Exercises for the test of linguistics

There are four choices following each statement. Mark the choice that best complete the statement.

Chapter 1 Introduction

1. The study of language as a whole is often called ________ linguistics.

A. particular

B. general

C. ordinary

D. generative

2. Traditional grammar regards the ________ form of language as primary, not the spoken form.

A. oral

B. written

C. writing

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D. vocal

3. The description of a language at some point in time is a ________ study.

A. synchronic

B. diachronic

C. historical

D. comparative

4. According to F. de Saussure, ________ refers to the abstract linguistic system shared by all the members of a speech community.

A. parole

B. performance

C. langue

D. Language

5. Language is arbitrary in that there is no logical connection between meanings and ________.

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A. words

B. sounds

C. objects

D. ideas

6. Which of the following isn’t the design features of human language?

A. arbitrariness

B. performance

C. duality

D. displacement

7. The core of linguistics excludes ________.

A. semantics

B. morphology

C. phonetics

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D. psycholinguistics

Chapter 2 Phonology

1. ________ is concerned with all the sounds that occur in the world’s languages.

A. Phonology

B. Phonetics

C. Morphology

D. Phonemics

2. Acoustic phoneticians try to describe the ________ properties of the stream of sounds which a speaker issues.

A. oral

B. mental

C. physical

D. recorded

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3. The sounds produced without the vocal cords vibrating are ________ sounds.

A. voiceless

B. voiced

C. vowel

D. consonantal

4. [p] is a voiceless bilabial ________.

A. affricate

B. fricative

C. stop

D. liquid

5. ________ aims to discover how speech sounds in a language form patterns and how these sounds are used to convey meaning in linguistic communication.

A. Linguistics

B. Phonetics

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C. Phonology

D. Articulatory phonetics

6. A ________ is not a sound; it is a collection of distinctive phonetic features.

A. phoneme

B. phone

C. sound

D. speech

7. The different phones which can represent a phoneme in different phonetic environments are called the ________ of that phoneme.

A. phones

B. sounds

C. phonemes

D. allophones

8. ________ is a typical tone language.

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A. English

B. Chinese

C. French

D. American English

Chapter 3 Morphology

1. Morphology refers to the ________ of words.

A. science

B. form

C. history

D. system

2. The smallest meaningful unit of language is ________.

A. morpheme

B. phone

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C. phoneme

D. allomorpheme

3. The word “boyish” contains two ________.

A. phonemes

B. morphs

C. morphemes

D. allomorphs

4. ________ morphemes are those that cannot be used independently but have to be combined with other morphemes, either free or bound, to form a word.

A. Free

B. Bound

C. Root

D. Affix

5. Morphemes that represent “tense”, “number”, “gender”, “case”

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and so forth are called ________ morphemes.

A. inflectional

B. independent

C. free

D. derivational

6. ________ modify the meaning of the stem, but usually do not change the part of speech of the original word.

A. Prefixes

B. Suffixes

C. Roots

D. Affixes

7. In English “-ise” and “-tion” are called ________.

A. prefixes

B. suffixes

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C. infixes

D. free morphemes

8. There are rules that govern which affix can be added to what type of ________ to form a new word.

A. root

B. affix

C. stem

D. word

9. The words such as “l(fā)ab” and “doc” are ________.

A. formed by blending

B. acronyms首字母縮略詞

C. coined by back-formation

D. clipped words

10. The compound word “running dog” should be pronounced ________,

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when it means “a person who follows others blindly”.

A. running ‘dog

B. ‘running ,dog

C. ‘running ‘dog

D. ,running ‘dog

Chapter 4 Syntax

1. Syntax is the study of the interrelationships between elements of sentence structure and of the rules governing the way words are ________ to form sentences in a language.

A. analyzed

B. examined

C. linked combined D. arranged

2. ________ lexical categories are open categories in the sense that new words are constantly added.

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A. Minor

B. Major

C. All

D. None of the above

3. NP and ________ are essential components of a sentence.

A. VP

B. PP

C. AP

D. CP

4. The two clauses in a ________ sentence are structurally equal parts of the sentence.

A. simple

B. complete

C. complex

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D. coordinate

5. The embedded clause in a complex sentence is normally called ________ clause.

A. a subordinate

B. a main

C. a matrix

D. a major

6. Transformational grammar is a type of grammar first proposed by ________ in the mid-1950s.

A. Saussure

B. Bloomfield

C. Chomsky

D. Halliday

7. The rules that group words and phrases to form grammatical sentences are called ________ rules.

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A. lexical

B. structural

C. coordinate

D. combinational

8. ________ can generate an infinite number of sentences.

A. Phrase structure rules

B. Movement rules

C. Syntactic rules

D. None of the above

Chapter 5 Semantics

1. Semantics can be defined as the study of ________.

A. words

B. meaning

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C. communication

D. context

2. Sense relates to the complex system of relationships that hold between the linguistic elements themselves (mostly words); it is concerned with _________ relations.

A. extra-linguistic

B. intra-linguistic

C. non-linguistic

D. multi-linguistic

3. Reference deals with the relationship between the linguistic elements (words, sentences, etc) and the ________ of experience.

A. extra-linguistic

B. intra-linguistic

C. non-linguistic

D. multi-linguistic

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4. Two words that are opposite in meaning are called ________.

A. synonyms

B. homonyms

C. antonyms

D. homophones

5. The pair of words “wide / narrow” are called ________.

A. gradable opposites

B. complementary antonyms

C. co-hyponyms

D. relational opposites

6. What is the meaning relationship between the two words “flower/ rose”?A. Polysemy

B. Synonymy

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C. Hyponymy

D. Antonymy

7. The words “railway” and “railroad” are ________.

A. emotive synonyms

B. dialectal synonyms

C. stylistic synonyms

D. collocational synonyms

8. The same word may have more than one meaning, which is called ________.

A. synonymy

B. homonymy

C. hyponymy

D. polysemy

9. The pair of words “l(fā)end” and “borrow” are ________.

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A. gradable antonyms

B. relational opposites

C. complementary antonyms

D. none of the above

10. The way to analyze sentence meaning is called ________ analysis.

A. componential

B. predication

C. syntactic

D. logical

Chapter 6 Pragmatics

1. Linguists found that it would be impossible to give an adequate description of meaning if ________ of language use was left unconsidered.

A. brevity

B. context

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C. accuracy

D. none of the above

2. If a sentence is regarded as what people actually utter in the course of communication, it becomes ________.

A. a sentence

B. an act

C. a unit

D. an utterance

3. ________ act theory is an important theory in the language.

A. Speaking

B. Speech

C. Sound

D. Spoken

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study of pragmatic

4. One of the contributions Searle has made is his classification of ________ acts.

A. locutionary

B. illocutionary

C. perlocutionary

D. speech

5. Of the three speech act, linguistics are most interested in the ________.

A. locutionary act

B. perlocutionary act

C. illocutionary act

D. none of the above

6. Most of the violation of the maxims of the CP give rise to ________.

A. utterance meaning

B. speech act theory

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C. conversational implicatures

D. all of the above

7. The significance of Grice’s CP lies in that it explains how it is possible for the speaker to convey ________ is literally said.

A. more than

B. less than

C. the same as

D. none of the above

Chapter 7 Language Change

1. We may use the term ________ instead of historical linguistics as a way of referring to the approach which studies language change over various period of time and at various historical stages.

A. diachronic linguistics

B. synchronic linguistics

C. sociolinguistics

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D. psycholinguistics

2. An important set of extensive sound changes affecting vowels, known as the Great Vowel Shift, occurred at the end of the ________.

A. Old English period

B. Middle English period

C. Modern English period

D. Middle ages

3. The most widely-spread morphological changes in the historical development of English are the loss and addition of ________.

A. prefixes

B. suffixes

C. affixes

D. case markings

4. The most dramatic morphological loss concerns the loss of ________.

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A. gender markings

B. case markings

C. tense markings

D. both A and B

5. The most vigorous and on-going change in the historical development of a language is the change in its ________.

A. sound

B. vocabulary

C. morphological system

D. syntax

6. The most obvious way in which Modern English differs lexically from Old English is in the number of borrowed words from other languages, particular from ________.

A. Latin

B. French

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C. Greek

D. German

7. Chinese, the most popular language of the world, belongs to the ________ family.

A. Indo-European印歐語系

B. Sino-an . 漢藏語系

C. Austronesian南太平洋群島的

D. Afroasiatic非亞語系

Chapter 8 Language and Society

1. The goal of ________ is to explore the nature of language variation and language use among a variety of speech communities and different social situations.

A. psycholinguistics

B. sociolinguistics

C. historical linguistics

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D. general linguistics

2. The situation in which two or more languages are used side by side is referred to as ________.

A. diglossia

B. bilingualism

C. pidginization

D. blending

3. A linguistic ________ refers to a word or expression that is prohibited by the “polite” society from general use.

A. slang

B. euphemism

C. jargon

D. taboo

4. A ________ is a mild, indirect or less offensive word or expression substituted when a speaker or writer fears more direct wording might be harsh, unpleasantly

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direct, or offensive.

A. linguistic taboo

B. euphemism

C. address term

D. pidgin

5. In normal situations, ________ speakers tend to use more prestigious forms than their ________ counterparts with the same social background.

A. female; male

B. male; female

C. old; young

D. young; old

6. In general, language characteristic of ________ register is more often used in the written form than in the spoken form.

A. informal

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B. formal

C. neutral

D. none of the above

7. It is ________ for individuals to be a perfect user of two languages in a full range of situations.

A. common

B. rare

C. impossible

D. none of the above

Chapter 9 Language and Brain

1. ________ deals with how language is acquired, understood, and produced.

A. Sociolinguistics

B. Psycholinguistics

C. Neurolinguistics

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D. Anthropological linguistics

2. The left hemisphere of human brain is responsible for the functions of ________.

A. language and speech

B. calculation

C. analytic reasoning and associative thought

D. all of the above

3. ________ refers to the localization of cognitive and perceptual functions in a particular hemisphere of the brain.

A. Language lateralization

B. Brain lateralization

C. Right ear advantage

D. None of the above

4. The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is about ________.

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A. language and thought

B. language and translation

C. grammatical structure

D. second language acquisition

5. Linguistic ________ is the brain’s neurological specialization for language.

A. determinism

B. relativism

C. competence

D. lateralization

6. The ________ age for the acquisition of the first language coincides with the period of brain lateralization.

A. young

B. old

C. critical

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D. flexible

Chapter 10 Language Acquisition

1. The study of language development over a period of time is generally termed as ________.

A. applied

B. diachronic

C. comparative

D. synchronic

2. In general, language acquisition refers to children’s development of their ________ language of the community in which a child has been brought up.

A. first

B. second

C. third

D. foreign

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3. ________ is defined as a conscious process of accumulating knowledge of a second language usually obtained in school setting.

A. Acquisition

B. Learning

C. Studying

D. Acquirement

4. ________ transfer is a process that is more commonly known as interference.

A. Intentional

B. Positive

C. Negative

D. Interrogative

5. ________ was believed to be the major source of difficulties experienced and errors made by L2 learners.

A. Transfer

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B. Positive transfer

C. Negative transfer

D. Overgeneralization

6. ________ approach shows that there are striking similarities in the ways in which different L2 learners acquire a new language.

A. Transfer

B. Interference

C. Contrastive Analysis

D. Error Analysis

7. During the process of SLA, a learner constructs a series of internal representations that comprises the learner’s interim knowledge of the target language, this is ________.

A. interlanguage

B. first language

C. second language

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D. foreign language

8. The optimum age for SLA is ________.

A. childhood

B. early teens

C. teens

D. adulthood

9. Which of the following isn’t a factor that may influence SLA?

A. age

B. motivation

C. personality

D. sex

10. Which stages does the child belong to according to the development of the grammatical system when we heard his saying like “No heavy,” “No eat,” “He no bite you,” etc.?

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A. the development of phonology

B. the development of syntax

C. the development of morphology

D. the development of vocabulary ahnd semantics

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