MLL 190 Spring
2002
STUDY SHEET FOR
TEST I
When you come to
the test on Thursday, February 21, you should be able to accomplish the tasks listed below. If you
have mastered these things, you should have no trouble passing. This list
should not be taken as a guarantee that other points will not be covered on the
exam. To earn an A, you need to be able to synthesize the material and discuss
the topics that we have treated. You are responsible for the readings as well
as what was covered in class.
• Discuss the role of
“language mavens” in helping the public to understand language
• Discuss the nature of the
standard: its sources, its advantages, and the burdens it imposes.
• Explain what linguistics
is and what a linguist does.
• Explain the conflict
between the linguist’s view and the general public’s view of
nonstandard vernaculars.
• Define the following
aspects of linguistic competence: lexicon, phonology, syntax.
• Explain the difference
between descriptive and prescriptive approaches to grammar.
• Give and explain an example of hypercorrection.
• Explain what we mean when
we say that language varies according to social groups.
• Explain why we say that
language behavior is a function of both biological and social factors.
• List and explain the structural and the functional characteristics of human language that make it powerful
(as presented in class).
• Explain why the lexicon of
a language is constantly changing.
• Outline Pinker’s
assertions about the extent of the task that a human being accomplishes in
acquiring the lexicon.
• Explain what morphology is
and define the notion “morpheme.”
• Recognize and/or give
examples of the following: suffixes, prefixes, infixes.
• Explain and give examples
of affixation and the other processes that have produced new words in English.
• Explain and exemplify the
difference between inflection and derivation.
• Explain the difference
between productive and nonproductive morphological processes.
• Divide English words into
their constituent morphemes and indicate whether the affixes are inflectional
or derivational.
• Explain why a word chain
device is inadequate for modeling human language competence.
• Explain in what ways the
syntax of human languages involves more than just linear order.
• Supply the bracketing that
shows the proper syntactic structure of a simple sentence.
• Fill in the labels on a
tree structure representing a simple English sentence (N, NP, V, PP, etc.).
• Explain the importance of
recursion; give examples.
• Invent and explain cases
of syntactic ambiguity.
• Give examples of movement
in English syntax.
• Describe the
“principles and parameters” approach to syntax.
• Give some of the
grammatical structures that result from the two possible settings of the head parameter.
• Name another parameter
that has been suggested for language.
• Explain Pinker’s
contention that phonetic perception is like a sixth sense.
• Know the sound that
corresponds to each of the phonetic symbols used to transcribe English.
• Rewrite phonetically
transcribed English words in normal orthography (spelling).
• Identify the three basic
vowels and the features that distinguish them.
• Identify and exemplify
three consonantal points of articulation.
• Explain and exemplify the
following distinctions: stop/fricative; voiced/voiceless.
• Know some of the reasons
for disparities between spelling and sound in language.
• Explain what is
distinctive about the use of sound in tone languages.
• Explain what natural
classes are in phonology.
• Describe how languages can
make different uses of the raw material of speech in their phonologies (e.g,
vowel length, aspirated consonants, pitch contours).
• Show why automatic speech
recognition is such a difficult challenge.