Historical Linguistics Questions and Answers

Answer: C

The change of meaning over time is semantic change. Words broaden, narrow, rise or fall in value, as when 'nice' moved from 'foolish' to 'pleasant'.

Phonological change concerns the sounds of a language, morphological change its word forms and structures, and analogical change is a process of regularisation by pattern. None of these is the study of meaning change. Examples of such change are broadening, narrowing, amelioration (a rise in value) and pejoration (a fall in value).

Answer: D

The key gives the order Neogrammarian hypothesis, Sturtevant's paradox, on-going sound change and lexical diffusion. The Neogrammarian hypothesis, that sound change is regular without exception, dates from the 1870s. Sturtevant's paradox, that sound change is regular but analogy is irregular, was stated in the 1940s. Studies of change in progress and lexical diffusion belong to the later twentieth century.

The other sequences put lexical diffusion, which is a reaction to the Neogrammarian view, before it, or place on-going sound change before Sturtevant's paradox.

Answer: A

The key treats both statements as true. Sound change was held in the older view to be impossible to watch as it happens, since the changes are very small, and to show up only after they have built up over a long period.

The options that call either statement false are rejected by the key, although studies of change in progress such as Labov's later challenged the first statement. The key follows the classical position that change is seen only by comparing earlier and later stages of a language.

Answer: B

The key credits the idea of 'recycling' as a source of social motivation of sound change to William Labov, the founder of variationist sociolinguistics who studied how social factors drive change.

Peter Trudgill, John Gumperz and Ronald Wardhaugh are sociolinguists too, but the key does not give the idea of recycling to them. Labov's studies of New York and Martha's Vineyard are the best known sources of the view that social motives drive sound change.

Answer: B

He hissed mistery lectures is a spoonerism, option B. The speaker swapped initial sounds, so that the intended phrase missed history lectures became hissed mistery lectures. Swapping of sounds between words in this way is named after W. A. Spooner.

Epithesis (option A) is the addition of a sound at the end of a word. Dissimilation (option C) makes two similar sounds in a word less alike, and assimilation (option D) makes a sound more like a neighbour. None of these exchanges the onsets of two separate words.

Answer: B

The historical order is (iv) Grimm's Law, (iii) the Neogrammarian Hypothesis, (ii) the social motivation of sound change, and (i) lexical diffusion, which is option B. Grimm's Law dates from the early nineteenth century, the Neogrammarian hypothesis of exceptionless sound laws from the 1870s, Labov's work on the social motivation of change from the 1960s, and Wang's lexical diffusion from 1969.

Options A and C place the Neogrammarians before Grimm or put lexical diffusion before them, and option D simply lists the items in the printed order, which is the reverse of history for most of them. Only option B starts with the oldest concept and ends with the most recent.

Answer: B

The matching is Synchrony and Diachrony with Ferdinand de Saussure, Lexical Diffusion with William S-Y Wang, Social Motivation of Sound Change with William Labov, and the Neogrammarian Hypothesis with Osthoff and Brugmann (printed Bragmann). In codes that is a-ii, b-iii, c-iv, d-i, option B.

Option A assigns synchrony and diachrony to Osthoff and Brugmann, which is wrong because the distinction is Saussure's. Option C gives it to Wang and lexical diffusion to Saussure, and option D gives it to Labov. Learn each concept with its originator and the other three options fail.

Answer: C

Relative chronology of sound changes means the order in which different sound changes occurred, option C. It tells which change came before which other change, without fixing dates in years. For example, if one change feeds or bleeds another, the relative order explains the surviving forms.

Option A confuses it with the proto-history of a language. Option B only says that more than one change happened, which gives no ordering, and option D, one sound change, cannot be ordered against anything. Absolute chronology, in contrast, gives actual dates.

Answer: D

The change of Old Indo-Aryan rakta to ratta is assimilation, option D. The cluster kt becomes tt because the first consonant takes on the place and manner of the second, so two different sounds become identical. This is regressive (anticipatory) assimilation, common in the development of Prakrit from Sanskrit.

Dissimilation (option A) would make two similar sounds less alike, the opposite. Metathesis (option B) would swap the order of sounds, as in rakta becoming ratka, which does not happen here. Assibilation (option C) is the change of a stop into a sibilant, and no sibilant appears in ratta.

Answer: D

Cognates are words similar in sound and meaning occurring in genetically related languages, option D (the paper prints genetically related words). Words such as English father, German Vater and Latin pater are cognates: they descend from a common ancestor and show regular sound correspondences.

Option A, words in the same language, describes doublets or related forms inside one language, not cognates. Option B only says that words occur in different languages, which is true of any two unrelated words. Option C says the words belong to different language families, which describes similarity by borrowing or chance, not common descent.