Ⅰ. Each of the statements below is followed by four alternative answers. Choose the one that best completes the statement and put the letter in the bracket.
1. Since the beginning of the 20th century, ______ has become even more important for the expansion of English vocabulary.
2. Functional words do not have notions of their own. Therefore, they are also called ______ words. Prepositions, conjunctions, auxiliaries and articles belong to this category.
A.content
B.notional
C.empty
D.new
A B C D
C
3. The prehistoric Indo-European language is thought to be a highly ______ language.
A.inflected
B.derivative
C.developed
D.analytic
A B C D
A
4. The suffixes in words "heighten", "symbolize" are ______.
6. Reference is the relationship between language and the ______.
A.speakers
B.listeners
C.world
D.specific country
A B C D
C
[解析] “所指”表示的是语言和客观世界之间的关系。通过“所指”,说话者才能将所谈论的对象指明。
7. ______ is the semantic process in which the meaning of a word moves gradually away from its first sense by successive shifts until, in many cases, there is not a sign of connection between the sense that is finally developed and that which the term had in the beginning.
A.Derivation
B.Radiation
C.Inflection
D.Concatenation
A B C D
D
8. The sense relation between "lobster" and "animal" is ______.
B.transfer between abstract meanings and concrete meanings
C.transfer from objective meanings to subjective meanings
D.transfer from subjective meanings to objective meanings
A B C D
A
[解析] 语义转移是指原本指一种事物的词转而指代其他事物的语义变化现象。通感语义转移(transfer of sensations/sensational sense of transfer)涉及了两种感觉之间的语义转移,比如“loud colors”的意思是“亮色”,涉及了听觉和视觉之间的语义转移。
10. "Beyond the pale" is an idiom ______.
A.nominal in nature
B.adjectival in nature
C.verbal in nature
D.adverbial in nature
A B C D
B
[解析] 习语“beyond the pale”的结构为“介词+名词”,它在句子中执行形容词的功能(其构成成分不一定都是形容词),意思是“行为难以让人接受的”。
11. Of the following words, ______ is an initialism.
18. Linguistic context is also known as ______ context.
A.social
B.verbal
C.lexical
D.physical
A B C D
B
19. The five Romance languages, namely, Portuguese, Spanish, French, Italian, and Roumanian all belong to the Italic through an intermediate language called ______.
A.Sanskrit
B.Latin
C.Celtic
D.Anglo-Saxon
A B C D
B
20. The prefixes in words "neo-Nazi", "autobiography!" and "pan-European" are ______.
A.negative prefixes
B.prefixes of degree or size
C.prefixes of time and order
D.miscellaneous prefixes
A B C D
D
21. ______ are often referred to in a conversation to create puns for desired effect of humor, sarcasm or ridicule.
24. "General officer", "editorial article" and "gold medal" are often shortened as "general", "editorial" and "gold" respectively. In these cases there is a ______ behind this sort of semantic change.
27. ______ belongs to the sub-standard language, a category that seems to stand between general words including informal ones available to everyone and in-groups.
Ⅱ. Complete the following statements with proper words or expressions according to the course book.
1. In ______, the meaning of one word is often affected and defined by the neighboring words.
lexical context
2. Pronouns and numerals enjoy nation-wide use and stability, but have limited ______.
productivity and collocability
3. Language study involves the study of speech sounds, grammar and ______.
vocabulary
4. The surviving languages accordingly fall into eight principal groups, which can be grouped into an Eastern set: Balto-Slavic, Indo-Iranian, Armenian and Albanian; a Western set: Celtic, Italic, Hellenic, ______.
Germanic
5. ______ is the formation of new words by combining parts of two words or a word plus a part of another word.
Blending
6. Homophones are words identical only in ______ but different in spelling and meaning.
sound
7. Inflectional affixes are those affixes that are attached to the end of words to indicate ______ relationships.
grammatical
8. Relative synonyms, also called ______ are similar or nearly the same in denotation, but embrace different degrees of a given quality.
near-synonyms
9. Morphemes which are identical with root words are considered to be ______.
free morphemes
10. It can be concluded that English has evoked from a synthetic language (Old English) to the present ______ language.
analytic
Ⅲ. Define the following terms.
1. synecdoche
Synecdoche is the method of substituting part for the whole and vice versa, e. g. , earn one's bread (make a living).
2. translation-loans
Translation-loans are words and expressions formed from the existing material in the English language but modelled on the patterns taken from another language.
3. affixes
Affixes are forms that are attached to words or word elements to modify meaning or function.
4. synonyms
Synonyms can be defined as words different in sound and spelling but nearly alike or exactly the same in meaning.
5. Germanic
Germanic is a term used to refer to a branch of the Indo-European language family, which consists of English, German, Dutch, etc.
Ⅳ. Answer the following questions. Your answers should be clear and short. Write your answers in the space given below.
1. What are the linguistic factors of meaning changes?
The influx of borrowings has caused some words to change in meaning. In addition, the competition of native words eventually resulted in the semantic division. Finally, the change of meaning is brought about by analogy.
2. What are acronyms? Please illustrate it with at least two examples.
Acronyms are words formed from initial letters but pronounced as normal words. For example, NATO (/'neitəu/); AIDS(/'eidz/).
3. Please illustrate the grammatical meaning of a word with at least one example.
Grammatical meaning refers to that part of the meaning of the word which indicates grammatical concept or relationships, such as part of speech of words, singular and plural meaning of nouns, tense meaning of verbs and their inflectional forms. Grammatical meaning of a word becomes important only when it is used in actual context. For example, in the following sentence "The dog is chasing the cat." the words "dog" and "cat" are nouns and both are singular and used as subject and object in the sentence respectively; "is chasing" is the predicate verb in present continuous tense; "the" and "a" are determiners restricting the referent and indicating number.
4. Supply two examples to illustrate that the influx of borrowings has caused some words to change in meaning.
Pig/pork, sheep/mutton. In Old English, animals and their meat shared the same name. With the Norman Conquest and borrowing of corresponding French words, the English words were kept only for live animals and the French words for the animals killed and brought to the table.
Ⅴ. Analyze and comment on the following. Write your answers in the space given below.
1. Explain the three different periods of the English development.
(1) Old English (450-1150). After the Romans, the Germanic tribes called Angles, Saxons, and Jutes came in great numbers. Soon they obtained permanent control of the land, which was to be called England. Their language, historically known as Anglo-Saxon, dominated and almost totally blotted out the Celtic. Now people generally refer to Anglo-Saxon as Old English. The introduction of Christianity had a great impact on the English vocabulary. In the 9th century the land was invaded again by Norwegian and Danish Vikings. With the invaders, many Scandinavian words came into the English languages. Old English had a vocabulary of about 50,000-60,000 words. It was a highly inflected language just like modern German. Therefore. nouns, pronouns, adjectives, verbs, and adverbs had complex endings or vowel changes, or both, which differ greatly from the language that we use today. (2) Middle English (1150-1500). The Norman Conquest in 1066 started a continual flow of French words into English and Norman French became the polite speech. But by the end of the 13th century, English gradually came back. During this period, Britain had trade relations with Holland and as a result, as many as 2,500 words of Dutch origin found their way into English. (3) Modern English. Modern English began with the establishment of printing in England. During the Renaissance, enormous numbers of Latin words became part of English vocabulary. In the midseventeenth century, British tentacles began stretching out to every corner of the globe, thus enabling English to absorb words from languages of the world. Since the beginning of this century, thousands of new words have been created to express new ideas, inventions, and scientific achievements. In modern English, word endings were mostly lost with just a few exceptions. It can be concluded that English has evolved from a synthetic language to the present analytic language.
2. Study the following sentence: 1) pick out the idiom, 2) explain its origin and 3) comment on the use. David's head was in the tool-box, but his voice was heard saying, "Too many cooks, better let me."
(1)"Too many cooks" is from "Too many cooks spoil the broth." (2) In the situation of disorder or chaos, when everyone tries to direct, the speaker manages to control the situation. (3) The use of the short form indicates the informal situation. (4) This sentence implies the speaker and listener(s) are workmates or colleagues.