Monolingualism is quite rare in countries throughout the world.
True
False
Some early resistance among Mayanist archaeologists to the idea that the Mayan glyphs
represented a real writing system might be explained by a widely-held belief that
groups of people without writing are “uncivilized” in some way.
True
False
Although ethical considerations are very important for cultural anthropology, they are
not significant in linguistic anthropology, since linguistic anthropology focuses so
exclusively on language.
True
False
In the European Middle Ages, it was thought appropriate for the nobility to be illiterate.
True
False
Codeswitching is primarily a matter of making syntactic choices.
True
False
Ottenheimer’s research with Shintiri suggested to her that the evolutionary shift from
blended calls to duality of patterning may have occurred in the context of children’s
language play.
True
False
No writing system is a perfect representation of speech.
True
False
Codeswitching is primarily a matter of making syntactic choices.
True
False
Broca’s area, an area of the frontal region of the left cerebral hemisphere of the brain,
and Wernicke’s area, an area in the temporal lobe of the left hemisphere of the brain,
appear to be to key areas of the brain in which language is processed.
True
False
Any effort to compare components of signs to consonants and vowels in spoken
language will only create confusion.
Attempts at standardizing spelling often get tangled up in attempts to standardize
pronunciation.
True
False
Monolingualism is quite rare in countries throughout the world.
True
False
Children’s language games such as Pig Latin or Shintiri are valuable tools in teaching
children to turn their language into an object of analysis.
True
False
There is a clear difference between a dialect and a language.
True
False
Smell, taste, and touch can all be considered forms of nonverbal communication that
vary cross-culturally.
True
False
“Proto-World” is a highly developed reconstructed protolanguage.
True
False
Internal change tends to be more slow and predictable than external change in language.
True
False
The expectations that people in power have about literacy and its consequences can
affect other peoples’ access to status and power.
True
False
Once they were introduced and perfected in the 1950s, generative grammars ceased to
evolve.
True
False
A minimal pair is a pair of words in which a difference in sound makes a difference in
meaning, and it is the clearest and easiest way to identify phonemes in a language.
True
False
Sign languages do not change over time.
True
False
Like all languages, English is an SOV language.
True
False
When there are multiple dialects in a region, establishing a standardized writing system
ends up legitimizing one of those dialects at the expense of the others.
True
False
Languages and dialects are more accurately described as flexible collections of
linguistic practice rather than concrete unchanging entities
True
False
All languages employ the same obligatory categories, or grammatical categories that
must be expressed in speaking.
True
False
The difference between a free morpheme and a bound morpheme is that a bound
morpheme can stand alone while a free morpheme must be attached to other
morphemes.
True
False
Languages that developed and evolved without writing systems, such as Bantu
languages, do not have abstract nouns.
True
False
Three important characteristics of the human body that make speech possible are a
lower larynx, a longer pharynx, and a more flexible tongue.
True
False
It is not possible to understand other cultural systems in their own terms without losing
confidence in your own.
True
False
There is a clear difference between a dialect and a language.
True
False
Once we have reconstructed a protolanguage, we should be able to infer something
about the culture of the people who spoke the language and the region in which it may
have been spoken.
True
False
When linguistic anthropologist Jill Brody was called on to be a court interpreter for a
speaker of Tojol ab”al
a. the officers of the court doubted her fluency in the language.
b. she limited herself to simply translating the questions and responses, as she was
required to do by the courtroom setting.
c. she violated the norms of the setting to provide cultural translation.
d. the defendant was found innocent of all charges due to her persistent efforts on his
behalf.
The word ___________ is an example of both a coined word and a word which has
experienced meaning shift.
a. bogus
b. butterpillar
c. spam
d. uptight
When the vocal cords are open and relaxed, the sound produced is called:
a) voiceless.
b) voiced.
c) articulated.
d) unarticulated.
The N of Dell Hymes’ S-P-E-A-K-I-N-G mnemonic refers to the expectations that
speakers have about appropriateness of speech use. These are called the:
a. nestings.
b. niceties.
c. normalities.
d. norms.
The process of modifying existing words (e.g., by number or person) by affixation is
called:
a. morphing.
b. inflection.
c. hierarchy.
d. derivation.
A word related to another by descent from the same ancestral language is called a(n):
a. agnate.
b. cognate.
c. correlate.
d. calque
Flat hand, fist hand, index hand and cupped hand in ASL are
a. examples of dez phonemes.
b. types of sig.
c. comparable to vowels in spoken language.
d. interchangeable with one another and have no impact on the meaning of the sign.
The term coined by anthropologist Ray Birdwhistell in the 1950s to describe the study
of body movements is:
a. spaciology.
b. proxemics.
c. kinesics.
d. tweeting.
In the 1950s, Morris Swadesh developed an approach to dating how long ago two
languages split apart. This technique is called:
a. lexicography.
b. lexicogenetics.
c. glottochronology.
d. chronolinguistics.
In the 1960s, American linguistic anthropologist Dell Hymes began to develop a
fieldwork methodology for studying language in its social and cultural contexts. This
methodology was called:
a. the ethnography of speaking.
b. ethnoscience.
c. speaking in context.
d. the new ethnography.
In the English word farmers the “er is called:
a. a root.
b. a stem.
c. an affix.
d. a base.
The borrowing of words such as rouge and garage from French into English are
examples of which of the following kinds of language change?
a. internal change
b. external change
c. language degradation
d. language stasis
The word ___________ is an example of both a coined word and a word which has
experienced meaning shift.
a. bogus
b. butterpillar
c. spam
d. uptight
There are two parts to morphological analysis. What are they?
a. identifying morphemes and analyzing the way they are arranged in words
b. identifying morphemes and analyzing their phonological components
c. identifying morphemes and analyzing their allophones
d. analyzing the way morphemes are arranged in words and sentences
A theory that as children develop their intellectual abilities, their linguistic abilities
follow suit, is what kind of theory?
a. innatist theory
b. behaviorist theory
c. cognitivist theory
d. active construction of a grammar (or theory) theory
According to George Lakoff, categories don”t exist in the world independently of
people. Rather categories are the result of the ways in which we interact with the world.
a. True
b. False
The P of Dell Hymes’ S-P-E-A-K-I-N-G mnemonic refers to:
a. politeness.
b. posture.
c. presentation.
d. participants.
Cognates are:
a. words that can have more than one meaning depending on the individual.
b. words with exactly the same pronunciation and meaning in different languages.
c. words that are used by the elite members of a society to mark their status.
d. words related by descent from a common language.
The concern that learning a new frame of reference will cause you to lose your existing
frames of reference is
a. supported by extensive data.
b. referred to as ethnocentrism.
c. extraordinarily rare, particularly in the United States.
d. an attitude which makes learning a new language as an adult a simple task.
The right to be listened to (acquired by acquiring symbolic capital) is a crucial source of
power and influence in any given situation.
a. True
b. False
A group of people who share one or more varieties of language and the rules for using
any or all of those varieties in everyday communication is called a:
a. linguistic community.
b. speech community.
c. community of practice.
d. competent community.
A particular dialect generally becomes accepted as a ‘standard’ because:
a. it is genetically superior to others.
b. it changes more rapidly than others.
c. it is used by the socially “right” people.
d. it changes less slowly than others.
The term used to describe hand movement in phonemic analysis of American Sign
Language is
a. dez
b. tab
c. sig
d. wave
The English word “actress” is an unmarked form.
A. True
B. False
The borrowing of words such as rouge and garage from French into English are
examples of which of the following kinds of language change?
a. internal change
b. external change
c. language degradation
d. language stasis
The A of Dell Hymes’ S-P-E-A-K-I-N-G mnemonic refers to:
a. attitudes.
b. astuteness.
c. answers.
d. act sequence.
Feature analysis is based on the idea that
a) every member of a given category will be a perfect example of that category.
b) phonological features of a language are linked to cultural focus.
c) some members of a category can be more central than others.
d) the categories of our language determine our experience of reality.
The R in MAR stands for
a. reality.
b. reaction.
c. repair.
d. restitution.
Most _______________________ appear to mimic the syntax of the spoken language
of the communities that use them.
a. complex gestural systems
b. sign languages
c. proxemic systems
d. kinesic systems
In the 1950s, Morris Swadesh developed an approach to dating how long ago two
languages split apart. This technique is called:
a. lexicography.
b. lexicogenetics.
c. glottochronology.
d. chronolinguistics.
Morphemes are generally described in terms of :
a. their phonological components.
b. whether they function as bases or affixes.
c. whether they function as roots, stems, or bases.
d. whether they have grammatical gender or not.
The idea that knowing one language will not allow you to predict how another language
will categorize and knowing one language and name the world is called
a) linguistic relativity.
b) ethnocentrism.
c) linguistic determinism.
d) ethnosemantics
Scholars doing “the new ethnography” argued that the categorization system
encapsulated in a language, and the way a language categorized items:
b. determined the mental maturity of the people who used it.
c. was more sophisticated among “civilized” peoples.
d. was a model, or mental map, that speakers had for that particular part of the world.
e. could help elders in that culture to resist the symptoms of Alzheimer’s.