23. metalingual function              24. yo-he-ho

25. scientific                               26. descriptive

27. speech                                  28. diachronic linguistic

29. langue                                  30. competence

IV.

31.   Design feature: It refers to the defining properties of human language that tell the difference between human language and any system of animal communication.

32.   Displacement: It means that human languages enable their users to symbolize objects, events and concepts, which are not present (in time and space) at the moment of communication.

33.   Competence: It is an essential part of performance. It is the speaker’s knowledge of his or her language; that is, of its sound structure, its words, and its grammatical rules. Competence is, in a way, an encyclopedia of language. Moreover, the knowledge involved in competence is generally unconscious. A transformational-generative grammar is a model of competence.

34.   Synchronic linguistics: It refers to the study of a language at a given point in time. The time studied may be either the present or a particular point in the past; synchronic analyses can also be made of dead languages, such as Latin. Synchronic linguistics is contrasted with diachronic linguistics, the study of a language over a period of time.

V.

35.  

Duality makes our language productive. A large number of different units can be formed out of a small number of elements – for instance, tens of thousands of words out of a small set of sounds, around 48 in the case of the English language. And out of the huge number of words, there can be astronomical number of possible sentences and phrases, which in turn can combine to form unlimited number of texts. Most animal communication systems do not have this design feature of human language.

If language has no such design feature, then it will be like animal communicational system which will be highly limited. It cannot produce a very large number of sound combinations, e.g. words, which are distinct in meaning.

36.

       It is difficult to define language, as it is such a general term that covers too many things. Thus, definitions for it all have their own special emphasis, and are not totally free from limitations.

VI.

37.

       It should be guided by the four principles of science: exhaustiveness, consistency, economy and objectivity and follow the scientific procedure: form hypothesis – collect data – check against the observable facts – come to a conclusion.

Test Two

I.

1~5  ACDAA                              6~10 DBABB

II.

11~15 TTTFF                             16~20 TTTFF

III.

21. voiced, voiceless, voiced         22. friction

23. tongue                                  24. height

25. obstruction                                   26. minimal pairs

27. diphthongs                                   28. Co-articulation

29. Phonemes                             30. air stream

IV.

31.   Sound assimilation: Speech sounds seldom occur in isolation. In connected speech, under the influence of their neighbors, are replaced by other sounds. Sometimes two neighboring sounds influence each other and are replaced by a third sound which is different from both original sounds. This process is called sound assimilation.

32.   Suprasegmental feature: The phonetic features that occur above the level of the segments are called suprasegmental features; these are the phonological properties of such units as the syllable, the word, and the sentence. The main suprasegmental ones includes stress, intonation, and tone.

33.   Complementary distribution: The different allophones of the same phoneme never occur in the same phonetic context. When two or more allophones of one phoneme never occur in the same linguistic environment they are said to be in complementary distribution.

34.   Distinctive features: It refers to the features that can distinguish one phoneme from another. If we can group the phonemes into two categories: one with this feature and the other without, this feature is called a distinctive feature.

V.

35.

Acoustic phonetics deals with the transmission of speech sounds through the air. When a speech sound is produced it causes minor air disturbances (sound waves). Various instruments are used to measure the characteristics of these sound waves.

36.

       When the vocal cords are spread apart, the air from the lungs passes between them unimpeded. Sounds produced in this way are described as voiceless; consonants [p, s, t] are produced in this way. But when the vocal cords are drawn together, the air from the lungs repeatedly pushes them apart as it passes through, creating a vibration effect. Sounds produced in this way are described as voiced. [b, z, d] are voiced consonants.

VI.

37.

Omit.

Test Three

I.

1~5  AACBB                              6~10 BCADB

II.

11~15 TTFTT                             16~20 FTFFF

III.

21. initialism, acronym                22. vocabulary

23. solid, hyphenated, open          24. morpheme

25. close, open                                   26. back-formation

27. conversion                            28. morpheme

29. derivative, compound             30. affix, bound root

IV.

31.   Blending: It is a process of word-formation in which a new word is formed by combining the meanings and sounds of two words, one of which is not in its full form or both of which are not in their full forms, like newscast (news + broadcast), brunch (breakfast + lunch)

32.   Allomorph: It is any of the variant forms of a morpheme as conditioned by position or adjoining sounds.

33.   Close-class word: It is a word whose membership is fixed or limited. Pronouns, prepositions, conjunctions, articles, etc. are all closed-class words.

34.   Morphological rule: It is the rule that governs which affix can be added to what type of base to form a new word, e.g. –ly can be added to a noun to form an adjective.

V.

Omit.

VI.

37.

(1) c       (2) a       (3) e       (4) d              (5) b

Test Four

I.

1~5 DCDDD                              6~10 ADDBA

II.

11~15 TTTTF                             16~20 FTFTT

III.

21. simple                                  22. sentence

23. subject                                24. predicate

25. complex                                     26. embedded 

27. open                                   28. Adjacency

29. Parameters                           30. Case

IV.

31.   Syntax: Syntax refers to the rules governing the way words are combined to form sentences in a language, or simply, the study of the formation of sentences.

32.   IC analysis: Immediate constituent analysis, IC analysis for short, refers to the analysis of a sentence in terms of its immediate constituents – word groups (phrases), which are in turn analyzed into the immediate constituents of their own, and the process goes on until the ultimate sake of convenience.

33.   Hierarchical structure: It is the sentence structure that groups words into structural constituents and shows the syntactic category of each structural constituent, such as NP, VP and PP.

34.   Trace theory: After the movement of an element in a sentence there will be a trace left in the original position. This is the notion trace in T-G grammar. It’s suggested that if we have the notion trace, all the necessary information for semantic interpretation may come from the surface structure. E.g. The passive Dams are built by beavers. differs from the active Beavers built dams. in implying that all dams are built by beavers. If we add a trace element represented by the letter t after built in the passive as Dams are built t by beavers, then the deep structure information that the word dams was originally the object of built is also captured by the surface structure. Trace theory proves to be not only theoretically significant but also empirically valid.

V.

35.

An endocentric construction is one whose distribution is functionally equivalent, or approaching equivalence, to one of its constituents, which serves as the center, or head, of the whole. A typical example is the three small children with children as its head. The exocentric construction, opposite to the first type, is defined negatively as a construction whose distribution is not functionally equivalent to any of its constituents. Prepositional phrasal like on the shelf are typical examples of this type.

36.

       (1) more | beautiful flowers

       (2) more beautiful | flowers

VI.