语言学平时思考练习1.Would you say that language is arbitrary?What would language be like if it was not arbitrary?2.How has the TG grammar developed?3.In what ways do vowels differ from each other?4.Why do we say that /t/ and /d/ are differen

语言学平时思考练习1.Would you say that language is arbitrary?What would language be like if it was not arbitrary?2.How has the TG grammar developed?3.In what ways do vowels differ from each other?4.Why do we say that /t/ and /d/ are differen
语言学平时思考练习
1.Would you say that language is arbitrary?What would language be like if it was not arbitrary?
2.How has the TG grammar developed?
3.In what ways do vowels differ from each other?
4.Why do we say that /t/ and /d/ are different phonemes?
5.Is it true that the meaning of a compound is always predictable from the parts it contains?Illustrate with examples.
6.What is the IC analysis?Can you describe the sentence “The tall men and women left “in terms of the analysis?What are the problems there?
7.What is entailment?And what is presupposition?
8.What is an illocutionary act?Illustrate.
9.What are the major features of the English language used by female native speakers?

语言学平时思考练习1.Would you say that language is arbitrary?What would language be like if it was not arbitrary?2.How has the TG grammar developed?3.In what ways do vowels differ from each other?4.Why do we say that /t/ and /d/ are differen
1 Languages are said to be arbitrary because there is no necessary or natural relationship between the words of a given language and the concepts that they represent.For example,there is nothing in the word "tree" that connects it to the concept of a tree; which is why Spanish can use a totally different sign for the same concept:"árbol"; and so on with other languages.
Also,languages are arbitrary because the rules for the combination of signs in order to produce complete thoughts are different from one language to the other,and no set of rules can claim to be the "right" one.For example,in English you say "I like beer",whereas in Spanish you would say "Me gusta la cerveza".The literal translation of the latter would be something like:"Beer is agreeable to me",which sounds strange in English.And neither of these formulations has a better claim to accuracy,correctness or truth than the other.
4 For example,saying "d" instead of "t" in the word bet changes the meaning (the word becomes bed),therefore we use separate symbols for "d" and "t" in phonemic transcriptions.In other words,we say that "t" and "d" are two separate phonemes.
On the other hand,the "flap t" (in this pronunciation of the word letter) and the regular "t" (in this one) are two very different sounds.However,there are no English words where saying the "flap t" instead of the regular "t" (or the other way around) changes the meaning.Therefore,in phonemic transcription,we use the same symbol for the "flap t" and the regular "t".In other words,we say that the "flap t" and the regular "t" are the same phoneme.
6 In linguistics,Immediate constituent analysis or IC Analysis is a method of sentence analysis first explicitly introduced by American linguist Leonard Bloomfield in his book Language in 1933.It is a major feature of Bloomfieldian structuralist linguistics.
In IC analysis,a sentence is divided up into major divisions or "immediate constituents",and these constituents are in turn divided into further immediate constituents,and this process continues until irreducible constituents are reached,i.e.,until each constituent consists of only a word or meaningful part of a word.The end result of IC analysis is often presented in a visual diagrammatic form that reveals the hierarchical immediate constituent structure of a sentence.For sentences whose structures are unusual,this diagramming may become excessively complex; in such cases verbal description is used.
7 In logic,entailment (or logical implication) is a relation between sets of sentences and a sentence.Typically entailment is defined in terms of necessary truth preservation:some set T of sentences entails a sentence A if and only if it is necessary that A be true whenever each member of T is true.
In the branch of linguistics known as pragmatics,a presupposition (or ps) is an implicit assumption about the world or background belief relating to an utterance whose truth is taken for granted in discourse.
A presupposition must be mutually known or assumed by the speaker and addressee for the utterance to be considered appropriate in context.It will generally remain a necessary assumption whether the utterance is placed in the form of an assertion,denial,or question,and can be associated with a specific lexical item or grammatical feature (presupposition trigger) in the utterance.
8 An illocutionary act is a complete speech act,made in a typical utterance,that consists of
the delivery of the propositional content of the utterance (including references and a predicate),and
a particular illocutionary force,whereby the speaker
asserts
suggests
demands
promises,or
vows.