全国1月高等教育自学考试现代语言学试题.doc

全国2010年1月高等教育自学考试
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 brackets. ( 2% × 10=20% )
1. The language behavior of particular persons on particular occasions is determined by many
other factors over and above their linguistic ______. ( )
A. system
B. structure
C. competence
D. performance

2. When we pronounce the long vowels [i:] or [u:], our ______, which is a bony structure at the end of the windpipe, is in a state of tension. ( )
A. larynx
B. hard palate
C. glottis
D. vocal cords

3. The word “manuscript” is a two-morpheme cluster which contains ______. ( )
A. two roots
B. a root and a prefix
C. a root and a suffix
D. a root and a free morpheme

4. The grammatical knowledge is represented through Phrase Structure Rules, which state explicitly all and only the possible combinations of the ______ of a language, for example, in English, NP → ( Det ) (Adj) N (PP) (S). ( )
A. phrases
B. clauses
C. sentences
D. constituents

5. The view that the meaning of a linguistic form is defined as the “situation in which the speaker utters it and the response it calls forth in the hearer” was proposed by ______. ( )
A. Plato
B. Ogden and Richards
C. John Firth
D. Bloomfield

6. According to John Austin's theory of speech act, a(n) ______ act is the change brought about by the utterance. ( )
A. prelocutionary
B. locutionary
C. illocutionary
D. perlocutionary

7. In 1786, Sir William Jones suggested that ______ bore to Greek and Latin a stronger affinity than could possibly have been produced by accident.（ ）
A. Germanic
B. Persian
C. Sanskrit
D. Lithuanian

8. The existence of taboo words and taboo ideas stimulates the creation of euphemism, which shows that a word or phrase not only has a l____ act is the change brought about by the utterance. ( )
A. prelocutionary
B. locutionary
C. illocutionary
D. perlocutionary

7. In 1786, Sir William Jones suggested that ______ bore to Greek and Latin a stronger affinity than could possibly have been produced by accident.（ ）
A. Germanic
B. Persian
C. Sanskrit
D. Lithuanian

8. The existence of taboo words and taboo ideas stimulates the creation of euphemism, which shows that a word or phrase not only has a linguistic denotative meaning but also has a ______.( )
A. conceptual meaning
B. connotative meaning
C. cultural meaning
D. social meaning

9. Dichotic listening research tells us a signal coming in the left ear will first go to the ______ hemisphere, from where it is transferred to the left side of the brain for processing. （ ）
A. right
B. left
C. front
D. back

10. Studies of the effects of formal instruction on second language acquisition suggest that formal instruction may help learners perform some of the following types of tasks except ______.
( )
A. planned speech
B. writing
C. casual and spontaneous conversation
D. career-oriented examination

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. Double a refers to the property of language which means language is composed of discrete units at two levels. At the lower level there is a structure of sounds, which are meaningless. At the higher level there are morphemes and words, which are meaningful.
12. In the production of v , the back of the tongue is brought into contact with the soft palate, or velum, e.g., [k] in cat, [g] in get and [η] in sting.
13. Morphological rules are the rules that govern which affix can be added to what type of
s to form a new word.
14. A sentence is a structurally independent unit that usually comprises a number of words. A
phrase structure tree diagram assigns a h structure to sentences.
15. The words such as “pop” meaning a certain sound and “pop” meaning popular are in relationship of c homonyms.
16. The c view in the discussion of semantics is often considered as the initial effort to study meaning in a pragmatic sense.
17. Extensive changes in rules of morphology have occurred in the history of English. English has lost most of its i endings, by which it is no longer possible to identify the functional roles of nouns.
18. Diglossia describes any stable linguistic situation, in which there exists a strict f
differentiation between a low-variety or L-variety and a high variety or H-variety.
19. The localization of cognitive and perceptual functions in a particular hemisphere of the brain is called l .
20. I is the language that a learner constructs at a given stage of second language acquisition.

III. Directions: Judge whether each, of the following statements is true or false. Put a T for true or F for false in the brackets in front of each statement. If you think a statement is false, you must explain why you think so and then give the correct version. （2% × 10=20%)
21.（ ）According to Hall (1968), language is "the institution whereby humans communicate and interact with each other by means of habitually used oral-auditory arbitrary symbols." Most linguists today accept the view of language as a set of "habitually used symbols."
22.（ ）Intonation refers to a distinctive pattern of tones over stretch of speech in principle longer than a word, in other words, when pitch, stress and sound length are tied to the sentence rather than the word in isolation, they are collectively known as intonation.
23.（ ）Suffixes are added to the end of stems, during the process of which they modify the meaning of the original word but usually do not change its part of speech.
24.（ ）When we say a sentence has two levels of structure, D-structure and S-structure, we do not mean that the syntactic representations of these two levels must be different. Since syntactic movement occurs to all sentences, so the representations of the two
levels look different.
25.（ ）“He has been to New York”presupposes “He has been to America”.
26.（ ）John Searle made a distinction between what he called “constatives”and “performatives”.
27.（ ）Regularization of exceptional plural forms of nouns constantly occurs. By analogy to foe/foes, and dog/dogs, English speakers started saying cows as the plural of cow instead of the earlier plural kine. This analogical change does not occur when words are borrowed from foreign languages.
28.（ ）The common English address terms are First Name (e.g., John), Last Name (e.g., Smith), Title + Last Name (e.g., Dr. Green), Title + Title (e.g., Mr. President), Title alone (e.g., Sir) and Kin term (e.g., Dad). And outside of marked settings, between friends, neighbours and colleagues, first names are always preferred.
29.（ ）Thanks to cerebral plasticity, people suffering damage to the left hemisphere are able to transfer their language centers to the right hemisphere and to reacquire the lost linguistic skills with relatively little disruption.
30.（ ）The earliest sounds produced by infants can be considered as early language

IV. Directions: Explain the following terms, using one or two examples for illustration, if necessary. ( 3% × 10=30% )
31. design features
32. narrow transcription
33. bound morphemes
34. deep structure
35. hyponymy
36. commissives
37. sound assimilation
38. idiolect
39. Wernicke's area
40. interference

V. Directions: Answer the following questions.
( 10% ×2=20% )
41. Please illustrate the syntactic and semantic features of compounds in English language with examples.
42. Please explicate how language and thought develop and blend each other in order to understand the relationship between language and thought.