语言学真题汇总

nylon1007 · 发表于 2007-4-18 20:07:00

语言学的资料很少，看完书后想找些习题或往年试题做做，可以起到练兵，巩固所看书本知识的作用。我收集了一些高校语言学的往年试题供大家参考，讨论，交流一下做题的感受，也希望大家可以把自己所考学校的往年试题发表在上面，给大家一起讨论。
1 One of the main features of our human language is arbitrariness .Can you briefly explain what is this feature refers to ? Give examples if necessary(10 points). <北师大2003年试题）
2 In english we can describe a story as "a successful story" or "a success story ".Do you think they mean the same ? Please explain and give your reasons(10 points) ,<同上》
3 Expain the following terms ,giving examples where necessary.(50 points) <中山2003》  design feature macrolinguistics  vowel  minimal pair folk etymology  aspect anopho  r  error analysisr metaphor

4 Language can change through blending ,metanalysis ,back-formation, analogical creation and borrowing.Give two english words for each of them (5 points) 清华2000年试题
5 Answer the following question briefly.clearly,grammatically and correctly.(10 Points ) 湖南师大2003年
What is it wrong to assume that the meaning of a  sentence is  the sum of the meaning of the words which compose it ?
7 Define the following terms.(10 points) 中国海洋大学1999
Phoneme ,consonant,morpheme,lexicon,syntax,endocentric construction,semantics,hyponymy ,language ,design feature
8 Define the following terms .(20 points) 苏州大学1997
allophone  morpheme assimilation  internal authority  interlanguage phatic  communion
closed-class word government  semantica triangic lingua franca

What is the main grammatical difference between a  sentence and a clause ? 同上
6 Translate into chinese and exemplify each of the following.(10 points )
Example : dialectal synonyms
Answer , 方言同义词， Fall and autumn are dialectal synonyms .
  homography homophony gradable opposites endocentric constuction
exocentric construction
9 大连外国语学院1992年语言学全部试题 100 POINTS
  List the six important characteristics of human language .
  What are the types of morphemes ?
  Illustrate  the deep and surface structures .
  What do u know about the semantic features ?
  How does language change ?
10  Words in our mental lexicon are known to be related to one another .Discuss the relationships between words ,using examples from the english language .(15 points ) 北外2003年试题
11 What do you think are the similarities and dissimilarities between learning a first and a second language? ( 30 points)  同上

1.    What is language?
“Language is system of arbitrary vocal symbols used for human communication. It is a system, since linguistic elements are arranged systematically, rather than randomly. Arbitrary, in the sense that there is usually no intrinsic connection between a work (like “book”) and the object it refers to. This explains and is explained by the fact that different languages have different “books”: “book” in English, “livre” in French, “shu” in Chinese. It is symbolic, because words are associated with objects, actions, ideas etc. by nothing but convention. Namely, people use the sounds or vocal forms to symbolize what they wish to refer to. It is vocal, because sound or speech is the primary medium for all human languages. Writing systems came much later than the spoken forms. The fact that small children learn and can only learn to speak (and listen) before they write (and read) also indicates that language is primarily vocal, rather than written. The term “human” in the definition is meant to specify that language is human specific.

2. What are design features of language?
“Design features” here refer to the defining properties of human language that tell the difference between human language and any system of animal communication. They are arbitrariness, duality, productivity, displacement, cultural transmission and interchangeability

3. What is arbitrariness?
By “arbitrariness”, we mean there is no logical connection between meanings and sounds. A dog might be a pig if only the first person or group of persons had used it for a pig. Language is therefore largely arbitrary. But language is not absolutely seem to be some sound-meaning association, if we think of echo words, like “bang”, “crash”, “roar”, which are motivated in a certain sense. Secondly, some compounds (words compounded to be one word) are not entirely arbitrary either. “Type” and “write” are opaque or unmotivated words, while “type-writer” is less so, or more transparent or motivated than the words that make it. So we can say “arbitrariness” is a matter of degree.

4. What is duality?
Linguists refer “duality” (of structure) to the fact that in all languages so far investigated, one finds two levels of structure or patterning. At the first, higher level, language is analyzed in terms of combinations of meaningful units (such as morphemes, words etc.); at the second, lower level, it is seen as a sequence of segments which lack any meaning in themselves, but which combine to form units of meaning. According to Hu Zhanglin et al., language is a system of two sets of structures, one of sounds and the other of meaning. This is important for the workings of language. A small number of semantic units (words), and these units of meaning can be arranged and rearranged into an infinite number of sentences (note that we have dictionaries of words, but no dictionary of sentences!). Duality makes it possible for a person to talk about anything within his knowledge. No animal communication system enjoys this duality.

5. What is productivity?
Productivity refers to the ability to the ability to construct and understand an indefinitely large number of sentences in one’s native language, including those that has never heard before, but that are appropriate to the speaking situation. No one has ever said or heard “A red-eyed elephant is dancing on the small hotel bed with an African gibbon”, but he can say it when necessary, and he can understand it in right register. Different from artistic creativity, though, productivity never goes outside the language, thus also called “rule-bound creativity” (by N.Chomsky).

6. What is displacement?
“Displacement”, as one of the design features of the human language, refers to the fact that one can talk about things that are not present, as easily as he does things present. In other words, one can refer to real and unreal things, things of the past, of the present, of the future. Language itself can be talked about too. When a man, for example, is crying to a woman, about something, it might be something that had occurred, or something that is occurring, or something that is to occur. When a dog is barking, however, you can decide it is barking for something or at someone that exists now and there. It couldn’t be bow-wowing sorrowfully for a bone to be lost. The bee’s system, nonetheless, has a small share of “displacement”, but it is an unspeakable tiny share.

7. What is cultural transmission?
This means that language is not biologically transmitted from generation to generation, but that the details of the linguistic system must be learned anew by each speaker. It is true that the capacity for language in human beings (N. Chomsky called it “language acquisition device”, or LAD) has a genetic basis, but the particular language a person learns to speak is a cultural one other than a genetic one like the dog’s barking system. If a human being is brought up in isolation he cannot acquire language. The Wolf Child reared by the pack of wolves turned out to speak the wolf’s roaring “tongue” when he was saved. He learned thereafter, with no small difficulty, the ABC of a certain human language.

8. What is interchangeability?
Interchangeability means that any human being can be both a producer and a receiver of messages. Though some people suggest that there is sex differentiation in the actual language use, in other words, men and women may say different things, yet in principle there is no sound, or word or sentence that a man can utter and a woman cannot, or vice versa. On the other hand, a person can be the speaker while the other person is the listener and as the turn moves on to the listener, he can be the speaker and the first speaker is to listen. It is turn-taking that makes social communication possible and acceptable. Some male birds, however, utter some calls which females do not (or cannot). When a dog barks, all the neighboring dogs bark. Then people around can hardly tell which dog (dogs) is (are) “speaking” and which listening.

9. Why do linguists say language is human specific?
First of all, human language has six “design features” which animal communication systems do not have, at least not in the true sense of them. Secondly, linguists have done a lot trying to teach animals such as chimpanzees to speak a human language but have achieved nothing inspiring. Washoe, a female chimpanzee, was brought up like a human child by Beatnice and Alan Gardner. She was taught “American sign Language”, and learned a little that made the teachers happy but did mot make the linguistics circle happy, for few believed in teaching chimpanzees. Thirdly, a human child reared among animals cannot speak a human language, not even when he is taken back and taught to do so.

10. What functions does language have?
Language has at least seven functions: phatic, directive, Informative, interrogative, expressive, evocative and performative. According to Wang Gang (1988,p.11), language has three main functions: a tool of communication, a tool whereby people learn about the world, and a tool by which people learn about the world, and a tool by which people create art . M .A. K. Halliday, representative of the London school, recognizes three “Macro-Functions”: ideational, interpersonal and textual.

71.             What is entailment?
“Entailment” can be illustrated by the following two sentences, with Sentence A entailing Sentence B:
A: He married a blonde heiress.
B: He married a blonde.
In terms of truth value, the following relationships exist between these two sentences1) When A is true, B is necessarily true;(2) When B is false, too;(3) when A is false, B may be true or false; (4) When B is true, A may be true or false. Entailment is basically a semantic relation or logical implication, but we have to assume co-reference of “He” in sentence A and sentence B, before we have A entail B.

72.       What is presupposition?
Similar to entailment, “presupposition” is a semantic relationship or logical connection. The above-mentioned “When phrase No.1”is also true with presupposition. For example:
A: The girl he married was an heiress.
B: He married a girl.
But there is an important difference: Presupposition is not subject to negation, i.e., when A is false, B is still true. Other statements about the truth value in presupposition are1) When B is true, A can either be true or false;(2) When B is false, A has no truth value at all. Presupposition does not have to be found between two propositions. An example in point is: “ When did you stop beating your wife?” This presupposes that he has been beating his wife.

73.       What is componential analysis?
“Componential analysis” defines the meaning of a lexical element in terms of semantic components. For example, we may “clip” the following words “Man”, “Woman”, “Boy” and “Girl” so that we have only separate parts of them.
Man: + Human + Adult + Male
Woman: + Human + Adult -Male
Boy: +Human –Adult +Male
Girl: +Human –Adult –Male

74.       What is predication analysis? What is a one-place predicate? What is a two-place predicate? What is a no-place predicate? What are down-graded predications?
“Predication analysis” is a new approach for sentential meaning analysis. “Predication” is usually considered an important common category shared by propositions, questions, commands, etc. Predication is to break down the sentence into their smaller constituents: argument (logical participant) and predicate (relation element). The “predicate” is the major or pivotal element governing the argument. We may now distinguish a “two-place predicate” (which governs two arguments, e.g., subject and object), a “one-place predicate” (which governs one argument, i.e., subject) and a “no-place predicate” that has simply no argument (no real subject or object).

75.       What is a logical operator?
“Logical operator ” make only one kind of the “logical factors” or “logical means”, others being “definiteness”, “coreference”, “tense” and “time”, since predication is not the whole of a sentence or proposition. All these factors play a part in prepositional actualization of the predication ---the pining of a predication down a claim about reality. Example of logical operators are “not”, “and”, “or”, “some”, “if”, “false”, etc. The term “logical operation” reflects the fact that these meaning elements are often thought of as performing operations, controlling elements of the semantic system, so to speak.

76.       Why is writing important? Why is speech considered prior to writing?
Language can take the form of speech or writing, the former using sound as medium and the latter employing visual symbols. No one could tell when mankind first spoke; nor could people tell when mankind developed the first writing. A writing system consists of a graphemes plus characteristic features of their use, resulting in the diversion of the writing forms; word writing, syllabic writing and sound writing. It is widely considered that speech is the primary medium, and writing the secondary medium. But this comparative diminution does not mean that writing is unimportant. With the shot-lived memory and the finite capacity of information storing, writing is used, partly for compensation and partly for better communication. We cannot trust the negotiation counterpart so we turn to the writing and signing of an agreement. Writing leads people to the acme of science, study and research, and to the ultimate joy of literature

77.       What is a pictogram? What is an ideogram?
A “pictogram” refers to an inscription representing the features of a physical object. The Hebrew and the Chinese orthography still reflects traces of their pictorial origin. For instance, the letter “a” (aleph) imitates the head of an ox and the letter “b” (beth) imitates a horse. And “niú”, “mǎ”, “hǔ”and hundreds more of Chinese words derived from, and still keep the pictorial resemblance to, the shapes of the things or objects. The advantage of pictograms is that they can be easily understood by anyone. That explains why international road signs and public-toilet signs make a wide use of them.
An “ideogram” means an idea picture or idea writing. In order to express the attribute of an object or concepts associated with it, the pictogram’s meaning had to be extended. For instance, a picture of the sun does not necessarily represent the object itself, but connotes “warmth”, “heat”, “light”, “daytime”, etc. In spite of its disadvantages, the later form of ideograms turned out to be linguistic symbols, symbols for the sounds of these objects. The process is called the “Rebus Principle” indicating that writing is like a riddle composed of words or syllables depicted by symbols or pictures that suggest the sound of the words or syllables they represent.

78.       What is word writing? What is sound writing? What is syllabic writing?
Word writing refers to the writing system based on ideograms and/or pictograms, like Chinese. “Sound writing ” or “alphabetic writing”, which dominates the world, derived form the Latin alphabet with mild adjustments. Most of the European alphabets belong to the sound writing system, e.g., Spanish, German, French, English, etc. “Syllabic writing” is a word-syllabus writing, developed by the Egyptians. Japanese is a typical syllabic-writing language, though derived from Chinese, a Sino-Tibetan language. The Japanese modified the Chinese characters they had borrowed from ancient China so that the Japanese syllables (to the number of fifty) were each represented, either by what is called “hiragana” or by what is name “katakana”.

79.       What is a grapheme? What is orthography?
A “grapheme” is the minimal constructive unit in the writing system of a language. The English grapheme A is represented by A,α,a etc.
Orthography means correct spelling, spelling rules or attempts to improve spelling.

80.       What is affixation, conversion and compounding?
“Affixation” is the morphological process whereby grammatical of lexical information is added to the base (root or stem). It has been the oldest and the most productive word-formation method in the English language and some other European languages. “Prefixation” means addition of a prefix to make a new word, while “suffixation” means adding a suffix to a word. The word “unfaithful” is result of both prefixation and suffixation.
“Conversion” (called sometimes “full conversion”) is a word-formation process by which a word is altered from one part of speech into another without the addition (or deletion) of any morpheme. “Partial conversion” is also alteration when a word of one word-class appears in a function which is characteristic of another word-class, e.g., “ the wealthy” (=wealthy people).
”Compounding” is so complex a word-formation process as far as English is concerned that there is no formal criterion that can be used for the definition of it, though it may mean simply that two words or more come together used as one lexical item, like “dustbin”.