语言学论述题答案.pdfVIP

1 、How is Saussure ’s distinction between langue and parole similar to Chomsky ’s distinction between competence and performance? Saussure ’s distinction and Chomsky ’s are very similar in that they both think that language can be divided into two levels, one level is abstract (e.g. langue; competence) and the other concrete (e.g. parole; performance). And they also think that what linguists should deal with is the abstract level which can reveal the real nature of language. At the same time, they differ at least in that Saussure took a sociological view of language and his notion of language is a matter of social conventions, and Chomsky looks at language from a psychological point of view and to him competence is a property of the mind of each individual. 2 、What is a phone? How is it different from a phoneme? How are allophones related to a phoneme? A phone is a phonetic unit or segment. The speech sounds we hear and produce during communication are all phones.A phoneme is not any particular sound, but rather it is represented or realized by a certain phone in a certain phonetic context. The different phones which can represent a phoneme in different phonetic environments are called the allophones of that phoneme. For example, the phoneme /p/ in English can be realized as [p] and [ph], which are allophones of the phoneme /p/. 3 、 What are the major views concerning the study of meaning? (1) The naming theory proposed by the ancient Greek scholar Plato. According to this theory, the linguistic forms or symbols, in other words, the words used in a language are simply labels of the objects they stand for. So words are just names or labels for things. (2) The conceptualist view has been held by some philosophers and linguists from a