Chapter 1
Introduction
1. De?ne the following terms brie?y.
(1) linguistics: the scienti?c or systematic study of language.
(2) language: a system of arbitrary vocal symbols used for human communication. (3) arbitrariness: the absence of similarity between the form of a linguistic sign and what it
relates to in reality, e.g. the word dog does not look like a dog.
(4) duality: the way meaningless elements of language at one level (sounds and letters)
combine to form meaningful units (words) at another level.
(5) competence: knowledge of the grammar of a language as a formal abstraction and
distinct from the behavior of actual language use, i.e. performance.
(6) performance: Chomsky‘s term for actual language behavior as distinct from the
knowledge that underlies it, or competence.
(7) stylistics: the study of how literary effects can be related to linguistic features. (8) phatic communion: Language is used to establish an atmosphere or maintain
social contact between the speaker and the hearer.
(9) functionalism: the study of the forms of language in reference to their social function in
communication.
(10) formalism: the study of the abstract forms of language and their internal relations. (11) synchronic linguistics: the study of language and speech as they are used at a given
moment and not in terms of how they have evolved over time.
(12) diachronic linguistics: the study of linguistic change over time in contrast to looking at
language as it is used at a given moment.
2. No, language is human-speci?c. Human language has seven design features, including arbitrariness, duality, productivity, interchangeability, displacement, specialization and cultural transmission. These features are found utterly lacking in dogs‘ or pigs‘ noises and thus set human language apart from animal cry systems.
3. Arbitrariness refers to the fact that there is no logical or intrinsic connection bet ween a particular sound and the meaning it is associated with. For example, for the same animal dog, in English we call it /d0g/, in Chinese as ―gou‖, but ―yilu‖ in Japanese; it barks wow wow in English but wang wang in Chinese. Of course, onomatopoetic words such as ―quack-quack‖ and ―bang‖ are exceptions, but words like these are relatively few compared with the total number of words in a language.
4. A human baby does not speak any language at birth. What language the baby is going to speak is determined by the culture he is born into. A Chinese baby born and brought up in London by an English family will speak English, while an English child brought up in Beijing by a Chinese aunt will speak Chinese. That is to say, language cannot be transmitted through heredity. It is culturally transmitted.
5. Firstly, linguistics describes languages and does not lay down rules of correctness while traditional grammar emphasizes correctness. Secondly, linguistics regards the spoken language as primary, while traditional grammar emphasizes the priority of the written language. Thirdly, traditional grammar is based on Latin and it tries to impose the Latin categories and structures on other languages, while linguistics describes each language on its own merits. 6. A descriptive approach attempts to tell what is in the language while the prescriptive approach tells people what should be in the language. Most modern linguistics is descriptive, whereas traditional grammars are prescriptive.
7. Synchronic linguistics studies language at one particular time while diachronic linguistics studies language developments through time. Synchronic linguistics focuses on the state of language at any point in history while diachronic linguistics focuses on the differences in two or more than two states of language over decades or centuries. 8. No, human language has the design feature of specialization. It refers to the fact that man does not have a total physical involvement in the act of communication. For example, a mother can tell a story to her child while slicing up a cake. However, wolves can only respond to a stimulus and is totally involved physically in the communication process. Thus, a wolf cannot have a language similar to man‘s, even though it could express a thousand different emotions. Besides, the aspect of productivity also distinguishes human language from wolf ‘s postures.
Chapter 2
The Sounds of Language
1. De?ne each of the following terms brie?y.
(1) articulator: the tongue, lips, and velum, which change the shape of the vocal tract to
produce different speech sounds.
(2) assimilation: a phonological process whereby a sound becomes phonetically similar (or
identical) to a neighboring sound, e.g. a vowel becomes [+nasal] when followed by a [+nasal] consonant.
(3) consonant: a speech sound produced by partial or complete closure of part of the vocal
tract, thus obstructing the air?ow and creating audible friction. Consonants are described in terms of voicing, place of articulation, and manner of articulation.
(4) elision: the leaving out of a sound or sounds in speech.
(5) intonation: the variation in pitch and stress which gives beat and rhythm to the tune the
voice plays in ordinary speech.
(6) phoneme: the abstract element of a sound, identi?ed as being distinctive in a particular
language.
(7) phonetics: the study of linguistic speech sounds, how they are produced,
how they are perceived, and their physical properties.
(8) phonology: the study of the abstract systems underlying the sounds of language. (9) stress: the prominence given to certain sounds in speech.
(10) voicing: the vibration in the larynx caused by air from the lungs passing
through the vocal cords when they are partly closed; speech sounds are said to be either voiced or voiceless.
(11) voiceless: When the vocal cords are spread apart, the airstream from the
lungs is not obstructed at the space between vocal cords and passes freely. The sounds produced in this way are described as voiceless sounds.
(12) vowel: a speech sound produced without signi?cant constriction of the air ?owing
through the oral cavity.
2. Minimal pair test or substitution test.
Minimal pair test or substitution test is to see whether substituting one sound for 4another results in a different word. If it does, the two sounds represent different phonemes. For example, as to the English word bear, if we substitute p for b, we get the word pear, the two are different words. Then /b/ and /p/ represent different phonemes. Other examples are chunk/junk, ban/bin, bet/beat, ?ne/vine, side/site, etc.
3. Take the word big for example, in the word big /big/, /b/ is the onset, /i/ is the nucleus and /g/ is the coda. The difference between open syllables and closed syllables is whether the words have codas. If there are codas, they are closed syllables, such as pig, hat and at; if not, they are open syllables, such as do, I, tea and key. 4. (1) stop, consonant (2) back, rounded, vowel 5. (1) voiceless / voiced (2) bilabial / labiodental (3) close / semi-open (4) stop / nasal (5) alveolar / palatal (6) alveolar / dental
(1) kit/git, bucker/bugger, bag/back (2) mark/nark, smack/snack, sum/sun (3) best/vest, ober/over, lib/live (4) bore/more, abate/amate, mob/mom (5) pat/fat, apt/aft (AmE), harp (BrE)/half
7. (1) The stresses are placed on the second syllable except for ―promise‖. We may easily conclude that the verbs usually are stressed on the second syllable. (2) Syllable representations of the words:
collide [k2#laid] elect [i#lekt] consider [k2n#sid2]
Chapter 3
Morphology
1. De?ne the following terms brie?y.
(1) morphology: the study of the structure of words.5
(2) morpheme: the smallest unit of language that carries meaning or serves a
grammatical function.
(3) free morpheme: a morpheme that can stand alone as a word.
(4) bound morpheme: a morpheme that can not stand alone as a word, e.g.
ment (as in establishment), and -er (as in painter).
(5) morph: the smallest meaningful phonetic segments of an utterance on the level
of parole.
(6) allomorph: a phonetic form in which a morpheme is realized, e.g. -s, -es, and en are all
allomorphs (in writing) of the plural morpheme.
(7) derivation: the formation of new words by adding af?xes to other words or morphemes in
morphology and word formation.
(8) clipping: the process by which parts of a word of more than one syllable have been cut
off, and reduced to a shorter form.
(9) acronym: words which are composed of the ?rst letter of a series of words and are
pronounced as single words. Examples: NATO, radar and yuppy.
(10) initialism: Some new words are composed of the ?rst letters of a series of words
and pronounced by saying each letter in them. Such words are called initialism.
(11) blending: A single new word can be formed by combining two separate forms.
Typically, blending is ?nished by taking only the beginning of one word and joining it to the end of another word. For example, brunch is formed by the shortened forms of breakfast and lunch.
(12) root: the morpheme that remains when all af?xes are stripped from a complex word, e.g.
system from un- + system + atic + ally.
(13) stem: the base to which one or more af?xes are attached to create a more complex
form that may be another stem or a word. For example, book is the stem of bookish.
(14) pre?x: Af?xes can be joined to the beginning of the root or stem, in which case
they are called pre?xes.
(15) suf?x: Af?xes can be joined to the end of the root or stem, in which case they are called
suf?xes.
2. (3), (5), (7)