全国2007年1月高等教育自学考试现代语言学试题

课程代码：00830

Ⅰ.Directions: Read each of the following statements carefully. Decide which one of the four choices best completes the statement and put the letter A, B, C, or D in the brackets.(2%×10=20%)

1． The study of how people use their speech organs to produce speech sounds is of great interest to those working in the area of（　　　）

A．phonology  B．articulatory phonetics

C．auditory phonetics  D．acoustic phonetics

2．The vowel [u:] in English has all the following features EXCEPT（　　　）

A．long  B．rounded

C．closed  D．central

3．The stress of the compound noun“armchair”falls on（　　　）

A．the second syllable  B．the first syllable

C．both the first and second syllables  D．either the first or the second syllable

4．When we move a noun phrase from the object position to the subject position in passive transformation in English, we are（　　　）the noun phrase to the left.

A．rewriting  B．postposing

C．maintaining  D．preposing

5．Of the views concerning the study of meaning, the one in which meaning is explained in terms of observable stimuli and responses made by participants in specific situations is referred to as（　　　）

A．contextualism  B．behaviourism

C．conceptualism  D．the naming theory

6．The illocutionary point of the （　　　） is to commit the speaker to something’s being the case, to the truth of what has been said.

A．representatives  B．commissives

C．expressives  D．directives

7．Abbreviations of longer words or phrases may become lexicalized, for example, gym for gymnasium. This process is sometimes called（　　　）

A．blending  B．abbreviating

C．clipping  D．compounding

8．The differences between standard and non-standard, on the one hand, and between high and low language varieties in a _______ situation, on the other hand, are parallel but not identical.（　　　）

A．diglossic  B．bilingual

C．linguistic  D．sociolinguistic

9．The view that the brain is the source of human language and cognition goes back over（　　　）years.

A．10000  B．5000

C．2000  D．1000

10．（　　　） motivation occurs when the learner desires to learn a second language in order to communicate with native speakers of the target language.

A．Instrumental   B．Functional

C．Integrative  D．Social

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.Traditional grammarians tried to tell people what was good usage and what was bad usage by setting models for language users to follow. Thus their approach to the study of language was p       .

12.The f         intonation in English usually indicates that there is an implied message in what the speaker says.

13.The affix“hood” is a n        -forming suffix that can be added to the end of stems, such as child, boy, man, etc.

14.X-bar theory refers to a general and highly a         schema that can reduce the redundancies of individual phrase structure rules and may well capture certain basic properties shared by all phrasal categories across the languages of the world.

15.In the semantic analysis of a sentence, the basic unit is called p         .

16.The basic difference between pragmatics and traditional semantics is that pragmatics considers meaning in  c        and traditional semantics studies meaning in isolation from use.

17.Language changes can be associated with major social changes caused by wars, invasions, colonialization and colonial settlement, cultural and economic advances, or socio-economic

s         .

18.A personal dialect is referred to as idiolect. It shows idiosyncratic varieties and combines aspects of all the elements regarding regional, social, and s         variation, in one form or another.

19.It is known that specialized linguistic and perceptual skills are each localized in a particular hemisphere of the brain . The localization of cognitive and perceptual functions in a particular hemisphere of the brain is called l         .

20.The C         Analysis approach was founded on the belief that it was possible, by establishing the linguistic differences between the native and target language systems, to predict what problems learners of a particular second language would face and the types of errors they would make.

Ⅲ.Directions: Judge whether each of the following statements is true or false. Put a T for true of F for false in the bracket in front of each statement. If you think a statement is false, you must explain why you think so and give the correct version.(2%×10=20%)

21.(    )With their respective distinction between langue and parole, and competence and performance, both Saussure and Chomsky present the view that only the abstract structure of language can be studied systematically, but not its use.

22.(    )If a Chinese speaker pronounces the /l/ sound in the word feel not as a dark    , but as a clear [l], he will be misunderstood by a native speaker as saying something else.

23. (    )A logical subject may have different positions in a sentence.

24.(    )The subordinator only marks the beginning of an embedded clause, and it doesn’t indicate the grammatical function of the embedded clause in the sentence.

25.(    )English is rich in synonyms for historical reasons but complete synonyms, i.e. synonyms that are mutually substitutable under all circumstances, are rare.

26.(    )The utterance meaning of a sentence remains the same in all contexts.

27.(    )In Old English the main negation element was “ne”.Like Modern English“not”,the “ne”usually occurred after the auxiliary verb.

28.(    )A pidgin is ordinarily a simplified version of one of the languages, usually European, such as English, modified in the direction of the other and characterized by an absence of any complex grammar, and its vocabulary is also very limited.

29.(    )The nerve cells that form the surface of the brain are called the cortex, which serves as the intellectual decision-maker, receives messages from the sensory organs, and initiates all voluntary actions.

30.(    )Children learn language by simply imitating the speech of the people around them.

Ⅳ.Directions: Explain the following terms, using one or two examples for illustration if necessary.(3%×10=30%)

31.arbitrariness

32.assimilation rule

33.embedded clause

34.syntactic category

35.sense

36.Grimm’s  Law

37.code-switching

38.psycholinguistics

39.dichotic listening

40.error analysis

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

41.Do you think that the meaning of a compound is the sum total of the meanings of its components? Support your argument with examples.

42.Which maxim does B’s utterance in the following conversation violate? Does the violation give rise to conversational implicature? If it does, what is the implicature?

[A is talking with B about a film they have seen.]

A: The film was good. Don’t you think so?

B: The music was nice.