专八必备的英国人文地理知识

第一部分 英国

第一章 英国地理

1. The official name of the United Kingdom is the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

2. There are three political divisions on the islands of Great Britain: England, Scotland and Wales.

3. About a hundred years ago, Britain ruled an empire that had one fourth of the world’s people and one fourth of the world’s land area.

4. The Britain Empire was replaced by the Britain commonwealth in 1931,which is a free association of independent counties that were once colonies of Britain.

5. Britain is separated from the rest of Europe by the English Channel in the south and the North Sea in the east.

6. Britain has, for centuries, been tilting with the northwest slowly rising, and the southeast slowly sinking. The north and west of Britain are mainly highlands. The southeast and east are mainly lowlands.

7. The pennies, a range of hills running from north midlands to Scottish border, are the principal mountain chain.

8. Ben Nevis in Scotland is the highest mountain in Britain, and the Lough Neagh in Northern Ireland is the largest lake in Britain.

9. There are three natural zones in Scotland: the highlands in the north, the central lowlands, and the southern uplands. The lowlands in the center comprise mostly the forth and Clyde valleys.

10. Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast are the capitals of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

11. Scotland has about 800 islands, including the Orkney, Shetlands and Hebrides. 苏格兰有800座岛屿，包括奥克内群岛，谢特兰群岛和赫不里德群岛。

12. Besides, the Tweed, the Tyne, the Tees and the Thames Rivers on the east coast all face the North Sea ports on the European continent.

除此以外，东海岸的邓恩河，泰河，迪斯河和泰晤士河都面临欧洲大陆上的北海各港口。

13. The longest river in Britain is the Severn River. The most important river is Thames River. River Clyde is the most important river in Scotland.

英国最长的河流是赛文河，最重要的河流是泰晤士河。克莱德河是苏格兰最重要的河流。

14. Though the weather in Britain is so changeable and unpredictable, the climate is in fact a favorable one. Britain has a steady reliable rainfall throughout the whole year.

虽然英国的天气总是如此变化无常，无法预测，但实际上英国的天气相当宜人。英国全年有稳定的降雨量。

15. Britain has a population of 57411000. it is a densely populated country with an average of 237 people per square kilometer, and it is very unevenly distributed. 90% of the population is urban, and only 10% is rural.

英国人口为57411000。它是一个人口稠密，分布不均的国家，每平方公里平均237人，90％的人生活在城镇，只有10％的人居住在农村。

16. the English are Anglo-Saxons, but the welsh, Scots and Irish are Celts.

英格兰人是安各鲁－撒克逊人。而威尔士、苏格兰和爱尔兰人是凯尔特人。

17. The Celts of Wales defended their freedom for 1000 years and were not conquered by the English until 1536. today about a quarter of the welsh population still speak welsh as their first language and about one percent speak only welsh.

威尔士的凯尔特人为自由战斗了1000年，直到1536年才被英格兰人征服。今天有大约四分之一的威尔士人把威尔士语当作第一语言，大约1％的人只讲威尔士语。

18. though the Gaelic language is still heard in the Highlands and western isles, the English language is spoken all over the Scotland.

尽管在高地和西部岛屿还能听到盖尔语，但英语却遍及全苏格兰。

19. Since then, there has been bitter fighting between the Protestants who are the dominant group, and the Roman Catholics who are seeking more social and economic opportunities.

从那时起，新教徒和罗马天主教徒间展开了艰苦的斗争，新教徒是统治者，而罗马教徒要求更多社会和经济机会。

20. About three million have came to live and find work since world war second. They are mainly from the West Indies, India and Pakistan.

自二战以来，约有三百万人来到英国居住，他们主要来自西印度群岛，印度和巴基斯坦。

第二节 英国的起源（历史部分）

21. The first known setters of Britain were the Iberians. More dramatic monuments were the henges, the most important of which was Stonehenge in Wiltshire.

人们所知的英国最早居民是伊比例亚人。更为引人注目的是那些圆形石结构，其中最重要的是在维尔特郡发现的巨石阵。

22. The Celts may originally have come from eastern and central Europe, they came to Britain in three main waves: the first wave was the Gaels, the second was Britons and the third was Belgae.

凯尔特人最初来自于东欧及中欧，他们入侵英国分三次高潮：第一次是盖尔人；第二次是布立吞人；第三次是比利其人。

23. Julius Caesar, the great roman general, invaded Britain for the first time in 55BC. For nearly 400 years, Britain was under roman occupation.

伟大的罗马将军朱略思，恺撒，于公元前55年第一次入侵英国。将近400年，英国人处于罗马的占领下。

24. The roman built two great walls to keep the Picts. There were the Hadrian’s wall running from Carlisle to Newcastle, and the Antonine wall linking the estuaries of the Forth and the Clyde.

罗马人修建了2座长城以抵御皮特人。一条是哈德良长城，从卡莱尔到纽卡斯尔，另一条是链接福斯河口和克莱德河口的安东尼长城。

25. The Romans made use of Britain’s natural resources, mining lead, iron and tin and manufacturing pottery.

罗马人很好地利用了英国的自然资源，开采铅矿、铁矿和锡矿以及生产陶瓷。

26. In the mid-5th century a new wave of invaders, Jutes, Saxons, and Angles came to Britain, they were three Teutonic tribes.

五世纪中叶，朱特人，撒克逊人和安各鲁人不断入侵英国。这是三支日尔曼部落。

27. These seven principal kingdoms of Kent, Essex, Sussex, Essex, East Anglia, Mercia and Northumbria have given the name of Heptarch.

这七个主要的王国：肯特、威塞克斯、苏塞克斯、埃赛克斯、东安各鲁，麦西亚和诺森薄利亚合称七王国。

28. At the beginning of ninth century, under their king Egbert the West Saxons of defeated the Mercies. In 829, Egbert became an overlord of all the England.

九世纪初，在国王埃格伯特的带领下，西撒克逊人打败了麦西亚人。829年，埃格伯特成了整个英国的最高君主。

29. In 597, pope Gregory I sent st.Augustine to England to convert the heathen English to Christianity. Augustine was remarkably successfully in converting the king and the nobility.

597年，教皇格里高利派遣圣奥古斯廷去英格兰，使异教徒的英国人皈依基督教。在使国王和贵族皈依基督教方面，圣奥古斯廷特别成功。

30. Alferd, king of Wessex, was strong enough to defeat the Danes. He is known as the “father of Britain navy”.

威塞克斯的国王阿尔佛雷德非常强大，打败了丹麦人，他以“英国海军之父”闻名于史。

31. When Ethebred’s death left no strong Saxon successor, the Witan chose Canute the Danish leader, as king in 1016.

埃塞尔雷德死后没有留下有实力的撒克逊继承人，于是贤人会议选择了丹麦首领克努特为国王。

32. King Edward seemed more concerned with building Westminster Abbey than with affairs of state. He was far more Norman than Saxon.

爱德华国王对国事的关心远不及对威斯敏斯特大教堂的修建，他更像诺曼人而非撒克逊人。

33. Anglo-Saxon England perished with Harold’s death. William was crowned king of England in Westminster Abbey by the Archbishop of York.

随着哈罗德德死亡，安各鲁撒克逊人的英国消失了，在威斯敏斯特大教堂，约克大主教加冕威廉为英格兰国王。

34. The Norman conquest of England is perhaps the best-known event in English history. Under William, the feudal system in England was completely established.

诺曼征服或许是英国历史上最著名的事件，至此，英格兰的封建制度被完全建立起来。

第三节 英国的形成

35. William replaced the witan , the council of the Anglo-Saxon kings, with the Grand Council of his new tenants-in-chief.

威廉用由他的土地承租人组成的大议会取代了安各鲁撒克逊国王的顾问团－贤人会议。

36. The Doomsday Book, completed in 1086, was the result of general survey of England made in 1085, and stated the extent , value, the population, state of cultivation and ownership.

《末日审判书》完成于1086年，它记录了1085年进行的英国总调查结果。此册陈述了土地的范围、价值、人口、耕种情况和所有权。

37. William’s policy towards the church was to keep it completely under his control, but at the same time to uphold its power.

威廉对教会的政策是完全控制的同时，赞成它拥有权利。

38. Henry Π was the first king of the House of Plantagenet. He took measures to bring the disorders of king Stephen reign to an end.

亨利二世是金雀花王朝的首位国王。他采取措施结束了史蒂芬森国王统治时期的混乱局面。

39. Henry Π greatly strengthened the King’s Court and extended with its judicial work. He insisted that all clerks charged with criminal offences should be tried in the King’s Courts instead of in the Bishop’s Court.

亨利二世大大加强了王室法庭的力量并扩展了司法工作。他坚持被控刑事犯罪的教士都应在国王法庭受审而不是在主教法庭受审。

40. It was these exceptional privileges enjoyed by the clergy that brought King Henry into collision with Tomas Becket, the Archbishop of Canterbury.

正是神职人员享有的特权导致了亨利国王和坎特伯雷大主教托马斯贝克特之间的冲突。

41. Geoffrey Chaucer’s best known work is the Canterbury Tales which describes a group of pilgrims traveling to Canterbury to visitTomas Becket’s tomb.

杰佛利乔叟的名著《坎特伯雷故事集》描述了一群朝圣者到坎特伯雷参观托马斯贝克特坟墓的旅行。

42. The baron’s charter, or Magna Carta, as it came to be known was presented by a delegation of their class to the king and his advisers in the summer of 1215. 1215年夏天，贵族代表团把他们的宪章——后以大宪章闻名——递交给国王和他的顾问团们。

43. A committee of 24 barons plus the Mayor of London was chosen to help the king carry out the Charter, with the right of declaring war on him should he break its provisions.

由24名贵族和伦敦市市长组成的委员会帮助国王执行大宪章，若国王违反规定，他们有权对国王宣战。

44. Magna Carta was a statement of feudal and legal relationship between the crown and the barons, a guarantee of the freedom of the church and a limitation of the power of the king.

大宪章陈述的是国王与贵族间的封建和法律关系，保证了教会自由和限制了王权。

45. While the king Henry Ⅲ and Prince Edward were keep in prison, Simon de Montfort summoned in 1265 the great council to meet at Westminster which developed later into the Lords and the Commons known as a parliament.

1265年当亨利三世国王和爱德华王子被关入监狱，西蒙德孟福尔在威斯敏斯特召集大议会，大议会发展到后来演变为议会，分为上议院和下议院。

46. The statute of Wales in 1284 placed the country under English law and Edward Ⅰpresented his new-born-son to the Welsh people as the Prince of Wales, a title held by the heir to the throne ever since.

1284年的威尔士法，使威尔士处于英国法律之下，爱德华一世将他新出生的儿子赠与威尔士人民，封他为威尔士王子。此后，该称号一直由该王位的继承人沿用至今。

47. When Edward Ⅲ claimed the French Crown by the right of his mother Isabella, the French refused to recognize the claim because the Salic Law debarred females from

the succession. In 1337 Edward declared a war that was to last a hundred years. 爱德华三世通过他母亲伊莎贝拉的关系宣布继承法国王位，但法国人民拒绝承认，因为萨利法典规定女子不得继承王位，于是在1337年，爱德华对法宣战，战争持续了一百年。

48. Black Death swept through England in the summer of 1348 without warning. It killed between one half and one third of the population of England.

1348年夏天，黑死病横扫全英国，没有任何征兆，它夺去了三分之一到一半的英国人口。

49. In 1351 the government issued a statute of Laborers which made it a crime for peasant to ask for more wage or for their employers to pay more than the rates laid down by the Justice of the Peace.

1351年政府颁布“劳工法令”。规定农民们涨工资的要求或者雇主支付比地方官制定的工资水平高的工资都是犯罪。

50. Although the Peasant Uprising of 1381, was brutally suppressed, it had far-reaching significance in English history. It dealt a telling blow to villeinage and a new class of yeomen farmers emerged, paving the way for the development of capitalism.

尽管1381年的农民起义被血腥镇压了，但在英国历史上留下了深远的影响。它沉重打击了封建农奴制度，产生了全新的自耕农阶级，为资本主义发展铺设了道路

第四节 过渡时期的英国

51. The name the Wars of Roses was referring to the battles between the great house of Lancaster, symbolized by the red rose, and that of York, symbolized by the white. 玫瑰战争这个词是指两个家族间的战争，以红玫瑰为标志的蓝凯斯特家族和以白玫瑰为标志的约克家族。

52. In 1455, after Henry Ⅵ hand completely lost his reason, war broke out between the Yorkists and the Lancastrians. In 1461, the Duke of York’s son Edward, emerged the victor and was proclaimed as Edward Ⅳ.

1455年，当亨利六世再也没有理由（将国家交给摄政者管理时），战争在约克家族成员和蓝凯斯特家族成员中爆发了。1461年，约克公爵的儿子爱德华战胜成功成为爱德华四世。

53. On August 22, 1458, the last battle of the Wars of Roses was fought between Richard Ⅲ and Henry Tudor.

1458年8月22日，玫瑰战争的最后一次战役在理查德三世和亨利都铎之间展开。

54. The reform began as a struggle for a divorce and end in freedom from the Papacy. Henry Ⅷ wanted to divorce Catherine of Aragon. But Pope Clement Ⅲ refused to annul his marriage to Catherine.

改革以争取离婚开始，以脱离教皇而告终，亨利八世想与阿拉贡的公主凯瑟琳离婚，但教皇克莱蒙拒绝取消凯瑟琳和亨利八世之间的婚姻。

55. Henry’s reform was to get rid of the English Church’s connection with the Pope, and make an independent Church of England.

亨利改革的目的是拜托英国教会与教皇的联系，成立独立的英格兰教会。

56. The laws (e.g. the Act of Succession of 1534 and the Act of Supremacy of 1535) made his reform possible stressed the power of the monarch and certainly strengthened Henry’s position.

the succession. In 1337 Edward declared a war that was to last a hundred years. 爱德华三世通过他母亲伊莎贝拉的关系宣布继承法国王位，但法国人民拒绝承认，因为萨利法典规定女子不得继承王位，于是在1337年，爱德华对法宣战，战争持续了一百年。

48. Black Death swept through England in the summer of 1348 without warning. It killed between one half and one third of the population of England.

1348年夏天，黑死病横扫全英国，没有任何征兆，它夺去了三分之一到一半的英国人口。

49. In 1351 the government issued a statute of Laborers which made it a crime for peasant to ask for more wage or for their employers to pay more than the rates laid down by the Justice of the Peace.

1351年政府颁布“劳工法令”。规定农民们涨工资的要求或者雇主支付比地方官制定的工资水平高的工资都是犯罪。

50. Although the Peasant Uprising of 1381, was brutally suppressed, it had far-reaching significance in English history. It dealt a telling blow to villeinage and a new class of yeomen farmers emerged, paving the way for the development of capitalism.

尽管1381年的农民起义被血腥镇压了，但在英国历史上留下了深远的影响。它沉重打击了封建农奴制度，产生了全新的自耕农阶级，为资本主义发展铺设了道路

第四节 过渡时期的英国

51. The name the Wars of Roses was referring to the battles between the great house of Lancaster, symbolized by the red rose, and that of York, symbolized by the white. 玫瑰战争这个词是指两个家族间的战争，以红玫瑰为标志的蓝凯斯特家族和以白玫瑰为标志的约克家族。

52. In 1455, after Henry Ⅵ hand completely lost his reason, war broke out between the Yorkists and the Lancastrians. In 1461, the Duke of York’s son Edward, emerged the victor and was proclaimed as Edward Ⅳ.

1455年，当亨利六世再也没有理由（将国家交给摄政者管理时），战争在约克家族成员和蓝凯斯特家族成员中爆发了。1461年，约克公爵的儿子爱德华战胜成功成为爱德华四世。

53. On August 22, 1458, the last battle of the Wars of Roses was fought between Richard Ⅲ and Henry Tudor.

1458年8月22日，玫瑰战争的最后一次战役在理查德三世和亨利都铎之间展开。

54. The reform began as a struggle for a divorce and end in freedom from the Papacy. Henry Ⅷ wanted to divorce Catherine of Aragon. But Pope Clement Ⅲ refused to annul his marriage to Catherine.

改革以争取离婚开始，以脱离教皇而告终，亨利八世想与阿拉贡的公主凯瑟琳离婚，但教皇克莱蒙拒绝取消凯瑟琳和亨利八世之间的婚姻。

55. Henry’s reform was to get rid of the English Church’s connection with the Pope, and make an independent Church of England.

亨利改革的目的是拜托英国教会与教皇的联系，成立独立的英格兰教会。

56. The laws (e.g. the Act of Succession of 1534 and the Act of Supremacy of 1535) made his reform possible stressed the power of the monarch and certainly strengthened Henry’s position.

使改革可行的法律（如1534年的《继承法案》和1535年的《至尊法案》）强调了君主的权利并自然加强了亨利的地位。

57. When Mary Tudor became Queen after Edward, she attempted to forcibly recovert England to Roman Catholicism. People call her “Blood Mary”。

玛丽都铎再爱德华后当上女王，她试图强迫人们重新皈依罗马天主教。人们叫她“血腥玛丽”。

58. Elizabeth’s reign was a time of confident English national and of great achievements in literature and other acts, in exploration and in battle.

伊丽莎白统治时期，人民自信，民族主义高涨，在文学和其它艺术方面，在探险和对外作战方面都取得了巨大成功。

59. Elizabeth’s religious reform was a compromise of views. She broke Mary’s ties with Rome and restored her father’s independent Church of England.

伊丽莎白的宗教改革是各种观点的妥协，她中断玛丽与罗马的关系，恢复父王独立的英格兰教会。

60. For nearly 30 years Elizabeth successfully played against each other the two great Catholic powers, France and Spain.

将近30年来，伊丽莎白成功地令两大天主教强国法国和西班牙互相争斗，从而免于英国卷入任何主要的欧洲国的冲突。

61. The destruction of Spanish Armada showed England’s superiority as a naval power. It enabled England to become a great trading and colonizing country in the years to come.

西班牙无敌舰队的灭亡表明英国海上强国的优势，使英国在随后的几年能成为强大的贸易和殖民国。

62. Renaissance was the transitional period between the Middle Ages and modern times, covering the years c1350-c1650. In England, the Renaissance was usually thought of as the beginning with the accession of the House of Tudor to the throne in 1485. 文艺复兴处于中世纪向现代的过渡时期。覆盖1350-1650年。英国的文艺复兴通常被认为开始于1485年都铎家族的继位。

63. English Renaissance achieved its first expression in the so-called Elizabethan drama. Its first exponents were Christopher Marlowe, Ben Jonson, and William Shakespeare.

英国文艺复兴最好的表达方式是所谓的伊丽莎白戏剧。最好的代表任务是克里斯托夫。马洛；本。琼生和威廉。莎士比亚。

64. English Renaissance literature is primarily artistic, rather than philosophical scholarly.

英国文艺复兴时的文学主要是艺术的，而非哲学及学术的。

65. William Shakespeare wrote 37 plays, including the following tragedies: Romeo and Juliet, Julius Caesar, Macbeth, Harmlet, king Lear, Othello, and Cymbeline.

威廉莎士比亚共写了37个剧本。悲剧包括：罗密欧与朱莉叶；朱略斯恺撒；麦克白；哈姆雷特；李尔王；奥赛罗和辛白林。

66. The most famous of the Catholic compiracies was the Gunpowder plot of 1605. on

November 5, 1605, a few fanatical Catholics attempted to blow King James and his ministers up in the House of Parliament where Guy Fawkes had planted barrels of gunpowder in the cellars.

最著名的天主教阴谋是1605年的火药阴谋案。1605年11月5日，几个狂热的天主教徒企图在议会大厦炸死国王和大臣，盖伊福克斯已在地窖放了炸药桶。

67. James Ⅰ , a firm believer in the Divine Right of Kings, would have preferred on Parliament at all and actually did without one for seven years.

詹姆斯一世坚决相信“君权神授”，他根本不想要议会，而且连续7年从未召集过。

68. It was at this Parliament that the king was forced to accept the Petition of Right regarded as the second Magna Carta.

正式这届议会迫使国王接受《民权情愿书》——被视为第二个《大宪章》。

69. On August 22, 1642, the First Civil War began. The king’s men were called Cavaliers, and the supporters of Parliament were called Roundheads.

1642.8.22，第一次内战爆发，支持国王者被成为“骑士派”，支持议会者被成为“圆颅派”。

70. Charles was tried by a High Court of Justice, found guilty of have levied war against his kingdom and the Parliament, condemned to death, and executed on a scaffold outside the Banqueting House at Whitehall on January 30, 1649.

查尔斯在一级高级法院受审，犯有对王国和议会发动战争之罪，被判死刑，并于1649.1.30在宴会宫窗外的绞刑架上绞死。

71. The English Civil War not only overthrew feudal system in England but also shocked the foundation of the feudal rule in Europe.

英国内战不仅推翻叻英国的封建制度，而且动摇叻欧洲封建统治的基础。

72. Meanwhile, Oliver Cromwell and the “Rump” declared England a commonwealth. In December 1653,by an Instrument of Government, he became Lord Protector of the commonwealth of England.

克伦威尔用“小议会”取代“残余国会”，1653.12，根据《施政文件》，他成了英格兰共和国护国会。

73. The Parliament thus elected in 1660 resolved the crisis by asking the late king’s son to return from his long exile in France as king CharlesⅡ. The Restoration as it was called, was relatively smooth.

1660年选出的议会要求上任国王的儿子从长期流亡的法国回国做查尔斯二世，从而解决叻危机，所谓王权复辟相对平和。

74. Te Eglish politicians rejected JamesⅡ, and appealed to a protestant king, William of Orange to invade and take the English throne. This take-over became known as the Glorious Revolution.

英国政客反对詹姆斯二世。他们呼吁新教的国王，奥兰治亲王威廉入侵英国夺取王位。这就是“光荣革命”。

75. William and Mary jointly accepted the Bill of Rights which confirmed the principle of parliamentary supremacy. Thus the age of constitutioned monarchy of a monarchy. 威廉和玛丽共同接受了《权利法案》，此法案确立了议会权利至高无上的原则，议会限制王权的君主立宪制时代开始了。

76. It was during Anne’s reign that the name great Britain came into being when in 1707, the Act of Union united England and Scotland.

正是安妮统治的1707年，大不列颠这个名称产生，《联合法》把英格兰和苏格兰统一起来。

第五节 英帝国的兴衰

77、The Whigs were those who opposed absolute monarchy and supported the right to religious freedom for nonconformists. The Tories were traditionalists who wanted to preserve the powers of the monarchy and the church of England.辉格党人是指哪些反对绝对主权，支持新教徒宗教自由权利的人，托利党人是指那些支持世袭王权的人。

78. During the late 19th and early 19th centuries the open-field system ended when the Enclosure acts enabled weal their landowner to seize any land to which tenants could prove no legal title.

18世纪末，19世纪初，《圈地法》地颁布使较富有的土地主摄取佃农不能证明合法的土地，因此“开放田地”结束。

79.The industrial revolution refers to the mechanization of industry and the consequent change in social and economic organization in Britain in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.

工业革命指17世纪末，18世纪初英国工业的机械化，以及因此而导致的社会结构和经济结构的变化。

80.The limited monarchy which resulted from the powerful economic interests in the community could exert their influence on Government policy.

君主权利的限制，使得强大的经济利益集团能对议会政策施加影响。

81．The first steam engine was devised by Thomas newcomer at the end of 17th century, and the Scottish inventor james watt modified and improved the design in 1765. 十七世纪末，托马斯。纽卡墨设计了第一台蒸气机，苏格兰发明家詹姆斯。华特修改并改良了设计方案（1765）。

82．As a result of the industrial revolution, Britain was by 1830 the “workshop of the world”.

作为工业革命的结果，英国到1830年止成为“世界工场”。

83．In the 18th and 19th centuries, the lords had far more influence than it has today and the commons were also really gentry on the edge of aristocracy.

18世纪和19世纪，上议院比今日的影响大的多，并且下议院处于贵族的边缘上，也相当“贵气”。

84．The chartist movement was, however, the first nationwide working class movement and drew attention to serious problems.

宪章运动是第一次全国范围的工人运动，引起了对许多严重问题的关注。

85．In 1900, representatives of the trade unions, the ILP, and a number of socialist societies set up the labour representation for the general which changed its name to the labour party in time for the general election for 1906.

1900年，工会代表，独立工党和许多小型社会主义社团一起成立叻工人代表委员会。1906年的大选迫使工人代表委员会及时更名为工党。

86．English colonial expansion began with the colonization of Newfoundland in 1583. By 1900 Britain had built up a big empire, “on which the sun never set”.

英国殖民扩张始于1583年纽芬兰的殖民化，到1900年，英国已经建立了“太阳永不落”的大英帝国。

87．During world war Ⅰ， Britain lost over a million people, most of them under age of 25.

一战中英国死亡100多万人口，大多数为25岁以下的年轻人。

88．Chamberlain was not the man to lead his country in such a crisis, Winston Churchill , his first lord of admiralty took over as Prime Minster in 1940.

张伯伦在危急关头不能领导国家，因此他的首相温斯顿。邱吉尔于1940年接替首相职位。

89．In January, 1973, Britain finally became a member of the Europe Economic Community, which was established by the Treaty of Rome in 1957.

1973年1月，英国只能终于成为欧洲经济共同体的正式成员国，共同体是根据1957年的《罗马条例》成立的。

90．The election of 1979 returned the conservative party to power and Margaret Chatcher became the first woman prime minister in Britain.

1979年的选举令保守党再次上台，玛格丽特，撒切尔成为英国首位女首相。

第六节 英国经济

91．Between 1950 and 1973, Britain’s GDP grew at an average annual rate of 3%. Growth was hampered by chronic balance of payment deficits. The term “Britain disease” is now used to characterize Britain’s economic decline.

1950年至1973年兼，英国的国民生产总值平均年增长率为3％。经济发展受阻于长期收支平衡的赤字，现在常用“英国病”这个词来概括英国经济衰退的特征

92．By the end of 1947, the British economy had returned to its pre-war levels. The British economy in the 50s and 60s is characterized by show but steady growth, low unemployment and great material prosperity with rising standard of consumption. 到1947年底，英国经济恢复到战前水平，50到60年代，英国经济的特点是发展缓慢而稳定，失业少，消费上升，物质极度繁荣。

93．John m Keynes suggested that the government should use fiscal and monetary policy to fine-tune aggregate demand to achieve full employment, while using prices and incomes policy to suppress inflation at source.

约翰，凯恩斯建议政府在利用物价和收入政策从根本上抑制通胀的同时，应该利用财政和货币政策来微调社会总需求，以达到充分就业的目的。

94．The end of 1973 witnessed the first oil shock. As a result the rate of inflation rose to 16% in 1974. In the 1970s among the developed countries Britain maintained the lowest growth rate and the highest inflation rate.

1973年爆发了第一次石油危机，结果通胀率在1974年上升到了16％，70年代在发达国家中，英国增长率最低而通胀率最高。

95．The new economic programmed adopted by Mrs. Thatcher was based on the new classical school of thought. Privatization deregulation and market liberalization replaced prices and incomes control and state interventionism.

由撒切尔夫人提出的新经济计划以新的古典思想学派理论为基础，私有化、撤销价格管制和市场自由化取代了物价和收入控制及政府的干涉主义。

96．Mrs. Thatcher’s government took numerous measures to improve the efficiency of the economy during the past decade using both macroeconomic and microeconomic. 在过去十年，撒切尔政府运用宏观经济政策和微观经济政策，采取许多措施提高经济效益。

97．Just as the 1940s decade is remembered in Britain as the era of nationalization. The 1980s will be remembered as the decade of privatization. During past decade almost 40% of the Britain state enterprises were privatized.

正如20世纪40年代在英国以国有化的十年被记住一样，80年代的十年将以私有化被人们记住，过去十年里几乎有40％的国有企业被私有化。

98．Compared with many other countries, Britain has considerable reserves of coal. It was the development of Britain’s coalfields which led to the Industrial Revolution. Today British coal mining is called a “sick” industry.

和其他许多国家相比，英国煤储备相当丰富。正是英国煤田的发展引起了工业革命，今天的英国媒业被称为“生病”工业。

99．Later nature gas was discovered in 1965 and oil in 1970 under the North Sea. Today Britain is not only self-sufficient in oil but also has a surplus for export. 过去天然气和石油分别在1965年和1970年在北海发现，今天的英国石油不仅能自给自足，还有盈余出口。

100．The Midlands has deposits of coal and iron located near each other. Because of these resource the Midlands became the center of steal industry. But today local supplies have became exhausted ore must be imported from Spain?Sweden and elsewhere. The original advantages of the location of many steal works in Britain have gone. 中部地区既有煤储藏也有铁矿石储藏，因此中部地区成为钢铁中心。但今天当地储备已枯竭，矿石必须从西班牙、瑞典和其他地方进口，英国许多钢铁厂原先的地理优势已经一去不返。

101．The main textile producing regions of Britain are the east Yorkshire and humberside, and northern Ireland. Britain’s textile industry has declined markedly especially in the cotton 、jute and linen production. But the production of high quality woolen goods has not been so severely affected.

英国主要纺织基地是现在的中东部，约克郡和汉伯塞德郡及北爱尔兰。英国纺织业德显著衰退尤其表现在棉布、黄麻和亚麻布的生产上。但高质的羊毛商品还未受影响。

101．The main textile producing regions of Britain are the east Yorkshire and humberside, and northern Ireland. Britain’s textile industry has declined markedly especially in the cotton 、jute and linen production. But the production of high

quality woolen goods has not been so severely affected.

英国主要纺织基地是现在的中东部，约克郡和汉伯塞德郡及北爱尔兰。英国纺织业德显著衰退尤其表现在棉布、黄麻和亚麻布的生产上。但高质的羊毛商品还未受影响。

102．In the early 20th century the motor vehicle industry in Britain was developed in the west midlands and South East of England. The British motor industry is now dominated by four firms(Ford, the Rover Group, GM-Vauxhall, and Peugeot)

20世纪初，英国汽车工业在中地西部和英格兰东南部得到发展，现在英国地汽车业受控于四大公司（福特，拉夫集团，GM凡克斯豪和波昂特）。

103．There are three areas in Britain which have been some high-tech industrial growth: the area between London and South Wales, the Cambridge area and East Anglia and the area between Glasgow and Edinburgh in Scotland.

英国高科技工业发展较好的地区有三个：伦敦和南威尔士之间的地区、东英吉利的剑桥地区以及苏格兰的哥拉斯哥和爱丁堡之间的地区。

104．The British were pioneers in modern agriculture and were among the first to bring science and machinery to farming. In British only 3% of the population are farmers but they manage 70% of the land and managed like an industrial business.

英国是现代农业先驱，他们领先在农业中引进科学和机械。英国只有3％的农业人口，但他们却管理70％的土地。

105.There are mainly six farming types in Britain. They are arable farming, dairy farming, stock farming, mixed farming, hill farming and market gardening.

英国主要有六种农作业类型：耕地业、乳品业、家畜业、混合农业、山地畜牧业和市场果蔬业。

106．Arable farming emphasizes crop production and occurs on the more fertile soils. The chief crops are wheat, barely, oats, sugar beer and potatoes. During farming rears cattle primarily for milk production. Western regions with moderate rainfull, mild winters and cool summers are often important dairy areas.

耕地业重点是农作物生产，所需较肥沃的土壤，主要农作物有小麦，大麦，燕麦，甜菜和土豆。乳品业饲养的牛主要供生产牛奶。因此，降雨量适中，冬天温和，夏天凉爽的西部地区是重要的奶制业地区。

107．Stock farming rears livestock primarily for meat (e.g. beef , lamb). Market gardening is the growing of vegetable and fruit which can be rapidly transported to market while fresh.

家畜业饲养家畜主要是提供肉食（例如牛肉和羊肉）。市场果蔬业种植蔬菜和水果，在新鲜时就快捷的运输到市场出售。

108．Britain is the fifth largest trading nation in the world. Napoleon called it a “nation of shopkeepers” and it has remained one even after the end of empire and the loss of its political and economic hegemony.

英国是世界第五大贸易国，拿破仑称之为“店主之国”，即使英国瓦解，失去经济和政治霸权地位之后，还是一直保持贸易强国身份。

英语语言学笔记

1.1. What is language?

“Language is system of arbitrary vocal symbols used for human communication. It is a system, since linguistic elements are arranged systematically, rather than randomly. Arbitrary, in the sense that there is usually no intrinsic connection between a work (like “book”) and the object it refers to. This explains and is explained by the fact that different languages have different “books”: “book” in English, “livre” in French, in Japanese, in Chinese, “check” in Korean. It is symbolic, because words are associated with objects, actions, ideas etc. by nothing but convention. Namely, people use the sounds or vocal forms to symbolize what they wish to refer to. It is vocal, because sound or speech is the primary medium for all human languages, developed or “new”. Writing systems came much later than the spoken forms. The fact that small children learn and can only learn to speak (and listen) before they write (and read) also indicates that language is primarily vocal, rather than written. The term “human” in the definition is meant to specify that language is human specific.

1.2. What are design features of language?

“Design features” here refer to the defining properties of human language that tell the difference between human language and any system of animal communication. They are arbitrariness, duality, productivity, displacement, cultural transmission and interchangeability

1.3. What is arbitrariness?

By “arbitrariness”, we mean there is no logical connection between meanings and sounds (see I .1). A dog might be a pig if only the first person or group of persons had used it for a pig. Language is therefore largely arbitrary. But language is not absolutely seem to be some sound-meaning association, if we think of echo words, like “bang”, “crash”, “roar”, which are motivated in a certain sense. Secondly, some compounds (words compounded to be one word ) are not entirely arbitrary either. “Type” and “write” are opaque or unmotivated words, while “type-writer” is less so, or more transparent or motivated than the words that make it. So we can say “arbitrariness” is a matter of degree.

1.4.What is duality?

Linguists refer “duality” (of structure) to the fact that in all languages so far investigated, one finds two levels of structure or patterning. At the first, higher level, language is analyzed in terms of combinations of meaningful units (such as morphemes, words etc.) ; at the second, lower level, it is seen as a sequence of segments which lack any meaning in themselves, but which combine to form units of meaning. According to Hu Zhanglin et al. (p.6) , language is a system of two sets of structures, one of sounds and the other of meaning. This is important for the workings of language. A small number of semantic units (words), and these units of meaning can be arranged and rearranged into an infinite number of sentences (note that we have dictionaries of words, but no dictionary of sentences!). Duality makes it possible for a person to talk about anything within his knowledge. No animal communication system enjoys this duality, or even approaches this honour.

1.5.What is productivity?

Productivity refers to the ability to the ability to construct and understand an indefinitely large number of sentences in one’s native language, including those that has never heard before, but that are appropriate to the speaking situation. No one has ever said or heard “A red-eyed elephant is dancing on the small hotel bed with an African gibbon”, but he can say it when necessary, and he can understand it in right register. Different from artistic creativity, though, productivity never goes outside the language, thus also called “rule-bound creativity” (by N.Chomsky).

1.6.What is displacement?

“Displacement”, as one of the design features of the human language, refers to the fact that one can talk about things that are not present, as easily as he does things present. In other words, one can refer to real and unreal things, things of the past, of the present, of the future. Language itself can be talked about too. When a man, for example, is crying to a woman, about something, it might be something that had occurred, or something that is occurring, or something that is to occur. When a dog is barking, however, you can decide it is barking for something or at someone that exists now and there. It couldn’t be bow-wowing sorrowfully for dome lost love or a bone to be lost. The bee’s system, nonetheless, has a small share of “displacement”, but it is an unspeakable tiny share.

1.7.What is cultural transmission?

This means that language is not biologically transmitted from generation to generation, but that the details of the linguistic system must be learned anew by each speaker. It is true that the capacity for language in human beings(N. Chomsky called it “language acquisition device”, or LAD) has a genetic basis, but the particular language a person learns to speak is a cultural one other than a genetic one like the dog’s barking system. If a human being is brought up in isolation he cannot acquire language. The Wolf Child reared by the pack of wolves turned out to speak the wolf’s roaring “tongue” when he was saved. He learned thereafter, with no small difficulty, the ABC of a certain human language.

1.8.What is interchangeability?

Interchangeability means that any human being can be both a producer and a receiver of messages. We can say, and on other occasions can receive and understand, for example, “Please do something to make me happy.” Though some people (including me) suggest that there is sex differentiation in the actual language use, in other words, men and women may say different things, yet in principle there is no sound, or word or sentence that a man can utter and a woman cannot, or vice versa. On the other hand, a person can be the speaker while the other person is the listener and as the turn moves on to the listener, he can be the speaker and the first speaker is to listen. It is turn-taking that makes social communication possible and acceptable.

Some male birds, however, utter some calls which females do not (or cannot?) , and certain kinds of fish have similar haps mentionable. When a dog barks, all the neighbouring dogs bark. Then people around can hardly tell which dog (dogs) is (are0 “speaking” and which listening.

1.9.Why do linguists say language is human specific?

First of all, human language has six “design features” which animal communication systems do not have, at least not in the true sense of them(see I .2-8). Let’s borrow

C. F. Hocket’s Chart that compares human language with some animals’ systems, from Wang Gang(1998,p.8).

Secondly, linguists have done a lot trying to teach animals such as chimpanzees to speak a human language but have achieved nothing inspiring. Washoe, a female chimpanzee, was brought up like a human child by Beatnice and Alan Gardner. She was taught “American sign Language”, and learned a little that made the teachers happy but did mot make the linguistics circle happy, for few believed in teaching chimpanzees.

Thirdly, a human child reared among animals cannot speak a human language, not even when he is taken back and taught to lo to so (see the “Wolf Child”in I.7)

1.10.What functions does language have?

Language has at least seven functions: phatic, directive, Informative, interrogative, expressive, evocative and performative. According to Wang Gang (1988,p.11), language has three main functions: a tool of communication, a tool whereby people learn about the world, and a tool by which people learn about the world, and a tool by which people create art . M .A. K.Halliday, representative of the London school, recognizes three “Macro-Functions”: ideational, interpersonal and textual(see !.11-17;see HU Zhuanglin et al.,pp10-13,pp394-396).

1.11What is the phatic function?

The “phatic function” refers to language being used for setting up a certain atmosphere or maintaining social contacts(rather than for exchanging information or ideas). Greetings, farewells, and comments on the weather in English and on clothing in Chinese all serve this function. Much of the phatic language (e.g. “How are you?” “Fine, thanks.”) is insincere if taken literally, but it is important. If you don't say “Hello” to a friend you meet, or if you don’t answer his “Hi”, you ruin your friendship.

1.12. What is the directive function?

The “directive function” means that language may be used to get the hearer to do something. Most imperative sentences perform this function, e. g., “Tell me the result when you finish.” Other syntactic structures or sentences of other sorts can, according to J.Austin and J.Searle’s “indrect speech act theory”(see Hu Zhuanglin et al.,pp271-278) at least, serve the purpose of direction too, e.g., “If I were you, I would have blushed to the bottom of my ears!”

1.13.What is the informative function?

Language serves an “informational function” when used to tell something, characterized by the use of declarative sentences. Informative statements are often labelled as true(truth) or false(falsehood). According to P.Grice’s “Cooperative Principle”(see Hu Zhuanglin et al., pp282-283), one ought not to violate the “Maxim of Quality”, when he is informing at all.

1.14.What is the interrogative function?

When language is used to obtain information, it serves an “interrogative function”. This includes all questions that expect replies, statements, imperatives etc.,

according to the “indirect speech act theory”, may have this function as well, e.g., “I’d like to know you better.” This may bring forth a lot of personal information. Note that rhetorical questions make an exception, since they demand no answer, at least not the reader’s/listener’s answer.

1.15.What is the expressive function?

The “expressive function” is the use of language to reveal something about the feelings or attitudes of the speaker. Subconscious emotional ejaculations are good examples, like “Good heavens!” “My God!” Sentences like “I’m sorry about the delay” can serve as good examples too, though in a subtle way. While language is used for the informative function to pass judgement on the truth or falsehood of statements, language used for the expressive function evaluates, appraises or asserts the speaker’s own attitudes.

1.16.What is the evocative function?

The “evocative function” is the use of language to create certain feelings in the hearer. Its aim is , for example, to amuse, startle, antagonize, soothe, worry or please. Jokes(not practical jokes, though) are supposed to amuse or entertain the listener; advertising to urge customers to purchase certain commodities; propaganda to influence public opinion. Obviously, the expressive and the evocative functions often go together, i.e., you may express, for example, your personal feelings about a political issue but end up by evoking the same feeling in, or imposing it on, your listener. That’s also the case with the other way round.

1.17.What is the performative function?

This means people speak to “do things” or perform actions. On certain occasions the utterance itself as an action is more important than what words or sounds constitute the uttered sentence. When asked if a third Yangtze bridge ought to be built in Wuhan, the mayor may say “OK”, which means more than speech, and more than an average social individual may do for the construction. The judge’s imprisonment sentence, the president’s war or independence declaration, etc., are performatives as well(see J.Austin’s speech Act Theory, Hu Zhuanglin, ecal.,pp271-278).

1.18.What is linguistics?

“Linguistics” is the scientific study of language. It studies not just one language of any one society, but the language of all human beings. A linguist, though, does not have to know and use a large number of languages, but to investigate how each language is constructed. He is also concerned with how a language varies from dialect to dialect, from class to class, how it changes from century to century, how children acquire their mother tongue, and perhaps how a person learns or should learn a foreign language. In short, linguistics studies the general principles whereupon all human languages are constructed and operate as systems of communication in their societies or communities (see Hu Zhuanglin et al.,pp20-22)

1.19.What makes linguistics a science?

Since linguistics is the scientific study of language, it ought to base itself upon the systematic, investigation of language data which aims at discovering the true nature of language and its underlying system. To make sense of the data, a linguist usually has conceived some hypotheses about the language structure, to be checked

against the observed or observable facts. In order to make his analysis scientific, a linguist is usually guided by four principles: exhaustiveness, consistency, and objectivity. Exhaustiveness means he should gather all the materials relevant to the study and give them an adequate explanation, in spite of the complicatedness. He is to leave no linguistic “stone” unturned. Consistency means there should be no contradiction between different parts of the total statement. Economy means a linguist should pursue brevity in the analysis when it is possible. Objectivity implies that since some people may be subjective in the study, a linguist should be (or sound at least) objective, matter-of-face, faithful to reality, so that his work constitutes part of the linguistics research.

1.20.What are the major branches of linguistics?

The study of language as a whole is often called general linguistics (e.g.Hu Zhuanglin et al.,1988;Wang Gang,1988).But a linguist sometimes is able to deal with only one aspect of language at a time, thus the arise of various branches : phonetics ,phonology ,morphology, syntax, semantics, sociolinguistics, applied linguistics, pragmatics, psycholinguistics, lexicology, lexicography, etymology, etc.

1.21.What are synchronic and diachronic studies?

The description of a language at some point of time (as if it stopped developing) is a synchrony study (synchrony). The description of a language as it changes through time is a diachronic study (diachronic). An essay entitled “On the Use of THE”, for example, may be synchronic, if the author does not recall the past of THE, and it may also be diachronic if he claims to cover a large range or period of time wherein THE has undergone tremendous alteration (see Hu Zhuanglin et al.,pp25-27).

1.22.What is speech and what is writing?

No one needs the repetition of the general principle of linguistic analysis, namely, the primacy of speech over writing. Speech is primary, because it existed long long before writing systems came into being. Genetically children learn to speak before learning to write. Secondly, written forms just represent in this way or that the speech sounds : individual sounds, as in English and French as in Japanese. In contrast to speech, spoken form of language, writing as written codes, gives language new scope and use that speech does not have. Firstly, messages can be carried through space so that people can write to each other. Secondly, messages can be carried through time thereby, so that people of our time can be carried through time thereby, so that people of our time can read Beowulf, Samuel Johnson, and Edgar A. Poe. Thirdly, oral messages are readily subject to distortion, either intentional or unintentional (causing misunderstanding or malentendu), while written messages allow and encourage repeated unalterable reading.

Most modern linguistic analysis is focused on speech, different from grammarians of the last century and theretofore.

1.23.What are the differences between the descriptive and the prescriptive approaches?

A linguistic study is “descriptive” if it only describes and analyses the facts of language, and “prescriptive” if it tries to lay down rules for “correct”

language behavior. Linguistic studies before this century were largely prescriptive because many early grammars were largely prescriptive because many early grammars were based on “high” (literary or religious) written records. Modern linguistics is mostly descriptive, however. It (the latter) believes that whatever occurs in natural speech (hesitation, incomplete utterance, misunderstanding, etc.) should be described in the analysis, and not be marked as incorrect, abnormal, corrupt, or lousy. These, with changes in vocabulary and structures, need to be explained also.

1.24.What is the difference between langue and parole?

F. de Saussure refers “langue”to the abstract linguistic system shared by all the members of a speech community and refers “parole” to the actual or actualized language, or the realization of langue. Langue is abstract, parole specific to the speaking situation; langue not actually spoken by an individual, parole always a naturally occurring event; langue relatively stable and systematic, parole is a mass of confused facts, thus not suitable for systematic investigation. What a linguist ought to do, according to Saussure, is to abstract langue from instances of parole, i. e. to discover the regularities governing all instances of parole and make than the subject of linguistics. The langue-parole distinction is of great importance, which casts great influence on later linguists.

1.25.What is the difference between competence and performance?

According to N. Chomsky, “competence” is the ideal language user’s knowledge of the rules of his language, and “performance” is the actual realization of this knowledge in utterances. The former enables a speaker to produce and understand an indefinite number of sentences and to recognize grammatical mistakes and ambiguities.

A speaker’s competence is stable while his performance is often influenced by psychological and social factors. So a speaker’s performance does not always match or equal his supposed competence.

Chomsky believes that linguists ought to study competence, rather than performance. In other words, they should discover what an ideal speaker knows of his native language.

Chomsky’s competence-performance distinction is not exactly the same as , though similar to , F. de Saussure’s langue-parole distinction. Langue is a social product, and a set of conventions for a community, while competence is deemed as a property of the mind of each individual. Sussure looks at language more from a sociological or sociolinguistic point of view than N. Chomsky since the latter deals with his issues psychologically or psycholinguistically.

1.26.What is linguistic potential? What is actual linguistic behaviour?

These two terms, or the potential-behavior distinction, were made by M. A. K. Halliday in the 1960s, from a functional point of view. There is a wide range of things a speaker can do in his culture, and similarly there are many things he can say, for example, to many people, on many topics. What he actually says (i.e. his “actual linguistic behavior”) on a certain occasion to a certain person is what he has chosen from many possible injustice items, each of which he could have said (linguistic potential).

1.27.In what way do language, competence and linguistic potential agree? In what way do they differ? And their counterparts?

Langue, competence and linguistic potential have some similar features, but they are innately different (see 1.25). Langue is a social product, and a set of speaking conventions; competence is a property or attribute of each ideal speaker’s mind; linguistic potential is all the linguistic corpus or repertoire available from which the speaker chooses items for the actual utterance situation. In other words, langue is invisible but reliable abstract system. Competence means “knowing”, and linguistic potential a set of possibilities for “doing” or “performing actions”. They are similar in that they all refer to the constant underlying the utterances that constitute what Saussure, Chomsky and Halliday respectively called parole, performance and actual linguistic behavior. Paole, performance and actual linguistic behavior enjoy more similarities than differences.

1.28.What is phonetics?

“Phonetics” is the science which studies the characteristics of human sound-making, especially those sounds used in speech, and provides methods for their description, classification and transcription (see Hu Zhuanglin et al., pp39-40), speech sounds may be studied in different ways, thus by three different branches of phonetics.

(1)Articulatory phonetics; the branch of phonetics that examines the way in which a speech sound is produced to discover which vocal organs are involved and how they coordinate in the process. (2)Auditory phonetics, the branch of phonetic research from the hearer’s point of view, looking into the impression which a speech sound makes on the hearer as mediated by the ear , the auditory nerve and the brain.

(3)Acoustic phonetics: the study of the physical properties of speech sounds, as transmitted between mouth and ear.

Most phoneticians, however, are interested in articulatory phonetics.

1.29.How are the vocal organs formed?

The vocal organs (see Figure1, Hu Zhuanglin et al.,p41), or speech organs, are organs of the human body whose secondary use is in the production of speech sounds. The vocal organs can be considered as consisting of three parts; the initiator of the air-stream, the producer of voice and the resonating cavities.

1.30.What is place of articulation?

It refers to the place in the mouth where, for example, the obstruction occurs, resulting in the utterance of a consonant. Whatever sound is pronounced, at least some vocal organs will get involved,e. g. lips, hard palate etc., so a consonant may be one of the following (1 )bilabial:[p,b,m]; (2) labiodental:[f,v]; (3) dental:[,];

(4) alveolar:[t,d,l,n.s,z]; (5) retroflex; (6) palato-alveolar:[,]; (7) palatal:[j];

(8) velar[k,g,]; (9) uvular; (10)glottal:[h].

Some sounds involve the simultaneous use of two places of articulation. For example, the English [w]has both an approximation of the two lips and that two lips and that of the tongue and the soft palate, and may be termed “labial-velar”.

1.31.What is the manner of articulation?

The “manner of articulation” literally means the way a sound is articulated. At a given place of articulation, the airstream may be obstructed in various ways, resulting in various manners of articulation, are the following : (1) plosive:[p,b,t,d,k,g]; (2) nasal:[m,n,]; (3) trill; (4) tap or flap; (5) lateral:[l];

(6) fricative:[f,v,s,z]; (7) approximant:[w,j]; (8) affricate:[].

1.32.How do phoneticians classify vowels?

Phoneticians, in spite of the difficulty, group vowels in 5 types: (1) long and short vowels, e.g.,[i:,]; (4) rounded and unround vowels,e.g.[,i]; (5) pure and gliding vowels, e.g.[I,].

1.33.What is IPA? When did it come into being ?

The IPA, abbreviation of “International Phonetic Alphabet”, is a compromise system making use of symbols of all sources, including diacritics indicating length, stress and intonation, indicating phonetic variation. Ever since it was developed in 1888, IPA has undergone a number of revisions.

1.34.What is narrow transcription and what is broad transcription?

In handbook of phonetics, Henry Sweet made a distinction between “narrow” and “broad” transcriptions, which he called “Narrow Romic”. The former was meant to symbolize all the possible speech sounds, including even the most minute shades of pronunciation while Broad Romic or transcription was intended to indicate only those sounds capable of distinguishing one word from another in a given language.

1.35.What is phonology? What is difference between phonetics and phonology?

(1)“Phonology” is the study of sound systems- the invention of distinctive speech sounds that occur in a language and the patterns wherein they fall. Minimal pair, phonemes, allophones, free variation, complementary distribution, etc., are all to be investigated by a phonologist.

(2)Phonetics, as discussed in I.28, is the branch of linguistics studying the characteristics of speech sounds and provides methods for their description, classification and transcription. A phonetist is mainly interested in the physical properties of the speech sounds, whereas a phonologist studies what he believes are meaningful sounds related with their semantic features, morphological features, and the way they are conceived and printed in the depth of the mind phonological knowledge permits a speaker to produce sounds which from meaningful utterances, to recognize a foreign “accent”, to make up new words, to add the appropriate phonetic segments to from plurals and past tenses, to know what is and what is not a sound in one’s language.

1.36.What is a phone? What is a phoneme? What is an allophone?

A “phone” is a phonetic unit or segment. The speech sounds we hear and produce during linguistic communication are all phones. When we hear the following words pronounced:[pit], [tip], [spit], etc., the similar phones we have heard are [p] for one thing, and three different[p]’s, readily making possible the “narrow transcription or diacritics”. Phones may and may not distinguish meaning. A “phoneme” is a phonological unit; it is a unit that is of distinctive value. As an abstract unit, a phoneme is not any particular sound, but rather it is represented or realized by a certain phone in a certain phonetic context. For example, the phoneme[p] is represented differently in [pit], [tip] and [spit].

The phones representing a phoneme are called its “allophones”, i. e., the different (i.e., phones) but do not make one word so phonetically different as to create a new word or a new meaning thereof. So the different[p]’s in the above words are the

allophones of the same phoneme[p]. How a phoneme is represented by a phone, or which allophone is to be used, is determined by the phonetic context in which it occurs. But the choice of an allophone is not random. In most cases it is rule-governed; these rules are to be found out by a phonologist.

1.37.What are minimal pairs?

When two different phonetic forms are identical in every way except for one sound segment which occurs in the same place in the string , the two forms(i. e., word) are supposed to form a “minimal pair”, e.g., “pill” and “bill”, “pill” and “till”, “till” and “dill”, “till” and “kill”, etc. All these words together constitute a minimal set. They are identical in form except for the initial consonants. There are many minimal pairs in English, which makes it relatively easy to know what are English phonemes. It is of great importance to find the minimal pairs when a phonologist is dealing with the sound system of an unknown language(see Hu Zhuanglin et al., pp65-66).

1.38.What is free variation?

If two sounds occurring in the same environment do not contrast; namely, if the substitution of one for the other does not generate a new word form but merely a different pronunciation of the same word, the two sounds then are said to be in “free variation”. The plosives, for example, may not be exploded when they occur before another plosive or a nasal (e. g., act, apt, good morning). The minute distinctions may, if necessary, be transcribed in diacritics. These unexploded and exploded plosives are in free variation. Sounds in free variation should be assigned to the same phoneme.

1.39.What is complementary distribution?

When two sounds never occur in the same environment, they are in “complementary distribution”. For example, the aspirated English plosives never occur after[s], and the unsaturated ones never occur initially. Sounds in complementary distribution may be assigned to the same phoneme. The allophones of[l], for example, are also in complementary distribution. The clear[l] occurs only before a vowel, the voiceless equivalent of[l] occurs only after a voiceless consonant, such as in the words “please”, “butler”, “clear”, etc., and the dark[l] occurs only after a vowel or as a syllabic sound after a consonant, such as in the words “feel”, “help”, “middle”, etc.

1.40.What is the assimilation rule? What is the deletion rule?

(1) The “assimilation rule” assimilates one segment to another by “copying” a feature of a sequential phoneme, thus making the two phones more similar. This rule accounts for the raring pronunciation of the nasal[n] that occurs within a word. The rule is that within a word the nasal consonant[n] assumes the same place of articulation as the following consonant. The negative prefix “in-“ serves as a good example. It may be pronounced as [in], [i] or [im] when occurring in different phonetic contexts: e. g., indiscrete-[ ](alveolar)

inconceivable-[ ](velar)

input-[‘imput](bilabial)

The “deletion rule” tells us when a sound is to be deleted although is

orthographically represented. While the letter “g” is mute in “sign”, “design” and “paradigm”, it is pronounced in their corresponding derivatives: “signature”, “designation” and “paradigmatic”. The rule then can be stated as: delete a [g] when it occurs before a final nasal consonant. This accounts for some of the seeming irregularities of the English spelling (see Dai Weidong ,pp22-23).

1.41.What is suprasegmental phonology? What are suprasegmental features?

“Suprasegmental phonology” refers to the study of phonological properties of linguistic units larger than the segment called phoneme, such as syllable, word and sentence.

Hu Zhuanglin et al.,(p,73) includes stress, length and pitch as what they suppose to be “principal suprasegmental features”, calling the concurrent patterning of three “intonation”. Dai Weidong(pp23-25) lists three also, but they are stress, tone and intonation.

1.42.What is morphology?

“Morphology” is the branch of grammar that studies the internal structure of words, and the rules by which words are formed. It is generally divided into two fields: inflectional morphology and lexical/derivational morphology.

1.43.What is inflection/inflexion?

“Inflection” is the manifestation of grammatical relationships through the addition of inflectional affixes, such as number, person, finiteness, aspect, and case, which does not change the grammatical class of the items to which they are attached.

1.44.What is a morpheme? What is an allomorph?

The “morpheme” is the smallest unit in terms of relationship between expression and content, a unit which cannot be divided without destroying or drastically altering the meaning, whether it is lexical or grammatical. The word “boxes”, for example, has two morphemes: “box” and “-es”, neither of which permits further division or analysis if we don’t wish to sacrifice meaning. Therefore a morpheme is considered the minimal unit of meaning.

Allomorphs, like allophones vs. phones, are the alternate shapes (and thus phonetic forms) of the same morphemes. Some morphemes, though, have no more than one invariable form in all contexts, such as “dog”, “cat”, etc. The variants of the plurality “-s” make the allomorphs thereof in the following examples: map-maps, mouse-mice, sheep-sheep etc.

1.45.What is a free morpheme? What is a bound morpheme?

A “free morpheme” is a morpheme that constitutes a word by itself, such as ‘bed”, “tree” ,etc. A “bound morpheme” is one that appears with at least another morpheme, such as “-s” in “beds” , “-al” in “national” and so on. All monomorphemic words are free morphemes. Those polymorphemic words are either compounds (combination of two or more free morphemes )or derivatives (word derived from free morphemes).

1.46.What is a root ? What is a stem? What is an affix?

A “root” is the base form of a word that cannot be further analyzed without total loss of identity. In other words, a “root” is that part of the word left when all the affixes are removed. “Internationalism” is a four-morpheme derivative which keeps its free morpheme “nation” as its root when “ inter-”, “-al” and “-ism”

are taken away.

A “stem” is any morpheme or combination of morphemes to which an affix can be added. It may be the same as , and in other cases, different from, a root. For example, in the word “friends” , “friend” is both the root and the stem, but in the word “friendships”, “friendships” is its stem, “friend” is its root. Some words (i. e., compounds ) have more than one root ,e. g., “mailman” , “girlfriend” ,ect. An “affix” is the collective term for the type of formative that can be used, only when added to another morpheme(the root or stem). Affixes are limited in number in a language, and are generally classified into three subtypes: prefix, suffix and infix, e. g. , “mini-”, “un-”, ect.(prefix); “-ise”, “-tion”, ect.(suffix).

1.47.What are open classes? What are closed classes?

In English, nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs make up the largest part of the vocabulary. They are “open -class words”, since we can regularly add new lexical entries to these classes. The other syntactic categories are, for the most part, closed classes, or closed-class words. The number of them is hardly alterable, if they are changeable at all.

1.48.What is lexicon? What is word? What is lexeme? What is vocabulary? Lexicon? Word? Lexeme? Vocabulary?

“Lexicon”, in its most general sense, is synonymous with vocabulary. In its technical sense, however, lexicon deals with the analysis and creation of words, idioms and collocations. “Word” is a unit of expression which has universal intuitive recognition by native-speakers, whether it is expressed in spoken or written form. This definition is perhaps a little vague as there are different criteria with regard to its identification and definition. It seems that it is hard , even impossible, to define “word” linguistically. Nonetheless it is universally agreed that the following three senses are involved in the definition of “word”, none of which, though, is expected to cope with all the situations: (1)a physically definable unit ,e. g.,[it iz ‘w ](phonological), “It is wonder” (orthographic); (2) the common factor underlying a set of forms (see what is the common factor of “checks”, “checked”, “checking ”, etc.); (3) a grammatical unit(look at (1) again; every word plays a grammatical part in the sentence).

According to Leonard Bloomfield, a word is a minimum free form (compare: a sentence is a maximum free form, according to Bloomfield ). There are other factors that may help us identify words: (1) stability (no great change of orthographic features);

(2)relative uninterruptibility (we can hardly insert anything between two parts of a word or between the letters). To make the category clearer we can subclassify words into a few types: (1) variable and invariable words(e. g.,-mats, seldom-?); (2) grammatical and lexical words(e. g. to, in ,etc., and table, chair, ect. By “lexical words” we mean the words that carry a semantic content, e.g., nouns, verbs, adjectives and many adverbs; (3) closed-class and open-class words(see I.47).

In order to reduce the ambiguity of the term “word” ,the term “lexeme” is postulated as the abtract unit which refers to the smallest unit in the meaning system of a language that can be distinguished from other smaller units. A lexeme can occur in many different forms in actual spoken or written texts. For example, “write” is

the lexeme of the following words: “write”, “write”, “wrote”, “writing”, and “written.”

“Vocabulary” usually refers to all words or lexical items a person has acquired about technical or/and untechnical things. So we encourage our students to enlarge their vocabulary. “vocabulary” is also used to mean word list or glossary.

1.49.What is collocation?

“Collocation” is a term used in lexicology by some linguists to refer to the habitual co-occurrences of individual lexical items. For example, we can “read” a “book”; “correct” can narrowly occur with “book” which is supposed to have faults, but no one can “read” a “mistake” because with regard to co-occurrence these two words are not collocates.

1.50.What is syntax?

“Syntax” is the study of the rules governing the ways in which words, word groups and phrases are combined to form sentences in a language, or the study of the interrelationships between sentential elements.

1.51.What is a sentence?

L. Bloomfield defines “sentence” as an independent linguistic form not included by some grammatical marks in any other linguistic from, i. e., it is not subordinated to a larger linguistic form, it is a structurally independent linguistic form. It is also called a maximum free form.

1.52.What are syntactic relations?

“Syntactic relations” refer to the ways in which words, word groups or phrases form sentences; hence three kinds of syntactic relations: positional relations, relations of substitutability and relations of co-occurrence.

“Positional relation”, or “word order”, refers to the sequential arrangement to words in a language. It is a manifestation of a certain aspect of what F. de Saussure called “syntagmatic relations”, or of what other linguists call “horizontal relations” or “chain relations”.

“Relations of substitutability” refer to classes or sets of words substitutable for each other grammatically in same sentence structures. Saussure called them “associative relations”. Other people call them “paradigmatic/vertical/choice relations”.

By “relations of co-occurrence”, one means that words of different sets of clauses may permit or require the occurrence of a word of another set or class to form a sentence or a particular part of a sentence. Thus relations of co-occurrence partly belong to syntagmatic relations and partly to paradigmatic relations.

1.53.What is IC analysis? What are immediate constituents(and ultimate constituents)?

“IC analysis” is a new approach of sentence study that cuts a sentence into two(or more) segments. This kind of pure segmentation is simply dividing a sentence into its constituent elements without even knowing what they really are . What remain of the first cut are called “immediate constituents”, and what are left at the final cut are called “ultimate constituents”. For example, “John left yesterday” can be thus segmented: “John| left | | yesterday”. We get two immediate constituents

for the first cut (|), and they are “John” and “left yesterday”. Further split(||) this sentence generates three “ultimate constituents”: “John”, “left ” and “yesterday”.

1.54.What are endocentric and exocentric constructons?

“Endocentric construction” is one whose distribution is functionally equivalent to that of one or more of its constituents, i. e., a word or a group of words, which serves as a definable “centre” or “head”. Usually noun phrases, verb phrases and adjective phrases belong to endocentric types because the constituent items are subordinate to the head. “Exocentric construction”, opposite of endocentric construction, refers to a group of syntactically related words where none of the words is functionally equivalent to the group as whole ;that is to say ,there is no definable centre or head inside the group. Exocentric construction usually includes basic sentence, prepositional phrase, predicate(verb+object) construction, and connective(be+complement) construction.

1.55.What is a subject? A predicate? An object?

In some language, an “subject” refers to one of the nouns in the nominative case, such as “pater” in the following example: “pater filium amat” (put literally in English: the father the son loves). In English, a “grammatical subject” refers to a noun which can establish correspondence with the verb and which can be checked by a tag-question test, e.g., “He is a good cook(, isn’t he?).”

A “predicate” refers to a major constituent of sentence structure in a binary analysis in which all obligatory constituents other than the subject are considered together. e.g., in the sentence “The monkey is jumping ”, “is jumping ” is the predicate.

Traditionally “object” refers to the receiver or goal of an action, and it is further classified into two kinds: direct object and indirect object. In some inflecting languages, an object is marked by case labels: the “accusative case” for direct object, and the “dative case ” for direct object, and the “dative case” for indirect to word order(after the verb and preposition) and by inflections(of pronouns). E .g., in the sentence “John kissed me”, “me” is the object. Modern linguists suggest that an object refers to such an item that it can become a subject in passive transformation.

1.56.What is category?

The term “category” in some approaches refers to classes and functions in its narrow sense, e.g., noun, verb, subject, predicate, noun phrase, verb phrase, etc. More specifically it refers to the defining properties of these general units: the categories of the noun, for example, include number, gender, case and countability ;and of the verb, for example, tense, aspect, voice, etc.

1.57.What is number? What is gender? What is case?

“Number” is a grammatical category used for the analysis of word classes displaying such contrasts as singular, dual, plural, etc. In English, number is mainly observed in nouns, and there are only two forms: singular and plural. Number is also reflected in the inflections of pronouns and verbs.

“Gender” displays such contrasts as “masculine”, “feminine”, “neuter”, or

“animate” and “inanimate”, etc., for the analysis of word classes. When word items refer to the sex of the real-world entities, we natural gender(the opposite is grammatical gender).

“Case” identifies the syntactic relationship between words in a sentence. In Latin grammar, cases are based on variations in the morphological forms of the word, and are given the terms “accusative”, “nominative”, “dative”,etc. In English, the case category is realized in three ways: by following a preposition and by word order.

1.58.What is concord? What is government?

“Concord ” may be defined as requirement that the forms of two or more words of specific word classes that stand in specific syntactic relationship with one another shall be characterized by the same paradigmatically marked category or categories, e.g., “man runs”, “men run”. “Government” requires that one word of a particular class in a given syntactic class shall exhibit the form of a specific category. In English, government applies only to pronouns among the variable words ,that is , prepositions and verbs govern particular forms of the paradigms of pronouns according to their syntactic relation with them, e.g. , “I helped him; he helped me.”

1.59.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 hierachy, 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. (For “sentence”, see I.51.)

1.60.What is conjoining? What is embedding? What is recursiveness?

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

1.61.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”).

1.62.What is semantics?

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

1.63.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. (see Hu Zhuanglin et al., pp140-142). 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.

1.64.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. (2) “Concept” or “notion” is the impression of objects in people’s mind. (3) “connotation” is the implied meaning ,similar to “implication” and “implicature”.

(4) “Sense” is the lexical position in which a word finds itself. (5) “Denotation”, like “sense”, is not directly related with objects, but makes the abstract assumption of the real world. (6) “Reference” is the word-object relationship. (7) “Implicature”, in its narrow sense, refers to conversational implicature achieved by intentionally violating one of the four CP maxims (see I.122-123). (8) “Signification”, in contrast with “value”, mean the meaning of situation may not have any communicative value, like “What’s this?”

1.65.What is the Semantic/Semiotic Triangle?

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.

1.66.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 spatio-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.

1.67.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 latter expresses the distinction between the subject and the object of a sentence, oppositions of definiteness, tense the number, and the difference between statements, questions and requests. In a word, “the total linguistic meaning of any utterance consists of the lexical meaning of the separate words plus such structural meaning„”

G. Leech(1981) categorizes seven kinds of meaning, five of which are brought under the “associative meaning” (see the following chart).

Different from the traditional and the functional approach, F.R.Palmer(1981) and J.Lyons(1977) suggest we draw a distinction between sentence meaning and utterance meaning, the former being directly predictable from the grammatical and lexical features of the sentence, while the latter includes all the various types of meaning not necessarily associated thereto.

1.68.What is synonymy?

“Synonymy” is used to mean sameness or close similarity of meaning. Dictionary makers (lexicographers) rely on the existence of synonymy for their definitions. Some semanticians maintain, however, that there are no real synonyms, because two or more words named synonyms are expected without exception to differ from one another in one of the following aspects:

(1) In shades of meaning (e.g., finish, complete, close, conclude, terminate, finalize, end, etc.);

(2) In stylistic meaning (see 1.67);

(3) In emotive meaning (or affective meaning, see 1.67);

(4) In range of use (or collocative meaning, see 1.67);

(5) In British and American English usages [e.g., autumn (BrE), fall (AmE)]. Simeon Potter said,“ Language is like dress. We vary our dress to suit the occasion. We do not appear at a friend’s silver-wedding anniversary in gardening clothes, nor do we go punting on the river in a dinner-jacket.” This means the learning lf synonyms is important to anyone that wishes to use his language freely and well.

1.69.What is Antonymy? How many kinds of antonyms are there?

The term “antonymy” is used for oppositions of meaning; words that stand opposite in meaning are called “antonyms”, or opposites, which fall in there categories:(1)gradable antonyms(e.g, good-bad); (2)complementary antonyms(e.g., single-mar-ried); (3)relational antonyms(e.g., buy-sell).

1.70.What is hyponymy? What is a hyponym? What is superordinate?

“Hyponymy” involves us in the notion of meaning inclusion. It is a matter of class

membership. That is to say, when X id a kind of Y, the lower term X is the “hyponym”, and the upper term Y is the “superordinate”. Two or more hyponyms sharing the same one superordinate are called “co-hyponyms”. For example, “flower” is the superordinate of “tulip”, “violet” and “rose”, which are the co-hyponyms of “flower”.

1.71.What is polysemy? What is homonymy?

“Polysemy” refers to the semantic phenomenon that a word may have than one meaning. For example, “negative”, means(1)a statement saying or meaning “no”, (2)a refusal or denial, (3)one of the following words and expressions: no, not, nothing, never, not at all, etc. ,(4) a negative photograph or film. But we can sometimes hardly tell if a form has several meanings or it is a different word taking this form; hence the difference between polysemy and homonymy.

1.72.What is entailment?

“Entailment” can be illustrated by the following two sentences, with Sentence A entailing Sentence B:

A: He married a blonde heiress.

B: He married a blonde.

In terms of truth value, the following relationships exist between these two sentences:(1) When A is true, B is necessarily true;(2) When B is false, too;(3) when

A is false, B may be true or false ;(4) When B is true, A may be true or false. Entailment is basically a semantic relation or logical implication, but we have to assume co-reference of “He” in sentence A and sentence B, before we have A entail B.

1.73.What is presupposition?

Similar to entailment, “presupposition” is a semantic relationship or logical connection. The above-mentioned “When phrase No.1”is also true with presupposition. For example:

A: The girl he married was an heiress.

B: He married a girl.

But there is an important difference: Presupposition is not subject to negation, i.e., when A is false, B is still true. Other statements about the truth value in presupposition are:(1) When B is true, A can either be true or false;(2) When B is false, A has no truth value at all. Presupposition does not have to be found between two propositions. An example in point is :“ When did you stop beating your wife?” This presupposes that he has been beating his wife.

1.74.What is componential analysis?

“Componential analysis” defines the meaning of a lexical element in terms of semantic components. For example, we may “clip” the following words “Man”, “Woman”, “Boy” and “Girl” so that we have only separate parts of them.

Man: +Human+Adult+Male

Woman:+Human+Adult-Male

Boy:+Human-Adult+Male

Girl:+Huamn-Adult-Male

1.75.What is predication analysis? What is a one-place predicate? What is a two-place predicate? What is a no-place predicate? What are down-graded predications?

“Predication analysis” is a new approach for sentential meaning analysis. “Predication” is usually considered an important common category shared by propositions, questions, commands, etc. Predication is to break down the sentence into their smaller constituents: argument (logical participant) and predicate (relation element). The “predicate” is the major or pivotal element governing the argument. We may now distinguish a “two-place predicate” (which governs two arguments, e.g., subject and object), a “one-place predicate” (which governs one argument, i.e., subject) and a “no-place predicate” that has simply no argument(no real subject or object).

1.76.What is a logical operator?

(1)“Logical operator ” make only one kind of the “logical factors” or “logical means”, others being “definiteness”, “ coreference ”, “tense” and “time”, since predication is not the whole of a sentence or proposition. All these factors play a part in prepositional actualization of the predication ---the pining of a predication down a claim about reality.

(2)Example of logical operators are “not”, “and”, “or”, “some”, “if”, “false”, etc. The term “logical operation” reflects the fact that these meaning elements are often thought of as performing operations, controlling elements of the semantic system, so to speak.

1.77.Why is writing important? Why is speech considered prior to writing?

(1)Language can take the form of speech or writing, the former using sound as medium and the latter employing visual symbols. No one could tell when mankind first spoke; nor could people tell when mankind developed the first writing. A writing system consists of a graphemes plus characteristic features of their use, resulting in the diversion of the writing forms; word writing, syllabic writing and sound writing.

(2)It is widely considered that speech is the primary medium, and writing the secondary medium. But this comparative diminution does not mean that writing is unimportant. With the shot-lived memory and the finite capacity of information storing, writing is used, partly for compensation and partly for better communication. We cannot trust the negotiation counterpart so we turn to the writing and signing of an agreement. Writing leads people to the acme of science, study and research, and to the ultimate joy of literature

1.78.What is a pictogram? What is an ideogram?

(1)A “pictogram” refers to an inscription representing the features of a physical object. The Hebrew and the Chinese orthography still reflects traces of their pictorial origin. For instance, the letter “a” (aleph) imitates the head of an ox and the letter “b” (beth) imitates a horse. And “niú”, “mǎ”, “hǔ”and hundreds more of Chinese words derived from, and still keep the pictorial resemblance to, the shapes of the things or objects.

(2)The advantage of pictograms is that they can be easily understood by anyone. That explains why international road signs and public-toilet signs make a wide use of them. An “ideogram” means an idea picture or idea writing. In order to express the attribute of an object or concepts associated with it, the pictogram’s meaning had to be extended. For instance, a picture of the sun does not necessarily represent the object itself,

but connotes “warmth”, “heat”, “light”, “daytime”, etc. In spite of its disadvantages, the later form of ideograms turned out to be linguistic symbols, symbols for the sounds of these objects. The process is called the “Rebus Principle” indicating that writing is like a riddle composed of words or syllables depicted by symbols or pictures that suggest the sound of the words or syllables they represent.

1.79.What is word writing? What is sound writing? What is syllabic writing?

(1)Word writing refers to the writing system based on ideograms and/or pictograms, like Chinese (see 1.78). “Sound writing ” or “alphabetic writing”, which dominates the world, derived form the Latin alphabet with mild adjustments. Most of the European alphabets belong to the sound writing system, e.g., Spanish, German, French, English, etc.

(2)“Syllabic writing” is a word-syllabus writing, developed by the Egyptians. Japanese is a typical syllabic-writing language, though derived from Chinese, a Sino-Tibetan language. The Japanese modified the Chinese characters they had borrowed from ancient China so that the Japanese syllables(to the number of fifty) were each represented, either by what is called “hiragana” or by what is name “katakana”.

1.80.What is an alphabet? What is a syllabary?

An “alphabet” refers to the letters or signs representing speech sounds used in writing a language , arranged in a conventional order. A “syllabary” refers to a set or table or system of written characters representing syllables rather than individual sounds.

1.81.What is a grapheme? What is orthography?

(1)A “grapheme” is the minimal constructive unit in the writing system of a language. The English grapheme A is represented by A,α,a etc.

(2)Orthography means correct spelling, spelling rules or attempts to improve spelling.

1.82.What is reference?

“Reference”, as far as writing is concerned, means that in a sound writing system the graphemes and the phonemes are expected to build up and to keep up co-reference. For instance, the Reference of the English grapheme B generally is “b” and that of the grapheme X is “ks”. The problem with reference is that more than one phoneme can be represented by one single letter or grapheme. The grapheme O, for example, can represent its its different corresponding phonemes as in: so [], money [], together [], sob [].

For reference used in the sense of “sense” or “meaning”, place refer back to 1.64.

1.83.What is affixation, conversion and compounding?

(1)”Affixation” is the morphological process whereby grammatical of lexical information is added to the base (root or stem). It has been the oldest and the most productive word-formation method in the English language and some other European languages. “Prefixation” means addition of a prefix to make a new word, while “suffixation” means adding a suffix to a word. The word “unfaithful” is result of both prefixation and suffixation.

(2)“Conversion” (called sometimes “full conversion”) is a word-formation process by which a word is altered from one part of speech into another without the addition

(or deletion) of any morpheme. “Partial conversion” is also alteration when a word of one word-class appears in a function which is characteristic of another word-class, e.g., “ the wealthy” (=wealthy people).

(3)”Compounding” is so complex a word-formation process as far as English is concerned that there is no formal criterion that can be used for the definition of it, though it may mean simply that two words or more come together used as one lexical item, like “dustbin”.

1.84.What is blending, abbreviation and back formation?

(1)”Blending” is a relatively complex form of compounding in which two roots are blended by joining the initial part of the first root and the final part of the second root, or by joining the initial parts of the two roots, e.g., smog→smoke+fog, boatel→boat+hotel, etc.

(2)”Abbreviation”, also called in some cases “clipping”, means that a word that seems unnecessarily long is shortened, usually by clipping either the front or the back part of it, e.g., telephone→phone, professor→prof., etc.

Broadly speaking, abbreviation includes acronyms that are made up from the first letters of the long name of an organization, e.g., World Bank→WB, European Economic Community→EEC, etc. Other examples of acronyms can be found with terminologies, to be read like one word, e.g., radio detecting and ranging→radar []. Test of English as a Foreign Language→TOEFL [], etc.

(3)“Back-formation” refers to an abnormal type of word-formation where a shorter word is derived by detecting an imagined affix from a longer form already present in the language. It is a special kind of metanalyais, combined with analogical creation (see 1.85), e.g., editor→edit, enthusiasm→enthuse, etc.

1.85.What is analogical creation? What is borrowing?

The process of “analogical creation”, as one of the English tendencies in English word-formation, refers to the phenomenon that a new word or a new phrase is coined by analogy between a newly created one and an existing one. For example, “marathon” appeared at the First Olympic Games and by analogy modern English created such words as “telethon”, “talkthon”, etc. Analogy may create single words(e.g., sunrise-moonrise, earthrise, etc.; earthquake-starquake, youthquake, etc.) and phrases( e.g., environmental pollution-sound pollution, air pollution, cultural pollution,etc.).

“Borrowing” means the English language borrowed words from foreign languages, which fall in four categories: aliens, denizens, translation-loans and semantic borrowings.

“Aliens” are foreign loans that still keep their alien shapes, i. e., morphological and phonological features, e.g., “elite”, “coup détat”, “coupé”, etc.(from French). “Deniens” , also foreign words, have transformed their foreign appearance, i.e., they have been Angolcized (or Americanized), e. g., “get” (a Scandinavian borrowing), “theater” (a French loan), etc. “Hybrids” are also denizens, because they are words made up of two parts both from foreign soil, such as “sociology” (“socio-” from French and -logy from Greek).

“Translation-loans” are words imported by way of translation, e. g., “black humor”

from French(“humor noir”), “found object” form French ,too (“object trouve”), etc. Finally, semantic borrowings have acquired new meaning under the influence of language or languages other than the source tongue. For example, “gift” mean “the price of a wife ” in Old English (450-1150AD), and after the semantic borrowing of the meaning of “gift or present” of the Scandinavian term “gipt”, it meant and still means “gift” in the modern sense of it.

1.86.What is assimilation, dissimilation and metathesis?

“Assimilation” refers to change of a sound as the result of the influence of an adjacent sound, which is called “contact” or “contiguous” assimilation. The assimitative processes at word in language could be explained by the “theory of least effort” ,i.e., in speaking we tend to exert as little effort as possible so that we do not want to vary too often places of articulation in uttering a sequence of sounds. Assimilation takes place in quick speech very often. In expressions such as “immobile” , “illegal”, etc., the negative prefixes should be or have been “in-” etymologically.

“Dissimilation”, opposite of assimilation, is the influence exercised by one sound segment upon the articulation of another sound, so that the sounds become less alike than expected. As there are two[r] sounds in the Latin word “peregrines”, for instance, the first segment had to dissimilate into[l], hence the English word “pilgrim”. “Metathesis” is a process involving an alteration in the sequence of sounds. Metathesis had originally been a performance error, which was overlooked and accepted by the speech community. For instance, the word “bird” was “bird” in Old English. The word “ask” used to be pronounced [ask] in Old English, as still occurs in some English dialects.