linguistics assignment for 1-4, 2009

Assignment for linguistics course Hi, my dear students, ○

I appreciate your great efforts in trying to cope with a most difficult course with me and I do hope you have learned something from the lectures in the past few weeks .Now it’s your turn to do some team work together to figure out the answers. I am sure you will make some concerted efforts to show the best of you and enjoy the process on the way ! Y.H.

Chapter 1 Introduction 1. What do you know about microlinguistics and macrolinguistics? Briefly define them. 2. How do you understand the definition of language?

3. What are the design features

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mentioned in the textbook? Illustrate with examples.

4. What is language used for? Please give examples.

5. What’s the relationship between langue and parole? What about competence and performance?

6. what are the major schools of linguistics? Who are the respective representatives?

Chapter 2 Sounds

1. What’s the difference between phonetics and phonology?

2. How are English sounds classified? How are the vowels and consonants classified?

3. What is free variation? Illustrate with examples from both English and Chinese.

4. What is assimilation? Illustrate with examples.

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5. How is a syllable defined? What are open syllables and closed syllables? Illustrate with examples.

Chapter 3 Morphology

1. what are morphemes? What’s the difference between free morphemes and bound morphemes? Illustrate with examples.

2. Name some of the ways of word formation and give examples.

Chapter 4 Syntax

1. What are the major contributions of Noam Chomsky?

2 . What do you know about Immediate constituent analysis?

3. What do you know about TG?

4. Paraphrase the ambiguous sentences. See page 96: *8

Chapter 5 Semantics

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1. What are some major approaches to meaning? Their representatives?

2. What are Leech’s seven types of meaning? Examples?

3. What is componential analysis? Examples?

4. What are the semantic relationship between words? Examples?

5. How do you distinguish entailment from presupposition? Examples?

6. Explain some semantic ambiguous sentences. See page 133:2

Chapter 6 Pragmatics

1. What is speech act theory? Representative (s)?

2. What is CP? Representative ? 3. What is PP? Representative ?

Chapter 8 Sociolinguistics

1. What is dialect? How is it categorized? Examples?

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