1. Poison once meant simply “drink”, but now means “poisonous drink”. This is an example of ______ of meaning.

A. extension\\t\\t\\tB. narrowing\\t\\t\\tC. pejoration\\t\\t\\tD. amelioration

【答案】B。

2. The following are the features of Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English New Edition (1987) EXCEPT ______.

A. usage notes\\t\\t\\tB. language notes\\t\\tC. extra column\\t\\tD. clear grammar codes

【答案】C。

3. Words borrowed early in the past and now well assimilated into the English language are called ______.

A. denizens\\t\\t\\tB. aliens\\t\\t\\t\\tC. translation-loans\\t\\tD. semantic-loans

【答案】A。

4.Which of the following is NOT true?

A. English is more closely related to German than French.

B. Old English was a highly inflected language.

C. Modern English is considered to be an analytic language.

D. In early Middle English period, English, Latin and Celtic existed side by side.

【答案】D。

5. The forms that are attached to words or word elements to modify meaning or function are ______.

【答案】affixes。

6. ______, which is beyond language, is the result of human cognition, reflecting the objective world in the human mind.

【答案】concept。

7. Unlike free phrases, the structure of an idiom is to a large extent _______ as is shown in the idiom “in a brown study”, which cannot be changed into “in a brown hall”.

【答案】unchangeable。

8. In what way are the underlined words formed in the following sentences?

1) He wolfed down his lunch.

2) These is no milk in the fridge.

3) The headmaster is an easy-going man.

4) You have to show your ID before checking in the hotel.

5) I promised to babysit for my neighbor this weekend.

【答案】1) conversion\\t2) clipping\\t3) compounding\\t4) acronymy\\t5) back-formation

9. Comment on the difference between synonyms by analyzing the following synonymous groups.

(1) want, wish, desire

(2) result, consequence

(3) empty, vacant

【答案】The differences between synonyms boil down to three areas: denotation, connotation and application.

(1) Difference in denotation. Synonyms may differ in the range and intensity of meaning. Some words have a wider range of meaning than others. Want is the most general and has the widest range of meaning while wish and desire are much narrower in sense. As far as intensity is concerned, both are stronger than want and desire the strongest of all.

(2) Difference in connotation. By connotation, we mean the stylistic and emotive colouring of words. Some words share the same denotation but differ in their stylistic appropriateness. Result is neutral, neither appreciative nor derogatory. Used with good it conveys a positive attitude and with bad it expresses a negative meaning. Consequence, however, always has a negative implication.

(3) Difference in application. Many words are synonymous in meaning but different in usage in simple terms. They form different collocations and fit into different sentence patterns. Empty implies that there is no one or nothing inside while vacant suggests that something or some place is not occupied.

10. Explain how context clues are used in the sentence “Perhaps the most startling theory to come out of kinesics, the study of body movement, was suggested by Professor Bird Whistell”.

【答案】Definition is the context clue in this sentence. Often we find that the author gives formal definition immediately after the new term. In this sentence, the study of body movement is the definition of kinesics, which makes the meaning of the new word clear.