behavior. Linguistic studies before the 204 century are largely prescriptive whereas modem linguistic is mostly descriptive.

II. 判断正误（T for True and F for False）
1. When language is used to get information, it serves an informative function.
Answer: F (It serves an interrogative function).
2． Most animal communication systems lack the

primary level of articulation.
Answer: F (The primary units in these systems cannot be further divided into elements. So what they lack is the secondary level of articulation.)
3． Descriptive linguistics are concerned with how languages work, not with how they can be improved.
Answer: T

III. 填空题
1．By saying that "language is arbitrary", we mean that there is no logical connection between meaning and _______.
Answer: sounds
2． The distinction between langue and parole is made by the Swiss linguist E de Saussure. The distinction between competence and performance is made by the American linguist__________.
Answer: Noam Chomsky
3． An approach to linguistic study which attempts to lay down rules of correctness as to how language should be used is _______.
Answer: prescriptive

IV. 选择题
1．Unlike animal communication system, human language is ______.
A. stimulus free
B. stimulus bound
C. under immediate stimulus control
D. stimulated by some occurrence of communal interest
Answer：A
2. ____ has been widely accepted as the forefather of modem linguistics.
a. Chomsky b. Saussure c. Bloomfield d. John Lyon
Answer: b

V. 问答题
l. Is language productive or not? Why?
Answer: Firstly, Language is productive or creative. This means that language users can understand and produce sentences they have never heard before. Secondly, Productivity is unique to human language. Most animal communication systems have a limited repertoire, which is rapidly exhausted, making any novelty impossible. Thirdly, The productivity or creativity of human language originates from its duality. Because of duality, the speaker can combine the basic
linguistic units to form an infinite set of sentences. The productivity of language also means its potential to create endless sentences. This is made possible by the recursive nature of language.
2. Comment on the following statement: “In linguistics, ‘language’ only means what a person says or said in a given situation”.
Answer: This statement is incorrect. In linguistics, "language" has several layers of meaning: firstly, the whole of a person’s language, e.g. Shakespeare’s language; secondly, a particular variety or level of speech or writing, e.g. scientific language, literary language, colloquial language; thirdly, an abstract system underlying the totality of the speech/writing behavior of a community, e.g. the English language, the Chinese language; lastly, there is an even more abstract sense of "language", referring to the common features of all human languages that distinguish them from animal communication systems or any artificial language.
3. Point out three ways in which linguistics differs from traditional grammar.
Answer: Firstly, most linguistic analyses today focus on speech rather than writing. Secondly, modem linguistics is mostly descriptive while traditional grammar is largely prescriptive. Thirdly, a third difference is the priority of synchronic description over the traditional diachronic studies.
4. What is the major difference between Saussure' s distinction between langue and parole and Chomsky's distinction between competence and performance?
Answer: Saussure’s langue is social product, a set of conventions for a speech community. Chomsky regards competence as a property of the mind of each individual. Saussure studies language more from a sociological point of view while Chomsky studies it more from a psychological point of view.

第二章 语音学和音位学
I. 名词解释
1．narrow transcription
Answer: There are two ways to transcribe speech sounds. One is the “broad transcription”----the transcription with letter-symbols only, and the other is “narrow transcription”---the transcription with letter-symbols accompanied by the diacritics which can help bring out the finer distinctions than the letters alone may possibly do.
2. Illustrate the term “allophone” with at least one appropriate example.
Answer: Allophones are the different members of a phoneme, sounds which are phonetically different but do not make one word different from another in meaning. For example, in English, the phoneme /l/ is pronounced differently in "let", "play" and "tell". The first /l/ is made by raising the front of the tongue to the hard palate, while the vocal cords are vibrating; the second /l/ is made with the same tongue position as the first, but the vocal cords are not vibrating; and the third /l/ is made by raising not only the front by also the back of the tongue while the vocal cords are vibrating.

II 判断正误（T for True and F for False）
1. /o/ is a mid-high front rounded vowel.
Answer: F. (/o/ is a mid-high BACK rounded vowel.)
2. A phoneme in one language or one dialect may be an allophone in another language or dialect.
Answer: T.

III. 填空题：
1. The three cavities in the articulatory apparatus are _____, _______, and _____.
Answer: pharynx, the nasal cavity, the oral cavity
2. By the position of the ____ part of the tongue, vowels and classified as front vowels, central vowels and back vowels.
Answer: highest.
3. ____refers to the change of a sound as a result of the influence of an adjacent sound.
Answer: Assimilation.
4. You are required to fill in the blanks below abiding by the instance given beforehand.
Example: /p/: voiced bilabial stop
/s/: ________________
/g/:_______________
/tʃ/:______________
/t/: _______________
/f /: _______________
Answer:
/s/: voiceless alveolar fricative
/g/: voiced velar stop
/t

ʃ/: voiceless alveo-palatal/post-alveolar affricate
/ t /: voiced dental fricative
/f /: voiceless labiodental fricative
5. Which of the following words would be treated as minimal pairs and minimal sets?
pat, pen more, heat, tape, bun, fat, ban, chain, tale, bell, far, meal, vote, bet, heel, ten, men, pit, main, hit, eat, man
Answer:
pat, fat; pat, pit; pit, hit;
pen, ten; ten, men;
heat, eat; heat, heel;
tape, tale;
bun, ban;
chain, main;
bell, bet;
meal, heel;
man, men, main.

IV. 选择题
1. All syllables contain a(n) _______.
a. nucleus
b. coda
c. onset
Answer: a

2. _____is one of the supersegmental features.
a. Stop
b. Voicing
c. Deletion
d. Tone
Answer: d
3. Which of the following consonants does not exist in English?
a. dental stop
b. bilabial stop
c. alveolar stop
d. velar stop
Answer: a
4. _____is not an English consonant.
a. Labiodental plosive
b. Alveolar nasal
c. Velar stop
d. Dental fricative
Answer: a

V. 辨音选择
1. What are the distinctive features that group the following sounds in these sets?
1) /f, v ,s/
2) /p, f, b/
3) /g, z, b/
4) /k, g, w/
5) /m, n, ŋ/
Answer: 1) fricative 2) obstruent 3) voiced 4) velar
5) nasal
2. There is one segment that does not belong to the natural class in each of the following groups of speech sounds. You are required to identify that segment and label the natural class, using a descriptive term as specific as possible.
a) /m/, /n/, /w/, / ŋ /
b) /v/, /w/, /z/, /t/
c) /n/, /f/, /l/, /s/, /t/, /d/, /z/
Answer:
1) /w/ is a semi-vowel, and the others are all nasals.
2) /t/ is voiceless, and the others are voiced.
3) /f/ is labiodental, and the rest are alveolar

VI. 问答题
1．Circle the words that contain a sound as required:
1) a low vowel: pipe, gather, article, leave, cook
2) a bilabial consonant: cool, lad, leap, bomb, push
3) an approximant: luck, boots, word, once, table
4) a front vowel: god, neat, pit, lush, cook
5) a velar: god, fast, chat, lake, quick
2．Exemplify the relationship between phone, phoneme and allophone.
Answer: Firstly, a “phone” is a phonetic unit or segment. The speech sounds we hear and produce during linguistic communication are all phones. Phones may or may not distinguish meaning. Secondly, a "phoneme" is a phonological unit that is of distinctive value. As an abstract unit, a phoneme is not any particular sound. It is represented or realized by a certain phone in a certain phonetic context. Thirdly, the phones representing a phoneme are called its "allophones". How a phoneme is represented by a phone, or which allophone is to be used, is determined by the phonetic context in which it occurs. But the choice of an allophone is not random but rule-governed in most cases.
3．When we are pronouncing the following phrases, how do we actually articulate the "n" sound in the word "ten"? Do we still pronounce it as /n/?
1) ten houses 2) ten teachers 3) ten colleges 4) ten pupils 5) ten buildings 6) ten classes
Answer: 1) /n/
2) /n/
3) /

ŋ /
4) /m/
5) /m/
6) / ŋ /
4．How many functions do the vocal cords have in the production of speech sounds?
Answer: They have three functions: to make a glottal stop, to produce a voiced sound and to produce a voiceless sound.

第三章 形态学
I. 名词解释
1．morpheme
Answer: The morpheme is the smallest unit in terms of relationship between expression and content, a unit which cannot be divided without destroying or drastically altering its meaning, whether it is lexical or grammatical. For instance, the word "barks" in "The dog barks" consists of two morphemes ― "bark" and "-s", neither of which can be further divided into other smaller meaningful units.
2．lexeme
Answer: The term "lexeme" is postulated to reduce the ambiguity of the term "word". It is the abstract unit underlying the smallest unit in the lexical system of a language, which appears in different grammatical contexts. For example, "write" is the lexeme of the following set of words: "writes", "wrote", "writing", "written".
3．inflectional morphemes
Answer: Inflectional morphemes are also called inflectional affixes. They manifest various grammatical relations or grammatical categories such as number, tense, degree and case. In English, all inflectional morphemes are suffixes, e.g. -(e)s, -ing, -(e)d, -est.

II. 判断正误
1． A root is not always a free form.
Answer: T (There are such bound roots as “-ceive”.)

III. 填空题
1．Polymorphemic words other than compounds have two parts: the roots and the ____.
Answer: affixes
2．On, before and together are_____words ― they are words which do not take inflectional endings.
Answer: grammatical (functional/form)

IV．选择题
1．"Radar" is a/an____.
a. acronym
b. blending
c. coinage
d. clipping
Answer: a
2．Compound words consist of______ mor
phemes.
a. bound
b. free
c. both bound and free
Answer: b

V. 匹配题
Match each expression under A with the one statement under B that characterizes it.
A B
1. a noisy crow a. compound noun
2. eat crow b. root morpheme plus derivational prefix
3. scarecrow c. phrase consisting of an adjective plus noun
4. the crow d. root morpheme plus inflection affix
5. crowlike e. root morpheme plus derivational suffix
6. crows f. grammatical morpheme followed by lexical morpheme
g. idiom
Answer: 1. c 2. g 3. a 4. f 5. e 6. d

VI. 问答题
1. Divide the following words into Roots, IA (inflectional affix) and/or DA (derivational affix).
1) transformations 2) looseleaves
3) destructive 4) geese 5) misled
Answer:
1) trans- (DA) form (Root) -ation (DA) s (IA)
2) loose (Root) leave (Root) s (IA)
3) de- (DA) struct (Root) -ive (DA)
4) geese (IA)
5) mis- (DA) led (IA)
2. Label the morphological category of the morphemes underlined in each of the English expressions.
a) I' ve been here.
b) transform
c) oxen
d) recur
Answer: a) bound morpheme b) derivational prefix c) inflectional suffix d) bound root
3. Each of the following Persian words is poly-morphemic. You are required to match each of the notions given below with a morpheme in Persian. (Note that xar means "buy" and -id designates the past tense).
xaridi
You (singular) bought.
naxaridam
I did not buy.
namixaridand
They were not buying.
xarid
He bought.
naxaridim
We did not buy.
mixarid
He was buying.
mixaridid
You (plural) were buying.
xaridam
I bought.
Match each of the notions given below with a morpheme in Persian:
a) I
b) you (singular)
c) not
d) was/were V-ing (continuous)
Answer: a) am
b) i
c) na
d) miVid
4．It is a fact that morphological processes may be sensitive to certain phonological context. The English data given below illustrate this fact. You are required to state the phonological contexts where the

addition of -en is possible.
a b
whiten *bluen
madden *stupiden
redden *greenen
Fatten *fartheren quicken *slowen
deafen *difficulten

Liven *abstracten
harden *shallowen
soften *angryen
deepen *vividen

Answer: The suffix -en, which attaches to adjectives to form verbs, can only attach to monosyllabic bases ending in oral stops or fricatives.
Verb
Adjective
-en if Adjective ends in an obstruent (oral stop or fricative).
- <Φ> if Adjective ends in a sonorant (nasal, approximant, vowel)
Meaning: to make (more) Adjectives
5．The word uneasiness may be analyzed in either of the two ways below. You are required to find an argument to support one of the two analyses.
a)
N
Prefix
Noun
un
Adjective
Suffix
easi
ness
b)
N
Adjective
Suffix
Prefix
Adjective
ness
uneasi
Answer: b) is the correct analysis, because un- only attaches to adjecti