國立彰化師範大學九十四學年度碩士班招生考試試題
系所：
科目： 語言學概論(含兒童語言習得)
兒童英語研究所
☆☆請在答案紙上作答☆☆
I.
共 4 頁，第 1 頁
At age two years, two months, S, a lively and intelligent child, was producing one-word utterances
and short sentences. His English father, a trained phonetician, noted down his single-word utterances
at frequent but irregular intervals. At this stage in the development of his language, S has a consistent
pronunciation for each word in his vocabulary. Examples of these words are given in the following
list. The adult word is given at the left, and S’s pronunciation at the right. Where the adult
pronunciation differed from common American pronunciations is given in brackets (20%).
1. sock
gk
18. table
be:bu
2. leg
gk
19. bus
bt
3. singing
gii
20. John
dn
4. chockie
ggi:
21. bump
bp
5. stop
bp
22. drink
gik
6. spoon
bu:n
23. skin
gin
7. zoo
du:
24. stuck
gk
8. other [
d
25. nipple
mibu
9. scream
gi:m
26. Smith
mit
10. uncle
gu
27. brush
bt
11. dark [da:k]
ga:k
28. bath [ba:
ba:t
12. lock
gk
29. tent
dt
13. snake
e:k
30. thank you
g
14. knife
maip
31. tickle
gigu
15. new [nyu:]
nu:
32. crumb
g
16. apple
bu
33. angry
[:

17. play
be:
34. swing
wi
a. State the rules needed to derive S’s forms from the adult’s forms, for consonants only. (Do not be
concerned with the child’s rendering of vowels and diphthongs.) Your rules should be given in a single
ordered list, so that the child’s forms can be derived from the adult forms by applying all relevant rules
one after another in the order given (9%).
b. Determine all cases in which one rule is crucially ordered before or after another rule. Explain why
this ordering is necessary, mentioning specific examples (5%).
c. Show how your rules apply to the adult form to account for S’s pronunciation of the following: leg,
chockie, stop, drink, brush, angry (6%).
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國立彰化師範大學九十四學年度碩士班招生考試試題
系所：
科目： 語言學概論(含兒童語言習得)
兒童英語研究所
☆☆請在答案紙上作答☆☆
II.
共 4 頁，第 2 頁
Provide a broad phonetic transcription for the following words based on General American English
pronunciation. Be sure to include the stress marker(s) if the word is composed of two or more than
two syllables (15%).
1. exhibit
5. hedge
9. mutton
13. recession
2. flee
6. sprinkler
10. conviction
14. plight
3. clone
7. commodity
11. wreath
15. hurdle
4. stoop
8. whistle
12. Antarctic
III. According to some researchers, in first language acquisition of phonology, it is most characteristic
for learners under 36 months of age to simplify by reducing or deleting difficult sounds, as:
a. cluster reduction:
e.g., blue  bue
b. final consonant deletion:
e.g., big  bi
c. weak syllable deletion:
e.g., banana  nana
However, in the data reported in previous studies on second language acquisition, second language
learners appeared to use epenthesis to resolve the problem, as:
a. instead of cluster reduction, second language learners reportedly used vowel insertion much more
frequently:
e.g., tree  t
b. instead of final consonant deletion, second language learners more commonly favored vowel
addition:
e.g., big  bigu
c. and where first language learners deleted weak syllables, this phenomenon was reported to be
very uncommon among second language learners.
Recent studies have further shown that second language learners at higher proficiency level tend to
use the strategy of epenthesis more often whereas those of lower proficiency level tend to rely more
on deletion to pronounce difficult sounds. Cite relevant references to account for the overall different
strategy use between first and second language learners. Furthermore, explain why second language
learners at different proficiency levels adopt different strategies (15%).
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國立彰化師範大學九十四學年度碩士班招生考試試題
系所：
科目： 語言學概論(含兒童語言習得)
兒童英語研究所
☆☆請在答案紙上作答☆☆
共 4 頁，第 3 頁
Ⅳ. It has been suggested that children put words together to form phrases and sentences by analogy.
Studies of spontaneous speech, as well as experiments, show that children never make mistakes as
shown in (d). Based upon the following sentences, explain what you think of the ways which
children acquire their native languages. (10%)
a. The child was singing.
b.
c.
d.
Was the child singing?
The child who was singing was holding a balloon.
*Was the child who singing was holding a balloon?
Ⅴ. Some languages, for example English, have strict word order in sentences, whereas other languages,
for example Russian, are characterized by freedom of word order in sentences. In English, we can
only say the sentence in (A) below to express a situation where some child kicked some ball.
Speakers of Russian, by contrast, can use all the sentences in (B) to express the same situation.
According to examples given below, why do some languages have freedom of word order? Namely,
what should the nouns in the Russian sentences carry so we know which noun is the “doer of the
action” and which noun is “the receiver of the action”? (10 %)
Situation: Some child kicked some ball.
English: (A) The child kicked the ball.
Russian: (B)
a.
b.
c.
d.
e.
The child kicked the ball.
The child the ball kicked.
The ball the child kicked.
The ball kicked the child.
Kicked the child the ball.
f. Kicked the ball the boy.
Ⅵ. According to the sentences below, the meanings of the two sentences differ from one another.
What
does this difference tell us about
(i) the relationship between form and meaning in human language, and
(ii) the sentence interpretation engaging in associative chain meaning among adjacent words?
(10%)
a. Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.
b. Furiously ideas green sleep colorless.
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國立彰化師範大學九十四學年度碩士班招生考試試題
系所：
科目： 語言學概論(含兒童語言習得)
兒童英語研究所
☆☆請在答案紙上作答☆☆
共 4 頁，第 4 頁
Ⅶ. Japanese, differs from English in the usual word order in sentence construction. Thus while English
is generally SVO, Japanese is generally SOV. Consider the following Japanese sentences. The
sentences on the left column reflect Japanese syntax, but they use English words so that they are easier
to understand. Beside each (on the right) is a translation with normal English syntax.
Japanese
English
a. Taro yesterday big hamburger ate.
Taro ate a big hamburger yesterday.
b. Peter Hanako UPS by book sent.
Peter sent Hanako a book by UPS.
c. Taro school to biked.
Taro biked to school.
Draw the syntactic tree for each “Japanese” sentence above (i.e. the sentences on the left with
Japanese word order).
(ii) Write a set of Phrase Structure Rules that can derive all of these "Japanese" sentences. Do so
(i)
with the smallest number of rules possible, providing one set of rules to apply to all sentences.
(20 %)
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