全国2007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. Design features refer to the defining properties of human language that distinguish it from any

_______________system of communication.  

A. artificial  B. non-linguistic

C. animal  D. abstract

2. If you put a finger in each ear and say “z-z-z-z-z”, you can feel the vibrations of the _______________.

A. glottis  B. windpipe

C. larynx  D. vocal cords

3. In the word suitable, “-able” is a _______________morpheme.

A. derivational  B. inflectional

C. root  D. stem

4. _______________is a subfield of linguistics that studies the sentence structure of language,

i.e. how words are arranged in a sentence and in what order.

A. Morphology  B. Syntax

C. Phonology  D. Semantics

5. Whether a sentence is semantically meaningful is governed by rules called _______________.

A. selectional restrictions  B. grammatical rules

C. phrase structure rules  D. phonological rules

6. If a sentence is regarded as what people actually utter in the course of communication, it becomes a(n) _______________  .

A. clause  B. speech

C. utterance  D. predication

7.The discovery of Indo-European began with the work of ____________, who delivered an important paper in 1786 in which he suggested that Sanskrit bore a stronger affinity to Greek and Latin.

A. the British scholar Sir William Jones  B. the German linguist Franz Bopp

C. the Danish scholar Rasmus Rask  D. the German scholar Jacob Grimm

8.The important characteristic of a speech community is that the members of the group must,

in some reasonable way, interact _______________with other members of the community.  

A. geographically  B. linguistically

C. socially  D. psycholinguistically

9. Th e view that human brain is the source of human language and cognition goes back _______.

A. less than 1000 years  B. over 2000 years

C. less than 2000 years  D. over 3000 years

10. Language acquisition is primarily the acquisition of the _________system of language.

A. phonological  B. semantic

C. grammatical  D. communicative

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. L        is generally known as the scientific and systematic study of language.

12. Speech sounds can be described in physical or a         terms. Physically, sounds are

transmitted through the air from one person to another.

13. The morphemes that are independent units of meaning and can be used freely all by

themselves are called f         morphemes.

14. A simple sentence consists of a single c         which contains a subject and a predicate and stands alone as its own sentence.

15. C         analysis is based upon the belief that the meaning of a word can be divided into meaning components.

16. According to Searle,  s         acts fall into five general categories, i.e., there are five

general types of things we do with language.

17. In historical linguistics, language change refers to the study of the d         processes of

change in language elements and language systems.

18. Dialectal diversity develops when people are separated from each other g         and

socially. The changes that occur in the language spoken in one area or group do not necessarily spread to another.

19. Language functions are believed to be lateralized primarily in the 1         hemisphere of the brain.

20. For the vast majority of children, language development occurs spontaneously and requires

little conscious i         on the part of adults.

llI. 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 give the correct version. (2%×10=20%)

21. (     ) Language is a system of arbitrary vocal symbols used for human communication.

22. (     ) We use dark [] at the end of a word after a vowel or before a consonant, such as feel [fi:] and little [lIt], and clear [1] before a vowel, such as loaf [lυf]. From the phonological point of view, dark [] and clear [1] are the two different sounds.

23. (     ) Theoretically speaking, a compound can be a combination of two words of any parts of speech.

24. (     ) The level of syntactic representation before the operation of necessary movement is what we call deep structure.

25. (     ) Sense and reference are of the same thing in meaning study.

26. (     ) Paul Grice thought that in making conversation, the participants must first of all be willing to cooperate.

27. (     ) The word knight once meant “youth”, but was elevated in meaning in time for the age of chivalry. This is an example of semantic broadening.

28. (     )  In medieval times, a trade language came into use in the Mediterranean ports. It consisted of Italian mixed with French, Spanish, Greek, Arabic, and Turkish, and it was called Lingua Franca, “Frankish language.” The term lingua franca was generalized to other languages similarly used. Thus, any language can be a lingua franca.

29. (     ) Aristotle suggested that thought was the soul’s discourse with itself.

30. (     ) Some languages are more challenging to acquire as a first language.

Ⅳ.Directions: Explain the following terms, using one or two examples for illustration.

(3%×10=30%)  

31.duality

32.producrivity

33.fricative

34.affix

35.recursiveness

36.the naming theory

37.complementary antonyms

38.conversational implicature

39.language planning

40.psycholinguistics

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

41．Explain the Great Vowel Shift in the history of English, and give at least two examples of both Middle English and Modern English in phonetic transcription.

42.Discuss the different theories of child language acquisition with reference to the behaviorist learning model and the nativist biological model.