Introduction to Linguistics

Question 1

consonants (3)

Answer 1

• Voicing (voiced or voiceless): vocal chord vibrating or not?
  
  • Voiced; e.g. [d] sound.
  • Voiceless; e.g. [t] sound.
• Place of articulation: where is the closure in the vocal tract?
• Manner of articulation (stop or fricative): type of airflow.
  
  • Stops; e.g. [b], [t], [p], and [d] sounds.
  • Fricatives; e.g. [f] and [v] sounds.

Question 2

vowels (3)

Answer 2

• Height: tongue is high or low?
• Front-back: tongue tip or root being raised?
• Rounding: lips rounded or not?

Question 3

orthographic correspondence (2)

Answer 3

• English is notoriously bad at orthography correspondence between the number of letters and sounds.
• e.g. In ‘fix’ there are four sounds (f - i - k - s) while in ‘thing’ there are only three sounds (th - i - ng).

Question 4

subject (2)

Answer 4

• The NP (noun phrase) that appears to the left of a VP (verb phrase) and combines with it to form a sentence. Often described as “what the sentence is about.”
• When the sentence is in the active voice, the subject is typically (but not always) the cause or the instigator of the event described by the verb.
• e.g. The third man on the left is acting suspiciously.
• e.g. She ate a piece of cake.

Question 5

direct object (2)

Answer 5

• A NP that appears inside of the VP, to the right of the verb. Not all verbs take a direct object; whether a verb allows/requires one or not must be specified as part of the lexical knowledge of that verb.
• When the sentence is in the active voice, the direct object is usually the entity that’s acted upon, or comes into being, as a result of the actions of the subject.
• e.g. Copernicus made an important discovery.
• e.g. The president fired his chief of staff.

Question 6

indirect object (2)

Answer 6

• If two NPs occur inside a VP, only one is the direct object, while the other NP is the indirect object. Rather than expressing the acted-upon entity, the indirect object usually expresses the recipient of the acted-upon thing.
• An indirect object either appears immediately after the verb or is introduced by a preposition.
• e.g. Cyrano wrote Roxanne an eloquent love letter.
• e.g. The hooded man passed the bank teller a note.

Question 7

sentence complement (1)

Answer 7

• A clause, or a sentence unit, that appears inside the VP, to the right of the verb. It’s often (but not always) introduced by the complementizer word that, and may occur on its own, or together with a NP.
• e.g. His friends warned Copernicus that the authorities were planning his arrest.
• e.g. The president claimed he had created many new jobs.

Question 8

subordinate clauses (1)

Answer 8

• All clauses inside a sentence that aren’t the main clause. They may appear with the VP as sentence complements, attached to nouns as relative clauses, or introduced by adverbial words such as although, despite, after, etc.
• e.g. The horse raced while the cow stared.
• e.g. The man who was acting suspiciously turned out to be an escaped convict.
• e.g. She died because she had no money for the operation.

Question 9

conjoined clauses (1)

Answer 9

• Two or more constituents of the same type can be conjoined by and or but. When a main clause is conjoined with another main clause, they carry equal weight, and both are considered to be main clauses.
• e.g. The police stopped the car and the driver jumped out.
• e.g. Copernicus made a discovery but he hesitated to reveal it.

Question 10

relative clause (1)

Answer 10

• A sentence unit that’s embedded within a NP, usually (but not always) introduced by a relative pronoun such as who or that.
• e.g. The boy who stalked the prom queen has been caught.
• e.g. The discovery that Copernicus made was controversial.

Question 11

embedded clause (1)

Answer 11

• When the object of a sentence is another noun phrase.
• e.g. [The man] (S) [said] (V) [that he (S) liked (V) ice-cream (O)] (O).

Question 12

sentential complement (2)

Answer 12

• A type of embedded clause; when the object complement to the verb is an entire sentence.
• e.g. The boy saw that the dog eats grass.

Question 13

transitive verbs (2)

Answer 13

• Need to take an object as its complement.
• e.g. Chased—you need something that’s being chased.

Question 14

intransitive verbs (2)

Answer 14

• Don’t need objects, only subjects.
• e.g. Run—you can just be running, anything else is just additional information.

Question 15

ditransitive verbs (2)

Answer 15

• Have two object complements.
• e.g. The child sent the book to the school—in this sentence, you need something that’s being sent and where it’s been sent two.