全国2011年10月高等教育自学考试

现代语言学试题

课程代码:00830

 I .Directions: Read each of the following statements carefully. Decide which one of the four choices best completes the statement and put the letter A, B, C, or D in the brackets.

( 2% ×10=20% )

1.Often referred to as a design feature of language, ________ enables speakers to produce and understand an infinite number of sentences that they have neither spoken nor heard before.

(      )

A.duality                                                     B.productivity

C.displacement                                             D.arbitrariness

2.________ phoneticians study speech sounds from the speaker’s point of view.They study the process of how a speaker uses his/her speech organs to produce sounds.(      )

A.Articulatory                                              B.Auditory

C.Acoustic                                                   D.General

3.Morphemes such as -er, -en, in-are all called ________.(      )

A.free morphemes                                        B.inflectional morphemes

C.affixes                                                      D.roots

4.________ is of critical importance because it allows the grammar to generate an infinite number of sentences and sentences with infinite length.(      )

A.Recursiveness                                           B.Phrase structure

C.Transformation                                         D.Movement

5.Synonyms are classified into several kinds.The words such as start, begin, and commence can be called ________ synonyms.(      )

A.dialectal                                                   B.stylistic

C.emotive                                                    D.collocational

6.According to John Austin’s speech act theory, a(n)________ act is the act of conveying literal meaning by means of syntax, lexicon and phonology.(      )

A.prelocutionary                                          B.locutionary

C.illocutionary                                             D.perlocutionary

7.Grimm’s Law can be expressed in terms of natural classes of speech sounds: voiced aspirates become unaspirated; voiced stops become voiceless; voiceless stops become ________.(      )

A.affricates                                                  B.fricatives

C.voiced                                                      D.aspirates

8._________is characterized by the innovative, vivid and expressive use of nonstandard vocabulary as well as newly coined words, but it has traditionally carried a negative connotation.(      )

A.Linguistic taboo                                        B.Euphemism

C.Slang                                                       D.Vernacular language

9.Which of the following cases supports the idea that the language faculty of an average human degenerates after the critical period? (      )

A.Gage.                                                       B.Genie.

C.Broca.                                                      D.Wernicke.

10.Apart from the biological predisposition for language acquisition, language ________ is required for successful language acquisition.(      )

A.instruction                                                B.correction

C.imitation                                                  D.input and interaction

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

11.Language system is culturally transmitted, i.e.by teaching and learning, as opposed to g________inheritance.

12.A set of symbols called d       can be added to the letter-symbols such as those needed to indicate long vowels, nasalization to make finer distinctions than the letters alone make possible.

13.In terms of word endings, English is simpler than some other languages such as Russian and German, as in its historical development it has dropped quite a few of its i       affixes.

14.WH-movement is the proposed movement of wh-forms to the beginning of a clause or sentence.In English, WH-preposing is o         when a sentence changes from affirmative to interrogative.

15.In the study of meaning, two kinds of context are recognized: the s        context and the linguistic context.

16.The utterance meaning of a sentence varies with the c        in which it is uttered.

17.H        refers to a process of sound assimilation in which one of two phonetically similar syllables within a word is lost.For example, the Old English word “Engla-land” (“the land of the Angles”) came to be pronounced “England”.

18.Empirical studies of language use and conversation analysis indicate that in normal situations women tend to use more p       forms than men.

19.P           is considered as the intersection of psychology and linguistics, drawing equally upon the language and the mind or brain.

20.In second language acquisition, the process of adapting to the new culture of the L2 community is called a          .

III.Directions: Judge whether each of the following statements is true or false.Put a T for true or F for false in the brackets in front of each statement If you think a statement is false, you must explain why you think so and then give the correct version .

( 2% ×10=20% )

21.(      ) Modern linguistics is mostly descriptive, and prescriptive grammar is no longer used in current language teaching.

22.(      ) The nasal cavity is formed by the passage through the nose when the soft palate, the velum at the back of the mouth is lowered.The sounds thus produced are called nasals.In English there are three nasals: [m], [n] in man, and [ ] in cling.

23.(      ) From the orthographical point of view, a compound can be written as one word with or without a hyphen in between, or as two separate words, the choice of which is determined by conventions.

24.(      )In a tree diagram of sentence structures, S is the root of the tree, occupying the topmost position, from where it branches into phrasal categories, which further branch into smaller syntactic units. The points at which the tree branches are located at various levels are known as branching nodes. A branching node is connected directly only to one lower node.

25.(      ) Pairs of words that exhibit the reversal of a relationship between the two items are called complementary opposites.

26.(      ) If a speaker is saying something for which he or she lacks adequate evidence, he or she is violating the maxim of quantity.

27.(      ) Cognates may be defined as words that have developed from a common ancestor or common source.Work on the systematic form-meaning resemblance in cognates lies at the core of comparative reconstruction.

28.(      ) In medieval times, an agree-upon “common tongue” came into use in the eastern Mediterranean ports, which was called Lingua Franca.The term lingua franca cannot be generalized to other languages similarly used.Thus, not any language can be a lingua franca.

29.(      ) The fact that successful translation between languages can be made is one of the major arguments against the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis.

30.(      ) Empirical studies show that interference from the mother tongue is the major source of errors in learning a second language.

IV. Directions: Explain the following terms and give examples for illustration where appropriate. ( 3% ×10=30% )

31.synchronic linguistics

32.liquids

33.compounding

34.embedded clause

35.predication

36.directives

37.internal borrowing

38.social dialects

39.interpersonal communication

40.fossilization

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

41.Define with examples phonemic contrast, allophone and complementary distribution. What is the basic way to determine the phonemes of a language?

42.Describe with examples the lexical loss which occurred in Old English and Middle English.

 Do you think the loss of words inevitable? What do you think of the process of lexical loss?