A situation in which individuals and communities maintain their bilingualism on a
long-term basis is know as what?
a. stable bilingualism
b. transitional bilingualism
c. academic bilingualism
d. standardized bilingualism
The criterion of “mutual intelligibility” is a clear-cut way to distinguish a dialect from a
language.
a. True
b. False
The English-only laws that were passed in the early 1900s in Nebraska were primarily
intended to suppress the use of which language?
a. Spanish
c. Omaha
c. Yiddish
d. German
According to the autonomous approach theorists, literate thinking, acquired by learning
how to read, is characterized by which of the following kinds of thinking?
a. abstract
b. concrete
c. situational
d. memory-based
Languages that cannot be classified into any existing language family are called what?
a. language loners
b. language isolates
c. language conundrums
d. language lexicons
Which of the following physical characteristics is/are thought to be necessary for
spoken human language?
a. incisors
b. enlarged nasal passages
c. enlarged tongue
d. lowered larynx
An example of change in response to contact and borrowing between language is:
a. the development of such English words as “terrific” and “blog.”
b. the misanalysis in English of “I’m all shook up” as “emulsha cup.”
c. the use of the French [ ] sound in English words like “rouge.”ʒ
d. the regularization of the English plural “fish” to “fishes.”
A bound morpheme is defined as a morpheme which:
a. can stand alone.
b. must be affixed to another morpheme.
c. must be part of the deep structure of a sentence.
d. must be used to bind two other morphemes together.
An approach whose goal is the discovery of those rules that help to legitimate particular
conversational practices, as well as the ideas or ideologies that people have about
languages and conversations, is called:
a. exchange analysis (EA).
b. rule analysis (RA).
c. morphological analysis (MA).
d. discourse analysis (DA).
Gestures that convey emotion, such as smiles or frowns, are called:
a. illustrators.
b. emblems.
c. affect displays.
d. adaptors.
Recent reconstruction of Proto-Indo-European suggests that it was first spoken in:
a. on river islands in central Europe.
b. coastal areas where fishing was plentiful.
c. the savannah..
d. a temperate, forested climate.
Ottenheimer learned that her Japanese students did not ask questions during the class
period, but instead came up after class to ask questions, because
a. in Japan, it is considered deeply embarrassing to have anyone know that you are
confused.
b. they were concerned about their linguistic competence in English.
c. in Japan, it is rude to waste other students’ time with individual questions.
d. they thought that the other students might laugh at them.
Although languages generally change very slowly, one example of rapid change in
language is the development of:
a. dialects.
b. cognates.
c. protolanguages.
d. pidgins.
Globish, a potential lingua franca of the 21st century, is
a. a Mock English which indexes stereotypes of Anglophones.
b. a simplified, idiom-free form of English.
c. a form of language ideally suited to poetry and music lyrics.
d. taught in many international business schools today.
Using your own cultural system to interpret what others are doing, with the assumption
that your own system is the only one that makes sense, is referred to as:
a. cultural relativity.
b. emic analysis.
c. ethnocentrism.
d. ethnosemantics.
The design feature of language that refers to the fact that you can talk about things that
are not present is which of the following?
a. discreteness
b. displacement
c. productivity
d. duality of patterning
Consider the following KiSwahili data:
subjects: -ni = I; u- = you; tu- = we
tenses -na- = present tense -li- = past tense; -ta- = future tense
objects: – ni- = me -ku- = you -tu- = us
stems: -ona = see -penda = like -sikia = hear
Using this data, how would you translate the KiSwahili word ninakuona into English?
a. You see me.
b. You saw me.
c. I see you.
d. I hear you.
e. I will see you tomorrow.
The experience of linguistic anthropologists teaches us that
a. learning about other languages and cultures can help us better understand our own.
b. help us to see that our own language and culture has very little influence on us.
c. a deep study of another language will inevitably result in a loss of identity.
d. only a trained linguistic anthropologist can benefit from the study of other languages
and cultures.
Although languages generally change very slowly, one example of rapid change in
language is the development of:
a. dialects.
b. cognates.
c. protolanguages.
d. pidgins.
How many English morphemes are there in the English word lawnmower?
a. 2
b. 1
c. 3
d. 8
The splitting of the word hamburger into the morphemes ham and burger after it was
borrowed from German into English is an example of which of the following?
a. diglossia
b. voicing
c. language degeneration
d. reanalysis
A pidgin is a language which:
a. developed as a trade language.
b. developed from a creole.
c. has no grammar.
d. lasts many generations.
The design feature of language that refers to the fact that there is no necessary or causal
connection between a signal and its meaning is:
a. specialization.
b. semanticity.
c. arbitrariness.
d. rapid fading.
Which of the following words in English is a minimal pair:
a) to/two
b) through/three
c) only/lonely
d) bye/dry
The principle of linguistic relativity
a) has been largely disproven through ethnographic research.
b) is widely accepted today.
c) requires that we accept the fact that our language controls our organization of the
world.
d) is disproven by the fact that we can learn other languages and translate from one
language to another.
Kinesics is the study of the culturally patterned use of:
a. gestures.
b. personal space.
c. paralanguage.
d. exercise routines.
An example of change in response to contact and borrowing between language is:
a. the development of such English words as “terrific” and “blog.”
b. the misanalysis in English of “I’m all shook up” as “emulsha cup.”
c. the use of the French [ ] sound in English words like “rouge.”ʒ
d. the regularization of the English plural “fish” to “fishes.”
The I of Dell Hymes’ S-P-E-A-K-I-N-G mnemonic refers to the channels that are used
(speaking, writing, signing, etc.) as well as the varieties of language that speakers use
(language, dialect, register, etc.). These are called the:
a. impositionals.
b. inlays.
c. instrumentalities.
d. isms.
Which of the following is an ancient record-keeping system that used a system of knots
tied into strings?
a. cornelian binding
b. clove hitching
c. khipus
d. cuneiform
The splitting of the word hamburger into the morphemes ham and burger after it was
borrowed from German into English is an example of which of the following?
a. diglossia
b. voicing
c. language degeneration
d. reanalysis
From the rule above, which of the following words can you hypothesize would be
challenging for a Korean speaker learning English?
a) car
b) cold
c) bull
d) battle
“Pointing” concepts such as UP-DOWN, LEFT-RIGHT, or UPHILL-DOWNHILL,
used to name directions in which we might point or find things, are called:
a) deictic concepts.
b) relative markers.
c) absolute markers.
d) egocentric systems.
The fact that words can have specific meanings in specific situations, and may shift
meanings depending on the situation and who is saying them to whom
a. illustrate the importance of theoretical linguistics, which provides rules that help us
understand this phenomenon.
b. is a rare and unusual phenomenon which linguistic anthropologists have discovered.
c. mean that language must be studied in its cultural context.
d. make it absolutely impossible for speakers of one language to learn another language.
Edward T. Hall proposed four kinds of proxemically relevant spaces, or body distances,
that could be compared between cultures. In order from smallest (closest) to largest
(furthest), they are:
a. social, public, personal, intimate.
b. intimate, social, personal, public.
c. personal, intimate, public, social.
d. intimate, personal, social, public .