linguistics

Final Exam Study Guide II

This study guide is designed to help you revise for our final exam. It should be

used as a guide. Not everything on this sheet will be on the exam, and conversely

there will be questions on the exam not covered on the sheet.

Please revise our previous study guides and homework assignments.

1. What kinds of deictic expressions are used in this utterance (e.g. I = person deixis)?

a. I am coming home in a while. b. They will be here in 5 minutes. c. This box is full of my old textbooks.

2. What are the anaphoric expressions in this sentence?

Dr. Foster gave Andy some medicine after he told her about his headache and she advised him to

take the pills three times a day until the pain went away.

3. What is one obvious presupposition of a speaker who says:

a. Your clock isn’t working. b. Where did he find the money? c. She lost her keys again. d. We regret going to France. e. The king of France is bald.

4. Someone is talking loudly on the phone while you are trying to concentrate, so you decide to say one the following. Identify which would be direct or indirect speech acts.

a. Could you please step outside? b. Please lower your voice. c. I am trying to concentrate. d. Stop it!

5. In these examples, is the speaker appealing to positive or negative face?

a) If you’re free, there’s going to be a party at Yuri’s place on Saturday. b) Let’s go to the party at Yuri’s place on Saturday. Everyone’s invited.

6. What is the cooperative principle? Identify and describe its four maxims.

7. Identify the cooperative maxims that are flouted in the following examples and

explain why this is the case:

a. Recommendation letter for a linguistics student:

Ms. X attended class regularly, and her husband is an excellent cook. Yours, etc.

b. Family is family.

c. A: Isn’t Mary a very good friend?

B: She always wants to meet up for coffee.

d. A: A lot of people are depending on you.

B: Thanks, that really takes the pressure off.

8. Can you describe four typical features of caregiver speech?

9. During which stage do children typically first produce syllable sequences similar to “mama” and “dada” and how old are they?

10. Which of these two utterances was produced by the older child and why?

a. Where kitty? b. Why you smiling?

11. What are the three components of communicative competence?

12. Which are the four areas of the brain that are connected to our ability to use language?

13. What is the difference between language acquisition and language learning?

14. What is the difference between positive and negative transfer?

15. What is the Great Vowel Shift?

ENG/LIN230 Introduction to Linguistics Eirini Panagiotidou

16. Provide the definition of interlanguage and explain what happens when it fossilizes.

17. What is the difference between syllabic and alphabetic writing?

18. Identify instances of rebus writing in the following examples:

a. Cu2night.

b. 2b or not 2b

19. When did the Great Vowel Shift occur?

20. The Old English verb mete (“food”) is the source of the Modern English verb meat. What is the technical term used to describe this type of meaning change? Explain

why.

21. What is the difference between the term “accent” and the term “dialect”?

22. What is the difference between an idiolect and a sociolect?

23. Identify two different social markers in American English and explain how they are

related to prestige.