History of English

Question 1

True or False:
Japanese has had little change over the last 1000 years, while English has rapidly changed in just a few centuries

Answer 1

True

Question 1

The words “twitter” “biodiesel” and “texting” are all examples of

Answer 1

Lexical Change due to the ADDITION of new vocabulary

Question 2

What is Reduction?

Answer 2

Purposeful speaking and refers to when speakers want to “economize” their language

Question 3

Great Vowel Shift

Answer 3

There was a length distinction in English vowels and the GVS altered the position of all the long vowels. (e.g. the vowel sound in the words “mice” and “beat” used to be a short vowel sound but changed later to a longer vowel sound: it changed to the longer diphthong sound [aj] in the word “mice” and to the longer [i] sound in “beat”.)

Question 4

True or False:
English is Germanic branch or Indo-European languages

Answer 4

True

Question 5

External examples of motivations for language change include:

Answer 5

Political, Social, and Economic events

Question 6

True or False:
The Kurgan culture was a violent one

Answer 6

True

Question 7

True or False:
Languages that evolved from Indo-European have common root words for “honey, fox, and pine”

Answer 7

True

Question 8

what percentage of Modern English words have roots in Old English?

Answer 8

50% - 55%

Question 9

Analogy means:

Answer 9

the regularization of language
ex. “mouse/mice/mouses”

Question 10

Language change is usually led by people of ___________ class

Answer 10

Lower to Middle