MH Language and Linguistics 5 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: What is 'language endangerment,' and what is its primary driver globally?
- Languages gaining new speakers due to globalization
- The process by which languages lose speakers, primarily driven by political, economic, and social pressures favoring dominant languages (Correct answer)
- The deliberate simplification of language by governments
- The natural evolution of dialects into distinct languages
Correct answer: The process by which languages lose speakers, primarily driven by political, economic, and social pressures favoring dominant languages
Language endangerment occurs when a language loses speakers across generations, most often because speakers shift to economically or politically dominant languages.
Question 2: What is 'prototype theory' in lexical semantics?
- The idea that word meanings are defined by necessary and sufficient conditions
- The view that categories are organized around best exemplars (prototypes) with graded membership (Correct answer)
- A theory that all word meanings derive from spatial metaphors
- The claim that all languages share the same basic vocabulary
Correct answer: The view that categories are organized around best exemplars (prototypes) with graded membership
Prototype theory, associated with Eleanor Rosch, holds that category membership is graded around a central, most representative member rather than defined by strict criteria.
Question 3: What distinguishes synchronic linguistics from diachronic linguistics?
- Synchronic studies language at a single point in time; diachronic studies language change through time (Correct answer)
- Synchronic linguistics focuses on sounds; diachronic linguistics focuses on meaning
- Synchronic studies written language; diachronic studies spoken language
- Synchronic is qualitative research; diachronic is quantitative research
Correct answer: Synchronic studies language at a single point in time; diachronic studies language change through time
Synchronic linguistics analyzes language at a single moment without regard to history, while diachronic (historical) linguistics tracks change across time.
Question 4: Which concept in cognitive linguistics holds that abstract concepts are understood through mappings from concrete physical experience?
- Transformational grammar
- Conceptual metaphor theory (Correct answer)
- Generative phonology
- Distributional semantics
Correct answer: Conceptual metaphor theory
Conceptual metaphor theory, developed by Lakoff and Johnson, argues that abstract domains (like time or argument) are structured through systematic mappings from bodily, concrete experience.
Question 5: What is 'register' in linguistics?
- A list of words in a language arranged alphabetically
- A variety of language used in a particular social situation or for a specific purpose (Correct answer)
- The phonetic transcription of a spoken utterance
- A tone language's pitch level on a single syllable
Correct answer: A variety of language used in a particular social situation or for a specific purpose
Register refers to how language varies according to context, audience, and purpose, such as formal academic writing versus casual spoken conversation.
Question 6: What is the 'critical period hypothesis' in language acquisition?
- The idea that language is most efficiently acquired before puberty due to neurological maturation (Correct answer)
- The argument that vocabulary is acquired faster than grammar at all ages
- The claim that bilingual children acquire language more slowly than monolinguals
- The theory that literacy must precede oral language development
Correct answer: The idea that language is most efficiently acquired before puberty due to neurological maturation
The critical period hypothesis, associated with Lenneberg, proposes that there is a biologically determined window, closing around puberty, during which first language acquisition proceeds naturally.
Question 7: In conversation analysis, what is 'turn-taking' and what governs it?
- The act of translating between turns in a multilingual meeting
- The system by which participants in conversation manage the orderly exchange of speaking turns through cues and signals (Correct answer)
- A speaker's right to hold the floor indefinitely in formal discourse
- The process of learning conversational norms in a second language
Correct answer: The system by which participants in conversation manage the orderly exchange of speaking turns through cues and signals
Turn-taking is the conversational mechanism by which speakers coordinate who speaks and when, governed by transition relevance places and cues like intonation and gaze.
MH Language and Linguistics 5
What is 'language endangerment,' and what is its primary driver globally?