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西南大学外国语学院
《语言学导论》复习思考题
01
Ⅰ
. In each question there
are four choices. Decide which one would
be the best answer to the question, or
best completes the sentence.
Write the
corresponding letter on your ANSWER SHEET.
1. According to Noam Chomsky, language
is the product of_______.
A. an innate
faculty, unique to humans
B.
communication
C.
environmental conditioning
D. all of the above
2. Which of the
following statements is FALSE? ________.
A. Language is just for communication.
B. Language is one of many ways in
which we experience the world.
C. Language is a sign system.
D. Language is arbitrary and
conventional.
3.
Which
one
of
the
following
statements
about
errors
in
foreign
language
learning
in
FALSE? _________.
A. Errors can not be avoided in foreign
language learning.
B. Errors tell the
teacher how far towards the goal the learner has
progressed and consequently
what
remains for him to learn.
C. Errors are something bad that should
not be allowed in foreign language learning.
D.
Errors
provide
the
researcher
with
evidence
of
how
language
is
learned
or
acquired,
what
strategies or procedures the learner is
employing is his discovery of the language.
4. The English language
has______.
A. morphemes
B. syntax
C. number agreement
D. all of the above
5
. “He” and
“she” are not examples of gender agreement in
English, because
_____.
A.
they are pronouns
B. they need not
agree with other words in an English sentence
C. they mark
biological/social gender
D.
both b and c above
6. A
phoneme is_____.
A. the smallest
meaningful unit in language
B. the smallest unit in language
C. the same as an allophone
D. both b and c above
1
7.
Of the following, what are the two types of
phonetics______.
A. acoustic and
electric
B. arbitrary
and auditory
C.
articulatory and acoustic
D. allophonic and allomorphic
8.
/
?
ik/ is a transcription
of_______.
A. sick
B. chick
C.
chic
D.
thick
9
.
The
Black
English
sentence
“I
don't
gotta
do
nothing”
is
considered
incorrect
because________.
A. it contains a double negative and is
thus inherently incorrect
B. it is impossible to understand
C. it is not associated
with the upper class use of standard English
D. both a and b above
10. The use of non-standard
English persists because_______.
A. the
working class is incapable of speaking “correctly”
B. English is a complicated
and therefore difficult language to master
C. subordinate groups use
non-standard English to promote solidarity
D. teachers do not properly
stress the importance of standard English in
schools
11. True or false:
Chinese has no inflections for grammatical case.
______.
A. True
B. False
12. What is defined as 'the
study of sentence structure'? ______.
A. Morphology
B. Semantics
C.
Phonology
D. Syntax
13.
______
refers
to
the
fact
that
there
is
no
necessary
or
logical
relationship
between
a
linguistic form and its meaning.
______.
A. Displacement
B. creativity
C. arbitrariness
D.
duality
14. The study of a
language at some point of time is called________.
A. computational linguistics
B. sociolinguistics
C.
diachronic linguistics
D. synchronic linguistics
15. ________ refers to the
abstract linguistic system shared by all the
members of a speech
community
A. Langue
B. performance
C. competence
D. parole
16. Traditional grammar is ________.
A.
descriptive
B.
prescriptive
C.
non-Latin-based
D. wrong
2
17. ______ is the branch of linguistics
which studies the characteristics of speech sounds
and
provides methods for their
description, classification and transcription.
A. Phonology
B. Phonetic
alphabet
C. Corpus linguistics
D. Phonetics
18. _____ is the minimal unit in the
sound system of a language, which is of
distinctive value.
A. Allophone
B. Phone
C. Phoneme
D. Morpheme
19. Which of the following
factors does not help to identify a word? ______.
A. Relative shortness
ve
uninterruptibility
C. A minimum free
form
D. Stability
20. Speech act theory was initially
developed by _______.
A. Halliday
B. Austin
C.
Searle
D.
Grice
21. The four major
modes of semantic change are_______.
A. extension, narrowing, elevation and
degradation
B. extension,
generalization, elevation and degradation
C. extension, narrowing,
specialization and degradation
D. extension, elevation, amelioration
and degradation
22. The
relation between the two wor
ds
“husband” and “wife” can be described
as____.
A. gradable antonymy
B. converse
antonymy
C. complementary antonymy
D. synonymy
23.
“friendly” is a _______.
A.
compound
B. inflectional
word
C. derivative
D.
morpheme
24.
The
construction “honest people” is
_______.
A. a coordinate
construction
B. an
exocentric construction
C. an
endocentric construction
D. an immediate constituent
25. The word “brunch” and
“motel” are _______.
A.
formed by blending
B.
acronyms
C. coined by back-formation
D. clipped words
26
. The function of the
sentence “A nice day, isn?t it?” is
_______.
A. directive
B. informative
C. performative
D. phatic
27.
Which of the following sounds is a voiced bilabial
stop?
______.
A.
[m]
B. [v]
C. [p]
D. [b]
28. Which
of the following sounds is a voiceless affricate?
_______.
A. [w]
B. [f]
C. [
??
]
D. [
??
]
3
29
. In the sentence “Can I
have a bite to drink?” the speaker may not have a
problem with
competence, but
with_______.
A. performance
B. utterance
C. syntax
D. context
30
. The phrase
“Colorful ideas sleep furiously” is an example
of_______.
A. rapport talk
B. indexical language
C. an ungrammatical but
acceptable sentence
D. a
grammatical but unacceptable sentence
31
. There are
______ morphemes in the word
“children?s”
A. six
B. two
C. three
D. four
32
. The words “take” and
“table” are called _______ bec
ause they
can stand as a word by
themselves.
A. inflectional morphemes
B. free morphemes
C. stems
D. roots
33. Identify the morphemes
in the word 'unimaginative':
A. un-im-ag-in-at-ive
B.
un-imaginative
C. un-
imagin-ative
D.
unimagin-ative
34. Which of
the following two-term sets shows the feature of
complementarity? _______.
A. Husband/
Wife
B. Alive/Dead
C. Hot/ Cold
D. White/ Black
35. The Whorf Hypothesis
claims that________.
A.
language is full of “rich points”,
whose meanings are difficult to translate into
another
language
B. abstract terms are easily
translatable
C. accents are
part of identity
D.
language influences culture-specific ways of
knowing
36
. The
phrase ?time is
a commodity?
is an example of_______.
A.
The Whorf Hypothesis
B. A metaphoric
system
C. A non-standard variety
D. A rich point
37
. The last phoneme in the
word “hang” is a _______.
A. glottal
B. palatal
C. dental
D. nasal
38. Three places of
articulation that involve the teeth and/or the
lips are:
A. palatal,
velar, glottal
B. bilabial, labiodental,
dental
C. stop, fricative,
affricative
D. nasal, lateral, semi
vowel
4
39. In the sentence 'I took my big
brown cat to the vet yesterday', which of the
following does
not appear? _______.
A. Adjective
B.
Preposition
C. Adverb
D.
Conjunction
40
.
What is the meaning relationship between the two
words “plant/grass”? ______.
A. Homonymy
B. Antonymy
C.
Hyponymy
D. Allomorphs
41
.
The syllabic structure of the word “linguistics”
is ______.
A. CVCCVCCVCC
B. CVCCCVCCVCC
C. CVCCVVCCVCC
D. CVCVVCCVCC
42. The phonetic
transcription with diacritics is called _____.
A. broad transcription
B. International Phonetic
Alphabet
C. American English
Pronunciation
D. narrow transcription
43
. The Black English
sentence “I don't gotta do nothing” is considered
incorrect because:
a) it
contains a double negative and is thus inherently
incorrect
b) it is
impossible to understand
c)
it is not associated with the upper class use of
standard English
d) both a
and b above
44. According
to their ______, words can classified into closed-
class and open-class words.
A.
variability
B. membership
C.
similarities
D. functions
45. When language is used to
A. evocative
B. expressive
C. directive
D. performative
46.
A. free morpheme
B.
derivative
C. compound
D.
root.
47
. The phrase “time
is a commodity” is an example
of_______.
A. The Whorf
Hypothesis
B. A metaphoric system
C. A
non-standard variety
D. A rich point
48. _______ is a type of phonological
process by which one sound takes on some or all
the
characteristics of a neighboring
sound.
A. Assimilation
B. Transformation
C. Code-
switching
D.
interference
49. _______ refers to the
use of a native language pattern or rule which
leads to an error or
inappropriate form
in the target language.
A.
Interlanguage
B. Positive transfer
C. Negative transfer
D. Overgeneralization
50.
In the sentence “I took
my big brown cat to the vet yesterday”, which of
the following
does not appear? _______.
A. Adjective
B.
Preposition
C. Adverb
D. Conjunction
51. _______ is that part of the meaning
of word or phrase that relates it to phenomena in
the
real world or in a fictional or
possible world.
A. Connotation
B. Affective meaning
C.
Denotation
D. Sense
52. A linguist
regards the changes in language and language use
as ______.
A. unnatural
B. something to
be feared
C. natural
D. abnormal
5
53. The
semantic components of the word
“
boy
”
can be expressed as _____.
A. +human,
+male, +adult
B. +human, -male, +adult
C. +human, -male, -adult
D. +human, +male, -adult
54.
Conjunctions, preposition, pronouns and articles
can be classified as ____.
A. lexical
words
B. grammatical words
C. pro-forms
D. content words
55. If two sounds are of no distinctive
value, but are varieties of the same phoneme, they
are
called ______.
A. phones
B. speech sounds
C. allophones
D. morphs
56. In
the following sounds, _____ is a voiced stop.
A. [b]
B. [d]
C. [p]
D. [k]
57.
“
You
stand
up
”
is
transformed
into
“
Stand
up
”
.
Which
transformational
rule
is
used
according to TG Grammar? _____.
A. Copying
B. Addition
C. Reordering
D. Deletion
58. The words such as TOFEL, NATO, UFO
are _____.
A. formed by blending
B.
acronyms
C. coined by back formation
D.
clipped words
59. The words such as
“
brunch
”
,
“
motel
”
are _______.
A. formed by blending
B.
acronyms
C. coined by back formation
D.
clipped words
60. ______ are produced
when the obstruction is complete at first, then
released slowly with
friction resulting
from partial obstruction.
A. Nasals
B. Glides
C. Fricatives
D. Affricatives
61.
“
A fish is
swimming in the pond
”
is
transformed into
“
There is a
fish swimming in the
pond
”
. Which of
the following transformational rules is used?
______.
A. Copying
B.
Addition
C. Reordering
D.
Deletion
62.
“
The
man
put
on
his
hat
”
is
transformed
into
“
The
man
put
his
hat
on
”
.
Which
transformational rule
is applied here? _______.
A. Copying
B. Addition
C. Reordering
D. Deletion
63. The function
of the sentence
“
A nice day,
isn
?
t
it?
”
is ______.
A. directive
B. informative
C. emotive
D. phatic
64. Which of the following sounds is a
voiceless bilabial stop? _____.
A. [m]
B. [f]
C. [p]
D. [b]
65. Which of the following languages is
a tone language?
A. Russian
B.
Chinese
C. English
D. French
66. ________ speaking, no variety of
language is better than or superior to others.
A. Generally
B. Socially
C. Politically
D. Linguistically
67. Grammar-based language learning and
teaching fails partially because _____.
A. still no precise information is
obtained concerning how grammar can be learned
B. grammar can not be taught at all
C. it is useless to teach grammar in
language classes
D. learners can learn
better without grammar
foreign
language learners to achieve effective learning,
the input should_____.
A.
not be so far beyond their reach that they are
overwhelmed
6
B.
be interesting and simple
C. not be so
close to their current stage that they are not
challenged at all
D. Both A and C
69. Interlanguage is _____.
A. is produced by every foreign
language learners
B. a mixture of the
learner
’
s mother tongue and
the target language
C. imperfect
compared with the target language, but it is not
mere translation from the
learner
’
s
native
language
D. Both A and C
70.
Error analysis may be carried out in order
to______.
A. identify strategies which
learners use in language learning
B. try to identify the causes of
learner errors.
C. obtain information
on common difficulties in language learning
D. All of the above.
71.
Many
Chinese
English
learners
may,
at
the
beginning
stage,
produce
“
mans
”
and
“photo
es
”
as
the
plural
forms
of
“
man
”
and
“
photo
”
.
This
is
most
likely
the
result
of
_______
in the process of foreign language learning.
A. Negative transfer
B.
Overgeneralization
C.
Positive transfer
D. mother
tongue interference
72. Which of the
following qualities is not the requirement of a
good test? _______.
A. Objectivity
B. Reliability
C. Validity
D. Both A and C
73.
Which
of
the
following
statements
about
machine
translation
is
likely
to
be
wrong?
_______.
A. Machine
translation has always been a chief concern in
computational linguistics.
B. There are
areas where machine translation surpasses human
translations.
C. Sooner or later,
machine translation will replace human translation
completely.
D. In some areas, human
translations surpasses machine translation.
74. Teaching culture in our language
classes can _______.
A. get the
students familiar with cultural differences
B. help the students transcend their
own culture and see things as the members of
the target
culture will
C. emphasize the inseparability of
understanding language and understanding culture
through
various classroom practices
D. All of the above.
75.
According
to
Grice
?
s
theory,
a
conversational
implicature
arises
when
the
cooperative
principle and
its maxims are _______.
A. strictly
observed
B. secretly and
deliberately violated
C. blatantly or
apparently violated
D. Both A and
B
7
Ⅱ
. Match each of the
following terms in Column A with one of the
appropriate
definitions
in
Column
B.
Write
the
corresponding
letter on your
ANSWER SHEET.
Part One
Column A
1.
constituent
2.
complementary distribution
3. design features
4.
diglossia
5. displacement
6. homonymy
7. language interference
8. registers
9.
selectional restrictions
10. semantic anomaly
Column B
A. the phenomenon that
human language can cope with any subject whatever,
and it does not
matter how far away the
topic of conversation is in time and space
B. the framework proposed
by Hockett, which discusses the defining
properties of human
language as against
animal communication
C. the
restrictions on the type of noun that can be
selected with each verb
D.
the type of language which is selected as
appropriate to a type of situation
E. the phenomena that allophones occur
in different phonetic environments
F. a sociolinguistic situation where
two varieties of a language exist side by side
throughout the
community, with each
having a definite role to play
G. the case that two, or more meanings
may be associated with the same linguistic form
H. the case that one of the
arguments or the predicate of the main predication
is self-contradictory
I.
any linguistic form or group of linguistic forms
that appears at the bottom of one of the lines in
the tree diagram of the syntactic
analysis
J. the use of
elements from one language while speaking
another.
8
Part Two
Column
A
1. duality of structure
2.
free morphemes
3.
endocentric construction
4.
International Phonetic Alphabet
5.
Psycholinguistics
6. the syntagmatic
relation
7. derivational
morphemes
8. regional dialect
9. sequential rules
10.
presupposition
Column B
A. the study of the
relationship between language and mind.
B. the bound morphemes
which are conjoined to other morphemes (or words)
to derive or form a
new word
C. the organization of
language into two levels: a lower level of sounds
which combine to form a
higher level of
meaningful units
D. a
standardized and internationally accepted system
of phonetic transcription.
E. linguistic varieties used by people
living in different regions.
F. the rules which govern the
combination of sounds in a particular language.
G. one whose distribution
is functionally equivalent, or approaching
equivalence, to one of its
constituents
H. the kind of meaning
which the speaker doesn't assert but assumes the
hearer can identify from
the sentence
I. the morphemes which can
constitute words by themselves
J. the one between one item and others
in a linear sequence, or between elements which
are all
present
Part Three
Column A
my
2. blending
3. compounds
4. arbitrariness
5. cultural
transmission
9
6. diachronic linguistics
7.
distinctive features
8. standard
dialect
9. ultimate constituent
10. Creole
Column B
A. the study of the
language development or change over
time
B. the features that a
phoneme has and that distinguish it from other
phonemes
C. the words that
are produced by stringing together
words
D. the smallest
grammatical unit obtained through binary
segmentation
E. a particular
variety of a language, not related to any
particular group of language users
F. a language formed when a pidgin has
become the primary language of a speech
community
G. word formed by
combining parts of other words
H. the fact that the details of the
linguistic system must be learned anew by each
speaker
I. the oppositeness
of meaning between lexemes
J. a design feature of language which
refers to the fact that there is no logical
connection between
the signifier and
the signified of a sign.
Part Four
Column A
1. a proposition
2. a speech community
3. an
utterance
4. bilingualism
5. constatives
6.
performatives
7. registers
8. sociolect
9. the Whorf-
Sapir hypothesis
10.
utterance meaning
Column B
A. the suggestion that
different languages carve the world up in
different ways, and that as a result
their speakers think about it
differently
B. something conveyed by a
sentence in a context other than its literal
meaning
10
C. varieties of language that are
related to use
D. a piece of language
actually used in a particular context
E. the linguistic variety used by
people belonging to a particular social class
F. a community the members of which
have or believe they have at least one common
variety of
language
G. what
is expressed by a declarative sentence when that
sentence is uttered to make a statement
H. sentences which describe or state
something; they are either true or false
I. the situation where at
least two languages are used side by side by an
individual or by a group of
speakers,
with each having a different role to play
J. sentences that do not describe
things and cannot be said to be true or false
Part Five
Column
A
1. an analytic
proposition
2. binary cutting
3. connotation
4. derivation
5. lexicology
6. logical
semantics
7. reference
8.
semantic feature
9. the chain relation
10. the choice relation
Column B
A.
the
relation
holding
between
one
item
and
others
in
a
linear
sequence,
or
between
elements
which are all
present
B. the basic unit
of meaning in a word
C. the study of
the meaning of a sentence in terms of its truth
conditions
D. one whose
grammatical form and lexical meaning make it
necessarily true, without reference to
external criteria
E. the
additional meanings that a word or phrase has
beyond its central meaning
F.
a
relation
holding
between
elements
replaceable
with
each
other
at
a
particular
place
in
a
structure
G. the
morphological process in which affixes are added
to the stem
H. the concrete entities
that have the properties denoted by words or
phrases
I. the practice to
cut a grammatical construction into two parts and
then cut each of the two parts
into two
and continue with this segmentation until we reach
the smallest grammatical unit, the
11
morpheme
J. the study of the vocabulary items of
a language, including their meanings and
relations, their
classification and
collocation, and changes in their form and meaning
through time
Ⅲ
.
READING
COMPREHENSION.
Read
the
following
passages,
choose
the
correct
answer
for
each
question
and
write
the
corresponding letter on the ANSWER
SHEET.
Passage One
(Questions 1-6)
Psychologists
and
educators
have
known
for
a
long
time
that
learning
is
by
far
superior
to
teaching
language
through
some
automatic
conditioning
process.
Both
of
these
considerations
point
to
the
crucial
role
of
factors
in
language
acquisition
and
to
the
importance
of
knowing
just
what
the
learner
contributes
to
the
learning
process
so
that
it
can
be
taken
into
account in the teaching process.
Intelligence is usually conceived of as
the ability to learn and thus it is to be expected
that I.Q.
will be related to second-
language learning as well, and indeed the evidence
we have corroborated
this expectation.
This relationship, under conditions of school
learning, appears to be in the order
of
15
to
20
percent
of
the
contributing
variance.
The
importance
of
intelligence
in
second-language learning can be
interpreted as stemming from the fact that the
teaching process is
incapable
of
making
it
completely
clear
just
what
the
learner
is
to
acquire.
Thus
the
variance
contribution
of
intelligence
can
be
expected
to
increase
under
conditions
where
instructional
procedures are
weak and amorphous and decrease under conditions
where they are effective and
well
integrated. In this sense, the correlation between
intelligence and achievement can be viewed
as an indication of the quality of
instruction. The 20 percent variance contribution
just referred to
thus
indicates
that
within
the
present
conditions
of
language
teaching
in
schools,
given
the
criterion
definitions
and
goals,
and
distribution
of
aptitude
and
perseverance
factors
that
now
prevail,
the
quality
of
instruction
is
quite
high
and
the
amount
of
possible
improvement
fairly
limited. This
conclusion, if valid, is quite significant, since
it suggests that in order to increase the
success of the FL curriculum in schools
the major changes and improvements will have to
come in
the area of criterion
definition and implementation, i.e., a change in
what is being taught under
particular
conditions. Note that quality of instruction can
be high - that is, it is being made quite
clear to the student just what he is
supposed to learn - while the success of the over-
all program
can remain inadequate owing
to lack of perseverance on the part of the student
or to the choice of
a criterion goal
for the course that turns out to be not what was
wanted. It should be realized that a
change in criterion goal may affect the
quality of instruction, since 'corresponding to a
change in
what is being taught there
may have to be a change in how it is being taught.
With these new goals,
quality
of
instruction
will
have
to
be
reevaluated,
since
there
is
no
guarantee
that
our
present
knowledge will be equally effective in
teaching these newer skills.
12
1.
A. easy to
control
B. some automatic
conditioning process
C.
superior to
D. a process in
which the teacher plays a passive role
2. In the active learning,
the learners _______.
A.
are much involved in the learning process
B. know the teachers’
cru
cial role in the teaching process
C. learn through some
automatic conditioning process
D. play the same part in the learning
process as the teacher
3.
The
basic
difference
between
learning
and
learning
lies
in_______.
A.
the conditions of the learning process
B. the conditions of the teaching
process
C. the role of the
teacher in the teaching process
D. the role of
4. Which of the following is NOT the
learner factor?
A.
Intelligence
B. Instruction
C. Aptitude
D. Perseverance
5. Which of the following questions is
NOT touched in the passage?
A. How does intelligence affect the
quality of instruction?
B.
Why is
C. How do learner
factors contribute to the teaching process?
D. What is the difference
between
6.
Which of the following factors might affect the
quality of instruction?
A.
Criterion goal
B. Achievement
C. Perseverance
D. Learning skills
13
Passage Two (Questions 7-12)
This chapter has ranged
over several types of language variety, including
'language', 'dialects',
'registers',
'standard
languages',
'pidgins'
and
'Creoles'.
We
have
come
to
essentially
negative
conclusions about varieties. First,
there are considerable problems in delimiting one
variety from
another of the same type.
Secondly, there are serious problems in delimiting
one type of variety
from
another
-
languages
from
dialects,
or
dialects
from
registers,
or
'ordinary
languages'
from
Creoles,
or
Creoles
from
pidgins.
Thirdly,
we
have
suggested
that
the
only
satisfactory
way
to
solve
these
problems
is
to
avoid
the
notion
'variety'
altogether
as
an
analytical
or
theoretical
concept, and to focus instead on the
individual linguistic item. For each item some
kind of 'social
description'
is
needed,
saying
roughly
who
uses
it
and
when:
in
some
cases
an
item's
social
description, will be unique, whereas in
others it may be possible to generalize across a
more or
less large number of items. The
nearest this approach comes to the concept of
'variety' is in these
sets
of
items
with
similar
social
descriptions,
but
their
characteristics
are
rather
different
from
those of varieties like languages and
dialects. On the other hand, it is still possible
to use terms
like 'variety' and
'language' in an informal way, as they have been
used in the last few sections,
without
intending them to be taken seriously as
theoretical constructs.
7.
e conclusion about varieties” implies
that it
is ___ to define 'variety'
objectively and absolutely.
A. essential
B. useless
C. impossible
D.
unnecessary
8.
There are serious problems in delimiting languages
from dialects because ___ .
A. languages and dialects are of the
same type of variety
B.
their characteristics are rather different from
each other
C. languages and
dialects share the same social descriptions
D. there is no clear-cut
border between languages and dialects
9. According to the author,
the notion
A. vague
B.
clear
C.
analytical
D. theoretical
10. Some kind of
A. make clear the concept of
14
B. identify
individual linguistic items
C.
distinguish various types of varieties
D. describe the social features of
varieties
11.
'social description' for each item refers to ___ .
A. generalization across a
more or less large number of items
B. the characteristics in relation to
its uses in some social contexts
C. difference between varieties in
terms of their social characteristics
D. similarities between varieties in
terms of their social characteristics
12. Which of the following
is NOT true according to the passage?
A. There is no agreement on the
definition of the term 'variety'.
B. It is impossible to use the term
'variety' as a theoretical concept.
C. Varieties are distinguishable in
terms of items' social descriptions.
D. Different linguistic items can have
quite different social descriptions.
Passage Three (Questions 13-18)
Our
ability
to
deduce
context
from
text
is
one
way
in
which
language
and
context
are
interrelated.
Our
equally
highly
developed
ability
to
predict
language
from
context
provides
further evidence of the
language/context relationship. For example, if I
were to ask you to predict
both the
overall structure and some of the specific words
and sentences you would find in a recipe
for scrambling eggs, you would have
very little difficulty. If I asked you to write
down the recipe
text in a form
publishable in a popular magazine or cookbook, you
could almost certainly write
the entire
text with confidence that you were doing so in an
appropriate way.
You would
not, for example, give your recipe a title such as
Mowing Lawns
, nor would I
find
words
such
as
telephone,
picture,
jeans,
swim
in
your
text,
since
such
items
would
be
quite
blatantly inappropriate given that the
topic of a recipe is food and its preparation. You
would also
be unlikely to find yourself
writing sentences such as
If it is
possible, you are strongly advised to
take 6 eggs
or
Perhaps you should maybe mix the eggs
and milk for about 2 minutes or so
.
Such
sentences
express
a
degree
of
uncertainty
and
tentativity
inappropriate
to
the
role
of
writer
Nor
would
you
find
yourself
writing
Hi
guys!
Copy
this
for
a
recipe!
since
the
relationship
between
the
writer
and
reader
of
the
recipe
is
generally
more
formal
than
those
greetings suggest. Finally, you are
unlikely to have written
Take six of
these. Break them, and put
them in
there. Then add this.
Since there are a
number of words which your reader, distant from
you
in
time
and
space,
would
be
unable
to
interpret.
In
our
ability
to
predict
accurately
what
language
will
be
appropriate
in
a
specific
context,
we
are
seeing
an
extension
of
our
intuitive
understanding that language use is
sensitive to context.
Final evidence
which emphasizes the close link between context
and languages that it is often
simply
not
possible
to
tell
how
people
are
using
language
if
you
do
not
take
into
account
the
15
context of
use. One example of this was given above, when it
was pointed out that presented with
just
one
sentence
chosen
at
random
from
a
text
you
would
have
found
it
difficult
to
state
confidently just what
the writer of that text was doing. Considered in
its textual context (as a part
of a
complete
linguistic event), that
sentence clearly did have a function (to propose a
possible
solution). Taken out of
context, its purpose is obscured, with at least
part of its meaning lost or
unavailable.
Our ability to
deduce context from text, to predict when and how
language use will vary, and
the
ambiguity of language removed from its context,
all provide evidence that in asking functional
questions
about
language
we
must
focus
not
just
on
language,
but
on
language
use
in
context.
Describing
the
impact
of
context
has
involved
systemicists
in
exploring
both
what
dimensions,
and in what ways, context influences
language.
13.
Our ability to deduce context from text implies
___ .
A. dependence of
context on text
B.
independence of context from text
C. interrelation between language and
context
D. our ability to
predict language from context
14. It is stated implicitly
in the passage that the choice of words and
sentences in a
text ___ .
A. is of little difficulty
B. is independent of the type of the
text
C. needs to be made in
an appropriate way
D. is
related to the overall structure and the type of
the text
15.
The examples given in the second paragraph were
used to show ___ .
A.
language use is sensitive to context
B. how to write a recipe for scrambling
eggs
C. the relationship
between the writer and reader of the recipe is
generally formal
D. we are
able to predict accurately what language will be
appropriate in a specific context
16. Readers are unable to
interpret such sentences as
Take six of
these. Break them,
and put them in
there. Then add this
because ___ .
A. their intuitive
understanding is poor
16
B. they are distant from
the writer in time and space
C. they are unable to interpret the
grammatical structures
D.
they couldn't understand “these”, “them”, “there”
, “then” and “this” without context
17. It can be inferred from
the passage that systemicists describe language
with the
focus on its ___ .
A. functions
B. system
C. structure
D.
rules
18. The
author developed his/her main idea by ___ .
A. theoretical evidence
B. examples
C. description
D.
experimental evidence
Passage Four (Questions 19-23)
Two basic truths about the
psychology of human learning are (a), that it is
amazingly efficient
and powerful - by
such standards as the learning capacities of other
living organisms or man-made
automata
and
(b),
that
this
learning
goes
on
in
ways
that
neither
the
individual
learner
nor
the
educator or social scientist can
describe or explicate even in elementary and
simplistic terms. Two
outstanding
instances which illustrate both truths are (i),
the learning of a language and (ii), the
learning
of
a
culture
during
socialization
or
acculturation.
Concepts
such
as
which
social
scientists
have
invented
to
account
for
these
accomplishments of the individual have
such weak explanatory power that even in much
simpler
learning
situations,
such
as
a
rat
running
a
maze,
they
allow
for
such
inadequate
and
impotent
descriptions
that
psychologists
in
a
narrow
field
of
specialization
disagree
about
them.
The
weakest aspect about these
process
through
concepts
that
refer
to
external
events
(stimuli,
responses,
schedules
of
reinforcement, etc.),
whereas what obviously accounts for the process is
the internal mechanism of
the brain,
the capacities and workings of the human mind.
Theories
about
the
mind,
theories
about
knowledge
(as
distinguished
from
theories
about
behavior), theories about capacities,
about potentialities and competencies, have been
proposed by
many writers over the
course of modem scientific history, but these
occupy the back seat to the
leading
theories
in
the
social
sciences.
The
most
influential
and
widespread
approach
to
psychological explanation
remains in the United States today, in education,
in clinical psychology,
that of
Skinnerian operant conditioning of behavior. The
latter is widely claimed as being sound
and tough-minded in research, while
theories of the mind are presented to graduate
students and
future
researchers
in
a
shadowy
and
not
quite
respectable
light;
they
are
soft,
nonrigorous,
wishy-washy.
17