Chapter 12 Study Guide

Question 1

The Family Tree Model Assumes that languages, as they branch from a proto-language, change over time in regular ways.

Answer 1

True (at least in Grimm’s opinion)

Question 1

The number of people speaking English in the world as a second lang is continuing to increase.

Answer 1

True (native speakers are decreasing in number)

Question 2

The word for lip in German is die Lippe, the word for man in G is der Mann, and the word for nature is die Natur. The word pairs lip/Lippe, man/Mann, and nature/Natur are examples of English/German cognates).

Answer 2

True. Fit def of cognates: words in dif langs that are related to each other because they derive from a common mother lang.

Question 2

Before the time that Old English was spoken in Britain, ___ was one of the main groups occupying Britain. a. Normans b. Germans c. Vikings d. Celts e. Anglo-Saxons

Answer 2

Answer: E (Anglo-Saxons – Jutes too!)

Question 3

One of the problems with the Wave Model of language relatedness is that it is often hard to interpret because of the complicated patterns of overlapping circles.

Answer 3

True (also because it shows only one point in time (synchronic)).

Question 4

Female kinship terms such as mother, daughter, and sister are used to describe the relationships between languages.

Answer 4

True (family tree model: mother -> daughter -> sister)

Question 4

Today, because of cultural awareness and school programs, more extinct of nearly extinct langs are reemerging than contemporary languages are disappearing.

Answer 4

False? Hard to tell – langs are also becoming globalized at the same rate as they are revived (368).

Question 5

Morris Swadesh established that daughter languages would lose about 14% of the cognates that they inherited from the mother language about every 1000 years.

Answer 5

True (figured it out through lixicostatistics)

Question 6

Modern English has two more case endings than Middle English.

Answer 6

False (Middle English, -es, -e, -as, -em (sometimes)) (Modern English: -s, -‘s, -s’). It lost two endings.

Question 7

An example of an unconditioned sound change would be the Great Vowel Shift.

Answer 7

True (“an unconditioned sound change that altered all Middle English long vowels”)

Question 8

In 1872, Johannes Schmidt proposed the Wave Model of lang relatedness to address some of the inadequacies of the Family Tree Model.

Answer 8

True

Question 9

Most semantic changes in a lang reflect cultural changes.

Answer 9

True (“the change of what is in or out of a semantic domain is dependent on sociocultural changes.” Homosexality, for example, was originally viewed in the domain of illnss. In ‘75, however, it became an “alternate lifestyle” and not an illness through the removal of [+illness] semantic property from the definition.

Question 11

Proto-Indo-European is spoken today only by people in remote areas of northern Europe.

Answer 11

False (proto = ancient/parental language, so it probably isn’t the current language anywhere today).

Question 12

By the end of WWI, the British had brought the English language to about ___ of the world’s pop. a. 5 b. 12 c. 25 d. 45 e. 65

Answer 12

Answer: c (25% p.349)

Question 13

English is declining in the world today in terms of the percentage of the world population that speaks it as a first lang.

Answer 13

True

Question 13

By about 2017, the source used in your book estimates that nearly 20% of the world pop will be speaking Eng as a first or second lang.

Answer 13

False (43%, see p.368)

Question 14

The Great Vowel Shift altered the position of all Middle English long vowels.

Answer 14

True

Question 15

Regular sound correspondences (shifts) occur primarily in Indo-European langs.

Answer 15

False: The changes proposed by grim (from Proto-Indo-European to Germanic langs) help define the Germanic langs because these shifts occur in none of the other Indo-European langs (353)

Question 16

All living languages change over time.

Answer 16

True (Historical linguistics is “the study of how languages change over time and the relationship among different languages).

Question 16

Sir William Jones was the first to formally describe the similarities among some of the languages of Europe and Asia.

Answer 16

True (he spoke 28 languages. 350-351)

Question 18

A proto-lang is a parent lang from which it is assumed that many ancestral and modern langs were derived.

Answer 18

True

Question 19

A conditioned sound change is a sound change that appears to have happened spontaneously and everywhere (with a few exceptions) in the language.

Answer 19

False (this is the exact definition for “unconditioned” sound changes)

Question 21

The Family Tree Model of language relationships was devised by Jakob Grimm in the 1820s.

Answer 21

False (by August Schleicher in 1861).

Question 22

English is a member of the Romance lang family.

Answer 22

False (Germanic family)

Question 23

One prob with the Family Tree Model is that when illustrated graphically it makes it appear that related langs split from their mother lang very gradually.

Answer 23

False: It makes it seem like the split happens and the same time and quickly (355).

Question 24

One of Gramm’s discoveries was that the /p/, /t/, and /k/ of Proto-Indo-European changed to /f/, /ffff/ and /h/ in English.

Answer 24

True

Question 25

Portuguese, Spanish, French and Italian are all in the ___ lang family. a. Celtic b. Latin c. Germanic d. Balto-Slavic

Answer 25

Answer: B (Latin)

Question 26

Regular sound shift correspondences were first described by: a. Jacob Grimm b. Johannes Schmidt c. William Jones d. Morris Swadish

Answer 26

Answer: C (William Jones – noticed that (comparitively) Sanskrit was related to Latin in Greek)

Question 27

It would not be uncommon for an Eng speaker to go to Northern Europe and be understood (in varying degrees) while speaking English by 50 percent or more of Northern Europeans.

Answer 27

True? It is spreading as a political and scientific and class necessity (369).

Question 28

The Wave Model of lang relatedness represents more precisely the diffusion of langs and elements of langs than does the Family Tree Model.

Answer 28

True

Question 30

The fact that in English /s/,/z/, or /(upsidedown “e” /z/) is replacing plurals such as the -en in oxen is an example of the process of analogy.

Answer 30

True (analogy: the process whereby a dominant linguistic pattern in a language replaces exceptions to that pattern).

Question 31

Langs are disappearing quickly in the 21st century – a. But langs are only disappearing from Africa and Australia. b. But only the langs of hunting and athering peoples are disappearing. c. But at the same time some extinct langs are reemerging. d. A and B e. All of the above

Answer 31

Answer C (extinct langs are reemerging)

Question 32

Historical linguistics is a form of synchronic language study.

Answer 32

False (Synchronic linguistics is the study of a language at a given point in time).

Question 34

Today, all historical linguists agree with Swadesh’s calculation of the percent of cognates that are lost from daughter langs over time.

Answer 34

False (doesn’t account for cross-pollination with various ling constructs and the like so forth (364).

Question 35

The first person to suggest that groups of contemporary langs are descended from an ancestral lang was: a. Noam Chomsky b. Joseph Greenberg c. Deborah B. Schaffer d. William Jones

Answer 35

Answer: D (Sir William Jones – “first to formally describe” (btm 350)).

Question 37

Ethnolog’s estimated number of languages

Answer 37

6909 in 228 countries.