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Questions and Exercises

Chapter 1 Invitations to Linguistics

1. Define the following terms.

design features  function  synchronic diachronic  prescriptive  descriptive  arbitrariness  duality  displacement  phatic communion  metalanguage  macrolinguistics  competence  performance angue parole

2. Consult at least four introductory linguistics textbooks(not dictionaries), and copy the definitions of “language” that each gives. After carefully comparing the definitions, write a paper discussing which points recur and explaining the significance of the similarities and differences among the definitions.

3. Can you think of some words in English which are onomatopoeic?

4. Do you think that onomatopoeia indicates a non-arbitrary relationship between form and meaning?

5. A story by Robert Louis Stevenson contains the sentence “As the night fell, the wind rose.” Could this be expressed as “As the wind rose, the night fell?” If not, why? Does this indicate a degree of non-arbitrariness about word order?(Bolinger, 1981:15)

6. Does the traffic light system have duality? Can you explain by drawing a simple graph?

7. The recursive nature of language provides a theoretical basis for the creativity of language. Can you write a recursive sentence following the example in section 1.3.3?

8. Communication can take many forms, such as sign, speech, body language and facial expression. Do body language and facial expression share or lack the distinctive properties of human language?

9. Do you agree with the view that no language is especially simple?

10. What do you think of Bertrand Russell’s observation of the dog language: “No matter how eloquently a dog may bark, he cannot tell you that his parents were poor but honest” ? Are you familiar with any type of ways animals communicate among themselves and with human beings?

11. Can you mention some typical expressions of phatic communion in Chinese? There is the dialogue between Mrs.P and Mrs.Q on p.1213. When someone sneezes violently, do you say anything of the nature of phatic communion? Have you noticed your parents or grand-parents say something special on such an occasion?

12. There are many expressions in language which are metalingual or self-reflexives, namely, talking about talk and think about thinking, for instance, to be honest, to make a long story short, come to think of it, on second thought, can you collect a few more to make a list of these expressions? When do we use them most often?

13. Comment on the following prescriptive rules. Do you think they are acceptable?

(A)It is I.

(B)It is me.

You should say A instead of B because “be” should be followed by the nominative case, not the accusative according to the rules in Latin.

(A)Who did you speak to?

(B)Whom did you speak to?

You should say B instead of A.

(A)I haven’t done anything.

(B)I haven’t done nothing.

B is wrong because two negatives make a positive.

14. The prescriptivism in grammar rules has now shifted to prescriptions in choice of words. In the “guidelines on anti-sexist language” issued by the British sociological association, some guidelines are listed below. Do you think they are descriptive and prescriptive? What’s your comment on them?

(1)Do not use man to mean humanity in general. Use person, people, human beings, men and women, humanity and humankind.

(2)colored: This term is regarded as outdated in the UK and should be avoided as it is generally viewed as offensive to many black people.

(3)civilized: This term can still carry racist overtones which derive from a colonialist perception of the world. It is often associated with social Darwinist thought and is full of implicit value judgments and ignorance of the history of the non-industrialized world.

15. Why is the distinction between competence and performance important in linguistics? Do you think the line can be neatly drawn between them? How do you like the concept communicative competence?

16. Which branch of linguistics do you think will develop rapidly in China and why?

17. The following are some well-known ambiguous sentences in syntactic studies of language. Can you disambiguate them?

The chicken is too hot to eat.

Flying planes can be dangerous.

18. There are many reasons for the discrepancy between competence and performance in normal language users. Can you think of some of them?

19. What do these two quotes reveal about the different emphasis or perspectives of language studies?

A human language is a system of remarkable complexity. To come to know a human language would be an extraordinary intellectual achievement for a creature not specifically designed to accomplish this task. A normal child acquires this knowledge on relatively slight exposure and without specific training. He can then quite effortlessly make use of an intricate structure of specific rules and guiding principles to convey his thoughts and feelings to others,...Thus language is a mirror of mind in a deep and significant sense. It is a product of human intelligence, created anew in each individual by operations that lie far beyond the reach of will or consciousness.(Noam Chomsky: Reflections on Language . 1975: 4)

It is fairly obvious that language is used to serve a variety of different needs, but until we examine its grammar there is no clear reason for classifying its uses in any particular way. However, when we examine the meani0ng potential of language itself, we find that the vast numbers of options embodied in it combine into a very few relatively independent “networks”; and these networks of options correspond to certain basic functions of language. This enables us to give an account of the different functions of language that is relevant to the general understanding of linguistic structure rather than to any particular psychological or sociological investigation.(M.A.K.Halliday: 1970: 142)

20. You may be familiar with the following proverbs. How do you perceive them according to the arbitrariness and conventionality of language:

The proof of the pudding is in the eating.

Let sleeping dogs lie.

You can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.

Rome was not built in a day.

When in Rome, do as the Romans do.

All roads lead to Rome.

21. Give examples of situations in which a usage generally considered non-standard(e.g. ain’t)would be acceptable, even appropriate.

22. The following are some book titles of linguistics. Can you judge the synchronic or diachronic orientation just from the titles?

English Examined: Two Centuries of Comment on the Mother-Tongue.

Protean Shape: A Study in Eighteenth-century Vocabulary and Usage.

Pejorative Sense Development in English.

The Categories and Types of Present-Day English Word-Formation.

Language in the Inner City: Studies in the Black English Vernacular.

Chapter 2 Speech Sounds

1. Define the following terms.

phonetics  articulatory phonetics  phonology  speech organs  voicing  International Phonetic  Alphabet  consonant  vowel  manner of articulation  place of articulation  Cardinal Vowels  semi-vowel  vowel glide  coarticulation  phoneme  allophone  assimilation  Elsewhere Condition  distinctive features  syllable  Maximal Onset  Principle  stress  intonation  tone

2. Give the description of the following sound segments in English.

1)[ð]  2)[ʃ]  3)[ŋ]  4)[d]  5)[p]

6)[k]  7)[l]  8)[I]  9)[uː]  10)[ɒ]

3. Give the IPA symbols for the sounds that correspond to the descriptions below.

1)voiceless labiodental fricative

2)voiced postalveolar fricative

3)palatal approximant

4)voiceless glottal fricative

5)voiceless alveolar stop

6)high-mid front unrounded vowel

7)high central rounded vowel

8)low front rounded vowel

9)low-mid back rounded vowel

10)high back rounded tense vowel

4. Transcribe the following sentences into normal orthography.

1)ɒn ə klIə deI jʊ kn si: fə maIlz

2)səm piːpl θIŋk ðət fɜːst Impɹɛʃnz kaʊnt fə ə lɒt

5. Discuss the following questions.

1)What organs are involved in speech production?

2)Why did George Bernard Shaw say he could spell the word fish as ghoti ?

3)How is the description of consonants different from that of vowels?

4)To what extent is phonology related to phonetics and how do they differ?

5)“Assimilation is often used synonymously with coarticulation”. Discuss.

6)The pronunciation of tell is [teɫ], but that of teller is [telə]. Discuss why the phoneme /l/ is realized as [ɫ] and [l] respectively in this situation.

6. In some dialects of English the following words have different vowels, as shown by the phonetic transcription. Based on these data, answer the questions that follow.

1)How may the classes of sounds that end the words in columns A and B be characterized?

2)How do the words in column C differ from those in columns A and B?

3)Are [ʌI] and [aI] in complementary distribution? Give your reasons.

4)What are the phonetic transcriptions of(a) life and(b) lives ?

5)What would the phonetic transcriptions of the following words be?

(a)trial  (b)bike  (c)lice  (d)fly  (e)mine

6)State the rule that will relate the phonemic representations to the phonetic transcriptions of the words given above.

(Based on Fromkin, et al. 2003: 332)

7. The following words contain different forms of the negative prefix in- . Group the data according to the variants and try to determine which kinds of base word take which kinds of prefix variant and what kind of mechanism is responsible for the variation. Formulate a rule and then test it against words that are formed in this way but are not mentioned here.

irregular  incomprehensible  illiterate  ingenious  inoffensive  inharmonic  impenetrable  illegal  incompetent  irresistible  impossible  irresponsible  immobile  illogical  indifferent  inconsistent  innumerable  inevitable

(Based on Plag, 2003: 42)

8. In Old English, the fricatives /f/, / , ð/, and /s/ each represented two separate sounds:

Voicing is predictable by context. Study the words below and state the rule.

sæt      [sæt]        ‘sat’

hūs      [huːs]       ‘house’

ēast      [æːəst]      ‘east’

cyssan     [kyssɑn]      ‘to kiss’

hlāf      [hlɑːf]      ‘loaf’

cēosan     [tʃeːozɑn]    ‘choose’

heofon     [hɛovɔn]     ‘heaven’

Wuldorfæder  [wʊldɔrvædɛr]  ‘Father of Glory, God’

onstal      [ɔnstɑl]      ‘supply’

hrōfe      [hroːvɛ]      ‘roof’

eorean      [ɛorðɑn]     ‘earth’

æfter       [æftɛr]      ‘after’

ēeel       [eːðɛl]      ‘native lord’

nīt       [niːθ]       ‘hatred’

niter      [nIðɛr]       ‘downward’

nīeheard    [niːθhæərd]     ‘daring’

(Based on Fennell, 2001: 60-64 and Mitchell & Robinson, 2002)

9. Estuary English(EE)is a name given to the form(s)of English widely spoken in and around London and, more generally, in the southeast of England along the river Thames and its estuary. The websites below contain much information about this variety of English. Find out what EE is like.

http://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/estuary

http://www.ic.arizona.edu/~lsp/EstuaryEnglish.html

See also Gimson(2001: Chapter 7)for some discussion on the changes of British English pronunciation.

10. Here is the official IPA website. See what you can find there.

http://www.arts.gla.ac.uk/ipa/ipa.html

11. Based on your observation of Chinese students learning to speak English, discuss some of the typical phonetic and phonological difficulties they may encounter and make suggestions as to how you may help them tackle the problems. Make use of, as far as possible, what you have learned in this chapter.

12. The discussion of phonological processes and phonological rules in this chapter are all illustrated with English examples. Consider relevant facts in Chinese and see if they work in the same way.

Chapter 3 From Morpheme to Phrase

1. Define the following terms.

morpheme  compound  inflection  affix  derivation  root  allomorph  stem  bound morpheme  free morpheme  grammatical word  lexical word  closed-class  open-class  blending  loanword  loanblend  loanshift  acronym  back-formation

2. Complete the words with suitable negative prefixes.

a. removable  m. syllabic  b. formal  n. normal  c. practicable  o. workable  d. sensible  p. written  e. tangible  q. usual  f. logical  r. thinkable  g. regular  s. human  h. proportionate  t. relevant  i. effective  u. editable  j. elastic  v. mobile  k. ductive  w. legal  l. rational  x. discreet

3. MORPHEME is defined as the smallest unit in terms of relationship between expression and content. Then is morpheme a grammatical concept or a semantic one? What is its relation to phoneme? Can a morpheme and a phoneme form an organic whole?

4. Read the following paragraph and list all the function words you can find.(Include all forms of be as function words.)Give the percentage of function words in this paragraph.

She was a small woman, old and wrinkled. When she started washing for us, she was already past seventy. Most Jewish women of her age were sickly, weak, broken in body. But this washwoman, small and thin as she was, possessed a strength that came from generations of peasant ancestors. Mother would count out to her a bag of laundry that had accumulated over several weeks. She would lift the heavy bag, load it on her narrow shoulders, and carry it the long way home.

5. “A free form which consists entirely of two or more lesser free forms...is a phrase. A free form which is not a phrase is a word. A word, then,...is a minimum free form”(Bloomfield, 1935:178). Answer the following questions:

(a)The term “word” is ambiguous. What kind of words is Bloomfield’s definition intended to cover?

(b)Are there any traditionally recognized words of English(in the appro-priate sense of “word”)that fail to satisfy Bloomfield’s definition?

(c)What other criteria have been involved in the definition of the word?

6. Find the sources of the following blends. In cases where the dictionary does not provide the answer, your own ingenuity will be your guide.

(a)bash  (b)smash  (c)glimmer  (d)flimmer  (e)clash  (f)flare  (g)brunch  (h)motel  (i)transistor  (j)medicare  (k)workaholic  (l)spam  (m)telethon  (n)aerobicise  (o)chunnel  (p)chortle  (q)bit  (r)modem  (s)guestimate  (t)threepeat

7. Determine the historically accurate etymology of the words in the first column, and underline the correct one in the second or in the third column.

8. Determine the original term from which the following words were back-formed.

(a)asset  (b)burgle  (c)enthuse  (d)greed  (e)hush  (f)automate  (g)donate  (h)escalate  (i)homesick  (j)peddle  (k)diagnose  (l)tuit  (m)amusing  (n)loaf   (o)self-destruct  (p)attrit  (q)hairdress  (r)emote  (s)drowse  (t)frivol

9. Identify the immediate etymological source of the following words.(For example, the immediate source of “meaning” is French, although the more remote source is Latin.)

(a)air  (b)barbecue  (c)bungalow  (d)cola  (e)gusto  (f)babel  (g)buffalo  (h)cocoa  (i)costume  (j)ill  (k)mule  (l)decreed  (m)revolution  (n)benevolent  (o)lie  (p)topic  (q)subject  (r)theme  (s)wind  (t)datum

10. Classify the following words as loanwords(LW), loanblends(LB), loanshifts(LS)or loan translation(LT).

booby trap  coconut  loan-word  monk  firewater  free verse  war paint  yankee

11. If there are two affixes -ly , one producing adjectives and the other attaching to adjectives to produce adverbs, can we find words with both of these affixes?

12. Make a list of nouns from the following words that - s can attach to.

Epiphany  foot  hat  house  kitchen  ox  phenomenon  region  sheep  tomato

13. Are there any affixes that attach(relatively)productively to verbs, contribute no or very specific meaning, and do not change category?

Chapter 4 From Word to Text

1. Define the following terms.

syntax  co-occurrence  construction  constituent  endocentric  exocentric  subordination  category  coordinate  agreement  embedding  recursiveness  cohesion  grammatical subject & logical subject

2. Indicate the category of each word in the following sentences(Hint: It may help to refer back to section 4.2.2)

(a)The instructor told the students to study.

(b)The customer requested for a cold beer.

(c)The pilot landed the jet.

(d)These dead trees must be removed.

(e)That glass suddenly broke.

3. Put brackets around the immediate constituents in each sentence.

Ex.((I)((rode)(back)))((when)((it)((was)(dark)))).

(a)The boy was crying.

(b)Shut the door.

(c)Open the door quickly.

(d)The happy teacher in that class was beaming away.

(e)He bought an old car with his first pay cheque.

4. For each of the underlined constructions or word groups, do the following.

—State whether it is headed or non-headed.

—If headed, state its headword.

—Name the type of constructions.

Ex. His son will be keenly competing.

Answer: headed, headword—competing; verbal group

(a) Ducks quack.

(b)The ladder in the shed is long enough.

(c)I saw a bridge damaged beyond repair.

(d) Singing hymns is forbidden in some countries.

(e) His handsome face appeared in the magazine.

A lady of great beauty came out.

(g)He enjoys climbing high mountains.

(h) The man nodded patiently.

(i)A man roused by the insult drew his sword.

5. In the pairs of sentences that follow, indicate with “N” those that need not follow a particular order when they are joined by “and”. Indicate with “Y” those that need to be ordered. Aside from the examples below, in your opinion, which type is more relevant.

__________(a)The sun is shining.

The wind is blowing.

__________(b)Susie went to sleep.

She had a dream.

__________(c)John came in.

He closed the door.

__________(d)He came in.

John closed the door.

__________(e)She felt embarrassed.

She blushed.

__________(f)The sky is blue.

The grass is green.

__________(g)He walked away.

He got up.

__________(h)He enjoyed the meal.

He loved the pickles.

6. Combine the following pairs of sentences. Make the second sentence of each pair into a relative clause, and then embed it into the first.

(a)The comet appears every twenty years. Dr. Okada discovered the comet.

(b)Everyone respected the quarterback. The quarterback refused to give up.

(c)The most valuable experiences were small ones. I had the experiences on my trip to Europe.

(d)Children will probably become abusers of drugs or alcohol. Children’s parents abuse alcohol.

(e)Many nations are restricting emissions of noxious gases. The noxious gases threaten the atmosphere.

7. Use examples to illustrate different ways to extend syntactic constituents.

8. Mark the underlined parts of the sentences in Ex.4-37 with the terms such as participial phrase, gerundial phrase, and so on.

9. Explain the main characteristics of subjects in English.

Chapter 5 Meaning

1. Define the following terms.

conceptual meaning  denotation  connotation  reference  sense  synonymy  gradable antonymy  complementary antonymy  converse antonymy  relational opposites  hyponymy  superordinate  semantic component  compositionality  propositional logic  proposition  predicate logic  logical connective

2. Read the following passage from Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll, and discuss the meaning of mean in it.

“Don’t stand chattering to yourself like that,” Humpty Dumpty said, looking at her for the first time, “but tell me your name and your business.”

“My name is Alice, but—”

“It’s a stupid name enough!” Humpty Dumpty interrupted impatiently. “What does it mean ?”

“Must a name mean something?” Alice asked doubtfully.

“Of course it must,” Humpty Dumpty said with a short laugh: “my name means the shape I am—and a handsome shape it is, too. With a name like yours, you might be any shape, almost.”

3. Analyse the poem below from the semantic point of view, taking a special account of sense relations.

Coloured

Dear White Fella          You White Fella

Couple things you should know—  When you born, you pink

When I born, I black        When you grow up, you white

When I grow up, I black       When you go in sun, you red

When I go in sun, I black      When you cold, you blue

When I cold, I black        When you scared, you yellow

When I scared, I black       When you sick, you green

When I sick, I black        And when you die you grey

And when I die-I still black     And you have the cheek

To call me coloured?

4. Do the following according the requirements.

(a)Write out the synonyms of the following words:

youth; automobile; remember; purchase; vacation; big

(b)Give the antonyms of the following words, and point out in which aspect the two of each pair are opposite:

dark, boy, hot, go

(c)Provide two or more related meanings for the following:

bright, to glare, a deposit, plane

5. Some people maintain that there are no true synonyms. If two words mean really the same, one of them will definitely die out. An example often quoted is the disuse of the word “wireless”, which has been replaced by “radio”. Do you agree? In general what type of meaning we are talking about when we say two words are synonymous with each other?

6. In the text, we did not mention antonyms like “friendly: unfriendly”, “honest: dishonest”, “normal: abnormal”, “frequent: infrequent”, “logical: illogical” and “responsible: irresponsible”. Which type of antonymy do they belong to?

7. The British linguist F. R. Palmer argues in his Semantics(p.97)that “there is no absolute distinction between [gradable antonyms and complementary antonyms].We can treat male/female, married/single, alive/dead as gradable antonyms on occasions. Someone can be very male or more married and certainly more dead than alive.” Comment on it.

8. 姜望琪(1991: 79)claims that “To some extent, we can say that any two words of the same part of speech may become antonyms, as long as the meaning difference between them is what needs to be emphasized in the particular context.” He uses the two sentences below as examples. What do you think of the claim?

You have to peel a raw potato but you can skin a boiled one.

He’s no statesman, but a mere politician.

9. What is the superordinate term in the following list?

man, stallion, male, boy, bull, boar

10. Basing yourself on the model of componential analysis, analyze the following words:

teacher, typewriter, chopsticks

11. Circle the two-place predicates in the list below:

attack(verb), die(verb), between, put, love(verb), in, cat, elephant, forget

12. Translate the following logical forms into English, where a=Ann, b=Bill, c=Carol, L=like, M=mother, and x and y are variables which may be translated as “someone”, “anyone” or “everyone” depending on the quantifier:

(a)M(a, b)

(b)L(b, c)& L(c, b)

(c)L(a, b)& ~ L(a, c)

(d) x(L(x, b))

(e)~ x(L(x, c))

(f)~ x( y(L(y, x)))

Chapter 6 Language and Cognition

1. Define the following terms.

psycholinguistics  language acquisition  holophrastic stage  two-word stage  three-word utterances  connectionism  cohort model  interactive model  race model  serial model  parallel model  resonance model  construal  construal operations  figure-ground alignment  trajector  landmark  basic level category  subordinate level  image schema  metaphor  metonymy  ontological metaphors  structural metaphors  generic space  blend space

2. What does psycholinguistics study and what are the subjects of it?

3. Describe the stages of first language acquisition.

4. Illustrate the models explaining the process of word recognition.

5. What are the factors influencing sentence comprehension?

6. Explain the various aspects of process of language production.

7. What is the definition of cognitive linguistics?

8. Describe the three categories of conceptual metaphors.

9. Illustrate the model of blending theory.

10. Analyze the following paragraph by image schemas.

You wake out of a deep sleep and peer out from beneath the covers into your room. You gradually emerge out of your stupor, pull yourself out from under the covers, climb into your robe, stretch out your limbs, and walk in a daze out of the bedroom and into the bathroom. You look in the mirror and see your face staring out at you. You reach into the medicine cabinet, take out the toothpaste, squeeze out some toothpaste, put the toothbrush into your mouth, brush your teeth in a hurry, and rinse out your mouth. At breakfast you perform a host of further in-out moves—pouring out the coffee, setting out the dishes, putting the toast in the toaster, spreading out the jam on the toast, and on and on. Once you are more awake you might even get lost in the newspaper, might enter into a conversation, which leads to your speaking out on some topic.

Chapter 7 Language, Culture, and Society

1. Define the following terms.

Anthropological Study of Linguistics  Communication  Communicative Competence  Context of Situation  Nida’s Classification of Culture  Ethnography of  Communication  FLB  FLN  Gender Difference  Linguistic Determinism  Linguistic Relativity  Linguistic Sexism  Six-Person System  Speech Community  SPEAKING  Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis  Sociolinguistics of Language  Sociolinguistics of  Society  Tripartite Model for Successful Communication  Variationist Linguistics  Women Register

2. What are some important contributions that sociolinguistics has made to linguistic studies?

3. Why do we need to teach culture in our language classroom?

4. As students of linguistics, how should we understand the relationships between functionalism and formalism?

5. Over the past two decades, hundreds of new words have rushed into the daily life of Chinese people. Try to collect a bunch of these words, examine the context of their usage, and provide a feasible explanation to their booming.

6. It has been widely recognized that the so-called “magic words” like “thank you” and “please” are more frequently used in English speaking society than they will in Chinese speaking society. One of explanations for this phenomenon may go like this: Look, these foreigners are really more polite than our countrymen. Try to use your knowledge in sociolinguistics and make some comments on this understanding of cultural differences.

7. What will you say to a statement like “one culture’s meat is another culture’s poison” ?

8. Why should language instructors look to sociolinguistics?

9. For linguistic studies of the new century, what is the significance of the division made between the faculty of language in the broad sense(FLB)and in the narrow sense(FLN)?

Chapter 8 Language in Use

1. Define the following terms.

performative  constative  locutionary act  illocutionary act  perlocutionary act  cooperative principle  conversational implicature  entailment  ostensive communication  communicative principle of  relevance  relevance(as a comparative notion)  (Horn’s)Q-principle  R-principle  division of pragmatic labor  Levinson’s three heuristics

2. Consider the following dialogue between a man and his daughter. Try to explain the illocutionary force in each of the utterances.

[The daughter walks into the kitchen and takes some popcorn.]

Father: I thought you were practicing your violin.

Daughter: I need to get the [violin] stand.

Father: Is it under the popcorn?

3. If you ask somebody “Can you open the door?” he answers “Yes” but does not actually do it, what would be your reaction? Why? Try to see it in the light of speech act theory.

4. On 14 January, 1993, US President-elect Bill Clinton spoke to journalists in the wake of rumours that he might go back on some of his promises made during the electoral campaign.When cornered by some insistent journalists, he came up with the following statement.

I think it would be foolish for the President of the United States, for any President of the United States, not to respond to changing circumstances. Every President of the United States, as far as I know, and particularly those who have done a good job, have known how to respond to changing circumstances. It would clearly be foolish for a President of the United States to do otherwise.

Some linguists argue that campaign speeches, like all political speeches, are one of the occasions on which the CP and its maxims are suspended, do you agree? Can you think of any other similar occasion?

5. “The Club” is a device for blocking an automobile’s steering wheel, thus protecting the car from being stolen. And one of its ads reads:

THE CLUB!

Anti-theft device for cars

POLICE SAY:

‘USE IT’

OR LOSE IT

In terms of the Gricean theory, what maxim is exploited here? Find two Chinese ads of the same type.

6. A is reading the newspaper. When B asks “What’s on television tonight?” he answers “Nothing.” What does A mean in normal situations? Think of two situations in which this interpretation of “Nothing” will be cancelled.

7. Of the following pairs of sentences, say whether A entails B in each case.

(1)A. John is a bachelor.

B. John is a man.

(2)A. Janet plays the fiddle.

B. Someone plays a musical instrument.

(3)A. I’ve done my homework.

B. I haven’t brushed my teeth.

(4)A. Some of the students came to my party.

B. Not all of the students came to my party.

(5)A. Mary owns three canaries.

B. Mary owns a canary.

(6)A. John picked a tulip.

B. John didn’t pick a rose.

8. Each of the following conversational fragments is to some degree odd. To what extent can the oddness be explained by reference to Grice’s CP and maxims?

(1)A: Have you seen Peter today?

B: Well, if I didn’t deny seeing him I wouldn’t be telling a lie.

(2)A: Are you there?

B: No, I’m here.

(3)A: Thank you for your help, you’ve been most kind.

B: Yes, I have.

(4)A: Can you tell me where Mr Smith’s office is?

B: Yes, not here.

(5)A: Would you like some coffee?

B: Mary’s a beautiful dancer.

(6)A: Has the postman been?

B: He leant his bicycle against the fence, opened the gate, strode briskly down the path, stopped to stroke the cat, reached into his bag, pulled out a bundle of letters and pushed them through our letter box.

Chapter 9 Language and Literature

1. Define the following terms.

third-person narrator  I-narrator  free indirect speech  direct thought  stream of consciousness writing  text style

2. What different forms of sound patterning can you find in the first stanza of the poem, “Easter Wings”, by George Herbert(1593—1663)?

Lord, who createdst man in wealth and store,

Though foolishly he lost the same,

Decaying more and more,

Till he became

Most poore:

With thee

O let me rise

As larks, harmoniously,

And sing this day thy victories:

Then shall the fall further the flight in me.

3. Identify the type of trope employed in the following examples.

1)The boy was as cunning as a fox.

2)...the innocent sleep,...the death of each day’s life,...(Shakespeare)

3)Buckingham Palace has already been told the train may be axed when the rail network has been privatised.( Daily Mirror, 2 February 1993)

4)Ted Dexter confessed last night that England are in a right old spin as to how they can beat India this winter.( Daily Mirror, 2 February 1993)

4. Choose a scene from a play, one you have seen or read, one you have heard on the radio(there are published collections of radio plays available), or one you are studying.

1)Write a paraphrase of it, as described in Stage One in this course;

2)Write a commentary on the same scene, as described Stage Two in this course;

3)Choose one of the discourse features discussed above, and analyse the same scene to see how that feature is made use of in the scene, and the effect this has on your interpretation of it.

5. Discuss questions related to Exercise 4. Does your analysis change your attitude to anything you wrote in your paraphrase or commentary of the play? If so, what, and how?

6. Do you know anything about the British poet Philip Larkin?

7. What do you think of the cognitive approach to literature?

Chapter 10 Language and Computer

1. Define the following terms.

computational linguistics  computer literacy  speech synthesis  CALL  programmed instruction  LAN  CD-ROM  MT  concordance  e-mail  blog  chatroom  FYI  corpus  CMC  drill and practice

2. What is the basic difference between CAI and CAL in educational philosophy?

3. What are the 4 phases in the course of CALL development?

4. Are the linguist approach in MT research successful? Why?

5. What do you think about the knowledge-based approach?

6. What’s your view about the relation between MT and human translation?

7. Choose the correct answer from each of the following set of options.

a. Qualitative analysis is not useful in recognizing ambiguities in data.

True/False

b. Corpus A has 350,000 words in it and 615 examples of “get”. Corpus B has 20,000 words in it and 35 examples of “get”. Which corpus has the greatest proportion of the word “get” ?

Corpus A/Corpus B

c. A word frequency lexeme analysis is carried out on the data below. Which lexeme has the highest frequency?

bat 16

bats 2

batting 1

batty 4

can 22

clock 16

clocked 4

dark 7

darkening 11

gave 11

give 6

given 3

gives 1

8. What do you think about Chomsky’s criticism and the revival of corpus linguistics?

9. What is the difference between blog and chatroom?

10. Why should chatroom sometimes be monitored?

11. What does each of the following acronyms and numbers stand for?

AND  AISI  B4   CU

DIY  EOD  F/F   FYA

G2G  GA  HAGD  HLM

IDC  IHU  JAM    JK

KIT  LHM  LMA   NM

PM   Q4Y  SYS   TA

TTUL  U2   VBS   W8

WB   Y   YATB   WW4U

12. Can you guess the meaning of the following Emoticons or Smiley?

:-*   :{ }:  :<   (-:

:-() :OI   XD  :)

:-D   |-I

Chapter 11 Linguistics and Foreign Languag Teaching

1. Why should language teachers learn some knowledge of linguistics?

2. What is FOCUS ON FORM?

3. What is the INPUT HYPOTHESIS?

4. What is INTERLANGUAGE? Can you give some examples of interlanguage?

5. What is the discourse-based view of language teaching?

6. What are real-world tasks and pedagogical tasks? Can you give some examples?

7. What are the most important tasks for a syllabus designer?

8. What is a structural syllabus?

9. The structural syllabus is often criticised. Do you think it has some merits as well?

10. What are the important features of a task as defined in a task-based syllabus?

11. What are non-language outcomes?

12. What is Contrastive Analysis?

13. What are the differences between errors and mistakes? Can you identify the errors and mistakes in the sentences below?

(1)I bought in Japan.

(2)These dog are big.

(3)He was arrived early.

(4)Joe doesn’t likes it.

(5)Why didn’t you came to school.

(6)I doesn’t know how.

(7)She has been smoking less, isn’t it?

(8)I falled from the bike.

(9)I no have it.

(10)Why they look at each other?

(11)I know what is that.

(12)Although he was ill, but he still came.

(13)I go to the university yesterday.

(14)Teacher said he is right.

14. What is a corpus? Can you give some examples of how the use of a corpus contributes to language teaching?

Chapter 12 Theories and Schools of Modern Linguistics

1. Why is Saussure hailed as the father of modern linguistics?

2. What are the three important points of the Prague School?

3. What is the Prague School best known for?

4. What is the essence of Functional Sentence Perspective(FSP)?

5. What is the tradition of the London School?

6. What is the difference between Malinowski and Firth on context of situation?

7. What is important about Firth’s prosodic analysis?

8. What is the relation between Systemic Grammar and Functional Grammar?

9. What is special about Systemic-Functional linguistics?

10. Analyze the following sentences by identifying the Subject and Predicate on the first level and Theme and Rheme on the second level.

(1)Mary gave her daughter a birthday present.

(2)A birthday gift was given to Jenny.

(3)The play was written by William Shakespeare.

(4)Do have another drink.

11. Please put the following items in a diagram according to Halliday’s notion of system and scale of delicacy.

(1)she

(2)we

(3)always

(4)a perception process

(5)an action process

12. Analyze the following Relational-process sentences according to their mode and type.

(1)Linguistics is a difficult course.

(2)This laptop is Professor Huang’s.

13. Analyze the following sentences on two levels. First, identify the Subject, Finite, Predicator, and Adjunct. Second, identify Mood and Residue. Explain the difference, if any, between the two levels of analysis.

(1)Mr Hu made a speech at a conference yesterday.

(2)The university president has been awarded an international prize.

(3)Three days ago, an honorary title was given to a professor from Yale.

14. Analyze the following sentences on three levels of metafunctions.

(1)John likes linguistics.

(2)The paper was handed in three days later.

15. What are the special features of American structuralism?

16. How is behaviourist psychology related to linguistics?

17. What is Harris’s most important contribution to linguistics?

18. What is the theoretical importance of Tagmemics?

19. What are the main features of Stratificational Grammar?

20. How many stages of development has Chomsky’s TG Grammar undergone?

21. What does Chomsky mean by Language Acquisition Device?

22. Draw a tree diagram for each of the following sentences.

(1)The police attacked the suspect.

(2)These children cannot understand her painting.

23. Explain why Generative Grammar can produce well-formed sentences(e.g. Mary reads a book )but not ill-formed ones(e.g. * A book reads Mary ).

24. Why can a sentence like John kills John be transformed into John kills himself ?

25. What is special about TG Grammar?

26. What is Case Grammar?

27. What is Generative Semantics? ldKQNDmnsiY/gzKwaH9h8IsckAoPpdMrtwDfwsSnzj2aqOJp2yNRU4H8MwuFuSr5

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