江苏大学真题

江苏大学2004年硕士研究生入学考试试题

考试科目：英语语言学

考生注意：答案必须写在答题纸上，写在试题及草稿纸上无效！



I. Multiple choice (10%)

1. ____________ has been widely accepted as the forefather of modern linguistics.

a. Chomsky b. Saussure c. Bloomfield d. John Lyons

2. The minimal independent unit of language is _________.

a. phoneme b. word c. morpheme d. affix

3. ____________ is not an English consonant.

a. Labio-dental plosive b. Alveolar nasal c. velar stop

d. Dental fricative

4. __________ is not a distinctive feature in English phonology.

a. Nasality b. Voicing c. Aspiration d. rounding

5. The choice of an allophone in a given phonetic context is ______.

a. random b. predictable c. variable d. independent

6. Site and sight are ____________.

a. orthography b. homography c. homophony d. hyponymy

7. Kodak is a(n) ____________.

a. coinage b. blending c. acronym d. clipping

8. ____________ is a phenomenon that in some speech communities two varieties of a language exist sides by side, with each having a different role to play.

a. Bilingualism b. Diglossia c. Pidgin d. Creole

9. The Indirect Speech Act was developed by __________.

a. John Austin b. Levinson c. John Lyons d. John Searle.

10. The totality of linguistic varieties possessed by an individual constitutes his _________.

a. register b. linguistic repertoire c. idiolect d. dialect


II. Define the following terms(30%)

1. arbitrariness 2. evocative

3. competence 4. manners of articulation

5. distinctive features 6. stem

7. idiom 8. endocentric

9. hyponymy 10. sound writing

11. acronym 12. ideolect

13.standard language 14. illocutionary act

15.internal authority


III. Justify the following claims or statements. (20%)

1 The violation of one or more of the conversational maxims (of the CP Principle) can, when the listener fully understands the speaker, create conversational implicature, a humor sometimes.

2 Duality and cultural transmission are two most important design features of human language.

3. Chomsky's 'competence' and 'performance' are similar in meaning to Saussure's 'langue' and 'parole'.


IV. Make your critical remarks on the following: (20％):

1 It's a bit cold in here.

2 John married Fred's sister

3 He drank another glass of beer 第2页

4 The lecturer continued speaking.

5 Peter has stopped beating his wife


V. Give one concept to cover the following statement (6%)

1) Human language can be used to refer to real or imagined matters in the past, present, or future. It can even be used to talk about language itself.

2) A competent native speaker is able to utter any grammatical sentence that he has never said before or understand any that he has never heard before.

3) Chomsky believes that anyone who knows a language has internalized a set of rules about the sequences permitted in his language.

4) Chomsky is much interested in the study of the similarities between languages rather than their differences.

5) Roughly from 1930 to 1960 some linguists gave pre-eminence to the empirical or observational aspect in their investigation of meaning. They believed the meaning of a word is its use in the language.

6) Since 1960's, some modern linguists have viewed the primary function of language as the communication of ideas and assumed the data needed about language can be supplied by direct resort to intuition.


VI. Answer the following questions briefly (20%)

1. Do you prefer descriptive linguistics to prescriptive linguistics? Give your reasons.

2. What is the difference between broad transcription and narrow transcription?

3. How is a phoneme different from a speech sound?

4. Why is speech prior to writing?

5. Why can’t we do away with Chinese characters?


VII. For each of the underlined constructions or word groups, do the following: (8%)

a. State whether it is headed or non-headed.

b. If non-headed, state its headword.

c. Name the type of constructions.

1. Ducks quack.

2. I saw a bridge damaged beyond repair.

3. He enjoys climbing high mountains

4. His handsome face appeared in the magazine.


VIII. Give a detailed description of Firth’s theory of meaning. (16%)


IX. Give an overall account of the relationship between language and culture. (20%)