Review questions
Here are the review questions, covering chapters 1 through 8, that I made
up in preparation for the review session on Wednesday:
- Are nasal phones produced by raising the velum or by lowering it?
- Name four articulation points for stops in English.
- In a language that has pharyngeal fricatives, how and where are they
produced?
- Name three suprasegmental properties of phones.
- Give a minimal pair showing that /l/ and /ɹ/ are
different phonemes in English.
- Although /l/ is classified as a voiced liquid, it has a voiceless
allophone in English. Under what conditions is /l/ pronounced voicelssly
in English?
- What is the difference between a phonetic and a phonemic
transcription of the same utterance?
- Why are /m/, /n/, and /ŋ/ marked as [-continuant] in Table 3.25?
- State the maximal onset principle and apply it to divide the
English words asthma and workmanlike into syllables.
- Give an example of schwa epenthesis in English.
- What is the difference between free and bound morphemes?
- Divide the word untimelier into morphemes and show its
internal structure.
- Give an example of a compound English verb in which both components
are also verbs.
- List the inflectional affixes of English.
- Define suppletion and give an example of its operation in English
morphology.
- By which of the word-formation processes described in chapter four
was the word podcast created?
- Give an example of a noun formed by conversion from a preposition.
- In the phrase several large shipments of winter wheat,
which word is the head?
- The phrase with a sledge hammer is considered to be a
complement of the verb open in the sentence We opened
the crate with a sledge hammer, but it is not considered to be a
complement of the verb attend in the sentence He
attended the meeting with a sledge hammer. What is the difference? What
determines whether a phrase is a complement in a larger phrase, or just a
modifier?
- In the sentence Everyone knows that rain falls from the
sky, identify the matrix clause and the complement clause.
- Diagram the syntax of the sentence Adams dominated the
legislature and grimly tolerated the courts.
- Give an example of a sentence containing an ergative use of a
verb. How are ergatives related to passives?
- Give an example of two words that are homophones.
- Give an example of an English verb that illustrates the conflation
of motion with path in words derived from Latin or French, and another that
illustrates the conflation of motion with manner in words derived from Old
English or German.
- Under what conditions does the antecedent of a pronoun c-command
that pronoun?
- Identify some presuppositions of the sentence The three
wealthiest men in the room stopped smoking years before they began dyeing
their hair.
- Explain the deictic difference between the verbs bring and
take in English.
- Give an example of the use of the maxim of relevance to create a
conversational implicature.
- Give an example of assimilation as a mechanism of language change
over time.
- The word chemise is a borrowing from French. Is it more
likely to have been borrowed from medieval French or from modern French?
How can you tell?
- In discussing phonology, we found that the phonemic distinction of
/w/ from /ʍ/, which was once pretty common in American English,
is now rare. What process of change does this illustrate?
- The Latin verb domare meant "subdue" or "break," as in
"breaking a horse." By Grimm's law, what would one expect an English word
derived from domare to look like? What is the cognate English
word?
- If a language has only one phoneme that is [+nasal], which
phoneme is it most likely to be?
- Is a language more likely to have level tones or contour tones?
Which of these characteristics is marked?
- Is Bengali an Indo-European language?
- Are all the languages that have communities of native speakers in
Europe Indo-European?
Scheduled time for the final examination
As Mr. Raymond pointed out in class, the general information handout at the
beginning of the course and the on-line schedule of topics originally gave
the wrong time of day for the final examination in this course. It will be
held at 9 a.m. on Thursday, December 17.
I've moved the extensive administrivia to its own general
information page.
