现代语言学笔记

A Detailed Note for Modern Linguistics

1. Explain the following definition of linguistics: Linguistics is the scientific study of language. Linguistics investigates not any particular language, but languages in general.

Linguistic study is scientific because it is based on the systematic investigation of authentic(可靠的，真实的) language data. No serious linguistic conclusion is reached until after the linguist has done the following three things: observing the way language is actually used, formulating some hypotheses, （臆测）and testing these hypotheses against linguistic facts to prove their validity. 2. What are the branches of linguistics? What does each of them study? (语言学的主要分支是什么。每个分支的研究对象是什么？)

Linguistics mainly involves the following branches: 1) General linguistics, which is the study of language as a whole and which deals with the basic concepts, theories, descriptions, models and methods applicable in any linguistic study 2) Phonetics, 语音学which studies the sounds that are used in linguistic communication 3) Phonology, 音系学which studies how sounds are put together and used to convey meaning in communication 4) Morphology, 形态学which studies the way in which morphemes are arranged to form words 5) Syntax, 句法学which studies how morphemes and words are combined to form sentences 6) Semantics, 语义学which is the study of meaning in language. 7) Pragmatics, 语用学which is the study of meaning not in isolation, but in the context of use 8) Sociolinguistics, 社会语言学which is the study of language with reference to society 9) Psycholinguistics, 语言心理学which is the study of language with reference to the workings of mind. 10) Applied linguistics, 应用语言学which is concerned about the application of linguistic findings in linguistic studies; in a narrow sense, applied linguistics refers to the application of linguistic principles and

theories to language teaching, especially the teaching of foreign and second languages.

11) Other related branches are anthropological linguistics(人类语言学), neurological linguistics（神经语言学）, mathematical linguistics（数学语言学）, and computational linguistics（计算机语言学）.

3. What makes modern linguistics different from traditional grammar? (现代语言学与传统语法有什么区别？)

Traditional grammar is prescriptive（规定性）; it is based on \"high \"(religious, literary) written language. It sets models for language users to follow. But Modern linguistics is descriptive（描述性）; its investigations are based on authentic and mainly spoken language data. It is supposed to be scientific and objective and the task of linguists is supposed to describe the language people actually use, whether it is \"correct\" or not. 4. Is modern linguistics mainly synchronic（共时性） or diachronic（历时性）? Why?

(The description of language at some point in time is a synchronic study; the description of a language as it changes through time is a diachronic study.)

Modern linguistics is mainly synchronic, focusing on the present-day language. Unless the various states of a language are successfully studied, it will not be possible to describe language from a diachronic point of view. 5. Which enjoys priority in modern linguistics, speech or writing? Why?

Modern linguistics gives priority to the spoken language for the following reasons:

First, speech precedes writing. The writing system is always a later invention used to record the speech. There are still some languages that only have the spoken form. Then, a larger amount of communication is carried out in speech than in writing. Third, speech is the form in which infants acquire their native language. 6. Saussure 是如何区分语言langue和言语parole的？

(The distinction between langue and parole was made by the famous Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure early this century. Langue and parole are French words.)

Langue refers to the abstract linguistic system shared by all the members of a speech community, and parole refers to the realization of langue in actual use. Langue is the set of conventions and rules which language users all have to follow while parole is the concrete use of the conventions and the application of the rules. Langue is abstract; it is not the language people actually use, but parole is concrete; it refers to the naturally occurring language events. Langue is relatively stable, it does not change frequently; while parole varies from person to person, and from situation to situation. 7. Chomsky的语言能力competence和语言使用performance各指什么？

(American linguist N. Chomsky in the late 1950’s proposed the distinction between competence and performance.)

Chomsky defines competence as the ideal user’s knowledge of the rules of his language. This internalized set of rules enables the language user to produce and understand an infinitely large number of sentences and recognize sentences that are ungrammatical and ambiguous. According to Chomsky, performance is the actual realization of this knowledge in linguistic communication. Although the speaker’s knowledge of his mother tongue is perfect, his performances may have mistakes because of social and psychological factors such as stress, embarrassment, etc… Chomsky believes that what linguists should study is the competence, which is systematic, not the performance, which is too haphazard (偶然的). 8. How is Saussure’s distinction between langue and parole similar to Chomsky’s distinction between competence and performance? And what is their difference?

Both Saussure and Chomsky make the distinction between the abstract language system and the actual use of language. Their purpose is to single out one aspect of language for serious study.

They differ in that Saussure takes 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. 9. What characteristics of language do you think should be included in a good, comprehensive definition of language? Language is a system of arbitrary vocal symbols used for human communication.

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本质的 connection between the word and the thing it refers to. Third, language is vocal because the primary medium is sound for all languages. The term ―human‖ is meant to specify that language is human-specific. 10. What features of human language have been specified by Charles Hockett to show that it is essentially different from any animal communication system? 人类语言的甄别性特征是什么？

1. Arbitrariness（任意性）: (课本答案：a sign of sophistication only humans are capable of) It means that there is no logical connection between meanings and sounds. Although language is arbitrary by nature, it is not entirely arbitrary. Non-arbitrary words make up only a small percentage of the total number. The arbitrary nature of language is a sign of sophistication and it makes it possible for language to have an unlimited source of expressions. 2. Productivity（创造性）: （课本答案：creativity: animals are quite limited in the messages they are able to send）Language is productive or creative in that it makes possible the construction and interpretation of an infinitely large number of sentences, including those they have never said or heard before. 3. Duality（二重性）: （课本答案：a feature totally lacking in any animal communication）It means that language is a system, which consists of two sets of structure, or two levels, one of sounds at the lower level and the other of meanings at the higher level. At the lower or the basic level, there is the structure of individual and meaningless sounds, which can be grouped into meaningful units at the higher level. This duality of structure or double articulation of language enables its users to talk about anything within their knowledge. 4. Displacement（移位性）: （课本答案：no animal can ―talk‖ about things removed from the immediate situation）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 far-away places. In other words, language can be used to refer to contexts removed from the immediate situations of the speaker. 5. Cultural transmission（文化传递性）： （课本答案：details of human language system are taught and learned while animals are born with the capacity to send out certain signals as a means of limited communication）While we are born with the ability to acquire language, the details of any language are not genetically transmitted, but instead have to be taught and learned.

11. Do you think human language is entirely arbitrary? Why?

Language is arbitrary in nature, it is not entirely arbitrary, because there are a limited number of words whose connections between forms and meanings can be logically explained to a certain extent, for example, the onomatopoeia,拟声 words which are coined on the basis of imitation of sounds by sounds such as bang, crash, etc.. Take compounds for another example. The two elements ―photo‖ and ―copy‖ in ―photocopy‖ are non-motivated, but the compound is not arbitrary. Chapter 2: Phonology音系学 1. What are the two major media of communication? Of the two, which one is primary and why? 语言交际的两大媒介是什么？哪一个是基本的交际媒介？为什么？

Speech and writing are the major media of communication. Speech is considered primary over writing. The reasons are: speech is prior to writing in language evolution, speech plays a greater role in daily communications, and speech is the way in which people acquire their native language. 2. What are the three branches of phonetics? How do they contribute to the study of speech sounds? 语音学的三个分支是什么。它们是如何研究语言学的？ (可参照一下课文原话，可能更容易理解)

1) Articulatory phonetics describes the way our speech organs work to produce the speech sounds and how they differ. 2) Auditory phonetics studies the physical properties of the speech sounds, and reaches important conclusion that phonetic identity is only a theoretical ideal. 3) Acoustic phonetics studies the physical properties of the speech sounds, the way sounds travel from the speaker to the hearer; it deals with the sound waves through the use of such machines as a spectrograph

（声谱仪）.

3. Where are the articulatory apparatus of human being contained? Pharyngeal cavity, oral cavity and nasal cavity. 4. What is voicing and how is it caused? 什么叫浊音化？它是如何形成的？

Voicing is the result of the vibration of the vocal cords. When the vocal cords are drawn wide apart, letting air go through without causing vibration, the sounds produced in such a way are voiceless. When vocal cords are

held together tautly so that the air stream vibrates them, the sounds produced in this way are voiced. 5. What is the function of nasal cavity? How does it perform this function?

The function of nasal cavity is to nasalize the sounds that are produced. It does this by closing the air passage connecting the oral and nasal cavities so that the air stream can only go through the nasal cavity. 6. Describe the various parts in the oral cavity which are involved in the production of speech sounds?

The various pats of the tongue: the tip, the front, the blade, and the back; the uvula; the soft palate; the hard palate; the teeth ridge (alveolar); the upper and lower teeth; the lips. 7. How broad transcription and narrow transcription differ? 宽式标音和严式标音有什么区别？(P22)

The broad transcription is the transcription of sounds by using one letter to represent one sound.

The narrow transcription is the transcription with diacritics （变音符号） to show detailed articulatory features of sounds.

In broad transcription, the symbol [l] in used for the sound [l] in words like leaf [li:f], feel [fi:l], build [bild], and health [helθ]. The sound [l] in all these words is differ slightly. The [l] in [li:f], occurring before a vowel, is

called a clear [l], and no diacritic is needed to indicate it; the [l] in [fi:l] and [bild], occurring before another consonant, is called dark [l], indicated in narrow transcription as [l]. Then in [helθ], the sound [l] is followed by the dental sound [θ], it is thus called a dental [l], and transcribed as [helθ]（注：l下有一个向下的框，无法打印） in narrow transcription. 8. How are the English consonants classified? 英语的辅音是如何分类的？

1) by manner of articulation.

a. stops（plosive爆破音）: [p],[b],[t],[d],[k],[g]

b. fricatives（磨擦音）: [f],[v],[s],[z],[ θ],[ð], [∫ ], [ʒ], [h] c. affricates（破擦音）: [ t∫], [dʒ] d. liquids（lateral边音，流音）: [l], [r] e. nasals（鼻音）: [m],[ n],[ ŋ] f. glides （semivowels半元音）: [w], [ j] 2) by place of articulation :

a. bilabial（双唇音）: [p],[b],[m],[w] b. labiodental（唇齿音）: [f],[v] c. dental（舌齿音）: [θ],[ ð]

d. alveolar（齿龈音）: [t],[d],[s],[z],[n],[l],[r] e. palatal（腭音）: [∫], [ʒ],[ t∫ ], [dʒ], [j] f. velar（软腭音）: [k], [g], [ŋ ] g. glottal（喉音，声门单）: [h]

9. What criteria are used to classify the English vowels? 英语的元音是如何分类的？

1) According to the position of the tongue, vowels may be distinguished as front vowels such as [i:] [i] [e] [æ] [a], central vowels such as [ɜ:] [ə] [ʌ], and back vowels such as [u:] [ʊ ] [ɔ:] [ɔ ] [ɑ:]

1

2) According to the openness of the mouth, we classify the vowels into four groups: close vowels such as [i:] [i] [u:] [ʊ ], semi-close vowels such as [e] [ɜ:], semi-open vowels such as [ə] [ɔ:], and open vowels such as

[æ] [a] [ʌ ] [ɔ ] and [ɑ:].

3) According to the shape of the lips, vowels are divided into rounded vowels and unrounded vowels. In English all the front and central vowels are unrounded vowels, all the back vowels, with exception of [ɑ:], are

rounded.

4) According to the length of the vowels, the English vowels can also be classified into long vowels and short vowels. The long vowels include [i:] [ɜ:] [ɔ: ] [u:] [ɑ:]，while the rest are short vowels.

10. What is the difference between a monophthong单元音 and a diphthong双元音?

A monophthong is one for which the organs of speech remain in a given position for a period of time. A diphthong is a vowel sound consisting of a deliberate glide. The organs of speech starting in the position of one vowel and immediately moving in the direction of another vowel, for example: [i:], [i] are monophthongs, and [aɪ ], [eɪ ] are diphthongs. 11. How do phonetics and phonology differ in their focus of study? Who do you think will be more interested in the difference between [l]and [l], [p] and [ph], a phonetician or a phonologist? Why? Phonetics: description of all speech sounds and their fine differences. It not necessarily distinguish meaning.

Phonology: description of sound systems of particular languages and how sounds function to distinguish meaning. It is realized as certain phone and it distinguish meaning. A phonetician would be more interested in such differences because such differences will not cause differences in meaning, but can make finer distinctions of the sounds. 12. What is a phone? How is it different from a phoneme? How are allophones related to a phoneme? Phone: a speech sound, a phonetic unit. （It not necessarily distinguish meaning）

Phoneme: a collection of abstract sound features, a phonological unit. (realized as certain phone, distinguish meaning) Allophones: actual realization of a phoneme in different phonetic contexts. 13. What is a minimal pair and what is a minimal set? Why is it important to identify the minimal set in a language?

Minimal pair: two sound combinations identical in every way except in one sound element that occurs in the same position. Minimal set: a group of sound combinations with the above feature.

By identifying the minimal pairs or the minimal set of a language, a phonologist can identify its phonemes. 14. What are phonemic contrast, complementary distribution, and minimal pair? 什么叫音位对立？什么叫互补分布？什么是最小对立对？(p34)

If two phonetically similar sounds can occur in the same environments and they distinguish meaning, they are in phonemic contrast. [p], [b]

If two phonetically similar sounds are two allophones of the same phoneme and they occur in different environments, they are said to be in complementary distribution. [p], [ph].

When two different forms are identical in every way except for one sound segment which occurs in the same place in the strings, the two words are said to form a minimal pair. For example, kill and bill. 15. Explain with examples the sequential rule, the assimilation rule and the deletion rule. (P36,每条规则记一个例子) Sequential rule: rule governing the combination of sounds in a particular language.

Assimilation rule: rule assimilating one sound similar to the following one by copying one of its phonetic features. Deletion rule: rule governing the deletion of a sound in a certain phonetic context although it is represented in spelling. 16. What are supresegmental features? How do the major suprasegmental features of English function in conveying meaning? 什么是超音位特征？它是如何影响语义的？ (p40) Suprasegmental features are phonological features above the sound segment level.

The major suprasegmental features in English are word stress, sentence stress and intonation.

1) The location of stress in English distinguishes meaning, such as `import and im`port. The similar alternation of stress also occurs between a compound noun and a phrase consisting of the same elements. A

phonological feature of the English compounds is that the stress of the word always falls on the first element and the second element receives secondary stress, for example: `blackbird is a particular kind of bird, which is not necessarily black, but a black `bird is a bird that is black.

2) Sentence stress refers to the relative force which is given to the words in a sentence. The more important words such as nouns, main verbs, adjectives, adverbs, and demonstrative pronouns, are pronounced with

greater force and made more prominent. And the other categories of words (articles, personal pronouns, auxiliary verbs, prepositions, and conjunctions) are usually not stressed. But to give special emphasis to a certain notion, a word in sentence that is usually unstressed can be stressed to achieve different effect. Take the sentence ―He is driving my car.‖ For example, to emphasize the fact that the car he is driving is not his, or yours, but mine, the speaker can stress the possessive pronoun my, which under normal circumstances is not stressed.

3) English has four basic types of intonation, known as the four tones: When spoken in different tones, the same sequence of words may have different meanings. Generally speaking, the falling tone indicates that what

is said is a straight-forward, matter-of-fact statement, the rising tone often makes a question of what is said, and the fall-rise tone often indicates that there is an implied message in what is said. 17. What does sentence stress mean?

Sentence stress refers to the relative force which is given to the words in a sentence. Some words are more important than others, and the more important words are pronounced with greater force and made more prominent. The more important words in English are nouns, main verbs, adjectives, adverbs, and demonstrative pronouns, and the other categories of words (articles, personal pronouns, auxiliary verbs, prepositions, and conjunctions) are usually not stressed. To give special emphasis to a certain notion, a word in a sentence that is usually unstressed can be stressed. For example: He is driving my car. My may be stressed to emphasize the fact that the car is mine. Chapter 3: Morphology形态学 1. Define the following terms: 2. What does morphology study?

Morphology is a branch of grammar which studies the internal structure of words and the rules by which words are formed. The aim of morphology is to find out the rules according to which words are formed. For example: ―simplify‖, ―qualify‖, ―beautify‖ are formed by adding ―-ify‖ to either an adjective or a noun. 3. What is a morpheme? Describe with examples the various types of morphemes used in English. Morpheme is the smallest meaningful unit of language.

Free morphemes: They are the independent units of meaning and can be used freely all by themselves, for example, ―book-‖ in the word ―bookish‖.

Bound morphemes: They are those that cannot be used independently but have to be combined with other morphemes, either free or bound, to form a word such as ―-ish‖ in ―bookish‖. // Bound morphemes can be subdivided into roots and affixes. A root is seen as part of a word; it can never stand by itself although it has a clear and definite meaning, such as ―gene-‖ in the word ―generate‖. // Affixes are of two types: inflectional and derivational. Inflectional morphemes manifest various grammatical relations or grammatical categories such as ―-s‖ in the word ―books‖ to indicate plurality of nouns. Derivational affixes are added to an existing form to create a word such as ―mis-‖ in the word ―misinform‖. // Derivational affixes can also be divided into prefixes and suffixes. Prefixes occur at the beginning of a word such as ―dis- ‖ in the word ―dislike‖, while suffixes occur at the end of a word such as ―-less‖ in the word ―friendless‖. 4. Try to find out the meaning of the following roots in English and give two or three words that contain each of them: geo- — the earth: geology, geography

-ology — a branch of learning: morphology, phonology tele- — distant, far: telescope, television vision — seeing, sight: television liter- — words: literal, literature

audi- — listening: auditor, audience, auditorium gene- — life: generate, genetic, genital semi- — half: semiconductor, semifinal aqu- — water: aquarium, aquatic

-loqu- — speech: eloquent, loquacious, soliloquy

-ium — hall: stadium, gymnasium, auditorium, aquarium -path- — emotion: sympathy, empathy toler- — endure: tolerate, tolerable

thermo- — heat:: thermometer, thermostatic, thermonuclear manu- — hand: manuscript, manual, manufacture hydro- — water: hydraulic, dehydrate chron- — time: chronological, chronicle demo- — people: democracy, demography dur- — lasting: during, durable

agr- — farming: agriculture, agrarian

kilo- — one thousand: kilometer, kilogram -nym- — mane: pseudonym, antonym ped- — foot: centipede, impede -rupt- — breaking: rupture, abrupt

-gress- — movement: progress, digress poly- — various: polygon, polyglot syn- — identical: synchronic, sympathy

5. What are the main inflectional affixes 屈折词缀in English? What grammatical meaning do they convey? -(e)s, indicating plurality (of nouns)

-(e)s, indicating third person singular, present tense -(e)d, indicating past tense (for all three persons) -ing, indicating progressive aspect

-er, indicating comparative degree (of adjectives and adverbs) -est, indicating superlative degree (of adjective and adverbs) -’s, indicating the possessive case (of nouns) 6. State the morphological rules that govern the use of the given derivational affixes.

Example: -er This suffix is added to a verb to form a noun indicating the agent that carries out the action, e.g. write — writer.

1) -ant: this suffix is added to a verb to form a noun indicating the agent, e.g. assistant 2) -ment: suffix added to a verb to form its corresponding noun, e.g. development 3) sub-: prefix added to an adjective to form another adjective to indicate a lesser degree, e.g. substandard 4) -en: suffix added to an adjective to form a verb to indicate the acquisition of the quality denoted by the adjective, e.g. lighten, blacken 5) en-: prefix added to an adjective to form a verb to indicate the acquisition of the quality denoted by the adjective, e.g. enrich, enlarge 6) –ee: suffix added to a verb to form a noun indicating the recipient of the action denoted by the verb, e.g. employee 7) –ful: suffix added to a noun to form an adjective indicating the quality denoted by the noun, e.g. plentiful 8) –some: suffix added to a noun to form an adjective indicating the quality denoted by the noun, e.g. quarrelsome 9) –wise: suffix added to a noun to form an adverb meaning ―with regard to the area indicating by the noun‖, e.g. careerwise 10) un-: prefix added to an adjective to indicate the absence of the quality indicated by the adjective, e.g. unemployed

7. What are the main features of the English compounds?

Despite the various formations, all compounds share the following features:

1) Orthographically, a compound can be written as one word with or without a hyphen in between, or as two separate words, e.g., armchair, follow-up, thunder bird. 2) Syntactically, the part of speech of the compound is generally determined by the part of speech of the second element, e.g., head-strong adj. greenhouse n. 3) Semantically, 语义地the meaning of compound is often idiomatic, not always being the sum total of the meanings of its components. For example, a blackleg is not a leg that is black, a greenhouse is not a

house that is green, a hotdog is not a dog at all.

2

Phonetically, 语音学the stress of a compound always falls on the first element, while the second element receives secondary stress. For example, ―,running ’dog.‖ Thus pronounced, the form means ―a dog that is running,‖ the other way is to put the primary stress on the first element ―running‖, in this case, ―running dog‖ is actually a compound noun and metaphorically it refers to a person who follows another person obediently in his wrong doings.

8. Explain the formation and meaning of the following compounds:

Example: nightcap, noun formed by combining two nouns, meaning a drink one takes before going to bed. 1) cat’s paw: noun formed by two nouns, meaning a person used by another as a tool 2) tablecloth: noun formed by combining two nouns, meaning a piece of cloth spread on a table to cover it 3) green-eyed: adjective formed by combining an adjective and an –ed form, meaning jealous 4) green horn: noun formed by combing an adjective and a noun, meaning a person not experienced for a job or occupation 5) update: verb formed by combining an adverb and a verb, meaning to bring something up to date 6) jet lag: noun formed by combing two nouns, meaning the feeling of fatigue caused by traveling in a jet plane crossing different time zones 7) bootleg: verb (also noun) formed by combining two nouns meaning ―to make, carry, or sell illicit goods‖ 8) built-in: adjective formed by combining a past participle with preposition, meaning ―made as an integral part‖ 9) cockpit: noun formed by joining two nouns, meaning the compartment in an aircraft where the pilot or the crew sit 10) good-for-nothing: adjective formed by joining an adjective, a preposition and a pronoun, meaning irresponsible or worthless

Chapter 4: Syntax 1. Define the following terms: 2. Types of sentences （句子的基本类型）: Traditionally, three major types of sentences are distinguished. They are simple sentence, coordinate or compound sentence and complex sentence.

1) A simple sentence consists of a single clause which contains a subject and a predicate and stands alone as its own sentence. For example, ① John reads extensively. ② Mary decided to take a linguistic class the next semester. Each of the two sentences contains a single clause and can stand structurally independent. 2) A coordinate sentence contains two clauses joined by a linking word called coordinating conjunction, such as ―and‖, ―but‖, ―or‖. The two clauses in a coordinate sentence are structurally equal parts of the sentence; neither is subordinate to the other. For example, ③ John is reading a linguistic book, and Mary is preparing for her history exam. ④ John likes linguistics, but Mary is interested in history. 3) A complex sentence contains two or more clauses, one of which is incorporated into the other. The two clauses in a complex sentence have unequal status, one subordinating the other. The incorporated, or subordinate, clause is normally called an embedded clause, and the clause into which it is embedded is called a matrix sentence. For example, ⑤ Mary told Jane [that John liked linguistics]. ⑥ [That John likes linguistics] puzzles everyone. ⑦ Mary showed interest in linguistics [after John gave her a lecture]. In the above three examples, the clauses in the square brackets are embedded clauses. They are subordinate to the clauses outside the brackets which are called matrix clauses.

3. 画出 ―Flying planes can be dangerous.‖ 的树型图。‖ (答案见课本，可以自己手工画一下)

This sentence is ambiguous because it has two readings: a. Planes which are flying can be dangerous. b. To fly planes can be dangerous. The tree diagrams are as follows: 4. Because languages have recursive properties, 循环性there is no limit to the potential length of sentences, and the set of sentences of any language is infinite. Give two examples to show the recursive properties of

sentences. a. I love music. b. You know that I love music. c. Everybody knows that you know that I love music. a. The little girl saw the man with the telescope. b. The little girl saw the man with the telescope which was purchased at a new shop. c. The little girl saw the man with the telescope which was purchased at a new shop whose owner was a good friend of the little girl.

(注意看一下课后习题)

Chapter 5: Semantics语义学 1. What are the major views concerning the study of meaning(语义研究的主要流派有哪些)?

1) The naming theory: It was proposed by the ancient Greek scholar Plato. According to this theory, the linguistic forms or symbols used in a language are taken to be labels of the objects they stand for. So words are just names or labels for things. 2) The conceptualist view: It holds that there is no direct link between a linguistic form and what it refers to. In the interpretation of meaning, they are linked through the mediation of concepts in the mind. 3) Contextualism: 语境主义It is based on the presumption（假定） that one can derive meaning from or reduce meaning to observable contexts. Two kinds of context are recognized: the situational context and the linguistic context. For example, the meaning of the word \"seal\" in the sentence \"The seal could not be found\" can only be determined according to the context in which the sentence occurs: The seal could not be found. The zoo keeper became worried. (seal meaning an aquatic mammal) The seal could not be found. The king became worried. (seal meaning the king's stamp)

4) Behaviorism:行为主义 The contextualist view was further strengthened by Bloomfield. He drew on behaviorist psychology when he tried to define the meaning of linguistic forms. 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\". (Bloomfield, 1933) This behaviorist theory is somewhat close to contextualism. It is linked with psychological interest.

2. What is sense and what is reference? How are they related? 所指与意义有什么关系？

Sense and reference are two terms in the study of meaning. (1) Sense is concerned with the inherent meaning of the linguistic form. It is the collection of all the features of the linguistic form; it is abstract and de-contextualized. It is the aspect of meaning that dictionary compilers are interested in. Reference means what a linguistic form refers to in the real, physical world; it deals with the relationship between the linguistic element and the non-linguistic world of experience. (2) Obviously, linguistic forms having the same sense may have different references in different situations. On the other hand, there are less frequent occasions when linguistic forms with the same reference might differ in sense, e.g. ―morning star‖ and ―evening star‖. 3. How many major sense relations between words.

1.synonymy,同义词 2.polysemy,一次多义 3.homonymy, 同音异义4.hyponymy 下义关系and 5.antonymy.反义词

4. What are the major types of synonyms in English? (同义词的分类)

1) Dialectal synonyms: Dialectal synonyms are words which have more or less the same meaning and are used in different regional dialects such as petroleum in British English and gasoline in American English. Dialectal synonyms can also be found within British, or American English itself. For example, \"girl\" is called \"lass\" or \"lassie\" in Scottish dialect. 2) Stylistic synonyms: Stylistic synonyms are words which have the same meaning but differ in style, or degree of formality. Some of the stylistic synonyms tend to be more formal, others tend to be casual , and still others are neutral in style. For example: old man, daddy, dad, father, male parent. 3) Synonyms that differ in their emotive or evaluative meaning: They are words that have the same meaning but express different emotions of the user. The emotions of the user indicate the attitude or bias（偏爱） of the user toward what he is talking about, such as thrifty and miser. 4) Collocational synonyms: Some synonyms differ in their collocation. That is, they go together with different words, for example: accuse . . . of, charge . . . with, rebuke . . . for. 5) Semantically different synonyms: They refer to the synonyms that differ slightly in what they mean. For example, \"amaze\" and \"astound\" are very close in meaning to the word \"surprise,\" but they have very subtle differences in meaning. While amaze suggests confusion and bewilderment, \"astound\" suggests difficulty in believing.

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

Homonymy: different words are identical in sound or spelling, or in both, but different in meaning. e.g. night—knight, tear v.—tear n., fast a.—fast v. Polysemy: the same one word has more than one meaning. e.g. earth – our planet, or the soil on its surface.

Hyponymy: refers to the sense relation between a more general, more inclusive word and a more specific word. (The general word is called the superordinate, and the more specific words are called its hyponyms. Hyponyms of the same superordinate are co-hyponyms to each other.) e.g. furniture—table,bed. 6. How can words opposite in meaning be classified? (反义关系可以分为哪几个类别？各有什么特征？)

1) Gradable antonyms: Some antonyms are gradable because there are often intermediate forms between the two members of a pair such as far/near, dark/bright, ugly/beautiful 2) Complementary antonyms: a pair of complementary antonyms is characterized by the feature that the denial of one member of the pair implies the assertion of the other. left/right, vacant/occupied,

north/south

3) Relational opposites: pairs of words that exhibit the reversal of a relationship between the two items. father/daughter, doctor/patient

7. What are the major sense relations between sentences.

1) X is synonymous with Y

e.g. X: He was a bachelor all his life. Y: He never married all his life.

In terms of truth condition, if X is true, Y is true, and if X is false, Y is false. 2) X is inconsistent with Y

e.g. X: John is married. Y: John is a bachelor.

In terms of truth condition, if X is true, Y is false, and if X is false, Y is true. 3) X entails Y. (Y is an entailment of X.) (entails=be included in) e.g. X: He has been to France. Y: He has been to Europe.

In terms of truth condition, if X is true, Y is necessarily true, and if X is false, Y may be true or false; If Y is true, X may be true or false, and if Y is false, X is false. 4) X presupposes Y. (Y is a prerequisite of X.) e.g. X: John’s bike needs repairing. Y: John has a bike.

In terms of truth condition, if X is true, Y must be true, and if X is false, Y is still true; If Y is true, X is either true of false, and if Y is false, no truth value can be said about X.

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

In the light of componential analysis, the meaning of a word consists of a number of distinctive meaning features; it is these different features that distinguish word meaning. Similarly, a phoneme is considered as a collection of distinctive sound features and it is these sound features that distinguish different sounds. 9. What is grammaticality? What might make a grammatically meaningful sentence semantically meaningless? (P107-108)

Grammaticality: the grammatical well-formedness of a sentence. A sentence may be well-formed grammatically, i.e. it conforms（使一致） to the grammatical rules of the language, but it is not necessarily semantically well-formed, i.e. it may not make sense at all. Whether a sentence is semantically meaningful is governed by the rules called the selectional restrictions, i.e. constrains on what lexical items can go with what others. Some sentences may be grammatically well formed, i.e. they comply perfectly with the grammar rules, yet they may not be semantically meaningful. The reason is that they contain words which are not supposed to go together, thus violating the selectional restrictions. 10. 什么是述谓结构(predication analysis)？它有那些类型？

The predication is the abstraction of the meaning of a sentence. This applies to all forms of sentence, including statements, imperative and interrogative forms. A predication consists of argument(s) and predicate. An ar-gument is a logical participant in a predication. It is generally identical with the nominal element (s) in a sentence. A predicate is something that is said about an argument or it states the logical relation linking the arguments in a sentence.

According to the number of arguments contained in a predication, the predications may be classified into two-place predication (containing two arguments), one-place argument (containing one argument), and no-place predication (containing no argument). For example:

His car is next to my car. (Two-place predication) He is singing. (One-place predication) It is raining. (No-place predication) 11. 句子的意义是构成句子的每个单词意义的总和吗？

The meaning of a sentence is not the sum total of the meanings of all its components. It cannot be worked out by adding up all the meanings of its constituent words. For example; The dog bit the man.

4)

3

The man bit the dog.

The two sentences consist of exactly the same words, but they are widely different in their meanings. 12. 语义变化的主要类型有哪些？（see chapter 7, P145）

Semantic change refers to the change of meaning of a word. The major types of semantic change are as follows:

1) Semantic broadening refers to the process in which the meaning of a word becomes more general or inclusive than its historically earlier denotation. For example, the word ―holiday‖ was originally used to

mean a day of religious significance because it was a ―holy day‖. Today everyone enjoys a holiday, whether he or she is religious or not.

2) Semantic narrowing is the reverse process in which the meaning of a word becomes less general or inclusive than its historically earlier meaning. For example, the word ―liquor‖ in contemporary English is

an alcoholic drink, but it was once synonymous with ―liquid‖, be it alcoholic or not.

3) Semantic shift 语义演变refers to the process in which a word loses its former meaning and acquires a new, sometimes related meaning, e.g. the word ―silly‖. Quite surprisingly, a ―silly‖ person was a

happy person in Old English, and a naive person in Middle English, but a foolish person in Modern English.

Chapter 6: Pragmatics 语用学 1. What does pragmatics study? How does it differ from traditional semantics? 语用学和传统语义学有什么区别？

Pragmatics studies how speakers of a language use sentences to effect successful communication. (or how meaning is conveyed in the process of communication.)

Pragmatics is the study of meaning in the context of use, while traditional semantics treats meaning as something intrinsic, abstract and de-contextualized.（展开：＊Traditional semantics studied meaning, but the meaning of language was considered as something intrinsic, and inherent, i.e. a property attached to language itself. Therefore, meanings of words, meanings of sentences were all studied in an isolated manner, detached from the context in which they were used. ＊Pragmatics studies meaning not in isolation, but in context. ＊The essential distinction between semantics and pragmatics is whether the context of use is considered in the study of meaning. If it is not considered, the study is restricted to the area of traditional semantics; if it is considered, the study is being carried out in the area of pragmatics.） 2. How is the notion of context interpreted?(Why is the notion of context essential to pragmatics?)

＊The notion of context is essential to the pragmatic study of language. It is generally considered as constituted (n.结构) by the knowledge of the speaker and hearer. ＊The shared knowledge is of two types: the knowledge of the language they use; and the knowledge about the world, including the general knowledge about the world and the specific knowledge about the situation in which linguistic communication is taking place.＊ Without this shared knowledge, linguistic communication would be impossible, and without considering this knowledge, linguistic communication cannot be satisfactorily accounted for in a pragmatic sense. 3. How are sentence meaning and utterance meaning related, and how do they differ? 句子的语义与话语语义有什么联系和区别？

Utterance-meaning 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. The former is concrete and context-dependent and the latter is abstract and de-contextualized.

（展开：＊A sentence meaning is often considered as the intrinsic property of the sentence itself in terms of a predication. It is abstract and independent of context. ＊The meaning of an utterance is concrete, and context-dependent. ＊The utterance meaning 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. ＊For example, ―There is a dog at the door‖. The speaker could utter it as a matter- of- fact statement, telling the hearer that the dog is at the door. The speaker could use it as a warning, asking the hearer not to approach the door. There are other possibilities, too. So, the understanding of the utterance meaning of ―There is a dog at the door‖ depends on the context in which it is uttered and the purpose for which the speaker utters it.） 4. How does a sentence relate and differ from an utterance? （How a sentence becomes an utterance?）

＊A sentence is a grammatical unit. Its meaning is often studied as the abstract, intrinsic property of the sentence itself in terms of a predication. ＊Utterance is what people actually utter in the course of communication. If we regard 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 whether ―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 regard it as a grammatical unit and consider it as a self-contained unit in isolation 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.＊Most utterances take the form of sentences, i.e. most utterances are complete sentences in terms of syntax; however, some utterances are not, and some cannot even be restored to complete sentences. 5. According to John Austin, what are the three acts a person is possibly performing while making an utterance. Give an example.

Locutionary act, illocutionary act, and prelocutionary 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. )

For example: You have left the door wide open.

＊The locutionary act performed by the speaker is that he has uttered all the words \" you,' \" have,\" \" door,\" \" left,\" \" open,\" etc. and expressed what the word literally mean. ＊The illocutionary act performed by the speaker is that by making such an utterance, he has expressed his intention of asking the hearer to close the door. ＊The perlocutionary act refers to the effect of the utterance. If the hearer understands that the speaker intends him to close the door and closes the door, the speaker has successfully brought about the change in the real world he has intended to; then the perlocutiohary act is successfully performed. 6. Why are linguists most interested in the illocutionary act?

An illocutionary act is the act of expressing the speaker's intention; it is the act performed in saying something. Of the three speech acts, linguists are most interested in the illocutionary act because this kind of speech act is identical with the speaker’s intention, and in their study of language communication, linguists are most interested in how a speaker expresses his intention and also how his intention is recognized by the hearer. 7. What are the five types of illocutionary speech acts Searle has specified? What is the illocutionary point of each type? John Searle是如何对言外行为进行分类的？它们各自的言外指的是什么？

1) Representatives（讲述类）: stating or describing, saying what the speaker believes to be true. 2) Directives（指令类）: trying to get the hearer to do something. 3) Commissives（承诺类）: committing the speaker himself to some future course of action. 4) Expressives（表达类）: expressing feelings or attitude towards an existing state. 5) Declarations（宣告类）: bringing about immediate changes by saying something.

1) Representatives: Representatives are used to state, to describe, to report, etc. 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, swearing, hypothesizing are among the most typical of the representatives.) For example:

(I swear) I have never seen the man before. (I state) the earth is a globe.

2) Directives: Directives are attempts by the speaker to get the hearer to do something. Inviting, suggesting, requesting, advising, warning, threatening, ordering are all specific instances of this class. For example: Open the window!

3) Commissives: Commissives are those illocutionary acts whose point is to commit the speaker to some future course of action. When the speaker is speaking, he puts himself under obligation. For example: I promise to come.

I will bring you the book tomorrow without fail.

4) Expressives: The illocutionary point of expressives is to express the psychological state specified in the utterance. The speaker is expressing his feelings or attitude towards an existing state of affairs, e.g. apologizing, thanking, congratulating. For example: I’m sorry for the mess I have made.

5) Declarations: Declarations have the characteristic that the successful performance of such an act brings about the correspondence between what is said and reality. For example: I now declare the meeting open. 8. What are the four maxims of the CP? How does the violation of these maxims give rise to conversational implicatures（会话暗示）? 合作原则的四个准则是什么？违反合作原则的四个准则是如何产生会话含义

的？

1) The maxim of quantity （数量准则）

a) Make your contribution as informative as required (for the current purpose of the exchange). （使自己所说的话达到当前交谈目的所要求的详尽程度。） b) Do not make your contribution more informative than is required. （不能使自己所说的话比所要求的更详尽。）

2) The maxim of quality （质量准则）

a) Do not say what you believe to be false. （不要说自己认为不真实的话。） b) Do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence. （不要说自己缺乏足够证据的话。）

3) The maxim of relation（关联准则）：Be relevant.（说话要贴切。） 4) The maxim of manner （方式准则）

a) Avoid obscurity of expression. （避免晦涩的词语。） b) Avoid ambiguity. （避免歧义。） c) Be brief (avoid unnecessary prolixity) （说话要简短，避免累赘。） d) Be orderly. （说话要有条理。） A. Do you know where Mr. Smith lives?

B. Somewhere in the southern suburbs of the city.

This is said when both A and B know that B does know Mr. Smith's address. Thus B does not give enough information that is required, and he has flouted the maxim of quantity. Therefore, such conversational

implicature as \"I do not wish to tell you where Mr. Smith lives\" is produced.

A. Would you like to come to our party tonight? B. I'm afraid I' m not feeling so well today.

This is said when both A and B know that B is not having any health problem that will prevent him from going to a party. Thus B is saying something that he himself knows to be false and he is violating the maxim of

quality. The conversational implicature \"I do not want to go to your party tonight\" is then produced.

A. The hostess is an awful bore. Don't you think? B. The roses in the garden are beautiful, aren't they?

This is said when both A and B know that it is entirely possible for B to make a comment on the hostess. Thus B is saying something irrelevant to what A has just said, and he has flouted the maxim of relation. The

conversational implicature \"I don't wish to talk about the hostess in such a rude manner\" is produced.

A. Shall we get something for the kids?

B. Yes. But I veto I - C - E - C - R - E - A - M.

This is said when both A and B know that B has no difficulty in pronouncing the word \"ice-cream.\" Thus B has flouted the maxim of manner. The conversational implicature \"I don’t want the kids to know we are

talking about ice-cream\" is then produced.

Chapter 7：Historical Linguistics历史语言学

1. What is the purpose or significance of the historical study of language?

1) Researches in historical linguistics shed light on prehistoric developments in the evolution of language and the connections of earlier and later variants of the same language and provide valuable insights into the kinship patterns of different languages.

2) The identification of the changes that a particular language has undergone enables us to reconstruct the linguistic history of that language, and thereby hypothesizes its earlier forms from which current speech and writing have evolved.

3) The historical study of language also enables them to determine how non - linguistic factors, such as social, cultural and psychological factors, interact over time to cause linguistic change. 2. Characterize the nature of language change. 语言变化的本质有什么特征？

All living languages change with time and language change is inevitable. As a general rule, language change is universal, continuous and, to a considerable degree, regular and systematic. Language change is extensive, taking place in virtually all aspects of the grammar.

Although language change is universal, inevitable and in some cases vigorous, it is never an overnight occurrence, but a gradual and constant process, often indiscernible（难识别的，看不见的） to speakers of the same generation.

3. English has undergone tremendous changes since its Anglo-Saxon days. Identify the major periods in its historical development, and name major historical events that led to the transition from one period to the next.

英语语言的发展可分为哪几个主要阶段？各个阶段的转变是以什么历史事件为标志的？

4

Major periods: English has undergone dramatic changes throughout the three major periods, i.e. Old English (roughly from 449 to 1100), Middle English (roughly from 1100 to 1500), and Modern English (roughly from 1500 to the present).

Historical Events: The Old English period began with the invasion of the British Isles by English-speaking Anglo-Saxons from Europe, and ended with the arrival of Norman French invaders historically known as the Norman Conquest. The Middle English period is distinguished from the Old English period by the Norman Conquest, and from the Modern English period as the result of the cultural influence of the European renaissance movement.

4. Explain why the word order of Old English is more varied than that of Modern English. 为什么古英语的词序比现代英语灵活？

Old English has an elaborate case marking system to show if a constituent is the subject, object, and so on, of a sentence, while Modern English has a much weaker system for case marking and therefore has to rely heavily on more rigid word order to indicate grammatical relations.

5. As language changes over time, the meaning of a word may deviate from its original denotation. Discuss the major types of semantic changes. 语义变化的主要类型有哪些？（see chapter 7, P145） Semantic change refers to the change of meaning of a word. The major types of semantic change are as follows:

1) Semantic broadening refers to the process in which the meaning of a word becomes more general or inclusive than its historically earlier denotation. For example, the word ―holiday‖ was originally used to

mean a day of religious significance because it was a ―holy day‖. Today everyone enjoys a holiday, whether he or she is religious or not.

2) Semantic narrowing is the reverse process in which the meaning of a word becomes less general or inclusive than its historically earlier meaning. For example, the word ―liquor‖ in contemporary English is

an alcoholic drink, but it was once synonymous with ―liquid‖, be it alcoholic or not.

3) Semantic shift refers to the process in which a word loses its former meaning and acquires a new, sometimes related meaning, e.g. the word ―silly‖. Quite surprisingly, a ―silly‖ person was a happy person in

Old English, and a naive person in Middle English, but a foolish person in Modern English.

6. Explain the purpose of reconstruction in historical linguistics and the method employed by historical linguists. 历史语言学重新构建语言历史的目和方法各是什么？

Historical linguists aim at establishing, through the method of comparative reconstruction, the genetic relationship between and among various languages based on the evidence of systematic form-meaning resemblance in cognate items, and thereby to reconstruct the protolanguage of a language family.

7. Over the years from Old English period to the Modern English period, English has undergone some major sound changes. Illustrate these changes with some examples. The major sound changes include changes in vowel sounds, and in the loss, gain and movement of sounds.

The changes in vowel sounds can be seen in the Great Vowel Shift in the history of English, which led to one of the major disagreements between the pronunciation and the spelling system of Modern English. These changes involve seven long, or tense vowels, for example: Middle Eng. Modern Eng. five fi:v faɪv mouse mu:s maʊs feet fe:t fi:t mood mo:d mu:d break brɜ:ken breɪk broke brɔ:ken brəʊk name nɑ:m neɪm Sounds do not just change, they can be lost. Vowel sounds change, but some sounds simply disappeared from the general pronunciation of English. One example of sound loss is the /kn - / clusters in the word – initial

position. In Old and Middle English, both /k/ and /n/ were pronounced, as is shown in the spelling of such words as ―knight‖ and ―knee.‖ Although Modern English spelling of these words still keeps the initial letter k, its sound is no longer pronounced. Sound changes can also take the form of sound addition. Sound addition includes the gain or insertion of a sound, for example: spinle spindle, emty empty.

Sound change can take the form of sound movement. It involves a reversal in position of two neighbouring sound segments. For example, the /r/ sound in the Old English words ―bridd‖ (―bird‖) and ―hros‖ (―horse‖) was moved to the right of the vowel sounds in their Modem English counterparts ―bird‖ and ―horse.‖ 8. What are the most widely-spread morphological changes in the historical development of English?

The most widely-spread morphological changes in the historical development of English are the loss and addition of affixes. A number of morphological rules in Old English are now lost in Modern English. Some of these rules are about derivational affixes, such as suffixes ―-baere‖ and ―-bora‖ . In Old English an adjective would derive if ―-baere‖ was added to a noun, such as: lust (―pleasure‖) + baere lustbaere (―agreeable‖) But this rule has been lost in modern English. The most dramatic morphological loss concerns the loss of gender and case marking. In Old English, for example, ―stan‖(注：a上有一横) (―stone‖) was marked masculine, while ―gief‖ (―gift‖) and ―deor‖ (注：e上有一横) (―wild animal‖) were marked respectively feminine and neuter. In modern English, the gender markers of these words have been lost. Some affixes have been added to the English morphological system. Take ―-able‖ for example, it has been added to English since the Old English period. At first, words ending in ―-able,‖ such as ―favourable‖ and ―conceivable,‖ were borrowed altogether from French. Then this suffix became a productive rule in English. It was used with other verbs to form adjectives. Contemporary English speakers apply this suffix rule to more stems, thus producing new adjectives such as ―payable,‖ and ―washable.‖

9. 什么是Grimm法则？

Jacob Grimm, A German scholar, found a series of consonant shifts that occurred in the history of the Germanic languages including English, Dutch, German, Swedish and Danish. The following are the three sets of consonant shifts that Grimm discovered:

a. Voiced stops become voiceless. b → p d → t g → k b. Voiceless stops become fricatives. p → f t → θ k → x

c. Voiced aspirates become deaspirated. bh → b dh →d gh →g

Because these sound changes were so strikingly regular and law-like, they became known as Grimm’s Law. According to this law, the Germanic languages were subject to a rule that changed all voiceless stops into fricatives after they split off from other Indo-European languages.

10. The causes of language change. 语言变化的主要原因是什么？ 1) Sound assimilation is the physiological effect of one sound on another. It may cause loss of vowels or consonants, vowel nasalization and morphological and lexical changes. In an assimilative process, successive

sounds are made identical, or more similar, to one another in terms of place or manner of articulation, or of haplology, the loss of one of two phonetically similar syllables in sequence. For example, the Old English word ―Engla-land‖ (―the land of the Angles‖) came to be pronounced ―England‖ through the assimilation of ―la-la sounds.

2) Rule simplification and regularization are a type of spontaneous morphological rule change involving exceptional plural forms of nouns. For example, many English speakers tend to ignore the exceptional plural

rules, just producing plural nouns such as ―hoofs‖ instead of ―hooves‖.

3) Internal borrowing caused by the need to lessen the burden on memory. For example, by analogy to the pairs ―reap/reaped‖ and ―seem/seemed‖, English speakers are heard saying ―He sweeped the floor.‖ 4) Elaboration is motivated by the need to reduce ambiguity and increase communicative clarity or expressiveness. For example, Modern English has a stricter word order than Old English did. 5) Sociological triggers refer to those radical socio-political changes that lead to vigorous language changes. A typical example in the history of English is the Norman Conquest, a military event that marked the

dawning of the Middle English period.

6) The continual process of cultural transmission across generations is another cause of language change. For example, while old people tend to call a refrigerator ―icebox‖, the younger generation is more often heard

speaking of a ―fridge‖ as they have the desire to sound different from the older generation.

7) Children’s approximation toward the adult grammar constitutes another basic cause for language change. Children tend to acquire the simplified and regularized expressions, thus giving rise to language change in the

long run.

Chapter 8：Socio- linguistics

1. What are the distinctions between bilingualism and diglossia?

Bilingualism refers to a linguistic situation in which two standard languages are used in a speech community; whereas in a diglossic community, two varieties of language are used for different situations, one being more standard and higher, and used for more formal matters, and the other less prestigious, and used for colloquial situations.

2. Describe three features of Black English, including at least one phonological and one syntactic characteristics. 1) One of the phonological features of Black English is the simplification of a consonant cluster at the end of a word by dropping the word-final phoneme. As a result, for example, ―pass,‖ ―past‖ and ―passed,‖ are all

pronounced the way as ―pass‖ is.

2) One of the syntactic features of Black English is the constant absence of the copula, such as in ―That mine‖ and ―The coffee cold.‖ 3) Another syntactic feature of Black English is the systematic use of the expression ―it is ―where Standard English uses ―there is ―in the sense of ―there exists‖: ―Is it a Mr. Johnson in this office?‖ 4) Another syntactic feature that characterizes Black English is the double negation construction with sentences like ―I don’t know nobody‖, and ―He don’t go nowhere.‖ 3. The following words are considered instances（实例） of sexist language. Find alternatives to these masculine-marked words: 1) businessman → business executive 2) cleaning woman → housekeeper 3) forefather → ancestor 4) housewife → homemaker 5) kinsman → relative 6) layman → nonspecialist 7) spokesman → speaker, representative 8) statesman → leader 9) stewardess → flight attendant 10) workmanship → skilled job, quality job 11) mankind → people 12) manpower → personnel 13) mothering → nurturing 14) chairman → chair/moderator 15) mailman → postal worker/letter carrier 16) fireman → fire fighter

5

17) policeman → police safety officer 18) salesman → sales representative 19) dustman → sanitation engineer 20) to man(v.) → to operate 4. List several ways in which the speech of women and the speech of men differ from each other.

Women tend to use more prestigious forms, more polite and indirect language, and more specific color terms than their male counterparts. Females are found to use more questions than declarative statements in comparison with males.

展开：1) In normal situations, female speakers tend to use more prestigious forms than their male counterparts with the same general social background. For example, standard English forms such as ―I did it‖ and ―he isn’t‖ can be found more often in the speech of females, while the more colloquial ―I done it‖ and ―he ain’t‖ occur more frequently in the speech of males.

2) Another feature often associated with so-called women’s language is politeness. Usually, tough and rough speeches have connotations of masculinity and are not considered to be desirable feminine qualities. In general, men’s language is more straightforward, less polite, and more direct, and women’s language is more indirect, less blunt生硬，率直, and more circumlocutory迂回的.

3) This phenomenon of sex-preferential differentiation is also reflected in the relative frequency with which males and females use the same lexical items. For example, certain words that are closely associated with women may sound typically feminine as a result of that association. For example, some English adjectives like ―lovely‖, ‖nice‖, ‖darling‖ and ―cute‖ occur more often in female speeches and therefore cause feminine association.

4) Females have also been shown to possess a greater variety of specific color terms than males, in spite of the fact that men do not necessarily possess less acute color perception than women. On the other hand, males have the reputation of possessing a larger vocabulary in traditionally male-dominated domains such as sports, hunting and the military.

5) Sex-preferential differentiation is also seen in the speech acts of males and females.

A request in English such as ―Close the door when you leave‖ can be phrased in a number of ways ranging from a harsh command to a very polite request: a. Close the door when you leave.

b. Please close the door when you leave.

c. Would you please close the door when you leave? d. Could you close the door when you leave?

Although the above options are all available to both men and women, it is usually the more polite forms that are selected by female speakers. In general, females are found to use more questions than declarative statements in comparison with males.

5. Discuss with examples some of the linguistic differences between Standard English and Black English.

One of the most prominent phonological characteristics of Black English is the frequent simplification of consonant clusters at the end of words when one of the two consonants is an alveolar /t/, /d/, /s/, or /z/.The application of this simplification rule may delete the past - tense morpheme, so ―past ―and ―passed ―are both pronounced like ―pass.‖ Another salient characteristic of Black English phonological system concerns the deletion of some word-final stop consonants in words like ―side‖ and ―borrowed.‖ Speakers of Black English frequently delete these word-final stops, pronouncing ―side‖ like ―sigh‖ and ―borrowed‖ like ―borrow.‖

One prominent syntactic feature is the frequent absence of various forms of the copula ―be‖ in Black English, which are required of Standard English. Compare the following expressions in Black English and Standard English:

(1) Black English Standard English They mine. They’ re mine. You crazy. You re crazy.

Another distinctive syntactic feature of Black English is the systematic use of die expression ―it is‖ where Standard English uses ―there is ―in the sense of ―there exists‖: Is it a Mr. Johnson in this office?

Another aspect of Black English is the use of double negation constructions. Whenever the verb is negated, the indefinite pronouns ―something‖, ―somebody‖, and ―some‖ become the negative indefinites ―nothing‖, ―nobody‖, and ―none‖, for example: He don’t know nothing. (He doesn’t know anything.)

6. A formal remark may have basically the same content as an informal one, but not necessarily the same social meaning. Write two directives and two statements with the same content but in two different register forms,

each appropriate for a particular context.

1) Directives:

Formal: Kindly extinguish（熄灭）the illumination（照明） upon exiting.

Less formal: Please turn off the lights on your way out.

2) Statements:

Formal: We regret（遗憾） to inform（通知） you that permission is not granted（准予）.

Less formal: We are sorry to tell you that you don’t have our permission.

7. Change the following informal statements for formal situations: 1) The delegates were savvy（知道，了解） of the fact that the document they were signing wasn’t perfect.

The delegates understood that the document they were signing was not perfect.

2) The candidate slammed（猛力抨击） her opponent for often changing his tune on the issues.

The candidate criticized her opponent for often changing his views on the issues.

3) Stickley furniture may not be real smooth, but it’s pricey（昂贵的） and fresh（新颖的）.

Stickley furniture may not be very comfortable, but it is expensive and fashionable.

8.

Euphemism 委婉语 Denotation 指示语 1) economically deprived poor 2) low-income dresses cheap clothes 3) dignified（有威严，有品格的） matron（夫人，已婚妇女） old woman 4) negative（负的） savings debts 5) disabled（伤残的） cripple（跛子） 6) retirement pension oldage pension

dole（失业救济金） 7) unemployment benefit

go on strike（罢工） 8) take industrial action

drug addiction（毒瘾） 9) chemical dependency

10) under the weather ill 11) low IQ/slow stupid 12) companion animal pet 13) disposal（处理） officer/sanitation engineer dustman（清洁工） 14) correctional facility（矫正设施） prison 15) correctional officer gaoler（监狱看守）

slum area（贫民区） 16) development area

17) pacification（讲和，平定） bombardment（炮击，轰击）

9. What is a linguistic taboo? What effect does it have on our use of language?

a

1) A linguistic taboo refers to a word or expression that is prohibited by the ―polite‖ society from general use. Obscene, profane, and swear words are all taboo words that are to be avoided entirely, or at least

avoided in mixed company. b In sociolinguistics, a linguistic taboo, denotes any prohibition on the use of particular lexical items to refer to objects or acts. a

2) As language use is contextualized in particular social settings, linguistic taboo originates from social taboo. When an act is taboo, reference to this act may also become taboo. Taboo words and expressions

reflect the particular social customs and views of a particular culture. As linguistic taboo reflects social taboo, certain words are more likely to be avoided, for examples, the words related to sex, sex organs and excrement排泄物 in many cultures. The avoidance of using taboo language mirrors social attitudes, emotions and value judgments, and has no linguistic bias. b The avoidance of using taboo language has led to the creation of euphemisms. A euphemism is a mild, indirect or less offensive word or expression substituted when the speaker or writer fears more direct wording might be harsh, unpleasantly direct, or offensive. For example, we say ―portly‖ instead of ―fat‖. In many cultures, people avoid using direct words that pertain to death or dying.

3) Although the use of euphemisms has the effect of removing derogatory贬损 overtones暗示, the disassociative effect is never long-lasting. Often when the negative connotation of a word is recognized in its

euphemistic form, a new euphemism will have to be sought for. However, an excessive use of euphemism may have negative effects. a As a matter of fact, many euphemisms have become cliches陈腔滥调 that are to be avoided in formal speech and writing. b They also tend to be wordy and to give writing a timid quality. c In addition, euphemism can be evasive or even deceitful. Because they are often improperly used to obscure the intended meaning, many people find them offensive and prefer plain language.

注：以上第3）条可用于回答：State that excessive use of euphemism may have negative effects.

10. Excessive use of euphemism may have negative effects. Rewrite each of the following sentences to eliminate euphemistic expressions: 1) The employees who had been notified of an interruption in their employment were referred to their outplacement manager.

The laid-off（被解雇的）employees were told to speak to the person who would try to help them find new jobs.

2) The official acknowledged that he had misspoken when he said the troops had not engaged in any protective-reaction missions.

The official admitted that he had lied when he claimed the troops had not engaged in any offensive （攻击性）missions.

3) The prisoner’s life will be terminated at dawn.

The prisoner will be executed（处死，执行） at dawn.

4) The non-essential personnel in this division will be vacationed by next week.

The unnecessary people in this division will be laid off by next week.

5) Reaching the top of the ladder of success must be a moving experience.

Being successful must be a pleasant experience.

6) I was told that he did away with himself.

I was told that he had committed suicide.

7) He’ll be accountable despite his diabolical（恶魔的） skill.

He’ll be accountable despite his impressive skill.

8) It is a widespread but unproven hypothesis that the parameters of significant personal change for persons in mid-life are extremely narrow.

It is a widely held myth that middle-aged people can’t change.

9) I purchased a residential property that was in need of substantial upgrading.

I bought a house in need of repair.

Chapter 9：Psychological Linguistics

1. Define or explain the following terms: 2. What are the biological foundations of language?

Of all organisms, human beings are the only spontaneous creators and users of highly sophisticated languages that permit the communication of a wide range of knowledge and ideas. Evidently, our linguistic ability does not depend primarily on the structure of our vocal cords, for other mammals also have vocal cords. Human linguistic ability largely depends, instead, on the structure and dynamics of the human brain. As far as is currently known, human beings are the only organisms in which one particular part of the left half of the brain is larger than the corresponding part of the right half. This has led to the belief that human language is biologically, or more exactly, neurologically, based.

3. What are the major mental functions under the control of each hemisphere?

Psychological research suggests that both hemispheres perform important mental functions and they differ only in the manner in which they treat incoming stimuli. For example, the right hemisphere processes stimuli more holistically全面地 and the left hemisphere more analytically分析地. Brain lateralization for major mental functions under the control of each hemisphere is given as follows:

6

(1) Left hemisphere Right hemisphere

language and speech perception of nonlinguistic sounds analytic reasoning holistic reasoning

temporal ordering visual and spatial skills reading and writing recognition of patterns

calculation recognition of musical melodies associative thought

Because each cerebral hemisphere has unique functional superiority, it is accurate to think of the hemispheres as complementarily specialized. 4. In what cortical regions are speech and language thought to localized?

In what have come to known as Broca’s area, Wernicke’s area and angular gyrus, all located in the left hemisphere of the brain.

5. Describe one research technique that has provided linguists with information about the localization of speech and language in the brain.

A research technique known as the ―dichotic listening‖ has been used to study how the brain controls hearing and language. When performing a dichotic listening task, subjects wear earphones and simultaneously receive different sounds in the right and left ear, and are asked to repeat what they hear. Dichotic listening research makes use of the generally established fact that anything experienced on the right-hand side of the body is processed in the left hemisphere of the brain, and vice versa. During dichotic listening experiments, subjects reported hearing the language spoken to their right ears prior to the language spoken to their left ears. The results provide empirical support for the belief that the left hemisphere of the brain is dominant for language and speech.

6. Many left-handed people have their language centers in the right hemisphere of the brain. What type of result would we expect to obtain from such people on a dichotic listening task?

Since the left-handed subjects have language centers resident in their right hemisphere of the brain, they would hear the auditory signal given to the left ear first. This is because it takes a shorter time for the signal to go directly from the left ear to the right side of the brain than it does for the signal spoken to the right ear to travel first to the left hemisphere and then onto the right hemisphere for processing.

7. Describe the processes of language perception, comprehension and production.

From the perspective of psycholinguistic analysis, language use in terms of perception, comprehension and production follows a certain pattern which involves the coordination of various language centers. For example, when we speak, words are drawn from Wernicke’s area and transferred to Broca’s area, which determines the details of their form and pronunciation. The appropriate instructions are then sent to the motor area which controls the vocal tract (声道) to physically articulate the words. When we hear something and try to comprehend it, the stimulus from the auditory cortex is transmitted to Wernicke’ s area, where it is then interpreted. When we perceive a visual image, a message is sent to the angular gyrus, where it is converted into a visual pattern.

8. When asked to read a list of words, some aphasic patients substitute other words for those printed on the list. Often the substituted words are similar or related to the printed words, as is shown by the data given below.

What does the data reveal about how words are likely to be stored in the brain? Printed Words Words Uttered by Aphasics abroad overseas canary parrot decide decision liberty freedom remember memory portray portrait short small speak discussion tall long

Evidently, what is actually stored in the brain is meaning instead of form, and categorical （直截了当的）information instead of discrete（离散的） information. 9. What is the safe conclusion from Genie’s case?

A safe conclusion from Genie’s case is that the language faculty of an average human degenerates after the critical period and consequently, most linguistic skills cannot develop. 10. Provide evidence for the view that there is a critical period for language acquisition.

The critical period for language acquisition coincides with the time during which the brain’s hemispheric lateralization for language and other cognitive skills takes place. It is believed that the end of the critical period corresponds to the completion of this lateralization process. Evidence in support of the critical period hypothesis comes from the fact that children acquiring their first language beyond the critical age are hardly successful, such as the case of ―Genie.‖

Aphasic studies also seem to support the critical period hypothesis: it is reported that preadolescent children suffering damage to the left hemisphere are able to transfer their language centers to the right hemisphere and reacquire the lost linguistic skills.

Further supporting evidence comes from studies in the field of second language acquisition: adults experience much greater difficulty in learning a second or foreign language, in contrast to young children, who are known to be excellent second language learners.

11. According to the strong version of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, language determines speakers’ perceptions and patterns their way of life. How in your view does language relate to thought and culture?

Language does not so much determine the way the speaker perceives the world as it functions as a means by which information can be stored and retrieved, by which a culture transmits its belief, values and norms, and by which the speaker interacts with other members of the culture.

12. How are language and thought related to each other?

Language and thought may be viewed as two independent circles overlapping in some parts, where language and thought are consistent with each other and one never occurs without the other. When language and thought are identical or closely parallel to each other, we may regard thought as ―subvocal speech‖, and speech as ―overt thought. In such a case, speaking and thinking take place simultaneously. Chapter 10：Language Acquisition

1. Discuss the biological basis of child language acquisition.

1Language acquisition is a human species-specific capacity. All children are biologically equipped with this capacity at birth. That is, children are born with the neural prerequisites（先决条件） for language development ○and language use. ○2Because language acquisition is biologically based, all normal children, except those with mental or physical impairments, are capable of acquiring at least one language during the early period of life, a period corresponding to the period of neural maturation of the brain. ○3Because language acquisition is a natural endowment, children, regardless of their cultural tradition, intelligence, and opportunities to receive formal instruction and correction, follow the same natural route of language development and acquire their native language with equal success.

2. Provide supporting evidence for the argument that children acquiring language do not simply memorize words and sentences.

Children’s acquisition of language is a rule-governed behavior. What they acquire is a set of rules for generating an infinite number of sentences. If language was learned through imitation and memorization of individual words and expression, children would only speak the kind of language that they were exposed to. However, it is widely recognized that children can comprehend sentences that they have never heard before, and they are heard producing utterances that connot be possibly uttered by adults. Many errors in the speech of children are not the result of imitation and memorization but the result of overgeneralization of rules. For example, the way a child learns to negate sentences and form questions can be considered examples of overgeneralization in syntax acquisition.

3. Why do we say language acquisition is primarily the acquisition of the grammatical system of language? In principle, no human brain can store all the words and expressions of a language. ○1What happens is that when processing the language they hear, children construct the grammar and make sense of the expressions according to the grammar. ○2When producing utterances, they follow the internalized grammatical rules. ○3Without the knowledge of the productive rules, it would be impossible for language users to produce and understand an unlimited number of sentences which they have never heard before.

4. Different theories of child language acquisition have been advanced. Discuss two contrasting views with reference to the behaviorist learning model and the nativist（先天论者） biological model.

The behaviorist view: Language acquisition is a process of habit formation. Language is learned through stimulus and response. Reinforcement of selected responses is the key to understanding language development. Children learn to produce correct sentences because they are positively reinforced when they say something right and negatively reinforced when they say something wrong.

The nativist view: Language acquisition is the species-specific property of human beings. Children are born with an innate ability to acquire language. They are predisposed to develop their native language along a universal, predetermined route through similar stages. They go about acquiring the grammar of their native language using principles unique to language acquisition.

5. What is the role of correction and reinforcement in first language acquisition?

1According to Behaviorist learning theory, children are believed to gradually assume correct forms of the language of their community when their ―bad‖ speech gets corrected and when their good speech gets positively ○

reinforced. ○2Researchers have found that correction and reinforcement are not key factors in child language development as they were claimed to be. 3○When adults do attempt to correct children’s grammatical errors and the correct form is repeated, their efforts seem to have little effect, or simply doom to failure because children often do not know what the problem is and continue to use a personally constructed form. Children’s reinforcement has been found to occur usually in children’s pronunciation or reporting of the truthfulness of utterances, rather than in the grammaticality of sentences.

6. What is the role of imitation in first language acquisition?

1At one time, it was widely believed that children learned language by simply imitating the speech of those around them. We now know that this cannot be true, since many utterance types produced by children do not ○

closely resemble structures found in adult speech. ○2If children learn their native tongue by imitating their parents, how can we account for the utterances that are typical of children’s language, such as the plural form ―my foots,‖ the past tense forms of ―I eated,‖ and the negative construction of ―No the sunshining‖? It is impossible that children imitate these structures from adults because they are never heard in adult conversations. ○3In addition, Children with speech impairment for neurological（神经学上的） or physiological（生理学上的） reasons learn the language spoken to them and understand what is said. ○4A more reasonable explanation is that children are attempting to construct and generalize their own grammatical rules. ○5Some young language learners do seem to make selective use of imitation, but they do not blindly mimic adult speech in a parrot fashion, but rather exploit it in very restricted ways to improve their linguistic skills. The point is that imitation plays at best a very minor role in the child’s mastery of language.

7. What are the major stages that a child has to follow in first language development? What are the features of the linguistic forms at each stage? 1) The prelinguistic stage: At the babbling stage, the sounds and syllables that children utter are meaningless. Babbling, especially early babbling, is largely independent of the particular language to which children

are exposed. The sounds produced in this period seem to include a large variety of sounds. Babbling does not seem to depend on the presence of acoustic, auditory input. When children are through the tenth and eleventh months, they are capable of using their vocalizations to express emotions and emphasis, and of attempting at the grand task of language acquisition.

2) The one-word stage: This stage usually occurs in the late part of the first year or the early part of the second year. At this stage children learn that sounds are related to meanings. They begin to use the same string

of sounds of the native language to ―mean‖ the same thing. Children’s one-word utterances are also called holophrastic sentences, because they can be used to express a concept or prediction that would be associated with an entire sentence in adult speech. One-word utterances sometimes show an overextension or underextension of reference.

3) The two-word stage: During the second year of life, child’s utterances gradually become longer. Children are heard uttering two-word expressions in a variety of combinations. Children’s two-word utterances can

express a certain variety of grammatical relations indicated by word order, for example: ―Daddy hat. / Doggie bark. /Shoe mine. /Apple me. ―Two-word expressions are absent of syntactic or morphological markers. Pronouns are rare.

4) The multiword stage: It occurs between two and three years old. The salient(突出的) feature of the utterances at this stage ceases to be the number of words, but the variation in strings of lexical morphemes, for

example: Daddy like this book./He play little tune./This shoe all wet. /No sit there. The early multiword utterances typically lack inflectional morphemes and most minor lexical categories, therefore they are often called telegraphic speech. Although they lack grammatical morphemes, telegraphic sentences are not simply words that are randomly strung together, but follow the principles of sentence formation. As this type of telegram-format speech increases, a number of grammatical morphemes begin to appear in children’s speech. Simple prepositions begin to turn up in their speech. By the age of five, with an operating vocabulary of more than 2,000 words, children have completed the greater part of the language acquisition process.

8. Account for the phenomenon of young children’s apparent retrogression（退步） from saying, for example, ―went‖ and ―came ― to ―goes‖ and ―comed.‖(P262 the development of morphology) 12Later when they encounter more instances of regular verbs denoting past events with inflectional ―-ed‖ ○Children first learn irregular forms of verbs like ―went‖ and ―came as individual words in regular form. ○

morphemes, they realize that the addition of ―-ed‖ to a verb is a rule that changes the present time to the past time. At this stage, children tend to generalize this rule and apply it to all verbs, and consequently are heard producing the ―ill‖ forms such as ―goed‖ and ―comed.‖ ○3It must be pointed out that errors from overgeneralization should not be viewed as negative, but as evidence of normal progress in language acquisition. At a later time, when they realize that there are exceptions to the rule, they begin to make distinctions between regular and irregular forms.

9. Discuss one major factor which contributes to the difficulties most L2 learners encounter.

1）A primary difficulty most L2 learners can be captured in terms of a distinction between acquisition and learning. Acquisition……; learning…… (参见11题)

2）It has been suggested by some SLA scholars that learning difficulties confronting adult L2 learners arise from the fact that for most people a second language is leaned in a formal setting, rather than acquired in a natural environment.

7

3）Language acquisition is contrasted with language leaning on the ground that acquisition is subconscious, focusing on meaning, while learning is conscious, focusing on form. It is argued that conscious knowledge of linguistic forms does not ensure acquisition of the rules, that is, does not ensure an immediate guidance for actual performance.

10. What’s the difference between acquisition and learning, according to Krashen?

1According to Krashen, acquisition refers to the gradual and subconscious development of ability in the first language by using it naturally in daily communicative situations. ○2Learning, however, is defined as a conscious ○process of accumulating knowledge of a second language usually obtained in school settings. 3○A second language, Krashen argues, is more commonly learned but to some degree may also be acquired, depending on the environmental setting and the input received by the L2 learner. A rule can be learned before it is internalized (i.e., acquired), but having learned a rule does not necessarily preclude（成为…的预兆） having to acquire it later. For example, an English language learner may have learned a rule like the third person singular ―-s‖, but is unable to articulate the correct form in casual and spontaneous conversation because the rule has not yet been acquired. This shows that conscious knowledge of rules does not ensure an immediate guidance for actual performance.

11. Discuss the contrastive analysis in detail.

1） Contrastive Analysis was developed in order to identify and predict the areas of learning difficulty. Given this approach, it was hypothesized that L2 errors were predominantly the result of negative

transfer, or mother tongue interference and second language learning was believed to be a matter of overcoming the differences between LI and L2 systems.

2） According to this view, the major task of second language teaching should predominantly be: first, contrast the native and the target language systems and make predictions about the language items that

would cause difficulty and the errors that learners were likely to make; then use these predictions in deciding on the type of language items that needed special treatment in teaching and in material development and the type of intensive techniques that would be employed to overcome learning difficulties created by the interference.

3） In practice, the Contrastive Analysis is not effective because a large proportion of grammatical errors could not be explained by mother tongue interference. Errors predicted by contrastive analysis have

often not occurred, whereas many actual errors, such as ―goed‖ and ―foots‖, come from overgeneralization instead of negative transfer. Errors, according to the contrastive analysis approach, are negative and had to be overcome or given up. In fact, errors produced in a learner’s second language utterance may very well be developmental errors and therefore, should not be looked upon simply as a failure to learn the correct form, but as an indication of the actual acquisition process in action. Developmental errors often result from the effort on the part of the learner to construct and test general rules of communication in the target language.

12. How do you understand interlanguage?

1Interlanguage consists of a series of interlocking and approximate linguistic systems in-between and yet distinct from the learner’s native and target languages. ○2It represents the learner’s transitional competence moving ○along a learning continuum stretching from one’s LI competence to the target language competence. 3○As a type of linguistic system in its own right, interlanguage is a product of L2 training, mother tongue interference, overgeneralization of the target language rules, and communicative strategies of the learner. 13. Enumerate（列举） some causes that lead to the systematic occurrence of errors in SLA.

Some major causes that lead to the systematic occurrence of errors in second language acquisition include interference from the mother tongue, interlingual interference within the target language and overgeneralization:

1) Mother tongue interference is found at the level of pronunciation, morphology, syntax, vocabulary and meaning, and can be predicted by contrasting the grammatical or other systems of the native and target

languages.

2) Interlingual interference, or cross-association, occurs when the learner mixes rules and patterns of the target language and produce hybrid（混合的） structures. 3) Overgeneralization: the use of previously available strategies in new situation, i.e. the application of a particular pattern or rule of the target language in many other linguistic situations.

14. What is the role of input for SLA?

1It is evident that SLA takes place only when the learner has access to L2 input and the opportunity to interact with the input. ○2It appears that what learners need is not mere exposure to L2 data, but the ○kind of input data that are specially suited to their current stage of development. Discuss the effects of formal instruction on SLA.

Although formal instruction generally focuses on the explicit teaching of linguistic forms, it aids adult L2 learners, particularly adult beginners, by providing opportunities for learners to receive modified comprehensible input that are specially suited to their current stage of L2 development. Moreover, in the ―intake-type‖ of classroom environment, teaching materials and methods are all finely tuned in order to meet the needs of the learner and provide them with ample opportunities to interact with the input.

15. How do the learner factors potentially influence the way in which a second language is acquired? 1) The optimum age for second language acquisition: First language acquisition is most successful when it occurs during the early years of one’ s life before puberty, but the optimum age for SLA does not always

accord with the maxim of ―the younger the better‖. The optimum age for SLA is early teenage. This claim is justifiable（有理由的） because this is the age when the learner’ s flexibility of the language acquisition faculty has not been completely lost while one’s cognitive skills have developed considerably（相当地）.

2) Motivation: Motivation in language learning can be defined in terms of the learner’s overall goal or orientation. Instrumental motivation occurs when the learner’s goal is functional, i.e. to use it as an instrument

for the purpose of, for instance, securing a desirable job. Integrative motivation occurs when the learner’s goal is social, i.e. to integrate oneself with the second language community.

3) Acculturation: The acculturation hypothesis focuses on the social and psychological conditions under which L2 processing is most likely to take place successfully. It states simply that the more a person aspires

to acculturate to the community of the target language, the further he or she will progress along the developmental continuum.

4) Personality: Intuitively, an outgoing personality may contribute to language acquisition. Research results, however, only partially support this hypothesis. No significant relationship has been found between

talkativeness on the one hand and overall proficiency in a second language on the other. But it is recognized that as a result of being frequently exposed to and interacting with the target language, learners with an extroverted personality are likely to achieve better oral fluency than otherwise.

In sum, A good second language learner is, among other things, an adolescent who has a strong and well-defined motivation to learn. He is able to respond and adaptable to different learning situations. He seeks out all opportunities and makes maximum use of them to interact with the input. He employs appropriate learning strategies. And he is willing to identify himself or herself with the culture of the target language community.

8