such education may in?uence their speech as well. (The answers are quite open) 8. a—S b—F c—L d—K e—Q f—T g—A h—P i—N j—G k—E l—C m—H n—R o—D p—I q—B r—J s—M t—O
Chapter 9
Psycholinguistics
1. De?ne the following terms brie?y.
(1) psycholinguistics: the study of the relation between language and mind: the mental
structures and processes which are involved in the acquisition, comprehension and production of language.
(2) language production: the process involved in creating and expressing meaning through
language, such as the four successive stages provided by Levelt (1989): conceptualization, formulation, articulation and self-regulation.
(3) language comprehension: From a psycholinguistic point of view, we store a great deal of
information about the properties of the language, and retrieve this information when we understand language. Besides, language comprehension can be treated in four levels: sound, word, sentence and text comprehensions.
(4) Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis: It refers to the view that the language system could in?uence or
even determine one‘s thought, and a particular language imposes particular ideas of nature or beliefs of one‘s culture.
(5) linguistic determinism: One‘s language structure determines his cognitive structure.
That is, learning a language may change the way a person thinks or perceives the objective world.
(6) linguistic relativity: As one‘s language influences one‘s cognitive system,
speakers of different languages perceive the world differently.
2. Psycholinguistics is the study of psychological aspects of language; it usually
investigates the psychological states and mental activities associated with the use of language. Most problems in psycholinguistics are comparatively more concrete, involving the study of language acquisition especially in children and linguistic performance such as producing and comprehending utterances or sentences among adults. However, theoretical linguistics is more objective. It usually investigates the existing phenomena about languages and its investigations are usually carried out in the branches of microlinguistics: phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax and semantics. Psycholinguistics is an interdisciplinary study of language and psychology, with structural linguistics and cognitive psychology as itsroots while theoretical linguistics solely focuses on aspects of language.
3. (1) The correct form is ―They swam across the lake‖, which is caused by
exchange.
(2) The correct form is ―The spy was bound and gagged‖ , which is caused by
exchange.
(3) The correct form is ―I will see you in the park‖, which originates from substitution. 4. The slip-of-the-tongue phenomenon described above can be explained by the
parallel distributed processing (PDP) approach in word comprehension. The PDP approach holds that people use several separate and parallel processes at the same time to understand spoken or written language. In the slip-of-the-tongue phenomenon, people have already conceptualized his/her idea (thought), but can not ?nd a proper word to express the idea. This shows that thought precedes language. According to linguistic determinism, language shapes one‘s thought. If there isn‘t language, there should be no thought. Thus, this phenomenon goes against linguistic determinism and shows that thought can exist with or without language.
5. The fact mentioned here ?ies at the face of linguistic determinism which says that one‘s
language structure determines one‘s cognitive structure. That‘s to say, a particular language can not shape one‘s world view. Language changes along social changes. And social changes can lead to the changes of people‘s view. At the same time, one‘s world view can affect a particular language. For example, Xiaojie was used to refer to the daughter of rich and important families before 1949. Then, since 1949, great changes have taken place in China. The world view of Chinese people has changed radically but the language has changed little. During the Cultural Revolution, Xiaojie became very much culturally loaded — young women not belonging to ?the revolutionary rank‘ and people not to be politically trusted. After 1979, it gradually became popular again, and now it has taken on a derogatory meaning (hooker). As it is mentioned above, it is social changes that shape one‘s world view, and it is cognitive structure that affects language.
Chapter 10
Cognitive Linguistics
1. De?ne the following terms brie?y.
(1) cognitive linguistics: a new approach to the study of language and mind. According to
this approach, language and language use are based on our bodily experience and the way we conceptualize it.
(2) categorization: the mental process of classi?cation.
(3) prototype: what members of a particular community think of as the best example of a
lexical category, e.g. for some English speakers ―cabbage‖ (rather than, say, ―carrot‖) might be the prototypical vegetable.
(4) category: the products of categorization.
(5) prototype theory: a theory of human categorization that was posited by Eleanor Rosch.
Following this theory, natural categories are organized according to prototypes which are considered as the most typical or representative of the category. A robin or sparrow is regarded as a prototype of the category of ―bird‖. People decide whether an entity belongs to a category by comparing that entity with a prototype.
(6) metaphor: an extension of a word‘s use beyond its primary meaning to include
referents that bear some similarity to the word‘s primary referent, as in “eye of a needle‖, or ―cream of the age group‖.
(7) metonymy: also called conceptual/cognitive metonymy in Cognitive Linguistics.
It refers to a conceptual operation in which one entity, the vehicle, can be employed in order to identify another entity, the target, with which it is associated, such as the use of ―Hemingway‖ for ―Hemingway‘s works‖ and “White House‖ for ―government of the USA‖.
(8) iconicity: a feature of a language which means that the structure of language re?ects in
some way the structure of experience, that is, the structure of the world, including the perspective imposed on the world by the speaker. Caesar‘s historic words ―Veni, vidi, vici (I came, I saw, I conquered)‖ is a good case to prove the iconicity of order (the similarity between temporal events and the linear arrangement of elements in a linguistic construction).
(9) grammaticalization: the shift of an independent word to the status of
agrammatical element. A famous example in English is the transition of the lexical verb ―go‖ into an auxiliary used to express the future tense.
2. Some tips for the tests: according to the prototype theory, prototypes are the best examples of
a category and natural categories are organized around prototypes. Therefore, names of category prototypes tend to come to mind before those of peripheral examples, but many factors (such as culture, individual experience and context) may in?uence the choice of prototypes of categories.
3. In the English preposition list, the spatial prepositions, such as in, on, at, might be the
commonest prepositions in grammar books. The reason is that spatial prepositions are closest to our bodily experience, thus they may be highest in frequency of use. 4. (1) The marriage is rather fragile without enough attention and patience. Their wedding is splendid, while their marriage is rather fragile. (2) Their marriage is on the rocks.
They have walked more smoothly since they had a child.
(3) They love each other so much that nothing can separate them apart. The more objection there is, the tighter they are to each other.
5. (1) His wife is a lovely bird. The source domain is ―(a lovely) bird‖ and the target domain
is ―his wife‖. This expression uses the features of a bird to describe the woman, which invites us to conceptualize that she must be lovely, small and mild.
(2) She is a sheep in front of his husband, while a lion in her career. The source domain is
―sheep/lion‖ and the target domain is ―she‖. The word ―sheep‖ suggests that the woman is gentle, mild and obedient as a wife, while the word “lion‖ creates the impression that she is ambitious, energetic and in?uential in her work.
(3) My mother was a tiger when we were in danger. The source domain is ―tiger‖ and the
target domain is ―my mother‖. The word ―Tiger‖ conveys the idea that ―my mother‖ is brave, intrepid, strong and fearless.
6. De?nitions of these words in dictionaries help us a lot to conceptualize them,
most of which are descriptions of the causes, processes and properties of these emotions. We take ―anger, love and fear‖ for example: (1) anger: the strong feeling you have when something happened you think is bad and unfair (from Oxford Dictionary); a strong feeling of wanting to hurt or criticize someone because they have done something bad to you or been unkind to you (from Longman Dictionary). (2) love: to have a strong feeling of affection for someone, combined with sexual attraction (from Longman Dictionary); a strong feeling of deep affection for
somebody/something, especially a member of your family or a friend, or for somebody you are sexually attracted to (from Oxford Dictionary). (3) fear: the bad feeling that you have when you are in danger, when something bad might happen, or a particular thing frightens you (from Oxford Dictionary); the feeling you get