EL 100 Introduction to Linguistics

Midterm Examination
First Semester, A.Y. 2021-2022
Mr. A. Ramos

1. According to Corballis (2002), “There are good reasons to suppose that much of
the development of language over the past two million years took place through
manual gesture rather than vocalization”. How do you perceive the idea that the
origins of language are to be found in manual gestures and that the development
of speech comes from the transfer of manual gestures to vocalization? Explain
your answer in not more than one hundred (100) words.
Answer:
Million years ago our ancestors only depends on the environment wherein they
only use gestures because they don’t know how to speak.This gestures helps
them to communicate and survive to the environment.As time goes by little by
liitle the gestures evolved through sign languages that they use and the mind also
evolves developing new strategies to communicate and by observing
environment such as animals and they’re confused on how these animals
communicate?then after a day by day experience,after they made strategies to
communicate this will comes into vocalization.

2. One of the principal goals of linguistics is to reconstruct the full, pure forms of an
original stage from the variously disfigured and mutilated forms which are
attested in individual languages. How would you argue for or against this point of
view? Explain your answer in not more than one hundred (100) words.
Answer:
I’m agree to the the principal goals of linguistics because the pure forms of
language has been changed and because of change the people make the
language more simple and easy and the fullness of the language has been
forgotten.Linguist may repair and reconstruct the missing in the language in order
to save the languages because there are some languages that tottaly dead and
extinct because people already forget it because of the changes.

3. Decide on the issue of whether language has developed as part of our general
cognitive abilities or whether it has evolved as a separate component that can
exist independently (and is unrelated to intelligence, for example). Expound your
stand on the issue in not more than one hundred (100) words.
Answer:
Language is a cognitive ability that unique to our species.Remember when we’re
a child we don’t know language and as we grow we learned language because of
our parents when they are talking we’re just observing and learning and after we
learn we use to speak and we developed language as we grow older.Language
and cognitive are related to each other.Because if we don’t have this unique
cognitive ability that is only to our species the language will not developed.
* Answers to the foregoing questions should be asserted utilizing the lessons and/or concepts of
the course Introduction to Linguistics