2009年10月现代语言学自考试题

全国2009年10月自考
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. Saussure used ______ to refer to the abstract linguistic system shared by all the members of a speech community. (　　　)
A. performance  B. parole
C. langue  D. competence
2. In English, a phoneme may be represented by two or more allophones. The choice of the allophone is ______. (　　　)
A. random  B. rule-governed
C. haphazard  D. unpredictable
3. In word-formation, a ______ is the smallest meaningful unit of language. (　　　)
A. phoneme  B. word
C. compound  D. morpheme
4. A ______ category usually refers to a word or phrase that performs a particular grammatical function, such as the subject or predicate in a sentence. (　　　)
A. lexical  B. phrasal
C. syntactic  D. phonetic
5. In the following pairs of words, ______ are a pair of relational opposites. (　　　)
A. “buy” and “sell”  B. “male” and “female”
C. “hot” and “cold”  D. “alive” and “dead”
6. The illocutionary point of ______ has the characteristic that the successful performance of an act of this kind brings about the correspondence between what is said and reality. (　　　)
A. directives  B. declarations
C. commissives  D. representatives
7. Old English had a rich case-ending system, e.g., Old English noun had four cases, i.e., nominative, genetive, dative and ______. (　　　)
A. possessive  B. vocative
C. accusative  D. locative
8. ______ dialects are characteristic of a particular type of linguistic activity and appropriate for use in particular speech situations. (　　　)
A. Social  B. Ethnic
C. Regional  D. Situational
9. Lying under the skull, the human brain contains an average of ten billion nerve cells called ______.(　　　)
A. nerve fibers  B. nerves
C. neurons  D. cerebral cortex
10. By the time children are going beyond the ______ stage, they begin to incorporate some of the inflectional morphemes. (　　　)
A. telegraphic  B. multiword
C. two-word  D. one-word

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. If a linguistic study aims to lay down rules for “correct” behavior, i.e., to tell people what they should say and what they should not, it is said to be p           .
12. Languages that use the pitch of individual syllables to contrast meanings are called t        
languages. Pitch variations can be used to distinguish meaning just like phonemes.
13. I             morphemes are those morphemes that show various grammatical relations or categories such as number, tense and case.
14. A c       sentence contains two or more clauses, one of which is incorporated into the other.
15. In grammatical analysis, the sentence is taken to be the basic unit, but in semantic analysis of a sentence, the basic unit is called p       , which is the abstraction of the meaning of a sentence.
16. The significance of Grice’s C        Principle lies in that it explains how it is possible for the speaker to convey more than is literally said.
17. The method of r       of a parent language from a comparison of its daughter languages is called the comparative method.
18. The avoidance of using t       language mirrors social attitude, emotions and value judgements.
19. Genie’s case not only confirms the critical period hypothesis, but also the view that human’s language a        device is independent of other intellectual abilities.
20. If the target language functions as a foreign language, the learner is likely to benefit from an
i         motivation.

Ⅲ. 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. ( 2% 10=20% )
21. (　　　) The arbitrary nature of language is absolute, i.e., there are no words in world languages that maintain a correspondence between form and sound.
22. (　　　) Certain strings of phonemes are permissible and others are not. If a word begins with an/1/or/r/, the next segment must be a vowel. That is why / 1bIk/does not sound like an English word. It violates the restriction on the sequencing of phonemes.
23. (　　　) The different stresses used in a compound do not usually affect the meaning of the compound.
24. (　　　) The recursive properties of phrase structure rules enable these rules to generate an infinite number of sentences, and sentences with infinite length.
25. (　　　) Entailment is a relation of inclusion. If X entails Y, the meaning of X is included in Y.
26. (　　　) Performatives are sentences that do not state a fact or describe a state, and are not verifiable.
27. (　　　) Another kind of change that can be thought of as “economy of memory” results in a reduction of the number of exceptional or irregular morphemes. For example, children and adults are presently saying I dreamed last night (instead of dreamt). This kind of change has been called rule simplification.
28. (　　　) One striking fact about the asymmetry between male and female terms in many languages is that when there are male/female pairs, the male form for the most part is unmarked and the female term is produced by adding a bound morpheme or by compounding.
29. (　　　) Research findings have shown that language processing centers are situated in a single area of the left hemisphere.
30. (　　　) The grammatical errors that occur in second language acquisition can all be explained by mother tongue interference.

Ⅳ. Directions: Explain the following terms, using one or two examples for illustration, if necessary. (3%10=30%)
31. synchronic study
32. competence
33. sentence stress
34. free morpheme
35. major lexical category
36. behaviourism as a semantic view
37. stylistic synonyms
38. expressives
39. euphemism
40. Broca’s area

Ⅴ. Directions: Answer the following questions. ( 10% 2=20% )
41. In some dialects of English, the word “ask” is pronounced [ks], and children’s speech shows a number of cases of sound movement, for example, “aminal” for “animal”. Now explain sound movement by giving examples. State the difference between sound movement and sound addition by examples.
42. Describe the distinctive features of Black English in its syntactic system by using examples.