大学英语语言学期末考试名词解释和论述答案..docVIP

名词解释 1.Competence and Performance: The distinction is discussed by the American linguist N. Chomsky in the late 1950’s. Competence----the ideal user’s knowledge of the rules of his language. Performance----the actual realization of this knowledge in linguistic communication. (American linguist N. Chomsky in the late 1950’s proposed the distinction between competence and performance. Chomsky defines competence as the ideal user’s knowledge of the rules of his language. This internalized set of rules enables the language user to produce and understand an infinitely large number of sentences and recognize sentences that are ungrammatical and ambiguous. According to Chomsky, performance is the actual realization of this knowledge in linguistic communication. Although the speaker’s knowledge of his mother tongue is perfect, his performances may have mistakes because of social and psychological factors such as stress, embarrassment, etc.. Chomsky believes that what linguists should study is the competence, which is systematic, not the performance, which is too haphazard. ) 2.Sociolinguistics: is the sub-field of linguistics that studies the relation between language and society, between the uses of language and the social structures in which the users of language live.( It is a field of study that assumes that human society is made up of many related patterns and behaviors, some of which are linguistic.) 3.Language Acquisition: refers to the child’s acquisition of his mother tongue, i.e. how the child comes to understand and speak the language of his community. (Language acquisition is concerned with language development in humans. In general, language acquisition refers to children’s development of their first language, that is, the native language of the community in which a child has been brought up.) 4.the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis: The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is a theory put forward by the American anthropological linguists Sapir and Whorf (and also a be