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      What is assimilation, dissimilation and metathesis? “Assimilation” refers to change of a sound as the result of the influence of an adjacent sound, which is called “contact” or “contiguous” assimilation. The assimitative processes at word in language could be explained by the “theory of least effort” ,i.e., in speaking we tend to exert as little effort as possible so that we do not want to vary too often places of articulation in uttering a sequence of sounds. Assimilation takes place in quick speech very often. In expressions such as “immobile”, “illegal”, etc., the negative prefixes should be or have been “in-” etymologically. “Dissimilation”, opposite of assimilation, is the influence exercised by one sound segment upon the articulation of another sound, so that the sounds become less alike than expected. As there are two[r] sounds in the Latin word “peregrines”, for instance, the first segment had to dissimilate into[l], hence the English word “pilgrim”. “Metathesis” is a process involving an alteration in the sequence of sounds. Metathesis had originally been a performance error, which was overlooked and accepted by the speech community. For instance, the word “bird” was “bird” in Old English. The word “ask” used to be pronounced [ask] in Old English, as still occurs in some English dialects
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      What is pragmatics? Pragmatics can be simply defined as the study of language in use. It is concerned with the study of meaning as communicated by a speaker (or writer) and interpreted by a listener (or reader). It has, consequently, more to do with the analysis of what people mean by their utterances than what the words or phrases in those utterances might mean by themselves
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      What is speech act theory? Speech act theory was proposed by J. L. Austin and has been developed by J. R. Searle. Basically, they believe that language is not only used to inform or to describe things, it is often used to “do things”, to perform acts
Austin suggests three basic senses in which in saying something one is
doing something and three kinds of acts are performed simultaneously:     1) Locutionary act: the utterance of a sentence with determinate sense and reference;     2) Illocutionary act: the making of a statement, offer, promise, etc, in uttering a sentence, by virtue of the conventional force associated with it; 3) Perlocutionary act: the bringing about of effects on the audience by means of uttering the sentence, such effects being special to the circumstances
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      What’s Searle’s classification of illocutionary acts? Searle suggests five basic categories of illocutionary acts:      Assertives: sentences that commit the speaker to the truth of something. Typical cases are "I think the train is moving" and "I'm sure John has stolen the book". The degree of commitment varies from statement to statement. The commitment is small in "I guess John has stolen the book" but very strong in  "I solemnly swear that John has stolen the book"
    Directives: sentences by which the speaker tries to get the hearer to do something. "I beg you to give me some help" and "I order you to do it right now" are both attempts to get something done by the hearer. Among the verbs that fall into this group are  "ask", "plead", "entreat", "command", or "advise"
    Commissives: sentences that commit the speaker to some future action. Promises and offers are characteristic of these acts. Interestingly, warning is also a commissive, as in "If you do that  again,  I'll  hit  you", because it also commits the speaker to doing something
    Expressives: sentences that express the speaker's psychological state about something. Verbs typically used for this category are  "thank",  "congratulate", "apologize", "welcome", "deplore". Declaratives: sentences that bring about immediate change in existing state of affairs. As soon as an employer says to an employee "You are fired", the employee loses his job. Verbs often used for declarations are "name", "christen", "nominate", "point", or "declare"
87. What is the cooperative principle? H.P. Grice (1975) believes that there must be some mechanisms governing the production and comprehension of these utterances. He suggests that there is a set or assumptions guiding the conduct of conversation. This is what he calls the Cooperative Principle. He formulates the principle and its maxims asfollows:     Make your contribution such as is required, at the stage at which it occurs, by the accepted purpose or direction of the exchange in which you are engaged
   The Maxim of Quality     Try to make your contribution one that is true, specifically      (i) do not say what you believe to be false;      (ii) do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence.
    The Maxim of Quantity      (i) Make your contribution as informative as is required for the current purpose of the exchange;      (ii) do not make your contribution more informative than is required
   The Maxim of Relevance      Make your contribution relevant
   The Maxim of Manner      Be perspicuous and specific:      (i) avoid obscurity;      (ii) avoid ambiguity;      (iii) be brief; (iv) be orderly
88. What is applied linguistics? In the broadest sense, applied Linguistics refers to the study of language and linguistics in relation to practical problems, such as lexicography, translation, speech pathology, etc. Applied linguistics uses information from sociology, psychology, anthropology, and information theory as well as from linguistics in order to develop its own theoretical models of language and language use, and then uses this information and theory in practical areas such as syllabus design, speech therapy, language planning, machine translation, various facets of communication research, and many others
In the narrow sense, applied linguistics refers to the study of second /foreign language learning and teaching. It serves as a mediating area which interprets the results of linguistic theories and makes them user-friendly to the language teacher and learner
89. What is Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis? The Sapir-Whorf theory, named after the American linguists Edward Sapir and Benjamin Lee Whorf, is a very influential but controversial theory concerning the relationship between language, thought and culture. What this hypothesis suggests is like this: our language helps mould our way of thinking and, consequently, different languages may probably express our unique ways of understanding the world. Following this argument, two important points could be captured in this theory. On the one hand, language may determine our thinking patterns; on the other, similarity between languages is relative, the greater their structural differentiation is, the more diverse their conceptualization of the world will be. For this reason, this hypothesis has alternatively been referred to as Linguistic Determinism and Linguistic Relativity. Nowadays, few people would possibly tend to accept the original form of this theory completely. Consequently, two versions of the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis have been developed, a strong version and a weak version. The strong version of the theory refers to the claim the original hypothesis suggests, emphasizing the decisive role of language as the shaper of our thinking patterns. The weak version of this hypothesis, however, is a modified type of its original theory, suggesting