Language and Linguistics Questions and Answers

Answer: D

'Language is static' is not a characteristic of language. Language is dynamic: it changes with time, as new words enter and old forms fall out of use. Cultural transmission, structure dependence and creativity (productivity) with displacement are among the features of language usually listed. Language is dynamic, since new words are created, meanings shift, and grammar changes over centuries, as the shift from Old English to modern English shows. Cultural transmission, structure dependence and creativity with displacement are features that linguists list, such as in Hockett's design features.

Answer: B

The relation between a unit and the other units that could replace it in the same slot of a sequence is a paradigmatic relationship (Saussure's associative relation). In 'The cat sat', cat can be replaced by dog or man, and these alternatives form a paradigm.

A syntagmatic relationship is between units that occur together in a sequence (cat and sat). Synchronic and diachronic are not relations between units but two ways of studying a language, at one point in time or through its history.

Answer: B

Jakobson's model of communication is called the code model in the key. It takes communication to be a message encoded by an addresser, sent through a channel and decoded by an addressee, using a code shared by both, with the context the message refers to and the contact between them.

The context model, the verbal model and the non-verbal model are not the names used for Jakobson's scheme. His six factors (addresser, addressee, context, message, contact, code) and the six functions of language that correspond to them are, in the keyed answer, treated as a code model of communication.

Answer: A

The correct pairs are: Esperanto with artificial language (iv), Cratylus with dialogue (i), Sanskrit with the oldest Indic text (ii) (the list writes 'Indies') and Logos with the conception of speech (iii). The code is (iv), (i), (ii), (iii).

Esperanto was devised by Zamenhof as an international auxiliary language. Cratylus is Plato's dialogue on the correctness of names. Sanskrit's Rigveda is the oldest Indic text. Logos in Greek thought is word or reason, and so the conception of speech. Options B, C and D each break at least two of these pairs.

Answer: D

Eugene Nida is the odd one: he is best known for translation theory, in particular formal and dynamic equivalence, and for Bible translation. David Crystal, Thomas Sebeok and Harold Goodglass are grouped together in the key as writers on language and communication in relation to clinical, semiotic and neurological matters (Goodglass's work on aphasia, Sebeok's on signs and animal communication, Crystal's on language disorders).

The key therefore treats the first three as a set and Nida as the exception, so option D is the answer.

Answer: B

Both statements are correct. Hiragana is a Japanese syllabary used together with katakana and kanji to write Japanese, mainly for grammatical endings, native function words and native words. Katakana is also a syllabary, used together with hiragana and kanji, and is mostly employed for loanwords, foreign names and emphasis.

Options A, C and D each declare one or both statements wrong, but the two descriptions are the same in structure and both are accurate. The key is option B.

Answer: A

Both statements are taken as true in the key. The writing system developed for Egyptian, the hieroglyphs, was used mainly in monuments and sacred contexts, as against the cursive hieratic and demotic scripts for everyday writing, which supports (I). The hieroglyphic signs are basically pictures of the things they refer to, with other signs used for sounds, which supports (II).

Options B, C and D each call one or both statements false, which does not fit the key. The correct choice is option A.

Answer: B

The Logical Structure of Linguistic Theory was published in 1975. Chomsky wrote it in 1955-56 as a long manuscript, but the book appeared in print only in 1975 (Plenum Press), which is why the official key gives 1975.

1955 is the year of composition and is the tempting choice for that reason; it is not the year of publication. 1962 and 1965 are wrong: 1965 is the year of Aspects of the Theory of Syntax, a different and much better known book, and the question asks specifically about the earlier work. Do not confuse the date a work was written with the date it was published.

Answer: A

The keyed order is Competence, then Acquisition, then Performance. Chomsky frames the study of language around three questions: what the speaker knows (competence), how that knowledge is acquired, and how it is put to use (performance). The order in option A follows those three questions in sequence.

Option B puts acquisition before the knowledge it is supposed to explain, which reverses the logic: one must first say what is acquired. Options C and D start from performance, but in this framework performance is the use of knowledge and so comes after competence, not before it. Option D also puts acquisition last, which leaves the explanation of how competence arises to the end.

Answer: D

The keyed odd item is Ideograms. The stem as printed speaks of sub-disciplines, and the first two items, Epigraphy (the study of inscriptions) and Paleography (the study of ancient handwriting and scripts), are fields of study. Logographic is a descriptive term for a type of writing system in which a sign stands for a word or morpheme.

Ideograms are individual signs that depict an idea, the units of such a system rather than a discipline, so the official key treats this as the item that does not belong with the others. The printed stem is loosely worded, so this is an answer reached by elimination from the official key and the question is best learned as a classification of terms: Epigraphy and Paleography name areas of study; Logographic and Ideograms belong to the vocabulary of writing systems.