[英语考试]语言学概论--问答题.doc

1. What are the categories of lexical meaning? Lexical meaning includes: a) referential meaning (also denotative meaning). b) Associative meanings. Referential meaning is the central meaning and it is more stable and universal. Associative meanings are meanings that hinge on referential meaning, which are less stable and more culture-specific. Types of associative meanings: connotative meaning, social meaning, affective meaning, reflected meaning, collocative meaning 2. What are the components of metaphor? Target domain and source domain are the components of metaphors. That is to say all metaphors are composed of two components. This allows us to understand one domain of experience in terms of another. The domain to be conceptualized is called target domain, while the conceptualizing domain is termed the source domain. The transference of properties of the source domain to the target domain is referred to by some cognitive linguistics as mapping. The source domain is concrete and familiar. The target domain is abstract and novel. 3. How does transformational grammar account for sentence- relatedness? 1) Sentence- relatedness: sentences may be structurally variant but semantically related. 2) According to Chomsky, a grammar as the tacit shared knowledge of all speakers is a system of finite rules by which an infinite number of sentences can be generated. He attempts to account for this aspect of syntax by postulating that deep structures and surface structures. 3) Deep structures are the basic structures generated by phrase structure rules. 4) Surface structures are derived structures, the structures of sentences that we actually speak. Surface structures are derived from deep structures through transformational rules which include replacement, insertion, deletion and coping, etc. 5) There are five transformations: particle movement transformation, replacement, insertion, deletion and copying. 4. On what basis do linguists regard human language as species-specific