英语专业考研语言学重难点提示(6)

58. What is a phrase? What is a clause?

A ―phrase‖ is a single element of structure containing more than one word, and lacking the subject-predicate structure typical of ―clauses‖. Traditionally, it is seen as part of a structural hierarchy, falling between a clause and word, e.g., ―the three tallest girls‖ (nominal phrase). There is now a tendency to make a distinction between word groups and phrases. A ―word group‖ is an extension of a word of a particular class by way of modification with its main features of the class unchanged. Thus we have nominal group, verbal group, adverbial group, conjunction group and preposition group.

A ―clause‖ is group of words with its own subject and predicate included in a larger subject-verb construction, namely, in a sentence. Clauses can also be classified into two kinds: finite and non-finite clauses, the latter referring to what are traditionally called infinitive phrase, participle phrase and gerundial phrase.

59. What is conjoining? What is embedding? What is recursiveness?

“Conjoining‖ refers to a construction where one clause is co-ordinated or conjoined

英语专业考研语言学重难点提示

with another, e. g., ―John bought a cat and his wife killed her.‖ ―Embedding‖ refers to the process of construction where one clause is included in the sentence (or main clause) in syntactic subordination, e.g., ―I saw the man who had killed a chimpanzee.‖ By ―recursiveness‖ we mean that there is theoretically no limit to the number of the embedded clauses in a complex sentence. This is true also with nominal and adverbial clauses, e.g., ―I saw the man who killed a cat who…a rat which…that…‖

60. What is hypotactic relation? What is paratactic relation?

“Hypotactic relation‖ refers to a construction where constituents are linked by means of conjunction, e.g. ―He bought eggs and milk.‖ ―Paratactic relation‖ refers to constructions which are connected by juxtaposition, punctuation or intonation, e. g., ―He bought tea, coffee, eggs and milk‖ (pay attention to the first three nouns connected without ―and‖).

61. What is semantics?

“Semantics‖ refers to the study of the communication of meaning through language. Or simply, it is the study of meaning.

62. What is meaning?

Though it is difficult to define, ―meaning‖ has the following meaning: (1) an intrinsic property; (2) the connotation of a word; (3) the words put after a dictionary entry; (4) the position an object occupies in a system; (5) what the symbol user actually refers to;

(6) what the symbol user should refer to; (7) what the symbol user believes he is referring to; (8) what the symbol interpreter refers to; (9) what the symbol interpreter believes it refers to; (10) what the symbol interpreter believes the user refers to…linguists argued about ―meaning of meaning‖ fiercely in the result of ―realism‖, ―conceptualism/mentalism‖, ―mechanism‖, ―contextualism‖, ―behaviorism‖, ―functionalism‖, etc. Mention ought to be made of the ―Semantic Triangle Theory‖ of Ogden & Richards. We use a word and the listener knows what it refers to because, according to the theory, they have acquired the same concept/reference of the word used and of the object/referent.

63. What is the difference between meaning, concept, connotation, sense, implication, denotation, notation, reference, implicature and signification?

“Meaning‖ refers to the association of language symbols with the real word. ―Concept‖ or ―notion‖ is the impression of objects in people‘s mind. ―connotation‖ is the implied meaning, similar to ―implication‖ and ―implicature‖. ―Sense‖ is the lexical position in which a word finds itself. ―Denotation‖, like ―sense‖, is not directly related with objects, but makes the abstract assumption of the real world. ―Reference‖ is the word-object relationship. ―Implicature‖, in its narrow sense, refers to conversational implicature achieved by intentionally violating one of the four CP maxims. ―Signification‖, in contrast with ―value‖, mean the meaning of situation may not have any communicative value, like ―What‘s this?‖

64. What is the Semantic/Semiotic Triangle?

英语专业考研语言学重难点提示

Ogden and Richards presented the classic ―Semantic Triangle‖ as manifested in the following diagram, in which the ―symbol‖ or ―form‖ refers to the linguistic elements (word, sentence, etc.), the ―referent‖ refers to the object in the world of experience, and ―thought‖ or ―reference‖ refers to concept or notion. Thus, the symbol a word signifies ―things‖ by virtue of the ―concept‖, associated with the form of the word in the mind of the speaker of the language. The ―concept‖ thus considered is meaning of the word.

65. What is contextualism?

“Contextualism‖ is based on the presumption that one can derive meaning from, or reduce it to, observable context: the ―situational context‖ and the ―linguistic context‖. Every utterance occurs in a particular spatial-temporal situation, as the following factors are related to the situational context: (1) the speaker and the hearer; (2) the actions they are performing at the time; (3) various external objects and events; (4) deictic features. The ―linguistic context‖ is another aspect of contextualism. It considers the probability of one word‘s co-occurrence or collocation with another, which forms part of the meaning, and an important factor in communication.

66. How many kinds of meaning did linguists find and study?

C. C. Fries (1952) makes a traditional distinction between lexical meaning and structural meaning. The former is expressed by those ―meaningful‖ parts of speech, such as nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs, and is given in the dictionary associated with grammar. The lat …… 此处隐藏：5880字，全部文档内容请下载后查看。喜欢就下载吧 ……