Practice Test

Question 1

Great Vowel Shift

Answer 1

Shift in 1500s when the spelling of certain vowel sounds no longer corresponded with the pronunciation.

Question 2

Creolization

Answer 2

Creolization refers to the development of a language through the merging of two or more different languages.

Question 3

Universal Grammar

Answer 3

A set of principles that apply to all languages and are unconsciously accessible to every human language user.

Question 4

Morpheme

Answer 4

A morpheme is the smallest unit of meaning in a language and cannot be further subdivided into meaningful linguistic parts.

Question 5

Phoneme

Answer 5

A phoneme is the smallest unit of speech sound that, when combined with other units of speech sound, forms a word.

Question 6

Pragmatics

Answer 6

Pragmatics focuses on language as communication and is concerned with the uses of different types of utterances in different contexts and for different purposes.

Question 7

Critical Period Hypothesis

Answer 7

The critical period hypothesis states that humans’ ability to learn language peaks during early childhood.

Question 8

Prepositional Phrase

Answer 8

A prepositional phrase consists of a preposition and its object plus any modifiers. In the sentence “My brother ate four whole hot dogs during the game,” the word during serves as a preposition and the words the game are the object of the preposition.