2020年11月西南大学[0181]《语言学导论》

单项选择题

1、_________, except those with mental or physical impairments, are better or worse first language

1. 2. 3. 4.

F. Few men Some men No men Many men

2、_________ deals with the relationship between the linguistic element and the

non-linguistic world of experience.

1. 2. 3. 4.

Concept Reference Semantics Sense

3、A historical study of language is a ____ study of language.

1. 2. 3. 4.

prescriptive comparative diachronic synchronic

4、What essentially distinguishes semantics and pragmatics is whether in the

study of meaning _________ is considered.

1. 2. 3.

speech act grammar reference

4. context

5、Which of the following is not a design feature of human language?

1. 2. 3. 4.

Duality

Meaningfulness Arbitrariness Displacement

6、The sounds produced without the vocal cords vibrating are ____ sounds.

1. 2. 3. 4.

A. voiceless voiced vowel consonantal

7、 __________ is advanced by Paul Grice.

1. 2. 3. 4.

Speech Act Theory Cooperative Principle Politeness Principle

The General Principle of Universal Grammar

8、___________ refers to the phenomenon that words having different meanings

have the same form.

1. 2. 3. 4.

Hyponymy Polysemy Homonymy Synonymy

9、 _________ does not study meaning in isolation, but in context.

1. 2. 3. 4.

D. Sense relation Semantics Pragmatics Concept

10、The different phones which can represent a phoneme in different phonetic

environments are called the ____ of that phoneme.

1. 2. 3. 4.

phones allophones sounds phonemes

11、According to F. de Saussure, ____ refers to the abstract linguistic system

shared by all the members of a speech community.

1. 2. 3. 4.

E. langue competence performance parole

12、 “-s” in the word “books” is _______.

1. 2. 3. 4.

B. a stem

an inflectional affix a root

a derivative affix

13、_________ is a branch of grammar which studies the internal structure of words and the rules by which words are formed.

1. 2. 3. 4.

C. Grammar Morpheme Syntax Morphology

14、The development of linguistic skills involves the acquisition of ____ rules rather

than the mere memorization of words and sentences.

1. 2. 3. 4.

pragmatic cultural behaviour grammatical

15、“Tom's bike is red” _______ \"Tom has a bike\".

1. 2. 3. 4.

entails presupposes

is synonymous with is inconsistent with

16、In first language acquisition, explicit teaching of correct forms to young children plays ___ at best.

1. 2. 3.

a minor role

a significant role a basic role

4. no role

17、Bound morphemes are those that ____.

1. 2. 3. 4.

have to be used independently

can not be combined with other morphemes can stand as words on their own

have to be combined with other morphemes

18、The meaning carried by the inflectional morpheme is _____.

1. 2. 3. 4.

lexical morphemic grammatical semantic

19、A ____ vowel is one that is produced with the front part of the tongue maintaining the highest position.

1. 2. 3. 4.

back central front middle

20、Since /p/ and /b/ are phonetically similar, occur in the same environments and they can distinguish meaning, they are said to be _____.

1. 2. 3.

in phonemic contrast

in complementary distribution the allophones

4. minimal pair

21、The assimilation rule assimilates one sound to another by “copying” a feature of a sequential phoneme, thus making the two phones ______.

1. 2. 3. 4.

identical same exactly alike similar

22、____ is a voiced alveolar stop.

1. 2. 3. 4.

/z/ /d/ /k/ /b/

23、The sounds produced without the vocal cords vibrating are ____ sounds.

1. 2. 3. 4.

voiceless voiced vowel consonantal

24、Language is said to be arbitrary because there is no logical connection between _____ and meanings.

1. 2. 3.

sense sounds objects

4. ideas

25、Modern linguistics regards the written language as _____.

1. 2. 3. 4.

primary better secondary

unchangeable

26、Which of the following is not a design feature of human language?

1. 2. 3. 4.

Arbitrariness Displacement Duality

Meaningfulness

27、If a linguistic study describes and analyzes the language people actually use, it is said to be ______.

1. 2. 3. 4.

prescriptive analytic descriptive linguistic

28、A linguistic ____ refers to a word or expression that is prohibited by the

\"polite\" society from general use.

1. 2. 3.

jargon taboo

euphemism

4. slang

29、_______ are those that cannot be used independently but have to be combined with other morphemes, either free or bound, to form a word.

1. 2. 3. 4.

Bound morphemes Bound words Free morphemes Words

30、__________ is a voiced bilabial stop.

1. 2. 3. 4.

/d/ /k/ /b/ /z/

判断题

31、Vibration of the vocal cords results in a quality of speech sounds called voicing.

1. 2.

A.√ B.×

32、Language by no means determines the ways we perceive the objective world,

but by its convenience, availability, and habitual use, does influence the perceptions of human being.

1. 2.

A.√ B.×

33、Linguistics studies a particular language, not language in general.

1. 2.

A.√ B.×

34、The smallest meaningful units that can be used freely all by themselves are free

morphemes.

1. 2.

A.√ B.×

35、Every speaker of a language is, in a stricter sense, a speaker of a distinct idiolect.

1. 2.

A.√ B.×

36、The capacity to acquire one’s first language is a fundamental human trait that

all human beings, generally speaking, are equally well possessed with.

1. 2.

A.√ B.×

37、The standard language is a better language than nonstandard languages.

1. 2.

A.√ B.×

38、What is actually internalized in the mind of a native speaker is a complete list of words and phrases rather than grammatical knowledge.

1. 2.

A.√ B.×

39、The linguistic markers that characterize individual social groups may serve as

social markers of group membership.

1. 2.

A.√ B.×

40、Speech act theory was originated with the British philosopher John Searle.

1. 2.

A.√ B.×

41、Utterances always take the form of complete sentences.

1. 2.

A.√ B.×

42、“alive” and “dead” are complementary antonyms.

1. 2.

A.√ B.×

43、Componential analysis is a way in which the meaning of a word can be dissected into meaning components, called semantic features.

1. 2.

A.√ B.×

44、What essentially distinguishes semantics and pragmatics is whether in the study of meaning the context of use is considered.

1. 2.

A.√ B.×

45、“Smog” is a word formed by the word-forming process called acronymy.

1. 2.

A.√ B.×

46、Hyponymy refers to the phenomenon that words having different meanings have the same form.

1. 2.

A.√ B.×

47、Derivation refers to the process by which new words are formed by the addition of affixes to the roots, stems, or words.

1. 2.

A.√ B.×

48、Bilingualism and diglossia mean the same thing.

1. 2.

A.√ B.×

49、Pidgins are linguistically inferior to standard languages.

1. 2.

A.√ B.×

50、The standard language is a better language than nonstandard languages.

1. 2.

A.√ B.×

51、Two speakers of the same language or dialect use their language or dialect in the same way.

1. 2.

A.√ B.×

52、A person’s social backgrounds do not exert a shaping influence on his choice of linguistic features.

1. 2.

A.√ B.×

53、Language use varies from one speech community to another, from one regional group to another, from one social group to another, and even from one individual to another.

1. 2.

A.√ B.×

54、Observations of children in different language areas of the world reveal that the developmental stages are similar, possibly universal, whatever the nature of the input.

1. 2.

A.√ B.×

55、For the vast majority of children, language development occurs spontaneously and requires little conscious instruction on the part of adults.

1. 2.

A.√ B.×

56、The distinction between competence and performance was proposed by F. de Saussure.

1. 2.

A.√ B.×

57、A basic way to determine the phonemes of a language is to see if substituting

one sound for another results in a change of meaning.

1. 2.

A.√ B.×

58、A synchronic study of language is the description of language at some point in time.

1. 2.

A.√ B.×

59、For the vast majority of children, language development occurs

spontaneously and requires little conscious instruction on the part of adults.

1. 2.

A.√ B.×

60、The meaning of a sentence is the sum total of the meanings of all its components.

1. 2.

A.√ B.×

61、Words are the smallest meaningful units of language.

1. 2.

A.√ B.×

62、Morphology studies the internal structure of words and the rules by which

words are formed.

1. 2.

A.√ B.×

63、English is a tone language while Chinese is not.

1. 2.

A.√ B.×

、Generally speaking, left hemisphere is responsible for language and speech,

analytic reasoning, associative thought, etc., while the right hemisphere is responsible for perception of nonlinguistic sounds, holistic reasoning,

recognition of musical melodies, etc.

1. 2.

A.√ B.×

65、The syntactic rules of any language are finite in number, but there is no limit

to the number of sentences native speakers of that language are able to produce and comprehend.

1. 2.

A.√ B.×

66、Most languages have sets of lexical items similar in meaning but ranked

differently according to their degree of formality.

1. 2.

A.√ B.×

67、Language functions are believed to be lateralized primarily in the left

hemisphere of the brain.

1. 2.

A.√ B.×

阅读理解题(单选） 68、

Psychologists and educators have known for a long time that \"active learning\" is by far superior to \"passive learning\" and in the discussion in section 3.1.1 we have rejected the notion of teaching language through some automatic conditioning process. Both of these considerations point to the crucial role of \"learner factors\" in language acquisition and to the importance of knowing just what the learner contributes to the learning process so

that it can be taken into account in the teaching process. Intelligence is usually conceived of as the ability to learn and thus it is to be expected that I.Q. will be related to second-language learning as well, and indeed the evidence we have corroborated this expectation. This relationship, under conditions of school learning, appears to be in the order of 15 to 20 percent of the contributing variance. The importance of intelligence in

second-language learning can be interpreted as stemming from the fact that the teaching process is incapable of making it completely clear just what the learner is to acquire. Thus the variance contribution of intelligence can be expected to increase under conditions where instructional procedures are weak and amorphous and decrease under conditions where they are effective and well integrated. In this sense, the correlation between

intelligence and achievement can be viewed as an indication of the quality of instruction. The 20 percent variance contribution just referred to thus indicates that within the present conditions of language teaching in schools, given the criterion definitions and goals, and distribution of aptitude and perseverance factors that now prevail, the quality of instruction is quite high and the amount of possible improvement fairly limited. This conclusion, if

valid, is quite significant, since it suggests that in order to increase the success of the FL curriculum in schools the major changes and improvements will have to come in the area of criterion definition and implementation, i.e., a change in what is being taught under particular conditions. Note that quality of instruction can be high - that is, it is being made quite clear to the student just what he is supposed to learn - while the success of the over-all program can remain inadequate owing to lack of

perseverance on the part of the student or to the choice of a criterion goal for the course that turns out to be not what was wanted. It should be realized that a change in criterion goal may affect the quality of instruction, since

'corresponding to a change in what is being taught there may have to be a change in how it is being taught. With these new goals, quality of instruction will have to be reevaluated, since there is no guarantee that our present knowledge will be equally effective in teaching these newer skills.

1、In active learning, the learners _______.

1.

are much involved in the learning process

2. 3. 4.

play the same part in the learning process as the teacher know the teachers' crucial role in the teaching process learn through some automatic conditioning process

69、How men first learned to invent words is unknown; in other words, the origin of language is a mystery. All we really know is that men, unlike animals, somehow invented certain sounds to express thought and feelings, actions and things, so that they could communicate with each other; and after that they agreed upon certain signs, called letters, which could be combined to represent those sounds, and which could be written down. Those sounds, whether spoken, or written in letters we call words.

The power of words lies in the things they bring up before our minds. Words became filled with meaning for us by experience; and the longer we live, the more certain words recall to us the glad and sad events of our past; and the more we read and learn, the more meaningful a word may become to us.

1、According the author, the origin of language is _____.

1. 2. 3. 4.

a legend handed down from the past a question of little importance a matter that is hard to approach a problem not yet solved

70、How men first learned to invent words is unknown; in other words, the origin of language is a mystery. All we really know is that men, unlike animals, somehow

invented certain sounds to express thought and feelings, actions and things, so that they could communicate with each other; and after that they agreed upon certain signs, called letters, which could be combined to represent those sounds, and which could be written down. Those sounds, whether spoken, or written in letters we call words.

The power of words lies in the things they bring up before our minds. Words became filled with meaning for us by experience; and the longer we live, the more certain words recall to us the glad and sad events of our past; and the more we read and learn, the more meaningful a word may become to us.

1、According to the passage, which of following statements is true?

1. 2. 3. 4.

The more we read and learn, the sadder we are.

The more we read and learn, the more we will know about the world.

The more we read and learn, the more certain we will be about the world. The more we read and learn the happier we become.

71、

Psychologists and educators have known for a long time that \"active learning\" is by far superior to \"passive learning\" and in the discussion in section 3.1.1 we have rejected the notion of teaching language through some automatic conditioning process. Both of these considerations point to the crucial role of \"learner factors\" in language acquisition and to the importance of knowing just what the learner contributes to the learning process so that it can be taken into account in the teaching process.

Intelligence is usually conceived of as the ability to learn and thus it is to be expected that I.Q. will be related to second-language learning as well, and indeed the evidence we have corroborated this expectation. This relationship, under conditions of school learning, appears to be in the order of 15 to 20 percent of the contributing variance. The importance of intelligence in second-language learning can be interpreted as stemming from the fact that the teaching process is incapable of making it completely clear just what the learner is to acquire. Thus the variance contribution of intelligence can be expected to increase under conditions where instructional procedures are weak and amorphous and decrease under conditions where they are effective and well integrated. In this sense, the correlation between intelligence and achievement can be viewed as an indication of the quality of instruction. The 20 percent variance contribution just referred to thus indicates that within the present conditions of language teaching in schools, given the criterion definitions and goals, and distribution of aptitude and perseverance factors that now prevail, the quality of instruction is quite high and the amount of possible improvement fairly limited. This conclusion, if valid, is quite significant, since it suggests that in order to increase the success of the FL curriculum in schools the major changes and improvements will have to come in the area of criterion definition and implementation, i.e., a change in what is being taught under particular conditions. Note that quality of instruction can be high - that is, it is being made quite clear to the student just what he is supposed to learn - while the success of the over-all program can remain inadequate owing to lack of perseverance on the part of the student or to the choice of a criterion goal for the course that turns out to be not what was wanted. It should be realized that a change in criterion goal may affect the quality of instruction, since 'corresponding to a change in what is being taught there may have to be a change in how it is being taught. With these new goals, quality of instruction will have to be reevaluated, since there is no guarantee

that our present knowledge will be equally effective in teaching these newer skills. 1、“Passive learning” is ______.

1. 2. 3. 4.

some automatic conditioning process easy to control

superior to \"active learning\" in practice

a process in which the teacher plays a passive role

72、How men first learned to invent words is unknown; in other words, the origin of language is a mystery. All we really know is that men, unlike animals, somehow invented certain sounds to express thought and feelings, actions and things, so that they could communicate with each other; and after that they agreed upon certain signs, called letters, which could be combined to represent those sounds, and which could be written down. Those sounds, whether spoken, or written in letters we call words.

The power of words lies in the things they bring up before our minds. Words became filled with meaning for us by experience; and the longer we live, the more certain words recall to us the glad and sad events of our past; and the more we read and learn, the more meaningful a word may become to us.

1、One of the reasons why men invented certain sounds to express thoughts and actions was that ____.

1. 2. 3. 4.

they could agree or disagree with each other they could spell or combine them

they could communicate with each other in one way or another they could write to one another

73、

Psychologists and educators have known for a long time that \"active learning\" is by far superior to \"passive learning\" and in the discussion in section 3.1.1 we have rejected the notion of teaching language through some automatic conditioning process. Both of these considerations point to the crucial role of \"learner factors\" in language acquisition and to the importance of knowing just what the learner contributes to the learning process so that it can be taken into account in the teaching process.

Intelligence is usually conceived of as the ability to learn and thus it is to be expected that I.Q. will be related to second-language learning as well, and indeed the evidence we have corroborated this expectation. This relationship, under conditions of school learning, appears to be in the order of 15 to 20 percent of the contributing variance. The importance of intelligence in second-language learning can be interpreted as stemming from the fact that the teaching process is incapable of making it completely clear just what the learner is to acquire. Thus the variance contribution of intelligence can be expected to increase under conditions where instructional procedures are weak and amorphous and decrease under conditions where they are effective and well integrated. In this sense, the correlation between intelligence and achievement can be viewed as an indication of the quality of instruction. The 20 percent variance contribution just referred to thus indicates that within the present conditions of language teaching in schools, given the criterion definitions and goals, and distribution of aptitude and perseverance factors that now prevail, the quality of instruction is quite high and the amount of possible improvement fairly limited. This conclusion, if valid, is quite significant, since it

suggests that in order to increase the success of the FL curriculum in schools the major changes and improvements will have to come in the area of criterion

definition and implementation, i.e., a change in what is being taught under particular conditions. Note that quality of instruction can be high - that is, it is being made quite clear to the student just what he is supposed to learn - while the success of the over-all program can remain inadequate owing to lack of perseverance on the part of the student or to the choice of a criterion goal for the course that turns out to be not what was wanted. It should be realized that a change in criterion goal may affect the quality of instruction, since 'corresponding to a change in what is being taught there may have to be a change in how it is being taught. With these new goals, quality of instruction will have to be reevaluated, since there is no guarantee that our present knowledge will be equally effective in teaching these newer skills.

1、 Which of the following factors might affect the quality of instruction?

1. 2. 3. 4.

Learning skills Criterion goal Achievement Perseverance

74、

Psychologists and educators have known for a long time that \"active learning\" is by far superior to \"passive learning\" and in the discussion in section 3.1.1 we have rejected the notion of teaching language through some automatic conditioning

process. Both of these considerations point to the crucial role of \"learner factors\" in language acquisition and to the importance of knowing just what the learner contributes to the learning process so that it can be taken into account in the teaching process.

Intelligence is usually conceived of as the ability to learn and thus it is to be expected that I.Q. will be related to second-language learning as well, and indeed the evidence we have corroborated this expectation. This relationship, under conditions of school learning, appears to be in the order of 15 to 20 percent of the contributing variance. The importance of intelligence in second-language learning can be interpreted as stemming from the fact that the teaching process is incapable of making it completely clear just what the learner is to acquire. Thus the variance contribution of intelligence can be expected to increase under conditions where instructional procedures are weak and amorphous and decrease under conditions where they are effective and well integrated. In this sense, the correlation between intelligence and achievement can be viewed as an indication of the quality of instruction. The 20 percent variance contribution just referred to thus indicates that within the present conditions of language teaching in schools, given the criterion definitions and goals, and distribution of aptitude and perseverance factors that now prevail, the quality of instruction is quite high and the amount of possible improvement fairly limited. This conclusion, if valid, is quite significant, since it suggests that in order to increase the success of the FL curriculum in schools the major changes and improvements will have to come in the area of criterion

definition and implementation, i.e., a change in what is being taught under particular conditions. Note that quality of instruction can be high - that is, it is being made

quite clear to the student just what he is supposed to learn - while the success of the over-all program can remain inadequate owing to lack of perseverance on the part of the student or to the choice of a criterion goal for the course that turns out to be not what was wanted. It should be realized that a change in criterion goal may affect the quality of instruction, since 'corresponding to a change in what is being taught there may have to be a change in how it is being taught. With these new goals, quality of instruction will have to be reevaluated, since there is no guarantee that our present knowledge will be equally effective in teaching these newer skills.

1、The basic difference between \"active learning\" and \"passive learning\" lies in ______.

1. 2. 3. 4.

the role of \"learner factors\" in the learning process the role of the teacher in the teaching process the conditions of the teaching process the conditions of the learning process

75、How men first learned to invent words is unknown; in other words, the origin of language is a mystery. All we really know is that men, unlike animals, somehow invented certain sounds to express thought and feelings, actions and things, so that they could communicate with each other; and after that they agreed upon certain signs, called letters, which could be combined to represent those sounds, and which could be written down. Those sounds, whether spoken, or written in letters we call words.

The power of words lies in the things they bring up before our minds. Words became filled with meaning for us by experience; and the longer we live, the more certain words recall to us the glad and sad events of our past; and the more we read and learn, the more meaningful a word may become to us. 1、Words are usually _____.

1. 2. 3. 4.

the smallest meaningful units in language a string of letters written

a string of sounds spoken or written in letters a string of sounds spoken

主观题

76、What is a register？

参：

There exist types or varieties of the same one language, and they are assumed to be related both to the language user and to the use to which language is put. Varieties that are related to use are known as Registers. (According to Halliday, “Language varies as its function varies; it differs in different situations.” The type of language which is selected as appropriate to a type of situation is a register.) Halliday distinguishes three social variables that determine the register: field of discourse, tenor of discourse, and mode of discourse.

Field of discourse refers to what is going on: to the area of operation of the language activity. It is concerned with the purpose and subject-matter of communication. Tenor of discourse refers to the role of relationship in the situation in question: who the participants in the communication group are and in what relationship they stand to each other. Mode of discourse mainly refers to the means of communication. It is concerned with “how” communication is carried out. Fundamental to the mode of discourse is the distinction between speaking and wring. The three variables are the features of the context of situation which determine the features of language appropriate to the situation, i.e. register. And they determine the register collectively, not piecemeal.

77、How should errors on the part of foreign language learners be treated?

参：

①When a second language learner uses a linguistic item in a way which fluent or native speakers of the language regards as showing faulty or incomplete learning, he is

considered to have made an error. Usually, error is used as a cover term referring generally to the learner’s misuse of the target language, may it be grammatical or pragmatic, conscious or unconscious. ②The structuralist linguists follow the behavioristic view that to learn is to change old habits and build new habits. In their opinion errors occur when the learner fails to respond correctly to a particular stimulus in the second language. Since an error may serve as a negative stimulus which reinforces “bad habits”, it should not be allowed to occur. ③The post-structuralists regard errors as evidence of the learning process. By making hypothesis about the target language, the learner arrives at a particular interlanguage. Then he modifies his hypothesis and goes towards the target language. ④ Obviously, errors can be found at the stage of interlanguage. As stated by Corder (1967), errors are significant in the process of language teaching and learning.

78、Why can we say language is unique to mankind?

参：

As a system of signs designed for the purpose of human communication, language has the following design features:

1) Arbitrariness. By arbitrariness we mean that there is no natural or logical relationship between the forms of linguistic signs/words and their meaning.

2) Duality. Duality refers to the fact language has two levels of structures: the meaningless sound segments at the lower level combine to form units of meaning at the upper level. 3) Creativity. By creativity, we mean language is resourceful because of its duality and its recursiveness and has the potential to create infinite number of sentences, including those we have never heard or read before. (Creativity is sometimes used to refer to the ability that language users all have to construct and understand an indefinitely number of sentences in our native language, including sentences that we have never heard before, but that are appropriate to the situation in which they are uttered.)

4) Displacement. Displacement means that human languages can be used by their users to communicate things that are present as well as those that are absent in time and space. 5) Researches show that some animal communications may have some of these features, but no communication system other than human language possesses all of them. That is why we can say language is unique to humans.

79、Why are speech and writing treated differently in linguistics?

参：

While speech is the vocal/spoken form of language, writing is the written form of language. They belong to different systems though they may overlap. That speech is primary over writing is a general principle of linguistic analysis. First, speech existed long before writing systems came into being. Second, written forms just represent in this way or that the speech sounds. Third, genetically children learn to speak before learning to write. Everything considered,

speech is believed to more representative of human language than writing. Most modern linguistic analysis is thus focused on speech, different from traditional grammar of the 19th century and therebefore.

80、Exemplify what conversational implicatures are and how they arise.

参：

According to Grice, when we speak we generally have something like the Cooperative Principle and its maxims in our mind to guide us, though sub-consciously, or even unconsciously. We will try to say things which are true, relevant, as well as informative enough, and in a clear manner. Hearers will also try to interpret what is said to them in this way. The CP and its maxims not always strictly observed. In blatant, apparent violations, the speaker deliberately violates some maxims and makes it clear to his hearers, yet at a deeper level the CP and its maxims are still thought, by both the speaker and his hearers, to be upheld.

When blatant, apparent violations of some maxims take place, what Grice terms

“conversational implicatures” will arise. The following conversation illustrates the violation of the maxim of relation:

A: The hostess is an awful bore. Don’t you think so? B: The roses in the garden are beautiful, aren’t they?

B’s response is obviously not relevant to A’s question. The conversational implicature of B’s utterance is something like “I don’t want to talk about her” or “It is not proper to talk about her here and now.”

81、What is IC Analysis? Can you name one of its advantages in analyzing the structure of sentences?

参：

Immediate constituents refer to the constituents immediately, directly, below the level of a

construction. Immediate constituent analysis, often shortened as IC Analysis, is an approach to the analysis of a sentence in terms of its immediate constituents --- word groups (or phrases), which are in turn analyzed into the immediate constituents of their own, and the process goes on until the

smallest grammatical units in a construction, called ultimate constituents, are obtained through

binary cuttings. One of the advantages of IC analysis lies in that it can clearly demonstrate the internal structure of a sentence so that structural ambiguities, if any, will be revealed. For example, employing IC analysis, we can clearly see that the phrase “more expensive clothes” is ambiguous in that it can be analyzed as (more (expensive clothes)) or as ((more expensive) clothes). 82、What is an indirect speech act?

参：

According to the speech act theory, each utterance is produced with a certain illocutionary force, and at the same time, a speech act is performed in the name of that illocutionary

force. For example, in producing “Get out of the room!”, the speaker performs a speech act of ordering. An indirect speech act is a speech act performed indirectly, that is through performing another kind of speech act. For example, people often indirectly perform the speech act of requesting through performing the speech act of questioning, as the mother does in the following conversation:

Mother: Tommy, can you pass me the salt? Tom: Here you are. Mother: Thanks, honey.

Obviously, the mother here is not asking Tom whether he has the ability to pass her the salt; instead, she is making an indirect speech act, i.e. a request.

Indirect speech acts are often felt to be more polite ways of performing certain kinds of speech act, such as requests and refusals.