Review Questions for Chapter 1

Question 1: What is meant by the term “Language Variation”?

Language variation can refer to the differences in phonology, grammar, or the lexical choices
within one language

Question 2: What are the two main categories of language variation?

- dialectal variation and diatypical variation
Question 3: What are the variables in the category of dialectal variation?
+ Geographical/ regional (regional differences)
+ Temporal (differences in different periods of time).
+ Social (differences between people from different social classes).
+ Standard/ non-standard (standard/ non-standard differences)
+ Idiolect (differences between individuals)
Question 4: Geographical dialect indicates the linguistic differences between or among?
A. people B. regions C. time periods D. social classes
Question 5: Social dialect indicates the linguistic differences between or among?
A. people B. regions C. time periods D. social classes
Question 6: Temporal dialect indicates the linguistic differences between or among?
A. people B. regions C. time periods D. social classes
Question 7: Idiolect indicates the linguistic differences between or among?
A. people B. regions C. time periods D. social classes
Question 8: The interaction of which variables of situations results in diatypical variation?
- field of discourse, mode of discourse and tenor of discourse
Question 9: What is meant by “field of discourse”?
topics about which language is used to talk
Question 10: What is meant by “mode of discourse”?
relationships between the language user and the mode of delivery
Question 11: What is meant by “tenor of discourse”?
the relationships between the speaker/ writer and the listener/ reader
Question 12: What are some causes of differences in the way people speak?
Some differences are due to age, sex. stale of health, size. personality,
emotional state. and personal idiosyncrasies.
Question 13: How can the dialects of a single language be defined?
Mutually intelligible forms of a language that differ in systematic ways from each other.

Question 14: True or false?

It is very difficult to decide whether the systematic differences between two speech communities
reflect two dialects or two different languages. TRUE
Question 15: What happens when dialects become mutually unintelligible?
- They become new/different languages.
Question 16: How does dialectal diversity develop?
when people are separated from each other geographically and socially
Question 17: Complete the sentences:
Dialect differences tend to increase proportionately to the degree of communicative
ISOLATION between the groups.
Question 18: True or false?
Changes in the grammar do-> DO NOT take place all at once within the speech community.
They take place very fast, often originating in one region and quickly spreading to others, and
often taking place throughout the lives of several generations of speakers.
-> FALSE
Question 19: What is “accent”?
Accent refers to the characteristics of speech that convey information about the speaker's
dialect, which may reveal in what country or what part of the country the speaker grew up
or to which sociolinguistic group the speaker belongs.
Question 20: Accent refers to the characteristics of speech that convey information about the
speaker's _________, which may reveal in what country or what part of the country the speaker
grew up or to which sociolinguistic group the speaker belongs.
A. dialect B. personality C. state of health D. idiosyncrasy
Question 21: True or false?
The term accent is also used to refer to the speech of someone who speaks a language natively-
>NONNATIVELY; for example. a French person speaking English is described as having a
French accent.
-> FALSE
Question 22: Complete the sentence:
The origins of many regional dialects of American English can be traced to the people who
first settled North America in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
Question 23: How many major dialect areas in the British colonies by the time of the American
Revolution?
- 3: the Northern dialect spoken in New England and around the Hudson River; the
Midland dialect spoken in Pennsylvania; and the Southern dialect
Question 24: The changes in the pronunciation of which letter illustrated the development of
regional dialects in American English?
- R
Question 25: What does the underlined word/ phrase mean?
Pioneers from all three dialect areas in the British colonies spread westward. The intermingling
of their dialects “leveled" or “submerged" many of their dialectal differences .
A. separation B. interaction C. contrary D. coordination
Question 26: True or false?
The language of the regions where the new immigrants settle may thus be similarly->
DIFFERENTIALLY affected by the native languages of the settlers, further adding to the
varieties of American English.
-> FALSE
Question 27: Complete the sentence:
A comparison between the "r-less" dialect and other dialects illustrates PHONOLOGICAL
differences between dialects.
Question 28: What is meant by lexical differences?
It's the differences in the words people use for the same object.
Question 29: The concentrations defined by different word usage and varying pronunciation
among other linguistic differences, form dialect areas. A line drawn on the map separating the
areas is called an_________.
A. isolability B. isogon C. isogloss D. isograft
Question 30: True or false?
When you "cross” an isogloss, you are passing from one dialect area to another. TRUE
Question 31: The sentence “ John will eat and Mary” is considered UNGRAMMATICAL in
most dialects of English.
Question 32: True or false?
Although regional dialects differ in pronunciation, vocabulary, and syntactic rules, they are
major-> MINOR differences when compared with the totality of the grammar.
-> FALSE
Question 34: What do prescriptive grammarians, or language "purists," usually consider the
dialect used by political leaders and the upper socioeconomic classes, the dialect used for
literature or printed documents, the dialect taught in the schools, as?
- The correct form of the language
Question 35: True or false?
Standard American English (SAE) is an idealization. Nobody speaks this dialect; and if
somebody did, we would not know it, because SAE is not defined precisely. TRUE
Question 36: Complete the sentence:
One dialect is _____NEITHER_____ better ____NOR______ worse than another,
___NOR_______ purer ___NOR_______more corrupt; it is simply different.
Question 37: Why do language purists wish to stem change in language or dialect
differentiation?
- because of their false belief that some languages are better than others or that
change leads to corruption
Question 38: Languages and dialects have also been banned as a means of _________ control.
A. financial B. political C. social D. legal
Question 39: True or false?
The majority of regional dialects of the United States are, to a great extent, free from
Stigma. TRUE
Question 40: There is one dialect of North American Engl ish, however, that has been a victim
of prejudicial ignorance. What is it? AFRICAN AMERICAN ENGLISH
Question 41: Some people, white and black, think they can identify someone's race by hearing
an unseen person talk, believing that different races inherently speak differently. This assumption
is _________.
A. correct B. false C. neither correct nor false D. immoral
Question 42: What are some of the differences between AAE and SAE phonology?
R-Deletion.
 L-Deletion
Consonant Cluster Simplification .
Neutralization of [i] and [ε] before Nasals
Loss of Interdental Fricatives
Question 43: in AAE, people will pronounce “toll” and “toe” similarly or differently?
Question 44: What is the simplification rule of AAE?
Question 45: When speakers of AAE say I pass the test yesterday, they are showing an
ignorance of past and present. Is it true or false? FALSE
Question 46: What are the syntactic differences between AAE and SAE?
- Double negatives
- Deletion of the verb “be"
- Habitual “be"
Question 47: Why do some “educators” conclude that speakers of AAE are deficient and they
use language “illogically”? DOUBLE NEGATIVES he don't know nothing
Question 48: True or false?
Multiple negation is the irregular-> REGULAR rule in many other languages of the world.
FALSE
Question 49: In most cases, what will happen to a verb in AAE if that verb is contracted in
SAE? It is deleted.
Question 50: A feature related with the verb “be” exists in AAE but never in SAE. What is it?
Give examples to illustrate it.
The habitual “be"
In AAE, this distinction is made syntactically; an uninflected form of be is used if the
speaker is referring to habitual action.
John be happy. "John is always happy."
John happy. "John is happy now."
He be late. "He is habitually late." '
He late. "He is late this time."
Do you be tired? "Are you generally tired?"
You tired? "Are you tired now? "
Question 51. What is a Lingua Franca?
In areas of the world which are populated by people speaking divergent languages,
these groups desire social or commercial communication, so one language is often used by
common agreement. Such a language is called a lingua franca.

Question 52. What lingua franca did French use to be?

The lingua franca of diplomacy
Question 53: Hindi is the lingua franca of Pakistan. True or false? FALSE (India)
Question 54: What is a pidgin?
When the contact is too specialized and the cultures too widely separated for the
usual kind of lingua franca to arise, the two (or possibly more) groups use their native
languages as a basis for a rudimentary language of few lexical items and less complex
grammatical rules. Such a "marginal language" is called a pidgin.
Question 55: Where is the pidgin Tok Pisin popularly used? Papua New Guinea
Question 56: Pidgins are in some sense rudimentary, and they DON'T lack grammar. True or
false? FALSE
Question 57: What is the drawback of the small vocabularies of pidgins?
pidgins are not good at expressing fine distinctions of meaning

Question 58: What are generally absent from pidgins?

Case, tense, mood, and voice
Question 59: One distinguishing characteristic of pidgin languages is that:
A. no one learns them as native speakers.
B. everyone learns them as native speakers.
C. someone learns them as native speakers.
D. almost everyone learns them as native speakers.
Question 60: What is a Creole?
Creole exists when a pidgin comes to be adopted by a community as its native
tongue, and children learn it as a first language.
Question 61: The term Creole has a/an _______ origin?
A. English B. Spanish C. Portuguese D. Canadian
Question 62: Creoles become fully developed languages, having more lexical items and a
broader array of grammatical distinctions than pidgins. In time, they become languages as
complete in every way as other languages. True or False? TRUE
Question 63: What is Style or Register?
Most speakers of a language know many dialects. They use one dialect when out
with friends, another when on a job interview or presenting a report in class, and another
when talking to their parents. These "situation dialects" are called styles or registers.

Question 64: What is Slang?

Slang has been defined as "one of those things that everybody can recognize and nobody
can define."
Question 65: The use of slang, or colloquial language, introduces many new words into the
language by recombining _____ words into _____ meanings.
A. new/ new B. old/ new C. old/ old D. all options are correct
Question 66: One generation's slang may become another generation's standard vocabulary.
True or False? TRUE
Question 67: What is Jargon or Argot?
argot and jargon refer to the unique vocabulary used by professional or trade
groups.
Question 68: What is meant by the term Taboo?
Certain words in all societies are considered taboo-they are not to be used, or at least, not
in "polite company."
Question 69: Fill in the blank:
Words relating to sex, sex organs, and natural bodily functions MAKE UP A LARGE PART
OF_the set of taboo words of many cultures.
Question 70: What is a euphemism?
A euphemism is a word or phrase that replaces a taboo word or serves to avoid
frightening or unpleasant subjects

Question 71: In English, what word can be a euphemism of “die”?

- PASS ON or PASS AWAY
Question 72: What do the words like kike (for Jew), wop (for Italian), nigger or coon (for
African American), slant (for Asian), towel-head (for Middle Eastern Arab), and so forth
express? racist and chauvinist views of society
Question 73: One striking fact about the asymmetry between male and female terms in many
languages is that when there are male/female pairs, the male form for the most part is _________
and the female term is created by adding a bound morpheme or by compounding.
A. marked
B. unmarked
Question 74: Changes in English are taking place to reflect the feminist movement and the
growing awareness on the part of both men and women that language may reflect attitudes of
society and reinforce stereotypes and bias. True or False? TRUE
Question 75: It is said that language is _____ good _____ evil but its use may be one or the
other.
A. either/ or B. both/ and C. neither/ nor D. not only/ but also
Question 76: The invention or construction of secret languages and language games like Pig
Latin refutes->ATTEST the creativity of language use and the unconscious knowledge that
speakers have of the phonological, morphological, and semantic rules of their language. True or
False? FALSE

Review Questions for Chapter 2

Question 1: All living languages change with time. It is fortunate that they do so rather _____
compared to the human life span.
A. fast B. slowly
Question 2: How is English chronologically divided?
Question 3: Complete the sentence:
An examination of the changes that have occurred in English during the past 1,500 years shows
changes in lexicon, phonological, morphological, syntactic and semantic components of the
grammar.
Question 4: The [ai]-[a:] correspondence between these two dialects of English is an example of
regular sound correspondence.
Question 5: Centuries ago English underwent a phonological change called a sound shift in
which [u:] became [aw].
Question 6: What is a protolanguage?
the ancestral language from which related languages have developed
Question 7: Germanic languages such as English and German are genetically related to the
Romance languages such as French and Spanish. True or False? TRUE
Question 8: How do we know that the Germanic and Romance languages have a common
ancestor? the large number of sound correspondences that exist between them
Question 9: What do regular sound correspondences illustrate? changes in the phonological
system
Question 10: Complete the following sentence:
The inventory of sounds can change by the __loss___ of phonemes. The inventory can also
change by the _addition____ of new phonemes.
Question 11: An allophone of a phoneme can never become phonemic. True or False? FALSE -
> can
Question 12: What may an interaction of phonological rules result in?
changes in the lexicon
Question 13: Complete the sentence:
Changes in phonological rules can, and often do, result in dialect differences.
Question 14: From the standpoint of the language as a whole, phonological changes occur
gradually over the course of many generations of speakers, although a given speaker's grammar
may or may not reflect the change. True or false? TRUE
Question 15: What does Great Vowel Shift refer to?
A major change in the history of English that resulted in new phonemic representations of
words and morphemes took place approximately between 1400 and 1600.
Question 16: How can we observe some of the morphological changes?
by comparing older and newer forms of the language or by looking at different dialects
Question 17: Complete the sentence below:
Extensive changes in rules of morphology have occurred in the history of the English and most
of the Indo-European languages
Question 18: Complete the following statement:
Modern English is an SVO (Subject-Verb-Object) language. Old English was both a/ an SVO
and a/ an SOV language.
Question 19: Are sentences like Se man pone kyning sloh, literally the man the king slew
grammatical in old English? YES
Question 20: What was the main negation element in old English and where did it usually occur
in a sentence?
In Old English the main negation element was ne. It usually occurred before a verbal
element.
Question 21: What is the difference between the comparison in old English and modern
English?
the rules of comparative and superlative constructions. Today we form the comparative by
adding -er to the adjective or by inserting more before it; the superlative is formed by
adding -est or by inserting most. In Malory's Tales of King Arthur written in 1470, double
comparatives and double superlatives occur, which today are ungrammatical: more
gladder, more lower, most royallest, most shamefullest.
Question 22: What is meant by “Changes in the lexicon”? Lexical change
Question 23: Borrowing words from other languages is another important source of new words.
When does it occur?
when one language adds to its own lexicon a word or morpheme from another language,
often altering its pronunciation to fit the phonological rules of the borrowing language
Question 24: Name some borrowing words in Vietnamese?
Words like xi măng, xà phòng, cà rốt, cà phê etc… are borrowings from French, cộng hòa,
phổ thông, and đối thoại etc… from Sino- Vietnamese, cao bồi, phim, HIV, nốc-ao etc…
from English, karaoke from Japanese, and so on… to name but a few.
Question 25: True or false?
Only a few languages in the world are borrowers. FALSE -> most
Question 26: Choose A, B, C, or D
A native word is one whose ________________ can be traced back to the earliest known stages
of the language.
A. history or etymology
B. pronunciation
C. spelling
D. grammatical features
Question 27: How many ways in which a language may borrow a word? Give examples?
A language may borrow a word directly or indirectly. A direct borrowing means that the
borrowed item is a native word in the language from which it is borrowed. Feast was
borrowed directly from French and can be traced back to Latin festum. On the other hand,
the word algebra was borrowed from Spanish, which in turn had borrowed it from Arabic.
Thus algebra was indirectly borrowed from Arabic, with Spanish as an intermediary.
Question 28: From what language are these words buoy, freight, leak, pump, yacht borrowed?
Dutch
Question 29: Complete the following statement:
Words having to do with mathematics and chemistry were borrowed INDIRECTLY from
Arabic, because early Arab scholarship in these fields was quite advanced: Alcohol, algebra,
cipher and zero are a representative sample.
Question 30: What does the name “California” mean? Hot furnace
Question 31: What are Loan Translations? Give an example?
Loan translations are compound words or expressions whose parts are translated directly
into the borrowing language. Marriage of convenience is a loan-translation borrowed from
French mariage de convenance. Spanish speakers eat perros calientes, a loan translation of
hot dogs with an adjustment reversing the order of the adjective and noun, as required by
the rules of Spanish syntax. Modern Vietnamese have siêu thị, a loan translation of
supermarket, and nóng (ảnh/ đường dây nóng) of hot etc… from English.
Question 32: Name some ways in which new words come into a language?
- compounding or/ and recombining old words to form new ones with new meanings.
- derivational processes, as in uglification, finalize, and finalization.
- word coinage, deriving words from names, blends, back-formations, acronyms, and
abbreviations or clippings.
Question 33: What is meant by “a word is lost through inattention”?
Nobody thinks of it; nobody uses it; and it fades out of the language.
Question 34: Complete the sentence below:
Holiday, pictures and quarantine are examples of words whose meanings have been broadened.
Question 35: Deer and hound are examples of words with broadened meanings. True or false?
FALSE -> narrowed
Question 36: The word knight is an example of what phenomenon that a lexical item
undergoes? Meaning shifts
Question 37: How many kinds of semantic changes are there? 3: Broadening, narrowing and
meaning shifts.
Question 38: What is the name of the branch of linguistics that deals with how languages
change, what kinds of changes occur, and why they occurred?
historical and comparative linguistics
Question 39: What is the chief goal of the Nineteenth-Century Comparativists?
to develop and elucidate the genetic relationships that exist among the world's languages
Question 40: What are cognates?
Cognates are words in related languages that developed from the same ancestral root.
Question 41: How did the Neo-Grammarians view linguistics?
a natural science
Question 42: True or False?
When languages resemble one another in ways not attributable to chance or borrowing, we may
conclude they are related. TRUE
Question 43: How can a language die? When no children learn it
Question 44: What do linguists do to preserve endangered languages?
They attempt to preserve these languages by studying and documenting their grammars –
the phonetics, phonology, and so on – and by recording for posterity the speech of the last
few speakers.
Question 45: Complete the sentence below:
The way we classified languages according to the language family is like classifying people
according to their names.
Question 46: How many language types are there if languages are classified by the basic or most
common order in which Subject (S), Object (O), and Verb (V) occur? 6
Question 47: What is a basic cause of language change?
the way children acquire the language
Question 48: A, B, C or D
One plausible source of change is ___________, a kind of ease of articulation process in which
one sound influences the pronunciation of another adjacent or nearby sound.
A. assimilation
B. standardization
C. formation
D. reduction
Question 49: Another kind of language change that can be thought of as "economy of memory"
results in a reduction of the number of exceptional or irregular morphemes. What is this?
Analogic change
Question 50: True or False?
Assimilation and analogic change account for some linguistic changes, but they cannot account
for others. TRUE
Review Questions for Chapter 3
Question 1: If a child only receives the exposure to language without any formal teaching, what
will happen?
They learn to speak naturally
Question 2: Complete the following statement:
Writing permits a society to permanently record its literature, its history and science, and its
technology. The creation and development of writing systems is therefore one of the greatest of
human achievements.
Question 3: What is meant by “writing”?
By writing is meant any of the many visual (nongestural) systems for representing
language, including handwriting, printing, and electronic displays of these written forms.
Question 4: True or false?
The invention of writing comes relatively early in human history, and its development was fast.
FALSE -> Gradual, not fast
Question 5: What is the term for “picture writings”? Pictograms
Question 6: Pictograms are different from the modern writing systems in the point that:
A. each picture or pictogram is a direct image of the object it represents.
B. each picture or pictogram is an indirect image of the object it represents.
Question 7: Complete the sentence:
It can be said that the relationship between the form and meaning of the symbol in pictograms is
nonarbitrary.
Question 8: Why are pictograms still in use today?
where the native language of the region might not be adequate
Question 9: When do “pictograms” become “ideograms”?
when the drawing becomes less literal, and the meaning extends to concepts associated with
the object originally pictured
Question 10: Complete the statement:
A "no parking" symbol showing an automobile being towed away is more literal, more like a
pictogram.
Question 11: What is the oldest writing system known?
the writing system of the Sumerians
Question 12: What are “logograms”?
the symbols of a word-writing system
Question 13: True or false?
Logographic systems are true writing systems in the sense that the symbols stand for words of a
language. TRUE
Question 14: Complete the following sentences:
In a syllabic writing system, each syllable in the language is represented by its own symbol, and
words are written syllable by syllable.
Question 15: What is “rebus principle”? Give one example?
A system which uses the symbol of one word or syllable to represent another word or
syllable pronounced the same.
Eg: the symbol 🞊 stood for sun in English, it could then be used in a sentence like My 🞊 is
a doctor
Question 16: Is “Vá 9 săm lốp” in Vietnamese an example of the rebus principle? YES
Question 17: Why the “rebus principle” inefficient in some languages?
because in many languages words cannot be subdivided into sequences of sounds that have
meaning by themselves
Question 18: True or false?
The hieroglyphics were invented by the Egyptians long before the Sumerian pictography.
FALSE -> at the same time
Question 19: What helped hieroglyphics become a syllabic writing system?
The Rebus Principle
Question 20: In the writing system of the Phoenicians, the characters mostly stood for the
________ alone.
A. Consonants
B. Vowels
Question 21: What led to the alphabetic writing system?
In Greek, unlike Phoenician, vowels cannot be determined by grammatical context, so a
writing system for Greek required that vowels have their own independent representation.
Fortuitously Phoenician had more consonants than Greek, so when the Greeks borrowed
the system they used the leftover symbols to represent vowel sounds. The result was
alphabetic writing, a system where both consonants and vowels are symbolized.
Question 22: How many types of writing systems and what are they?
4 types of writing systems used in the world: word or logographic writing, syllabic writing,
consonantal writing, and alphabetic writing.
Question 23: What is Pinyin?
a spelling system using the Roman alphabet adopted by the Chinese government.
Question 24: What types of languages that are not efficiently written with a syllabary?
English, and Indo-European languages in general
Question 25: In Japanese writing, Chinese characters will commonly be used for the verb roots,
and hiragana symbols for the inflectional markings. True or False? TRUE
Question 26: What are the advantages of Alphabetic writing systems?
easy to learn, convenient to use, and maximally efficient for transcribing any human
language.
Question 27: True or false?
All European alphabets use Latin (Roman) letters, making minor adjustments to accommodate
individual characteristics of a particular language. FALSE -> most European alphabets
Question 28: Complete the following statement:
The written language reflects, to a certain extent, the elements and rules that together constitute
the grammar of the language.
Question 29: What can some punctuation marks reflect in the spoken language?
pauses and intonations
Question 30: What is more conservative, written language or spoken language? written
language
Question 31: True or false?
The spelling of most English words today is based on English spoken in the fourteenth, fifteenth,
and sixteenth centuries. TRUE
Question 32: To read English with correct pronunciations, what knowledge is required?
morphophonemic knowledge
Question 33: Complete the sentence below:
Writing has affected speech only marginally, most notably in the phenomenon of spelling
pronunciation.
Question 34: The clear influence of spelling on pronunciation is observable in the way place-
names are pronounced. Give some examples in English?
Berkeley is pronounced [burkli] in California, although it stems from the British [ba:kli];
Worcester [wustər] or [wustə] in Massachusetts is often pronounced [wurčεstər] in other
parts of the country. Salmon is pronounced [sæmən] in most parts of the United States, but
many southern speakers pronounce the [l] and say [sælmən].
Question 35: Complete the following statement:
Despite a certain lack of correspondences between sound and spelling, the spelling often reflects
speakers' morphological and phonological knowledge.