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DLAB Cross-Linguistic Comparison Flashcards

6 cards from real DLAB practice questions. Tap to flip, then mark Knew It or Still Learning — missed cards come back until you master them.

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  1. English says 'the red big house' sounds wrong, preferring 'the big red house.' This shows that English has a fixed adjective order where size comes before color. Which type of language rule does this demonstrate?

    Answer: Syntactic ordering constraint on adjectives

    English has a rigid adjective ordering rule: opinion-size-shape-age-color-origin-material-purpose. Size ('big') must precede color ('red'). This syntactic constraint is unconsciously followed by native speakers and differs across languages — French, for example, has more flexible adjective placement.

  2. Japanese uses Subject-Object-Verb (SOV) order: 'Tanaka-san hon-o yomu' = 'Tanaka book reads.' English uses SVO: 'Tanaka reads a book.' What percentage of world languages use SOV order?

    Answer: About 45%

    Approximately 45% of the world's languages use SOV order, making it the most common basic word order. SVO (like English) accounts for about 42%. Together, these two orders cover roughly 87% of all languages. VSO, VOS, OVS, and OSV are all much rarer.

  3. In Mandarin Chinese, 'ma' can mean 'mother,' 'hemp,' 'horse,' or 'scold' depending on the tone used. What type of language is Mandarin in terms of its use of pitch?

    Answer: A tone language where pitch distinguishes word meaning

    Mandarin is a tone language with four tones plus a neutral tone. Each syllable's pitch contour (high level, rising, falling-rising, falling) is an integral part of the word's identity. Changing the tone changes the word entirely, unlike English where pitch mainly conveys emotion or sentence type.

  4. Turkish 'ev-ler-im-de' means 'in my houses.' Each suffix has one meaning: ev (house), -ler (plural), -im (my), -de (in/at). What type of morphological system does Turkish use?

    Answer: Agglutinative

    Turkish is agglutinative: each suffix carries exactly one grammatical meaning, and suffixes chain together transparently. You can clearly segment 'ev-ler-im-de' into four meaningful parts. This contrasts with fusional languages where a single suffix may encode multiple meanings simultaneously.

  5. Arabic forms words using root consonant patterns: k-t-b relates to writing (kitab = book, katib = writer, maktub = written). What is this word-formation system called?

    Answer: Root-and-pattern (templatic) morphology

    Arabic uses root-and-pattern (templatic) morphology where a consonantal root (k-t-b = concept of writing) is inserted into vowel patterns (templates) to create different words. The root carries semantic meaning while the template carries grammatical meaning.

  6. English has prepositions ('in the house'), while Japanese has postpositions ('ie ni' = 'house in'). What typological correlation exists between word order and adposition type?

    Answer: SVO languages tend to use prepositions; SOV languages tend to use postpositions

    There is a strong typological correlation: head-initial languages (SVO like English) tend to use prepositions (head before complement), while head-final languages (SOV like Japanese, Korean, Turkish) tend to use postpositions (complement before head). This reflects the broader head-directionality parameter.