现代语言学 试题

课程代码： 00830

I. Directions: Read each of the following statements carefully. Decide which one of the four choices best completes the statement and put the letter A, B, C, or D in the bracket.(2%×10=20%)

1. The phonetic form of the prefix meaning “ not” is phonetically variant; it is  before a vowel or an alveolar consonant,  before a labial consonant, and  before a _____, for example, inoperable , indiscrete , impossible , and inconceivable . (       )

A. velar                                                           B. palatal

C. fricative                                                      D. stop

2. Tones are pitch variations that refer to morphologically defined segments to the extent that different _______ in a language are distinctive. Pitch variations can distinguish meaning just like phonemes.(       )

A. sounds                                                        B. patterns

C. pitches                                                        D. features

3. Some of the ______ rules are productive; they can be used freely to form new words.(       )

A. syntactic                                                     B. morphological

C. semantic                                                      D. phonological

4. VP, AP and PP share similar syntactic properties with NP in that they allow for _______ and complements in phrases. (       )

A. heads                                                          B. specifiers

C. lexical items                                                D. obligatory words

5. Bloomfield drew on _______ psychology when trying to define the meaning of linguistic forms. (       )

A. contextual                                                 B. conceptualist

C. behaviorist                                                 D. mentalist

6. Pragmatics differs from traditional semantics in that it studies meaning not in isolation, but in _______. (       )

A. sense                                                         B. concept

C. sentence                                                    D. context

7. The languages of the world belong to families and bear offspring. When we examine the languages of the world, we perceive similarities and differences among them that provide further evidence for the “ ______” relatedness we know exists. (       )

A. geographical                                              B. genetic

C. typological                                                D. functional

8. In English, powder room is a euphemism for toilet, which itself started as a _______ for lavatory, which is now more acceptable than its replacement. (       )

A. variant                                                      B. variation

C. variable                                                     D. euphemism

9. What can be drawn safely from the case of Genie is that _______. (       )

A. it confirms the critical period hypothesis

B. human’s language acquisition device is independent of other intellectual abilities

C. language can not be acquired at all after the critical period

D. the language faculty of an average human degenerates after the critical period and, as a result, most linguistic skills cannot develop

10. Although children are still acquiring aspects of their native language through the later years of childhood, it is normally assumed that they have completed the greater part of the language acquisition process by the age of ______.(       )

A. three and half                                            B. four

C. five                                                           D. six

Ⅱ . Directions: Fill in the blank in each of the following statements with one word , the first letter of which is already given as a clue. Note that you are to fill in ONE word only, and you are not allowed to change the letter given. (1% × 10=10%)

11. The core area of linguistics includes phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax and s                .

12. Phonetics provides the means to describe the sounds, showing how they differ; phonology tells us that they function as p         , acting to contrast words.

13. Both i____________ morphology and derivational morphology are the two sub-branches of morphology.

14. When a sentence is uttered or written down, the words of the sentence are produced one after another in a sequence. This sequential order of words in a sentence shows that the structure of a sentence is l_____________.

15. C_________ synonyms are synonyms that differ in the words they go together with. It is a matter of usage.

16. According to Searle’s classification of illocutionary acts, “I swear I have never seen the man before” is among the most typical examples of the r______.

17. Sound a________ refers to sound change or process by which features of one element change to match those of another that precedes or follows.

18. German-speaking Switzerland is described as a d___________ community, where the distinct varieties are Standard German and Swiss German.

19. The left hemisphere controls voluntary movements of, and responds to signals from, the r___________ side of the body.

20. Learning is defined as a conscious process of accumulating knowledge of a second language usually obtained in school settings while a__________ refers to the gradual and subconscious development of ability in the first language by using it naturally in daily communicative situations.

III. Directions: Judge whether each of the following statements is true or false. Put a T for true or F for false in the bracket in front of each statement. If you think a statement is false, you must explain why you think so and give the correct version. （ 2% × 10=20% ）

21.(      ) People can utter a sentence he has never heard or used before. In this sense, human language is creative.

22.(      ) In English both aspirated and unaspirated voiceless stops occur. The voiceless aspirated stops  and the voiceless unaspirated stops  occur in the same phonemic context or environment.

23.(       ) Parameters are syntactic options of UG that allow general principles to operate in one way or another and contribute to significant linguistic variations between and among languages.

24.(       ) Syntactic movement occurs to all sentences, therefore, the deep structure and surface structure of every sentence look different at its two levels of representation.

25.(       )The Anglo-Saxons were migrants from the northern parts of Europe, so the words that they originally used and the words that the English vocabulary has later taken in from other languages are regarded as loan words.

26.(       ) Paul Grice made a distinction between what he called “ constatives ” and “ performatives ” .

27.(       ) Most of the languages of Europe, Persia ( Iran), and the northern part of India belong to the same Indo-European language family. The language, which no longer exists, is called Proto-Indo-European, a term reflecting the earlier linguistic distribution of the speakers of this language family from India to Europe.

28.(       ) In Black English, when the verb is negated, the indefinite pronouns something, somebody, and some become the negative indefinites nothing, nobody, and none, as in :

He don’t know nothing.

He don’t like nobody.

He ain’t got none.

29.(       ) The cerebral cortex is the decision-making organ of the body, receiving messages from all the sensory organs and initiating all voluntary actions.

30.(       ) During the two-word stage of language acquisition, two-word expressions are absent of syntactic or morphological markers.

IV. Dirctions: Explain the following terms, using one or two examples for illustration. （ 3% × 10=30% ）

31. applied linguistics

32. diacritics

33. phrase structure rule

34. predicate

35. presupposition

36. cognates

37. creole

38. Wernicke’s area

39. overt thought

40. instrumental motivation

V. Answer the following questions. (10% × 2=20%)

41.To what extent can we say that language is culturally transmitted? Explain with examples. Does animal communication have the same feature of cultural transmission?

42. According to John Austin’s new model, please illustrate the three speech acts a speaker might be performing simultaneously when speaking.