Table of Contents
2012
- What are the major levels of linguistics?
Ans:There are six major levels of linguistics such as phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics. - What is syntax?
Ans: Syntax is the arrangement of words in sentences of language. - What are the branches of phonetics?
Ans: There are three branches of phonetics – articulatory phonetics, acoustic phonetics and auditory phonetics. - What is zero allomorph?
Ans: Zero allomorph is an inflection on nouns or verbs presumed to be present although invisible. - Define voicing.
Ans: In phonetics, the speech sounds which are produced with the vibration of the vocal cords are known as voicing. - What is elision?
Ans: In linguistics, elision or deletion refers to the omission of one or more sounds in a word or phrase. - What is Psycholinguistics?
Ans: Psycholinguistics is the study of the psychological and neurobiological factors that allow humans to acquire, use, comprehend and produce language. - What is phoneme?
Ans: Phoneme is the smallest unit of speech or language. - Define LAD.
Ans: LAD is Language Acquisition Device. It is the capacity to acquire one’s first language. - What is IPA?
Ans: IPA is a system of transcribing the sounds of languages which consists of some Latin and Greek latter’s and a variety of additional symbols and diacritics. - How many vowel sounds are there in English?
Ans: There are twenty vowel sound in English. - What is acronym?
Ans: An acronym is a word formed from the initial letters of a name or by combining initial letters of a series of words.
2013
- What is phonetics?
Ans: Phonetics is the branch of linguistics which is concerned with the production, transmission, reception, and perception of speech sounds. - What is assimilation?
Ans: Assimilation refers to a phonological process by which one sound becomes more like a nearby sound. - What is a face-threatening act?
Ans: Face – threatening acts are acts that infringe on the hearer’s need to maintain his/her self- esteem and be respected. - What are alveolar consonants?
Ans: Alveolar consonants are produced when the blade of the tongue articulates with the alveolar ridge. - What is a dialect?
Ans: A dialect is the regional variety of a language which is used by a particular speech community. - What is SLA?
Ans: SLA stands for Second Language Acquisition which is the process by which people learn a second language. - What is meant by ‘duality’?
Ans: Duality means that language is organized on two levels-physical level at which we can produce individual sounds e.g. n, b, i and meaning level – when we produce sounds in combination e.g. nib, bin. - What is ‘register’?
Ans: A register is a speech variety used by a particular group of people, usually sharing the same occupation. - What is a ‘minimal pair’?
Ans: A minimal pair is a pair of two words in a language which differ from each other by only one distinctive sound (one phoneme) and which also differ in meaning. - Name the passive articulators.
Ans: The passive articulators are upper lip, upper teeth, alveolar ridge, hard palate and soft palate. - Define ‘presupposition’.
Ans: Presupposition is the assumption the speaker makes about what the hearer is going to accept without challenge. - How many monophthongs are there in English?
Ans: There are twelve monophthongs in English.
2014
- What is diphthong?
Ans: A diphthong is a sound which is usually considered as one distinctive vowel of a particular language but it involves two pure vowels where one vowel glides into the other. - What is the smallest phonological unit?
Ans: Phoneme is the smallest phonological unit. - What is parole?
Ans: Parole is the actual, concrete act of speaking on the part of an individual .It refers to the actually produced utterances. - What is IC?
Ans: IC stands for Immediate Constituent which is any one of the largest grammatical units that constitute a construction. - What is tonic stress?
Ans: Tonic stress is extra strong stress on words to show special focus. - What is phone?
Ans: Phone means sound or voice. - What is Bound Stem?
Ans: A bound stem is a stem which cannot occur as a separate word apart from any other morpheme. - What is syntax?
Ans: Syntax is the study of sentence structure. - What is schema?
Ans: Schema is a stored body of knowledge. - What is isogloss?
Ans: Isogloss is a boundary line between places or regions that differ in a particular linguistic feature such as the pronunciation of a vowel. - What is tone?
Ans: A tone is a syllable which initiates a contrast in pitch level or direction. - Who is Saussure?
Ans: Ferdinand de Saussure is the originator of the 20th century reappearance of structuralism.
2015
- What is Idiolect?
Ans: Idiolect is the speech pattern of an individual at a particular period of time. - What is LAD?
Ans: LAD is Language Acquisition Device. - What is Recursion?
Ans: Rules can be applied more than once in generating sentences. - What is ‘zero morph”?
Ans: Zero morph is a morph where no morpheme is added but still semantically it makes sense that there is a plural form. - What is sociolect?
Ans: Sociolect is a variety of a language which is typical of a certain class. - What is allophone?
Ans: Allophone is the positional variant of the same phoneme. - What is stress?
Ans: Stress is the acoustic prominence of a syllable in a word. - What are bilabial sounds?
Ans: The sounds made by the two lips are called bilabial sounds. - What is SLA?
Ans: Second Language Acquisition. - What is a ‘minimal pair’?
Ans: A minimal pair is a pair of two words in a language which differ from each other by only one distinctive sound (one phoneme) and which also differ in meaning. - What is phonetics?
Ans: Phonetics is the branch of linguistics which is concerned with the production, transmission, reception, and perception of speech sounds. - What is competence?
Ans: Competence is the tacit knowledge of the language.
2016
- What are the major levels of linguistics?
Ans. The levels are – phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, pragmatics, etc. - What is parole?
Ans. Parole is a term used by Ferdinand de Saussure which deals with an individual’s actual speech. One’s parole can be influenced by external factors. - Define voicing.
Ans. In phonetics, Voicing is the sound that is produced by the vibration of the vocal cords. - What is assimilation?
Ans. Assimilation is a phonological process by which one sound becomes more like a nearby sound. - What is IC?
Ans. An Immediate Constituent (IC) is one of the largest grammatical units that form a construction. Immediate constituents are often further reducible. For example, in the complex noun phrase the dog that killed the cat, each of the following items is an immediate constituent: the dog that killed the cat. - What is schema?
Ans. Schema denotes the background knowledge which enables us to presuppose about what we might expect to experience in a given context. - What is psycholinguistics?
Ans. Psycholinguistics or psychology of language is the study of the psychological and neurobiological factors that enable humans to acquire, use, comprehend, and produce language. - Name the passive articulators.
Ans. The passive articulators are the alveolar ridge, soft palate, hard palate, teeth, upper lip, uvula, and pharynx. - What is diphthong?
Ans. In diphthongs, there are two vowels together but only one peak is there. - What is syntax?
Ans. The syntax is the study of sentence structure. - What is IPA?
Ans. IPA is a system of transcribing the sounds of languages which consists of some Latin and Greek letters and a variety of additional symbols and diacritics. - What is acronym?
Ans. An acronym is a kind of abbreviation.
2017
- What is linguistics?
Ans. The science of language is known as linguistics - Who is Saussure?
Ans. Ferdinand de Saussure is the originator of the 20th-century reappearance of structuralism - What is Langue?
Ans. Langue is a French word meaning ‘Language’. The term used by Saussure to refer to the collective knowledge of a community of the language spoken by its members. - What is a monophthong?
Ans. Monophthong is a term used in the phonetic classification of vowel sounds on the basis of their manner of articulation. - What is Pitch?
Ans. Pitch is the degree of highness or lowless of a tone - What is a bound morpheme?
Ans. Sounds that cannot stand alone as a word is a morphemes. It must be attached to another morpheme. - What is LAD?
Ans. LAD is Language Acquisition Device. It refers to the capacity to acquire one’s first language. - What is Sociolinguistics?
Ans. Sociolinguistics is the study of language in relation to society. - What is IPA?
Ans. IPA is a system of transcribing the sounds of languages which consists of some Latin and Greek letters and a variety of additional symbols and diacritics. - What is register?
Ans. A register is a subset of a language used for a particular purpose or in a particular social setting. - What is Accommodation Theory in SLA?
Ans. The theory which attempts to explain how relations impact SLA is the Accommodation theory. Accommodation theory explains the perceived distance between groups. - What is intonation?
Ans. Intonation is a pattern of changing pitch, intensity, and speed during an utterance to convey linguistic information.
2018
- What is IPA?
Ans. IPA stands for International Phonetic Alphabet. It is a system of transcribing sounds of a language. - What is diphthong?
Ans. When one vowel glides toward another vowel. it is called dipthong. For instance /el’. - What is schema?
Ans. Schema denotes the background knowledge which enables us to presuppose about what we might expect to experience in a given context. - What is IC?
Ans. An Immediate Constituent (IC) is one of the largest grammatical units that form a construction. Immediate constituents are often further reducible. For example, in the complex noun phrase the dog that killed the cat, each of the following items is an immediate constituent: the dog that killed the cat. - What is parole?
Ans. Parole is a term used by Ferdinand de Saussure which deals with an individual’s actual speech. One’s parole can be influenced by external factors. - What is Idiolect?
Ans. Idiolect is known as individual language as opposed to that of a group. - What is a ‘minimal pair’?
Ans. Minimal pair means a pair of two words in a language that differ from each other by only one distinctive sound (one phoneme) and which also differ in meaning as well. For instance, the English words bear and pear are a minimal pair as they differ in meaning and in their initial phonemes fb! and /p/. - Who is Noam Chomsky?
Ans. Noam Chomsky is one of the most important theorists of linguistics. - What is phonetics?
Ans. Phonetics is the scientific study of speech sounds. So. it is concerned with the production, transmission, and perception of speech sounds of a language. For example, /p/, /b/, /m/ are three bilabial consonant sounds in English. - What is Psycholinguistics?
Ans. Psycholinguistics or psychology of language is the study of the psychological and neurobiological factors that enable humans to acquire, use, comprehend, and produce language. - What is a dialect?
Ans. Dialect is the variety of a language spoken in a certain place. There are urban and rural dialects. - What is syntax?
Ans. In linguistics, the syntax is the study of the principles and processes by which sentences are constructed in particular languages.
2019
- What is stress?
Ans. Stress is the acoustic prominence of a syllable in a word. - What is phonology?
Ans. Phonology is the study of the sound system of one or more languages. - Define pidgin.
Ans. Pidgin is a simple form of a language that speakers of different language use to communicate. - What is LADO?
Ans. The Local Authority Designated Officer (LADO) deals with allegations of abuse made against adults working with children. - What does morpheme mean?
Ans. Allomorphs are the different forms of a single morpheme. - What is semantics?
Ans. Semantics is the study of meaning in language. - What is coherence?
Ans. Coherence is the relationship that links the meaning of utterances and sentences. - What is SLA?
Ans. Second-language acquisition (SLA) is the process by which people learn a second language. - What is bilingualism?
Ans. Bilingualism is the phenomenon of speaking and understanding two or more languages. - What is elision?
Ans. Elision is the removal of a sound from a word during pronunciation. - What is sociolect?
Ans. Sociolect is the dialect that is spoken by the people of a specific society. - What is pragmatics?
Ans. Pragmatics is the study of meaning in context.
2020
- What is linguistics?
Ans. The science of language is known as linguistics. - Define syllable.
Ans. A syllable is part of a word that contains a single vowel sound and is pronounced as a unit. - What is an acronym?
Ans. An acronym is a word formed by abbreviating a phrase by combining certain letters of words in the phrase into a single term. Common examples of acronyms include NASA. - What is acquisition?
Ans. An acquisition is an act of getting or receiving something or the item that was received. An example of an acquisition is the purchase of a house. - What do you understand by jargon?
Ans. Jargon is the complex language used by experts in a certain discipline or field. This language often helps experts communicate with clarity. - How many plosive consonants are there in English?
Ans. It is thus possible to find cases where a final plosive becomes fricative or nasal. For example, that side’ /dæssaid/, ‘good night’ /gunnait/, but most unlikely that a final fricative or nasal would become a plosive. - What is TG Grammar?
Ans. Transformational grammar is a theory of grammar that accounts for the constructions of a language by linguistic transformations and phrases. - On what is homophone?
Ans. Homophones are words that are spelled differently but sound the same. E.g. Rain and rein - What is register?
Ans. A register is a subset of a language used for a particular purpose or in a particular social setting. - What are the long English vowel sounds?
Ans. ‘Long vowel’ is the term used to refer to vowel sounds whose pronunciation is the same as its letter name. The five vowels of the English spelling system (‘a’. e, i, ‘o.’ and ‘u’) each have a corresponding long vowel sound /ei/, /i/, /ai/, /au/, /yu/. - What do you understand by caregiver speech”?
Ans. Baby talk refers to the simple language forms used by young children, or the modified form of speech often used by adults with young children. Also known as motherese or caregiver speech. - What are the main branches of phonetics?
Ans. 5 branches of phonetics.
Brief Questions with Answers from SET Suggestion-2022 (3rd Year)
Language
- What is language?
Ans: Language is a conventional system of spoken or written symbols used by humans within a social group to communicate cultural ideas. - What is meant by ‘duality’? [NU. 2013]
Ans: Duality means that language is organized on two levels: physical level at which we can produce individual sounds e.g. n, b, i and meaning level: when we produce sounds in combination e.g. – nib, bin. - What is idiolect? [DU. (affi) 2017, NU. 2015, 2018, 2021]
Ans: Individual’s language characteristic is known as idiolect. There are variations in voice quality, pitch, rhythm, choice of words, use of grammar etc. - What is bilingualism? [NU. 2019] [NU. 2018]
Ans: Complete mastery of two languages is bilingualism. - What is dialect?
Ans: Dialects are variations of a language spoken in different regions of the same country. - What is sociolect? [NU. 2015, 2019]
Ans: Sociolect is the way people speak based on their social group.
Basic Concepts in Linguistics
- What is linguistics? [NU. 2017, 2020]
Ans: Linguistics is the scientific study of language - What does TGG stand for? [DU. (affi) 2017]
Ans: Transformational Generative Grammar. - What is competence? [NU. 2015] [NU. 2016]
Ans: Competence is the actual knowledge of the language. - What are the major levels of linguistics?
Ans: The levels are – phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, pragmatics, graphology, lexicology etc. - What is SLA?
Ans: Second Language Acquisition. - What is ‘langue’? [NU. 2015, 2019] [DU. (affi) 2016, 2021, NU. 2017]
Ans: “Langue is the French term for ‘language’ referring to language as a system.” - Who’s Saussure? [DU. (affi) 2017, NU 2014, 2017]
Ans: Ferdinand de Saussure was a Swiss linguist known for his work in structural linguistics. - What do you mean by ‘parole’?’ [NU. 2014, 2016, 2018]
Ans: Parole refers to an individual’s spoken words or speech.
Phonetics and Phonology
- What is phonology? [NU. 2019]
Ans: Phonology is the study of sound patterns in different languages or within a language. - What is the smallest phonological unit? [NU. 2014]
Ans: Phoneme is the smallest phonological unit. - What is phonetics? [NU. 2015, 2018]
Ans: Phonetics studies the production of speech sounds by humans. - What are the main branches of phonetics? [NU. 2020]
Ans: There are three branches of phonetics. These are:
1. Articulatory Phonetics – Production of speech sounds
2. Acoustic Phonetics – Transmission of speech sounds
3. Auditory Phonetics – Perception of speech sounds. - What is phone? [DU. (affi) 2016, NU. 2014]
Ans: Phone means ‘sound’ or ‘voice’. - What is IPA? [DU. (affi) 2018, NU. 2016, 2017, 2018]
Ans: The full form of IPA is International Phonetic Alphabet. - Name the passive articulators. [NU. 2016]
Ans: Passive articulators are alveolar ridge, soft palate, hard palate, etc. - What are bilabial sounds? [NU.2015]
Ans: When producing [b], [p] or [m], pronunciation is done by bringing both lips together. This is bilabial production. - What is stricture? [DU. 2018]
Ans: Stricture is the degree to which the oral area is tightened. - Define Voicing. [NU.2016]
Ans: When the vocal cords vibrate fully, the consonant is called voiced; when they do not vibrate at all, it is voiceless. - What is diphthong? [NU. 2014, 2016, 2018]
Ans: Diphthongs are single vowel phonemes that consist of two pure vowels in sequence. - What is monophthong? [NU. 2017]
Ans: A vowel sound whose quality doesn’t change over the duration of the vowel is called a monophthong. They have one vowel sound. - What are the monophthongs of English? [DU. (affi) 2016]
Or, How many vowel sounds are there in English? [DU. (affi) 2017]
Ans: There are 12 pure vowels or monophthongsn in English –
/i:/, /ɪ/, /ʊ/, /u:/, /e/, /ə/, /ɜ:/, /ɔ:/, /æ/, /ʌ/, /ɑ:/ and /ɒ/ - What are tripthongs? [DU. (affi) 2018]
Ans: A single syllable may contain three vowel sounds that quickly glide together; these sounds are known as triphthongs. These are very rare. - Define the term ‘minimal pair’. [DU. (affi) 2017, NU. 2015, 2018]
Ans: Minimal pairs are pairs of words that vary only by the identity of the consonant. The vowel remains same, e.g. /mæt/ and /kæt]/. - What are allophones? [DU. (affi) 2017, NU. 2015]
Ans: Allophones are the linguistically non-significant variations of each phoneme. - What is intonation? [NU.2017]
Ans: Intonation includes the changes in pitch, intensity and speed of an utterance. - Define tone. [DU. (affi) 2018, NU. 2014]
Ans: A tone is a syllable. It initiates a contrast in pitch level or direction. - What is tonic stress? [NU. 2014]
Ans: Tonic stress refers to the syllable in a word which receives the most stress in an intonation unit. - What is assimilation? [DU. (affi) 2016, NU. 2016]
Ans: Assimilation is a phonological process by which one sound becomes more like a nearby sound. - What is elision? [DU. (affi) 2016, 2018, NU. 2019]
Ans: When a sound is removed from a word elision occurs. The lost phoneme is said to be elided or deleted. - What is schwa?
Ans: A schwa is an unstressed vowel such as the ‘a’ in comma, ‘e’ in model, second ‘o’ in common. - How many plosive consonants are there in English? [NU. 2020]
Ans: English has six plosive consonants: p, t, k, b, d, g. - What are the long English vowel sounds?[NU. 2020].
Ans: Long vowel sounds are created by placing two vowels together or ending the word with an /eɪ/, /i/, /ɑɪ/, /oʊ/, /yu/. - What are cardinal vowels? [DU. (affi) 2018]
Ans: Cardinal vowels are specific reference points used to describe vowel sounds based on tongue position, mouth shape, and lip rounding in language phonetics. - What is pitch? [DU. (affi) 2017, NU. 2017]
Ans: Pitch is the highness or lowness of a tone as perceived by the ear, which depends on the number of vibrations per second produced by the vocal cords. - What are the levels of pitch?
Ans: There are four levels of pitch: low, middle, high and very high. - What is stress? [DU. (affi) 2017, NU. 2015, 2019]
Ans: In phonetics, stress refers to the emphasis placed on a sound or syllable. - Define syllable. [NU. 2020]
Ans: A syllable is a word or part of a word that has one vowel sound. It may or may not contain any consonants. For example, ago has two syllables. The first syllable is just one vowel sounds. The second syllable is a consonant sounds followed by a vowel sound.
Morphology
- What is a morph?
Ans: A morph is the phonetic comprehension of a morpheme. - What is morpheme? [NU. 2019]
Ans: A morpheme is the smallest component of word that has semantic meaning. - What is allomorph?
Ans: Allomorphs are variants of a morpheme that differ in pronunciation but are semantically same. - What is morphology?
Ans: Morphology is the study of words and how they are formed in terms of their grammatical function and their meaning. - What is zero morph? [NU. 2015, 2021]
Ans: The plural form of sheep is actually ‘sheep + D.’ This is called zero morph where no morpheme is added but still semantically it makes sense that there is a plural form. - What is bound morpheme? [NU. 2017]
Ans: Sounds that cannot stand alone as a word is a bound morpheme. The ‘s’ in cats is a bound morpheme and it does not have any meaning without the free morpheme cat. - What is Bound Stem? [NU. 2014]
Ans: A stem that cannot stand free as a word is called a bound stem. If we remove the prefix re- from the word rejection, we are left with jection, which is a bound stem that contains the bound base ject and the suffix -ion. - What is a derivational morpheme? [DU. (affi) 2016]
Ans: Derivation is the process of creating different but morphologically related words. For example, the prefix ‘un’, when added to a verb or adjective, means ‘opposite’ or ‘not’: unhealthy. - What is blending?
Ans: Blends are formed when parts of two words are blended together such as brunch (breakfast + lunch). - What is clipping?
Ans: Clipping is a process of cutting words into shorter ones. Examples include: ‘fridge’ for ‘refrigerator. - What are acronyms? [NU. 2016, 2020]
Ans: Acronyms are words that are formed by taking the first letter from each word of a phrase such as ‘scuba’ which stands for Self-Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus or ‘SWAT’ for Special Weapons and Tactics.
Syntax
- What is syntax? [DU. (affi) 2018, NU. 2014, 2016, 2018]
Ans: Syntax refers to the rules and principles that govern the sentence structure. - What is surface structure?
Ans: The actual spoken sentence is known as surface structure. - What is deep structure?
Ans: Deep structure refers to underlying meaning of the sentence. - What is phrase structure grammar?
Ans: Phrase structure rules are a type of rewrite rule used to describe a given language’s syntax. - What is the difference between phrase structure and deep structure rule?
Ans: Phrase structure rules represent deep structure and always create structures with fixed word order. Transformational rules transforms into other category. - What are Schemata?
Ans: Schemata are mental patterns which we use to observe and understand our environment. - What is schema? [DU. (affi) 2018, NU. 2014, 2016, 2018]
Ans: Schema is a stored body of knowledge. - What is Recursion? [NU. 2015]
Ans: Rules can be applied more than once in producing sentences. This is Recursion. - What is embedding?
Ans: Embedding happens when the subordinate clause is set in in the subordinate or main clause. - What does IC stand for?
Or, What is IC? [NU. 2014, 2016, 2018]
Ans: IC is the abbreviation of the Immediate Constituent. - What is P-marker?
Ans: The representation of Phrase structure of a sentence is known as its ‘phrase marker’ or P-marker. - What is TG grammar? [DU. (affi) 2016, ‘NU. 2020]
Ans: A Transformational Generative grammar or TG grammar is a theory of grammar to show the rules which the native speaker of a language uses in forming all grammatical sentences and rejecting ungrammatical one.
Pragmatics
- Define pragmatics. [NU. 2019]
Ans: Pragmatics studies language in context of situation in which it occurs. - What is coherence? [NU. 2019]
Ans: Coherence is the relationship that links the meaning of utterances and sentences. - What is cohesion?
Ans: The action of forming a united whole is cohesion. - What is ellipsis?
Ans: Ellipsis is the type of cohesion maintained by the process of omission of some items which is known to both the speaker and the listener or the writer and the reader. - What is reference?
Ans: Reference is an act on the part of the speaker or writer who refers by using some appropriate expression. - What is flouting?
Ans: Flouting is oversimplified violation of an utterance. - What is inflection?[DU. (affi) 2018]
Ans: A change at the ending of a word to express a grammatical function such as tense, mood, person, number, case, and gender.
Semantics
- What is semantics?
Ans: Semantics is the study of meaning. It studies meaning of words, phrases, clauses, sentences and the similarities of language. - What is hyponym?
Ans: Words that belong to a class are hyponyms. For instance, daisy and rose are hyponyms of flower. - What is homophone? [NU. 2020]
Ans: Homophones are pronounced in the same way but are written differently and often have different meanings. - What is homonym?
Ans: Homonyms are spelled and pronounced in the same way but are used to convey different meanings. - What is a synonym?
Ans: When a word has the same or nearly the same meaning it is called synonym. - What is an antonym?
Ans: A word that is opposite in meaning to another word is called antonym.
Psycholinguistics
- What is psycholinguistics? [NU. 2016, 2018]
Ans: Psycholinguistics is the study of the psychological and neurobiological factors that allow humans to acquire, use, comprehend and produce language. - What is language acquisition? [NU. 2021, 2020]
Ans: Language acquisition is the process by which humans gain the capacity to perceive, comprehend, produce and use language.” - What is first language?
Ans: First language is the native language of the learner. - What is second language?
Ans: Second language is the other language that the learner wants to learn. - What is LAD? [NU. 2015, 2017, 2019,2021 DU. (affi) 2017]
Ans: LAD is Language Acquisition Device. - What do mean by i+l? [DU. (affi) 2016]
Ans: In his Monitor Theory, Krashen stated the concept that language input should be at the “i+1” level, just little beyond what the learner can fully understand. ‘i’ is the existing level and ‘1’ is the advanced level. - Define aphasia. [DU. (affi) 2018]
Ans: Aphasia of speech is a speech disorder that makes it difficult to put sounds and syllables together in the correct order to form words. - What is the sensori-motor stage?
Ans: Sensori-motor stage is a developmental stage before the first utterances. During this stage, children gather knowledge and experience by acting on their surroundings, by touching, grasping, looking and manipulating objects. - Who proposed/pioneered the mentalist theory? [DU. (affi) 2017]
Or, Who is Noam Chomsky? [NU. 2018]
Ans: The mentalist theory was proposed by Noam Chomsky. - What is acculturation?
Ans: Acculturation is a process in which members of one cultural group adopt the beliefs and behaviours of another group causing a change in the language. - What do you understand by ‘caregiver speech”? [NU. 2020]
Ans: A simple way of speaking that is used when talking to a child or other person who is learning to speak a language.
Sociolinguistics
- Define sociolinguistics. [NU. 2017]
Ans: Sociolinguistics is the study of the effect of all the aspects of society on the way language is used and the effects of language use on society. - What is code switching? [DU. (affi) 2016, 2019]
Ans: Code-switching is the use of different varieties of language in different social situations. - What is dialect? [NU. 2018]
Ans: Dialect is any regional, social or ethnic variety of a language. - What is Creole?
Ans: A language that becomes a native language from a pidgin is called a Creole. - What is Pidgin? [NU. 2019]
Ans: A pidgin is a new language which develops when speakers of different languages need to communicate but don’t share a common language. So, they form a new language combining the two. - What is Sapir-Whorf hypothesis?
Ans: Sapir-Whorf hypothesis describes the relationship between language, culture and thought. Sapir and Whorf agreed that it is our culture that determines our language, which in turn determines the way that we categorize our thoughts. - What is multilingualism?
Ans: Many individuals and families speak more than two languages. That is called multilingualism. - Define Register. [DU. (affi) 2016, NU. 2017, 2020]
Ans: A register is a speech variety used by a particular group people, usually sharing the same occupation. - What is sociolect? [NU. 2015, 2019]
Ans: A social dialect or sociolect is spoken by the people of a specific society. - What is diglossia? [DU. (affi) 2016]
Ans: Diglossia is the situation in which two very different varieties, of language exist side by side throughout a speech community keeping a different social function.. - What is bilingualism? [NU. 2019]
Ans: According to Weinreich, “the practice of alternative two languages is called bilingualism.” - What is borrowing? [DU. (affi) 2016]
Ans: Borrowing is the process of introducing linguistic items from one language to another. - Define isogloss. [DU. (affi) 2017, NU. 2014]
Ans: It is a boundary line between places that differ in a linguistic feature. - What is idiolect? [DU. (affi) 2017, NU. 2015, 2018]
Ans: An idiolect is the dialect of an individual person. No two persons speak in exactly the same way and each person’s dialect is constantly undergoing change. - What is Accommodation Theory in SLA? [NU. 2017]
Ans: Accommodation is a communication theory which emphasis the adjustments that people does while communicating. - What do you understand by jargon? [NU. 2020]
Ans:. Jargon is the language used by experts in a certain discipline or field. This language often helps experts communicate with clarity and accuracy.