DLAB Cross-Linguistic Comparison

Question 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?

Accepted Answer

Syntactic ordering constraint on adjectives

Answer

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.

Question 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?

Accepted Answer

About 45%

Answer

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.

Question 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?

Accepted Answer

A tone language where pitch distinguishes word meaning

Answer

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.

Question 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?

Accepted Answer

Agglutinative

Answer

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.

Question 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?

Accepted Answer

Root-and-pattern (templatic) morphology

Answer

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.

DLAB - Defense Language Aptitude Battery Practice Test

DLAB - Defense Language Aptitude Battery Practice Test

DLAB Cross-Linguistic Comparison