1、2007年北京师范大学英语专业（语言学）真题试卷及答案与解析 一、名词解释 1 Phoneme 2 Deep Structure and Surface Structure 3 Speech Act Theory 4 The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis 二、简答题 5 Explain why the sentence John saw a girl with a telescope is ambiguous, and explicate the ambiguity by drawing two or more syntactic trees for the sentence.
2、(10 points) 6 What are gradable antonyms? Explain the concept with examples.(10 points) 7 Read the following passage and state what wrong is with the use of “hello“ from the socio-cultural perspective.(10 points) A group of Chinese girls who just arrived at the U.S. for their university education de
3、cided to visit the city of New York together. Since their school was not very far from the city, so they planned to take a Greyhound bus to go there at the weekend. Saturday morning, they got up early and after two hours drive they got to the downtown of the city. They stayed there for a couple of h
4、ours, shopping and sightseeing happily. Everything seemed OK until it was the time for them to go back they suddenly realized that they lost their way back to the Greyhound bus station. What made the situation worse was that it was getting darker. In despair, they stopped at a corner on the street a
5、nd decided to ask for help. At this moment they saw a young couple passing by so they said “Hello!“ to this couple. To their surprise, the couple looked at them coldly and hustled on. Having no way out, they approached to the next group of passers-by and tried a louder “Hello “ this time. Again they
6、 got nothing but a cold shoulder from these city people. 8 Compare and contrast the following pairs of terms. Use examples if necessary.(20 points) Language learning and language acquisition 9 Field dependence and field independence 10 Contrastive analysis and error analysis 11 Scholars have tried t
7、o explain how human being acquire or learn the language. There are two major schools of thought in language learning theories, empiricism and mentalism. Please define and explain these two terms, and then make comments with your own point of views.(10 points) 12 It is believed that the study of lang
8、uage(linguistics)is closely related to language teaching. In what ways do you think linguistic studies contribute to the research and practice of language teaching?(10 points) 13 Some language teachers argue that we should “teach the language“ rather than “teach about the language“. What are the maj
9、or differences between these two approaches to language teaching?(10 points) 14 What is Fricative? List all the fricative sounds in English.(10 points) 15 What are syntagmatic and paradigmatic relations? Explain each of them with an example.(10 points) 16 State the Referential-Theory(or meaning tria
10、ngle)put forward by Ogden and Richards, and illustrate the theory with an example.(10 points) 17 State the various stages of Chomskys Transformational-Generative Grammar, and describe the theorys philosophical/methodological features.(10 points) 18 Explain the(communicative)Principle of Relevance, a
11、nd use it to explain why in a normal circumstance the sentence John went to the bank means that John went to a money-institution rather than that John went to the bank of a river.(10 points) 19 What is the social constructivist theory? What implications does this theory have for the practice of a la
12、nguage teaching?(15 points) 20 People employ different language learning strategies while they are learning English. Please describe and evaluate three language-learning strategies you often use from your learning experience.(15 points) 21 Some English learners make errors such as “speaked“ and “wri
13、ted“, while some others produce words like “spoked“ and “wroted“. Why do you think English learners make these two types of errors?(10 points) 三、单项选择题 22 Below are three multiple choice questions in an English test paper for junior middle school students. Do you see any problems in the design?(10 po
14、ints)How long is XY in triangle XYZ? （ A） 4 cm （ B） 6 cm （ C） 8 cm （ D） 12 cm 23 You look hungry. Dont you want_to eat? （ A） something （ B） anything （ C） nothing （ D） everything 24 What did you do yesterday evening? I_to the cinema. （ A） went （ B） goes （ C） was going . （ D） gone 2007年北京师范大学英语专业（语言学）
15、真题试卷答案与解析 一、名词解释 1 【正确答案】 Phoneme refers to a unit of explicit sound contrast: the existence of a minimal pair automatically grants phonemic status to the sounds responsible for the contrasts. A linguistic system is built on the idea of contrasts. By selecting one type of sound instead of another we
16、 can distinguish one word from another. 2 【正确答案】 Each sentence is said to consist of two levels of structure: deep structure and surface structure. Deep structure is the abstract structure and can be said to be the propositional core of the sentence. Deep structure shows the basic form of a sentence
17、 with all the necessary information to derive a well-formed sentence, and to give it a phonological representation and a semantic interpretation. Deep structure reveals the underlying structure of a linguistic utterance and specifies the grammatical relations and functions of the syntactic elements,
18、 as well as the linguistic meaning of the constituents. Surface structure is the actually produced structure. It is the directly observable actual form of sentences as they are used in communication, and from the perspective of Transformational Grammar, surface structure is a relatively abstract sen
19、tence structure resulting from the application of base rules and transformational rules. 3 【正确答案】 Speech Act Theory is an important theory in the pragmatic study of language. It was originated with the British philosopher John Austin in the late 50s of the 20th century. It is a philosophical explana
20、tion of the nature of linguistic communication. It aims to answer the question “What do we do when using language?“ Austin first of all made a distinction between what he called “constatives“ and “performatives“, but later he discarded this distinction and set up another model to explain the way act
21、s were performed by means of language. According to his new model, a speaker might be performing three acts simultaneously when speaking: locutionary act, illocutionary act, and perlocutionary act. A locutionary act is the act of uttering words, phrases, clauses. It is the act conveying literal mean
22、ing by means of syntax, lexicon and phonology. An illocutionary act is the act expressing the speakers intention; it is the act performed in saying something. A perlocutionary act is the act performed by or resulting from saying something; it is the consequence of, or the change brought about by the
23、 utterance; it is the act performed by saying something. 4 【正确答案】 Whorf developed a unique understanding of linguistic relativity, which is widely known as the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis. This hypothesis suggests that our language helps mould our way of thinking and, consequently, different languages ma
24、y probably express speakers unique ways of understanding the world. Following this argument, two important points can be captured in this theory. On the one hand, language may determine our thinking patterns; on the other, similarity between languages is relative. 【试题解析】 本题主要考查对一些基本概念和基本理论的理解和掌握，属识记
25、的范畴，答题既要简明扼要，又要求内容要点不能缺少。 二、简答题 5 【正确答案】 Ambiguity occurs when one expression has more than one meaning. There are two types of ambiguity: lexical ambiguity and structural ambiguity. Obviously the reason why the sentence John saw a girl with a telescope is that the sentence has an ambiguous structur
26、e. This sentence can be interpreted either as “John had a telescope and through it he saw a girl“(“with a telescope“ telling how John saw a girl)or “John saw a girl who had a telescope on herself(“with a telescope“ modifying “a girl“).The ambiguity can be solved by the following two tree diagrams: 【
27、试题解析】 本题主要考查句法学的相关内容，尤其是树形图的画法。考生一方面要对句法学的一些基本概念非常熟悉，同时又要熟练掌握树形图的画法。做到了这些，本题也就不难了。 6 【正确答案】 Antonymy is the name for oppositeness relation. There are three main sub-types: gradable antonymy, complementary antonymy, and converse antonymy. Gradable antonymy is the commonest type of antonymy. When we s
28、ay two words are antonyms, we usually mean pairs of words like: good bad, long short, big small. As the examples show, they are mainly adjectives. And they have three characteristics. First, as the rtame suggests, they are gradable. That is, the members of a pair differ in terms of degree. The denia
29、l of one is not necessarily the assertion of the other. For example, something that is not “good“ is not necessarily “bad“. It may simply be “so-so“ or “average“. Second, antonyms of this kind are graded against different norms. There is not absolute criterion by which we may say something is good o
30、r bad, long or short, big or small. The criterion varies with the object described. For example, a big car is in fact much smaller than a small plane. Third, one member of a pair, usually the term for the higher degree, serves as the cover term. For example, we ask somebody “How old are you?“ and th
31、e person asked may not be old in any sense. He may be as young as twenty or three. The word “old“ is used here to cover both old and young. The sentence means the same as “What is your age?“ 【试题解析】 本题主要考查反义关系的种类，答题时要先解释什么是反义词，然后再列出其分类，并进一步举例说明分等级的反义词的三个特征。参考胡壮麟语言学教程 (第三版 )110一 111页。 7 【正确答案】 Languag
32、e is a system of arbitrary symbols used for human communication. While culture is often defined as a system of shared beliefs, values, customs, behaviors, and artifacts that the members of a society use to cope with their world and with one another, and that are transmitted from generation to genera
33、tion through learning. Language is an indispensable carrier of culture. Culture finds a better representation through language use. In other words, there exists a close relationship between language and culture. According to the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis, language helps mould our way of thinking and, c
34、onsequently, different languages may probably express speakers unique ways of understanding the world. In the passage, in order to ask for help the group of Chinese girls says “Hello“ to the young couple and then to the next group of passers-by, but they have failed to realize the cultural context i
35、n which the communication takes place. In the United States where English is used, people should begin with “Excuse me“ rather than “Hello“ when asking for help. “Hello“ is often taken as a informal way of greeting rather than a way of asking for help and this may well underlie why “the couple looke
36、d at them coldly and hustled on“ and “they got nothing but a cold shoulder from these city people“. Due to their unawareness of the influence of culture on language, they fail to get help from the young couple and the next group of passers-by. 【试题解析】 本题主要考查社会语言学中语言与文化的关系问题。答题时可以先就语言和文化各自的定义进行说明，再阐述两
37、者之问的关系，然后运用上述知识分析问题。可以参考胡壮麟语言学教程 (第三版 )第 7章的内容并适当发挥。 8 【正确答案】 Language learning is sometimes contrasted with language learning on the assumption that these are different processes. The term “acquisition“ is used to refer to picking up a language through exposure, whereas the term “learning“ is used
38、to refer to the conscious study of a language. In other words, “language acquisition“ refers to the subconscious processes by which a language is learnt in a natural setting while “language learning“ refers to the conscious processes by which a language is learnt in a tutored setting. In the field o
39、f second language study, however, the term “second language acquisition“ is a cover term to refer to both the subconscious or conscious processes by which a language other than the mother tongue is learnt in a natural or a tutored setting. 9 【正确答案】 An area where individuals show differences in their
40、 abilities to discriminate events or visual, auditory, or tactile cues from their surrounding environments is known as field-dependence/field-independence. Herman Witkin conducted much of the original research in this area in the 1950s. A field-dependent person has difficulty finding a geometric sha
41、pe that is embedded or “hidden“ in a background with similar(but not identical)lines and shapes. A person who is field-independent can readily identify the geometric shape, regardless of the background in which it is set. This manner of interpretation, however, is not limited to visual cues. People
42、who are field-dependent are frequently described as being very interpersonal and having a well-developed ability to read social cues and to openly convey their own feelings. By contrast, individuals who are field-independent use an “internal“ frame of reference and can easily impose their own sense
43、of order in a situation that is lacking structure. They are also observed to function autonomously in social settings. They are sometimes described as impersonal and task-oriented. These people, however, do have the ability to discern their own identity of self from the field. 10 【正确答案】 contrastive
44、analysis is a way of comparing languages in order to determine potential errors for the ultimate purpose of isolating what needs to be learned and what does not need to be learned in a second language situation. The goal of contrastive analysis is to predict what areas will be easy to learn and what
45、 areas will be difficult to learn. The fact that not all errors are explicable by contrastive analysis resulted in a disillusionment with contrastive analysis. Gradually contrastive analysis was replaced by the error analysis movement, a major claim of which is that many errors made by L2 learners w
46、ere caused by factors other than L1 interference. Corder claimed that errors are not just to be seen as something to be eradiated, but rather can be important in and of themselves. Errors often arise from the learners lack of knowledge, it represents a lack of competence. For example, the learner ut
47、ilizes some L1 features rather than that of the target language itself, such as overgeneralization, which arises when the learner applies a rule in a situation where the rule does not apply. 【试题解析】 本题主要考查二语习得中的一些基本概念，属识记性知识，只要找到相关部分即可，需要时适当举例。 11 【正确答案】 Empiricism, in philosophy, refers to the view
48、that all concepts originate in experience, that all concepts are about or applicable to things that can be experienced, or that all rationally acceptable beliefs or propositions are justifiable or knowable only through experience. This broad definition accords with the derivation of the term empiric
49、ism from the ancient Greek word empeiria, “experience“. Mentalism, however, is a psychological and philosophical concept picked up and developed by Chomsky(1965)and modeled after Descartes and von Humboldts rationalism. Mentalism attempts to describe the internal(innate)language mechanism that provides the basis for the creative aspect of language development and use. In this program, Chomsky turns against the empirical approach of American structuralism(Bloomfield)and, especially, against Skinners behaviorist interpretation of language(behaviorism), since bot
