语言学问答题小结

1，What are the major branches of linguistics? What does each of them study?

答： The major branches of linguistics are:

(1) Phonetics: it studies the sounds used in linguistic communication;

(2) Phonology: it studies how sounds are put together and used to convey meaning in communication; (3) Morphology: it studies the way in which linguistic symbols representing sounds are arranged and combined to form words;

(4) Syntax: it studies the rules which govern how words are combined to form grammatically permissible sentences in languages;

(5) Semantics: it studies meaning conveyed by language;

(6) Pragmatics: it studies the meaning in the context of language use.

2，For what reasons does modern linguistics give priority to speech rather than to writing?

答： Speech and writing are the two major media of linguistic communication. Modem linguistics regards the spoken language as the natural or the primary

medium of human language for some obvious reasons. 1，From the point of view of linguistic evolution, speech is prior to writing. The writing system of any

language is always “invented” by its users to record speech when the need arises. Even in today's world there are still many languages that can only be spoken but not written. 2，Then in everyday communication, speech plays a greater role than writing in terms of the amount of information conveyed. 3，And also, speech is always the way in which every native speaker acquires his mother tongue, and writing is learned and taught later when he goes to school.4， For modern

linguists, spoken language reveals many true features of human speech while written language is only the “revised” record of speech. Thus their data for investigation and analysis are mostly drawn from everyday speech, which they regard as authentic.

3，How is Saussure's distinction between langue and parole similar to Chomsky's distinction between competence and performance?

答： Saussure's distinction and Chomsky's are very similar, they differ at least in that Saussure took a sociological view of language and his notion of langue is a matter of social conventions, and Chomsky looks at language from a psychological point of view and to him competence is a property of the mind of each individual.

4，What characteristics of language do you think should be included in a good, comprehensive definition of language?

答： 1，First of all, language is a system, i.e., elements of language are combined according to rules.

2，Second, language is arbitrary in the sense that there is no intrinsic connection between a linguistic symbol and what the symbol stands for.

3，Third, language is vocal because the primary medium for all languages is sound.

4，Fourth, language is human-specific, i. e., it is very different from the communication systems other forms of life possess.

5，What are the major functions of language? Think of your own examples for illustration.

答： Three main functions are often recognized of language: the descriptive function, the expressive function, and the social function.

1，The descriptive function is the function to convey factual information, which can be asserted or denied, and in some cases even verified. For example: “China is a large country with a long history.”

2，The expressive function supplies information about the user’s feelings, preferences, prejudices, and values. For example: “I will never go window-shopping with her.”

3，The social function serves to establish and maintain social relations between people. . For example: “We are your firm supporters.”

6，How do phonetics and phonology differ in their focus of study?

Both phonology and phonetics are concerned with the same aspect of language –– the speech sounds. But while both are related to the study of sounds,, they differ in their approach and focus. Phonetics is of a general nature; it is interested in all the speech sounds used in all human languages: how they are produced, how they differ from each other, what phonetic features they possess, how they can be classified, etc. Phonology, on the other hand, aims to discover how speech sounds in a language form patterns and how these sounds are used to convey meaning in linguistic communication.

7，What is category? How to determine a word's category?

Category refers to a group of linguistic items which fulfill the same or similar functions in a particular language such as a sentence, a noun phrase or a verb.

To determine a word's category, three criteria are usually employed, namely meaning, inflection and distribution. A word's distributional facts together with information about its meaning and inflectional capabilities help identify its syntactic category.

8，What are the major views concerning the study of meaning?

答：(1) The naming theory proposed by the ancient Greek scholar Plato. According to this theory, the linguistic forms or symbols, in other words, the words used in a language are simply labels of the objects they stand for. So words are just names or labels for things.

(2) The conceptualist view has been held by some philosophers and linguists from ancient times. This view holds that there is no direct link between a linguistic form and what it refers to (i. e., between language and the real world); rather, in the interpretation of meaning they are linked through the mediation of concepts in the mind.

(3) The contextualist view held that meaning should be studied in terms of situation, use, context –– elements closely linked with language behaviour. The representative of this approach was J.R. Firth, famous British linguist.

(4) Behaviorists attempted to define the meaning of a language form as the “situation in which the speaker utters it and the response it calls forth in the hearer.” This theory, somewhat close to contextualism, is linked with psychological interest.