Language Families and History of Languages

Question 1

English, Danish, Icelandic, Frisian, Gothic, German and Dutch are ….

Answer 1

Germanic

Question 2

We can link the correspondence between two languages using

Answer 2

sound laws

Question 3

French, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish and Romanian come from

Answer 3

Latin

Question 4

Gealic, Irish, Welsh and Breton descended from

Answer 4

Celtic

Question 5

There are two methods for the reconstruction of language:

Answer 5

internal reconstruction (using earlier developments in the language itself) and comparison between languages (looking at the same word within sentences)

Question 6

Ablaut

Answer 6

vowel alternation that produces such related words as sing, sang, sung, and song

Question 7

Uralic language family

Answer 7

Finnish, Estonian, Sami, Hungarian and some languages spoken in Russia.

Question 8

Language isolate

Answer 8

a language that does not belong to a language family

Question 9

Cognate words

Answer 9

words sharing similar pronunciation, meaning and spelling

Question 10

Reasons for speaker change

Answer 10

Speaker economy, clear message, prestige & extinction events

Question 11

Abdjad languages

Answer 11

languages without vowels

Question 12

Ways in which a language Changes

Answer 12

Long distance assimilation, regular assimilation, lenition, dissimilation, metathesis and intervervocalic fortition

Question 13

What is speaker economy?

Answer 13

speakers are lazy

Question 14

Regular assimilation

Answer 14

sounds become more similar to nearby sounds. Ex. Ten bucks -> tembucks.

Question 15

Lenition

Answer 15

weakening of sounds, reduction of use of articulators to make a sound more vowel like

Question 16

Dissimilation

Answer 16

speakers make similar sounds different to make a clearer distinction (marmor -> marble). Against speaker economy

Question 17

Metathesis

Answer 17

switching sounds. Ex: spaghetti -> pasghette

Question 18

Invervocalic Fortition

Answer 18

between two vowels produce unvoiced sounds

Question 19

What is speaker economy?

Answer 19

speakers are lazy

Question 20

What are the reasons for language change?

Answer 20

Speaker Economy, clear message and social effects

Question 21

Abjad languages

Answer 21

languages without vowels

Question 22

Why are words borrowed from other languages?

Answer 22

prestige and need

Question 23

Swadesh list

Answer 23

Words on the Swadesh list (1950) are core terms unlikely to be borrowed from other languages (I, you, we, one, two) etc