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| 1 | |
Which of the following statements concerning human language is not true? |
| | A) | It permits the discussion of past and future. |
| | B) | It is based on arbitrary associations between words and the things they stand for. |
| | C) | It rarely reflects social differences. |
| | D) | It is transmitted through learning, as part of enculturation. |
| | E) | It allows one to benefit from others' experiences. |
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| 2 | |
Recent research on the origins of language suggests that a key mutation might have something to do with it. Comparing chimp and human genomes, it appears that |
| | A) | the speech-friendly form of FOXP2 took hold in humans around 150,000 years ago, thus conferring selective advantages (linguistic and cultural abilities) that allowed those who had it to spread it at the expense of those who did not. |
| | B) | chimps lack the tongue-rolling gene that all humans have, and this might explain why they struggle to achieve clear speech. |
| | C) | chimps share with humans all of the genetic propensities for language, but lack the language-activation mutation. |
| | D) | a speech-friendly mutation occurred among the australopithecines in Europe and spread to other human populations through gene flow. |
| | E) | the speech mutation occurred even before the hominin line split from the rest of the hominids. |
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| 3 | |
The study of communication through body movements, stances, gestures, and expressions is |
| | A) | physical morphology. |
| | B) | kinesics. |
| | C) | phonology. |
| | D) | phonemics. |
| | E) | semantics. |
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| 4 | |
Which of the following is commonly used to communicate status differences in Madagascar? |
| | A) | bowing |
| | B) | falsetto voice |
| | C) | limp handshake |
| | D) | lowering one's head |
| | E) | firm handshake |
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| 5 | |
Words that have different meanings but differ in just one sound, such as "cat" and "bat," are known as |
| | A) | subgroups. |
| | B) | dialects. |
| | C) | minimal pairs. |
| | D) | creoles. |
| | E) | focal terms. |
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| 6 | |
The study of speech sounds in general, what people actually say in various languages, is known as |
| | A) | historical linguistics. |
| | B) | morphology. |
| | C) | phonetics. |
| | D) | phonemics. |
| | E) | kinesics. |
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| 7 | |
The study of the significant sound contrasts of a given language is known as |
| | A) | sociolinguistics. |
| | B) | morphology. |
| | C) | phonetics. |
| | D) | phonemics. |
| | E) | kinesics. |
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| 8 | |
"Pit" and "bit" are two English words that are differentiated by a single sound contrast: /p/ versus /b/. This means that /p/ and /b/ are |
| | A) | morphemes in English. |
| | B) | lexicons in English. |
| | C) | syntaxes in English. |
| | D) | phonemes in English. |
| | E) | kinesics in English. |
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| 9 | |
Who argued that the human brain contains a limited set of rules for organizing language, known as universal grammar? |
| | A) | William Labov |
| | B) | Edward Sapir |
| | C) | Pierre Bourdieu |
| | D) | Benjamin Lee Whorf |
| | E) | Noam Chomsky |
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| 10 | |
The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis states that |
| | A) | the grammatical categories of particular languages lead their speakers to think about things in different ways. |
| | B) | there are ten basic color terms that evolve in a set order. |
| | C) | the way people think leads them to develop particular grammatical categories. |
| | D) | human brains contain a limited set of rules for organizing language, so that all languages have a common structural basis. |
| | E) | women tend to build rapport with others when they speak, whereas men tend to report information in order to establish a place for themselves in a hierarchy. |
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| 11 | |
Semantics refers to |
| | A) | communication through body movements, stances, gestures, and facial expressions. |
| | B) | the arrangement and order of words in phrases and sentences. |
| | C) | a language's meaning system. |
| | D) | specialized sets of terms and distinctions that are particularly important to certain groups. |
| | E) | "high" and "low" variants of a language. |
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| 12 | |
In their cross-cultural study of color terms, Berlin and Kay found that |
| | A) | there were 20 basic color terms used by societies. |
| | B) | basic color terms evolved in a more or less set order. |
| | C) | the number of color terms did not vary with cultural complexity. |
| | D) | color terminology was most developed in areas with a history of intensive agriculture. |
| | E) | Australian hunter-gatherers used only two basic color terms, which translate as red and blue. |
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| 13 | |
All people style shift—that is, they |
| | A) | switch between "high" and "low" variants of a language. |
| | B) | vary their speech in different social contexts. |
| | C) | value the prestige dialect more than the speech of low-status groups. |
| | D) | use language and associated body movements to build rapport with others. |
| | E) | report information that serves to establish a place for themselves in a social hierarchy. |
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| 14 | |
Which of the following statements concerning Black English Vernacular is not true? |
| | A) | It is systematic and rule-governed. |
| | B) | It is inferior to SE in terms of its ability to communicate complex ideas. |
| | C) | One phonological difference is that BEV speakers are less likely to pronounce the r than SE speakers are. |
| | D) | Despite their omission of -ed as a past-tense marker and -s as a plurality marker, BEV speakers understand the difference between past and present verbs and between singular and plural nouns. |
| | E) | It has its own phonology and syntax, similar in some ways to those of southern dialects. |
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| 15 | |
Bourdieu refers to the widespread acceptance of the authority and correctness of the prestige dialect—even by people who do not use it—as |
| | A) | linguistic relativity. |
| | B) | linguistic stratification. |
| | C) | diglossia |
| | D) | symbolic capital. |
| | E) | symbolic domination. |
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| 16 | |
Languages that have descended from the same language are called |
| | A) | historical linguistics. |
| | B) | daughter languages. |
| | C) | protolanguages. |
| | D) | linguistic subgroups. |
| | E) | Proto-Indo-European. |
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