Historical Linguistics Questions and Answers

Answer: D

A language with no known relatives, living or recorded, is a language isolate. Basque in Europe and Burushaski in the Karakoram are standard examples, as each cannot be shown to belong to any known family.

'Anomalous' and 'isolative' are not the technical terms for this status. 'Isolative' is a loose form of 'isolating', which is a type of morphology (languages with little inflection, like Chinese) and not a genetic term. A polysynthetic language is another morphological type with long words made of many morphemes.

Answer: B

The change d to a fricative (eth) between vowels (V - V) is a conditioned sound change, because it occurs only in a specified environment, between vowels, and not everywhere. This is lenition, as in the shift of intervocalic d to a fricative in Spanish.

An unconditioned change (option A) happens in all positions. Fricativization (option C) names the type of change, from stop to fricative, but not the way of classification asked for, which is whether the change depends on the environment. Palatalisation (D) would involve a shift towards the palate. The key is B.

Answer: C

The sound laws in order of their dates are Grimm's Law (1822), Grassmann's Law (1863), Verner's Law (1875) and Fortunatov's Law (1881). The sequence is Grimm, Grassmann, Verner and Fortunatov.

Option A starts with Verner's Law, which is later than Grimm's, and option B puts Verner's Law last, after Fortunatov's. Option D starts with Grassmann's Law before Grimm's. Only the third option follows the order of the formulation of the laws.

Answer: C

Both statements are accepted as true. The neogrammarian hypothesis, formulated in the 1870s, held that sound changes are regular and exceptionless, so (I) correctly states it. (II) is also true as a statement of fact: there are sound changes with exceptions, as lexical diffusion studies show, and so not all change is regular.

Option A and option B each make one of the two false, which would deny that either the hypothesis as stated or its exceptions exist, and option D denies both. Option C is the key.

Answer: A

The lexical diffusion hypothesis was propounded by William S.-Y. Wang (1969, 'Competing changes as a cause of residue'). It holds that a sound change spreads gradually from word to word through the lexicon, rather than affecting all the relevant words at once as the neogrammarians claimed.

Bloomfield defended the neogrammarian regularity of sound change, Pike worked on tagmemics and phonetics, and Labov is known for variationist sociolinguistics and the study of change in progress. None of them proposed lexical diffusion.

Answer: B

The diagram shows two sounds, k and c, becoming one sound, so it is a merger. In a merger two or more phonemes that were distinct fall together into one, and the contrast between them is lost.

A split is the opposite, where one phoneme develops into two. 'Unconditioned' and 'conditioned' change describe whether the change depends on an environment, which the diagram does not show. The diagram's convergence of two sources on one result is the meaning of merger, option B.

Answer: C

The social motivation of sound change is associated with William Labov. In his Martha's Vineyard (1963) and New York City (1966) studies he showed that changes are driven by social meaning, such as local identity or prestige, and spread unevenly across social groups.

J.L. Fischer studied social influences on the choice of a linguistic variant in a New England village, and Joshua Fishman is known for the sociology of language. Uriel Weinreich is known for work on language contact and, with Labov and Herzog, on a theory of change, but the association of social motivation with the names in the key is Labov.

Answer: B

The change of Old English 'brid' into Middle English 'bird' is metathesis, in which two sounds in a word exchange places (here r and i). Other familiar cases are Old English 'waps' to 'wasp' and 'acsian' to 'ask'.

Assimilation is a sound becoming more like a neighbour, dissimilation is two similar sounds becoming less alike, and assibilation is a change of a sound into a sibilant (s-like) sound. None of these involves a swap in sound order, so option B is right.

Answer: C

Both statements are true. A proto-language is a reconstruction made from the evidence of related languages, so it is an abstraction and not a language anyone is recorded speaking. Because the reconstruction is a single uniform system, it does not show dialect variation, although the real language that it stands for would have had it.

The options that call either statement false are therefore rejected, and the key is 'Both I and II are true'. The reconstructed form of a word in the proto-language is marked with an asterisk, which also shows that it is hypothetical.

Answer: B

The key takes both statements as true. Analogy brings regularity into the paradigm by levelling irregular forms to a common pattern, as when a plural like 'kine' gives way to 'cows'. Analogical change can also upset an existing regular set, because a new form made on one pattern may disturb another, which is how the second statement is read.

The option that calls the first statement false is wrong, since analogy is the main force that regularises paradigms. The key is kept as printed.