Jessica Fong's Homework Assignments

Chapter 7 Study Questions

1. The woman kept a large snake in a cage, but it escaped recently; the- article, woman- noun, kept- verb, a- article, large- adjective, snake- noun, in- preposition, a- article, cage- noun, but- conjunction, it- pronoun, escaped- verb, recently- adverb

2. Grammatical gender is a distinction based on the type of noun (masculine & feminine) and not tied to sex; they are classified in accordance to their gender class and articles & adjectives conform to “agree with” the gender of the noun. Natural gender, speaking in terms of biology, is tied to sex.

3. (i) The infinitive is being split; Correction- The old theory consistently failed to explain fully all of the data. (ii) The sentence ends with a preposition; Correction- I can’t remember the name of the person to whom I gave the book.

4. In Latin, it makes sense to characterize the verb forms, but it doesn’t work in English. With the English language, it makes to characterize the pronouns.

5. (i) Bhuail an gille beag an cu dubh- The boy hit the small black dog.

(ii) Chunnaic an cu an duine mor- The dog saw the big man.

6. S[ NP{ Art(The) N(thief) } VP‹ V(stole) NP{ Art(a) N(wallet) } ]



 

Chapter 17 Study Questions

1. Cognates are words in different languages that have a similar form and meaning.

2. English & Swedish, Bengali & Urdu, Breton & Welsh, Czech & Ukrainian, French & Portuguese, Kurdish & Pashto

3. Based on the given data, the forms listed for language 1 are likely the closest to the original proto-forms.

4. Old English: ox, pig, deer, calf   French: bacon, beef, veal,venison

5. (a) thridda-third: Metathesis, (b) scribere-escribir: Prothesis, (c) glimsian-glimpse: Epenthesis, (d) hring-ring: Sound Loss, (e) slummer-slumber: Epenthesis, (f) beorht-bright: Epenthesis

6. The term narrowing best describes what is being done in the aforementioned example.

Chapter 18 Study Questions

1. I would say that the introductory quotation, at least in the general variety, is employing Standard American English.

2. An accent is the aspects of pronunciation that identify where a speaker is from, whereas a dialect is the aspects of the grammar, vocabulary and pronunciation of a variety of a language.

3. The one drawback of using NORMS in dialect surveys is that the dialect description obtained tends to be accurate of a period well before the time of investigation.

4. The isogloss represents the boundary between two areas highlighting a difference in a linguistic feature.

5. The first stage is the process of selection, when an official language is chosen; the second stage is the process of codification, in which basic grammars, dictionaries and written models are use to establish the standard variety.

6. A creole originally developed from a pidgin and has established itself as a native language of a native population, whereas a pidgin has no native speakers and developed as a method of communication between people who did not know each other’s language.

Chapter 19 Study Questions

1. A speech community is a group of people who share a set of norms and expectations regarding the use of language.

2. Whereas an idiolect is the personal dialect of an individual speaker, a sociolect is a social dialect, mainly concerned with one particular social group.

3. Labov used the term fourth floor for his experiment because of the two opportunities for the possible pronunciation of postvocalic (the sound that comes after a vowel); this allows for the best amount of variations from various groups.

4. The way someone pronounces certain parts of certain words, such as –ing, can serve as an indicator of what social group you may be part of; this is the function of a social marker.

5. A register is a conventional way of using language that is appropriate in a specific situation, occupation or topic, characterized by the use of jargon.

6. The use of be in the sentence, in accordance with AAVE, is a way of expressing habitual action, meaning that the presence or absence of this word could distinguish between what is a recurring activity or state and what is currently happening.

Chapter 20 Study Questions

1. Culture can be defined as socially acquired knowledge in term of the study of language.

2. Kinship terms are words used to refer to people who are members of the same family that indicate their relationship with other members.

3. Linguistic determinism puts out the idea that we can only think in the categories provided by our language; essentially that “language determines thought”.

4. Classifiers are grammatical markers that indicate the type or “class” of noun being used in a language.

5. She gave me a good advice -This sentence is ungrammatical because it includes –a before a non-countable noun (a good advice).

6. I think that golf on television is kind of boring, don’t you? –This sentence is more likely to be spoken by a woman because the use of rising intonation and tag question is a common characteristic of women’s speech.


https://docs.google.com/document/d/1rL8UIMKqN2rqtBRxCiCuottwBuzvfgUyvqxTrDDLElA/edit#

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ohzPSg8Cx9AkrfMgxs14oW5Vkj9TJFVoqSF1g9UKVvE/edit?pli=1#




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