Linguistics Sample Questions and Answers

Sample topics to be discussed at Master’s state exams:

Topics based on Thomas, J. (1995), Meaning in Interaction. An Introduction to Pragmatics. London and New York: Longman.

Sample question 1:

Based on your reading of Meaning in Interaction by Jenny Thomas, tell us which theories of politeness you know and how they view politeness.

Sample answer 1:

The student explains which theories he/she knows and explains how they view politeness.

Sample question 2:

How can indirectness be related to pragmatics according to Thomas’s book Meaning in Interaction and how can it be measured?

Sample answer 2:

The student explains how he/she understands the relationship between pragmatics and indirectness and provides some examples of how the latter can be measured.

Sample question 3:

Why can pragmatics be understood as meaning in interaction according to Thomas? Is there any difference between utterance meaning and utterance force? If yes, explain and illustrate it.

Sample answer 3:

The student explains what is understood under meaning in interaction in Thomas’s book and why is it so, while presenting some examples illustrating the difference between utterance meaning and utterance force.

Topics based on Halliday, M. A. K., Hasan, R. (1976) Cohesion in English. London and New York: Longman.

Reference (general topic)

Sample questions

1. Define the concepts endophoric and exophoric reference according to Halliday and Hasan. Give examples.

   Answer: The student defines the terms according to Halliday and Hasan’s approach and gives examples of endophoric and exophoric reference.

2. According to Halliday and Hasan, how do endophoric and exophoric reference contribute to the perception of textual cohesion? Do you agree with their approach? Are you aware of any alternative approaches?

   Answer: The student explains how, in Halliday and Hasan’s view, endophoric and exophoric reference contribute to the perception of textual cohesion. The student comments on Halliday and Hasan’s view, and if possible, compares it to alternative approaches.

3. Relate cataphoric and anaphoric reference to endophoric and exophoric reference. Give examples of language devices that may create
   • both cataphoric and anaphoric ties
   • only anaphoric ties
   • only cataphoric ties

Answer: The student explains how cataphoric and anaphoric reference are related to endophoric and exophoric reference. Drawing on Halliday and Hasan’s discussion of anaphoric and cataphoric reference, the student gives the required examples.

Note

The questions above are interrelated – they can be used as independent questions or in series, according to the answers provided by the student.

Topics based on Svoboda, A., Hrehovčík, T. (2006) An ABC of Theoretical and Applied Linguistics. Opava: Slezská univerzita.

Sample question 1: Functional Sentence Perspective (FSP).

Based on Svoboda-Hrehovčík’s An ABC of Theoretical and Applied Linguistics, explain the concept of the Functional Sentence Perspective as defined by Jan Firbas.

Suggested answer: The student will start by explaining the concepts of theme and rheme, he/she will introduce Firbas´s concept of the degrees of communicative dynamism as relative degrees of communicative importance by which elements contribute to the development of communication, describe their determination by the interplay/interaction of the factors of FSP and Firbas´s modification of the theme-rheme bipartition to the theme-transition–rheme tripartition and even pluripartition.

Sample question 2: The factors of FSP

How is the FSP concept according to Firbas (based on Svoboda Hrehovčík’s An ABC . . .) related to the role of (English) word order, meaning, context and intonation? What is the practical application of the FSP theory?

Suggested answer: The student will introduce the four factors of FSP: linearity (word order), semantics (dynamic semantic functions), context (verbal, situational, experiential) and intonation (prosodic features) and discuss differences in the interplay of these factors in individual languages, determining the relative degrees of communicative dynamism. He/she will stress the need for studying this interplay individually in each language and illustrate the fact by differences between typical Czech and English sentence structures.

Sample question 3: Conversational analysis

According to the book you have read, An ABC of Theoretical and Applied Linguistics, what is the focus of conversational analysis as a subdiscipline of discourse analysis?

Suggested answer: The student will explain that conversational analysis studies the rules of turn-taking in a conversation, the signals used to initiate or finish a turn (i.e. opening and closing markers), the role and devices of hedging and the structure of exchanges/interchanges (i.e. their components – adjacency pairs).