Linguistics Quiz: Morphology and Language Change

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Questions and Answers

What is the term for creating a word from scratch?

Combinatorics

Borrowing

Coinage (correct)

Affixation

Which type of affix is attached to the beginning of a stem?

Circumfix

Prefix (correct)

Infix

Suffix

What distinguishes derivational affixes from inflectional affixes?

Inflectional affixes are used to create new words.

Derivational affixes indicate grammatical roles.

Inflectional affixes derive new basic meanings.

Derivational affixes often change the part of speech. (correct)

Which of the following is an example of truncation?

Gasoline = gas Signup and view all the answers

Which of the following describes allomorphy?

Variation in the form of a morpheme based on context. Signup and view all the answers

What are bound morphemes?

Morphemes that cannot occur in isolation. Signup and view all the answers

Which of the following is an example of a compound word?

Colorblind Signup and view all the answers

What does productivity in morphology refer to?

Morphemes that combine freely with new stems. Signup and view all the answers

What does the Maxim of Quantity suggest in a conversation?

Offer only the necessary amount of information. Signup and view all the answers

Which of the following is NOT a type of sound change?

Lexical variation Signup and view all the answers

How can we reconstruct historical languages?

Using comparative methods with related languages. Signup and view all the answers

What is a key characteristic of regular languages in the Chomsky Hierarchy?

They can be represented using finite-state automata. Signup and view all the answers

What does smoothing refer to in the context of linguistics?

Assigning probability mass to previously unseen events. Signup and view all the answers

Which statement reflects a potential outcome of semantic/lexical change?

A word may acquire new meanings or lose old ones. Signup and view all the answers

What is the purpose of a bigram model in computational linguistics?

To predict the next word based on the previous word. Signup and view all the answers

What often facilitates language change among speech communities?

Transmission of language to younger generations is imprecise. Signup and view all the answers

Which type of 'ass test' refers to a criminal with prior claims of guilt?

alleged ass criminal Signup and view all the answers

What does the notation P → Q express in entailment?

P guarantees the truth of Q Signup and view all the answers

What is a hallmark of an expression considered deictic?

It changes meaning based on context. Signup and view all the answers

Which of the following tests is considered a rough indicator for presupposition?

'Hey, wait a minute' test Signup and view all the answers

What is the best definition of logical equivalence in the context of propositions?

Both P → Q and Q → P are true Signup and view all the answers

Which of the following expressions illustrates an (in)felicitous utterance?

I don't have a dog, but I own a cat. Signup and view all the answers

What guarantees that the truth of proposition P ensures the truth of proposition Q?

Entailment Signup and view all the answers

Which of the following statements represents a sticky entailment?

I fed my rat, but I don't have a rat. Signup and view all the answers

What does backformation refer to in linguistics?

Deriving a new stem from a word that appears complex morphologically. Signup and view all the answers

Which of the following is NOT a method for testing constituency?

Morpheme breakdown Signup and view all the answers

In the context of syntax, what does the term 'complement' refer to?

A required constituent that completes the meaning of a phrase. Signup and view all the answers

Which of the following is a sign of grammaticality in a sentence?

A native speaker would likely use the sentence in conversation. Signup and view all the answers

What does the Principle of Compositionality state?

The meaning of an expression is determined by its subparts and their combination. Signup and view all the answers

How can you determine if a word is a noun?

It can be replaced with a pronoun or proper noun. Signup and view all the answers

What is the role of 'arguments' in co-occurrence?

They are required constituents in a particular syntactic structure. Signup and view all the answers

Which of the following correctly defines a 'constituent' in a sentence?

A unified object that behaves like a single unit. Signup and view all the answers

What differentiates adjuncts from arguments in a sentence?

Adjuncts are optional and provide additional information. Signup and view all the answers

Which of the following best describes the role of a determiner in a noun phrase?

It is required to complete a noun phrase. Signup and view all the answers

What is the primary difference between lexical and compositional semantics?

Lexical semantics focuses on the meaning of words, while compositional semantics focuses on the meaning of phrases. Signup and view all the answers

Which of the following statements about sense and reference is accurate?

Reference pertains to the relationship between sense and the set of referents. Signup and view all the answers

Which category of adjectives does not have a clear denotation independent of the nouns they modify?

Relative adjectives Signup and view all the answers

What type of adjectives may not occur as predicates due to their non-standard relationship with nouns?

Non-subsective adjectives Signup and view all the answers

What constitutes the 'bare bones' of a sentence according to syntactic rules?

Arguments that are required for the sentence's meaning. Signup and view all the answers

What structure can a prepositional phrase (PP) serve in a sentence?

As either a verb phrase or noun phrase adjunct. Signup and view all the answers

Study Notes

Morphology

Morphology: Study of words and their internal structure. Words originate from coinage, borrowing, or combining elements.
Lexicon: Mental list of words and their properties.
Morpheme: Smallest meaningful unit (grammatical function).
Affixes: Morphemes attached to stems (prefixes, suffixes, infixes, circumfixes).
Stem: Base form to which affixes attach.
Root: Stem that cannot be broken down further.
Derivational Affixes: Create new words with different meanings or parts of speech.
Inflectional Affixes: Indicate grammatical roles (plural/past tense) without changing basic meaning.
Content Morphemes: Carry core meaning.
Function Morphemes: Grammatical in nature.
Bound Morphemes: Cannot occur in isolation.
Free Morphemes: Can occur in isolation.
Allomorphy: Variations in morpheme form due to context.
Productivity: Degree to which morphemes combine with new stems.
Reduplication: Repeating parts of a word (intensification, repetition, plurality).
Compounding: Combining two or more stems to form a new word.
Blends: Combining parts of words (portmanteau words).
Truncation (clipping): Shortening words.
Conversion: Assigning an existing word to a new syntactic category.
Backformation: Deriving a new stem from a seemingly complex word.

Syntax

Grammaticality: Well-formedness of sentences (acceptability).
Compositionality: Sentence meaning derived from its parts and how they combine.
Constituents: Groups of elements functioning as a unit.
Constituency Tests: Methods to identify constituents (substitution, displacement, coordination, fragments).
Lexical Categories: Parts of speech (nouns, verbs, adjectives, etc.).
Syntactic Categories: Phrasal level categories (NP, VP, PP).
Co-occurrence: Relationship between elements (obligatory vs. optional).
Arguments: Required constituents for a specific word or phrase.
Complements: Specific elements required or allowed by something else.
Adjuncts: Optional phrases/clauses that modify.
Agreement: Corresponding morphology in expressions.
Major Syntactic Categories: Sentence (S), Noun Phrase (NP), Determiner (Det), Adjective (Adj), Verb Phrase (VP), Transitive Verb (TV), Ditransitive Verb (DTV), Sentential Complement Verb (SCV), Adverb (Adv), Preposition (P), Prepositional Phrase (PP).
Adjective Types: Subsective, Intersective, Relative.

Semantics

Sense: Mental representation of meaning.
Reference: Set of referents an expression denotes.
Sense vs Reference: Relationships between how we think about something and the set of entities it represents in reality.
Lexical Compositional: Meaning of phrases determined by parts.
Adjective Types: Intersective, subsective.
Truth Values/Truth Conditions: Relationship between the meaning components and truth.
Entailment: One proposition guarantees the truth of another.
Contradiction: Two propositions cannot both be true.
Logical Equivalence: Mutual entailment.

Pragmatics

Pragmatics: Semantic meaning interacting with context.
Utterance vs. Sentence: Difference between string of words and its conversational use.
Context-Dependent Expressions (Indexical Expressions): Pronouns, locations, and times.
Felicity: Appropriateness of an utterance in a context.
Presupposition: Assumed information in a conversation.
Cooperative Principle: Principle for making conversations smooth.
Conversational Maxims: Guidelines for polite and effective conversations.
Implicatures: Messages indirectly communicated (implied).
Speaker meaning vs sentence meaning: Difference between what an utterance is meant to convey and what the words themselves would suggest.

Historical Linguistics

Diachronic Linguistics: Study of language change over time.
Language change causes: Transmission errors, internal variation, and external influences.
Sound change types: Realization shifts, mergers, and development of new sounds.
Regular Sound Change: consistent pattern in change.

Computational Linguistics

Computational Linguistics Goal: Assign probabilities to language input/output, or individual tokens.
Language Models: Assign probabilities to language inputs/outputs.
Bigram Model: Predicts the frequency of words based on preceding word.
Trigram Model: Predicts based on two preceding words.
Probabilities and Conditional Probabilities: Numerical representation of how likely something is to occur in a system.
Algorithms: Computational methods to process and analyze language.

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Description

Test your knowledge on key concepts in morphology and language change with this quiz. Questions cover topics such as affixes, compound words, sound change, and how languages evolve. Perfect for students studying linguistics and related fields.