【正确答案】(1)Phoneme refers to a unit of explicit sound contrast: the existence of a minimal pair automatically grants phonemic status to the sounds responsible for the contrasts. A linguistic system is built on the idea of contrasts. By selecting one type of sound instead of another we can distinguish one word from another.
(2)Each sentence is said to consist of two levels of structure: deep structure and surface structure.
Deep structure is the abstract structure and can be said to be the propositional core of the sentence. Deep structure shows the basic form of a sentence with all the necessary information to derive a well-formed sentence, and to give it a phonological representation and a semantic interpretation. Deep structure reveals the underlying structure of a linguistic utterance and specifies the grammatical relations and functions of the syntactic elements, as well as the linguistic meaning of the constituents.
Surface structure is the actually produced structure. It is the directly observable actual form of sentences as they are used in communication, and from the perspective of Transformational Grammar, surface structure is a relatively abstract sentence structure resulting from the application of base rules and transformational rules.
(3)Speech Act Theory is an important theory in the pragmatic study of language. It was originated with the British philosopher John Austin in the late 50's of the 20th century. It is a philosophical explanation of the nature of linguistic communication. It aims to answer the question "What do we do when using language?"
Austin first of all made a distinction between what he called "constatives" and "performatives", but later he discarded this distinction and set up another model to explain the way acts were performed by means of language. According to his new model, a speaker might be performing three acts simultaneously when speaking: locutionary act, illocutionary act, and perlocutionary act. A locutionary act is the act of uttering words, phrases, clauses. It is the act conveying literal meaning by means of syntax, lexicon and phonology. An illocutionary act is the act expressing the speaker's intention; it is the act performed in saying something. A perlocutionary act is the act performed by or resulting from saying something; it is the consequence of, or the change brought about by the utterance; it is the act performed by saying something.
(4)Whorf developed a unique understanding of linguistic relativity, which is widely known as the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis. This hypothesis suggests that our language helps mould our way of thinking and, consequently, different languages may probably express speakers' unique ways of understanding the world. Following this argument, two important points can be captured in this theory. On the one hand, language may determine our thinking patterns; on the other, similarity between languages is relative.

【答案解析】[解析] 本题主要考查对一些基本概念和基本理论的理解和掌握，属识记的范畴，答题既要简明扼要，又要求内容要点不能缺少。