北外语言学考博试题.docxVIP

PAGE 1 Answer the following questions in English. 1．Saussure says in his Course in General Linguistics: “ The signifier, though to all appearances freely chosen with respect to the idea that it represents, is fixed, not free with respect to the linguistic community that uses it. The masses have no voice in the matter, and the signifier chosen by language could be replaced by no other. No individual, even if he willed it, could modify in any way at all the choice that has been made; and what is more, the community itself cannot control so much as a single word; it is bound to the existing language. Then Saussure gives the following four reasons for the immutability of language: 1) The arbitrary nature of the sign. 2) The multiplicity of signs necessary to form any language. 3) The over-complexity of the system. 4) Collective inertia toward innovation. Explain and comment on the four reasons. (20 points) 2．In Aspects of the Theory of Syntax, Chomsky says: It seems plain that language acquisition is based on the child’s discovery of a generative grammar of his language – many of the concepts and principles of which are only remotely related to experience by long and intricate chains of unconscious quasi-inferential steps. A consideration of the character of the grammar that is acquired, the degenerate quality and narrowly limited extent of the available data, the striking uniformity of the resulting grammars, and their independence of intelligence, motivation, and emotional state over wide ranges of variation, leave little hope that much of the structure of the language can be learned by an organism initially uniformed as to its general character. Translate the passage into Chinese and then comment on Chomsky’s view on language and language acquisition. (20 points) 3．In his paper “The Status of Linguistics as a Science”, Sapir says: Though language is not ordinarily thought of as of essential interest to the students of social science, it powerfully conditions