The fact that many of our linguistic choices are unconsciously made
a. does not mean that they are not based on language ideology.
b. is a clear indication that ideology does not play an important role in language choice.
c. illustrates the absence of economic considerations in language choice.
d. indicates that we do not make conscious efforts to change our language .
Phonemic differences in American Sign Language can be described according to
a. hand shape, hand placement, and hand movement.
b. place and manner of articulation.
c. mouth movements which occur while the signer is signing.
d. facial expression.
Recent sign language research in Nicaragua appears to bolster which of the following
theories about language acquisition?
a. behaviorist theory
b. cognitivist theory
c. innatist theory
d. active construction of a grammar (or theory) theory
Linguistic anthropologist Robbins Burling argues that some of the earliest instances of
language use might have been:
a. generating calls, rather than comprehending them.
b. comprehending calls, rather than generating them.
c. closing calls, rather than opening them.
d. inventing folktales and tall tales.
Bronislaw Malinowski was an anthropologist who wrote about the importance of
attending to ______________ in the study of language.
a. denotation
b. context
c. form
d. morphology
The design feature of language that refers to the fact that speakers can hear themselves
talk and that they can monitor what they say as they say it is referred to as:
a. vocal auditory channel.
b. broadcast transmission and directional reception.
c. interchangeability.
d. total feedback.
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.
Linguistic anthropologists see language as a practice, something that human beings do
rather than only an thing or an entity.
A. True
B. False
Rules of complementary distribution of phones are concerned with
a) what is physically possible given the human vocal apparatus.
b) the sounds that linguists have encountered in human languages all over the world.
c) patterns in the occurrence of allophones of a phoneme.
d) discovering minimal pairs and using them to identify phonemes in a particular
language.
Living among a group of people on their own terms, learning and speaking their
language and trying, as much as possible, to see the world from their perspective is
called:
a. going native.
b. comparative research.
c. a holistic approach.
d. fieldwork.
The rules in a speech community:
a. can be learned in the field.
b. are the same from one culture to the next.
c. are best learned in a classroom situation.
d. none of these
Recent reconstruction of Proto-Bantu suggests that it was first spoken in:
a. the Comoro Islands.
b. Madagascar.
c. the Sahel.
d. the Cameroon region.
Gestures that facilitate the release of body tension, such as the nervous foot-shuffling of
people who would probably rather be leaving, are called:
a. adaptors.
b. illustrators.
c. regulators.
d. emblems.
When we notice that an American English speaker puffs air when they say “pit”, but not
when they say ‘spit”, and that this pattern holds true across a variety of utterances and
for a variety of speakers, we can conclude that
a) [p] and [p ] are allophones of /p/.ʰ
b) /p/ and /p / are allophones of [p].ʰ
c) /p/ and /p / are phonemes in English.ʰ
d) the mechanics of producing a bilabial plosive at the beginning of a word require you
to puff air, no matter what language you may be speaking.
A theory that children’s brains function as language acquisition devices, comparing
specific languages with a genetically built-in “core grammar” to help children acquire
specific languages rapidly, is what kind of theory?
a. innatist theory
b. behaviorist theory
c. cognitivist theory
d. active construction of a grammar (or theory) theory
Sign language components such as different kinds of hand shape, placement, and
movement, used to be called “cheremes” but nowadays they are referred to as:
a. handemes.
b. gesturemes.
c. kinemes.
d. primes.
How many English morphemes in the English word “firefighters?”
a. one
b. three
c. four
d. eleven
An affix that is inserted into the middle of a word is called:
a. a suffix.
b. a prefix.
c. a circumfix.
d. an infix.
The ability to speak a language well in a variety of social situations is called:
a. linguistic competence.
b. verbal competence.
c. communicative competence.
d. poetic competence.
Which of the following is considered to be the most likely order of steps along the road
to the evolution of full-fledged human language?
a. from blended calls through closed calls to duality of patterning
b. from duality of patterning through blended calls to closed calls
c. from closed calls through duality of patterning to blended calls
d. from closed calls through blended calls to duality of patterning
The linguistic term for sounds that accompany speech but are not directly part of
language is
a) paralanguage.
b) manner of articulation.
c) conditioned variation.
d) the American Usage System.
The idea that languages are arbitrary systems, and that knowing one language does not
allow you to predict how another language will categorize and name the world, is
referred to as
a. linguistic relativity.
b. cultural emphasis.
c. semiotic prognostication.
d. componential analysis.
Linguistic anthropologists use __________________ to reveal the culturally important
features by which speakers of a language distinguish different words in a semantic
domain.
a) contrast analysis
b) taxonomy
c) componential analysis
d) ethnography
The fact that most women who work in theater today refer to themselves as actors
a. is a sign of too much political correctness.
b. just sounds silly, as if they were claiming to be men.
c. is a successful effort to remove one case of gender bias in English.
d. cannot have any impact on the way these women are perceived.
The area in the human vocal apparatus between the velum and the pharynx is called the
a) glottis.
b) uvula.
c) alveolar ridge.
d) epiglottis.
In the Hanun?o language, color distinctions are made at two levels of contrast. This fact
a) indicates that most, if not all, Hanun?o speakers suffer from red/green color
blindness.
b) demonstrates the primitive nature of Hanun?o color categories.
c) is, in fact, not an accurate statement, but simply the result of a failure to do sufficient
intracultural research into Hanun?o color categories.
d) supports the assertion that color is not a universal human concept.
The study of the physical properties of sounds and the nature of the sound waves that
they produce is known as
a) acoustic phonetics.
b) auditory phonetics.
c) articulatory phonetics.
d) descriptive phonetics.
A theory that children need to hear language from others around them (stimulus) and to
receive praise (positive feedback) from parents and/or caretakers in order to develop
their linguistic abilities is what kind of theory?
a. innatist theory
b. behaviorist theory
c. cognitivist theory
d. active construction of a grammar (or theory) theory
The difference in tongue placement for producing the /n/ in the English words “ten”
[t n] and “tenth” [t θ]ɛ ɛnn
a) demonstrates that “ten” and “tenth” form a minimal pair.
b) involves the transformation of a nasal into a fricative.
c) indicates potential complementary distribution of the allophones [n] and [ ].nn
d) is a simple mechanical requirement for pronouncing [n] immediately before [θ]
When you cannot find the pattern of complementary distribution among allophones in a
language, you should consider the possibility that the variation among those allophones
is conditioned by:
a) social usage.
b) neighboring phonemes.
c) rules of engagement. intuition.
In a writing system, which of the following is a sign that helps to suggest related words
that are pronounced differently?
a. phonetic indicator
b. phonetic determinative
c. semantic indicator
d. semantic determinative
A good understanding of the mechanisms of language change allows you to:
a. see how biology determines language use.
b. understand the one-to-one connection between race and culture and language.
c. reconstruct ancestral languages from sets of daughter languages.
d. refute the Sapir/Whorf hypothesis.