Exam Must-Knows

Question 1

what is homonymy?

Answer 1

when a word has two unrelated meanings (e.g. river bank and money bank)

Question 2

what is synonymy?

Answer 2

when two unrelated words have the same meaning (e.g. kid and child)

Question 3

what is polysemy?

Answer 3

when a word has two closely related ‘senses’ or meanings (e.g. chicken meat and chicken bird)

Question 4

what does polysemy contain?

Answer 4

conceptual metaphor, image metaphor, and metonymy

Question 5

what is conceptual metaphor?

Answer 5

an abstract concept (e.g. boiling with rage)

Question 6

what is image metaphor?

Answer 6

a concrete thing (e.g. her eyes were sapphires)

Question 7

what is metonymy

Answer 7

something standing in for something (e.g. Jane Austen’s on the third shelf)

Question 8

what is a closed class word?

Answer 8

any function words

Question 9

what are the closed class words?

Answer 9

peepee dacks - pronouns, prepositions, determiners, adverbs, coordinators and subordinators

Question 10

what are open class words?

Answer 10

lexical words

Question 11

what are the open class words?

Answer 11

nouns, adjectives, verbs, and adverbs

Question 12

what is hypocorrection?

Answer 12

linguistic shortcuts (e.g. not trying hard enough)

Question 13

what is hypercorrection?

Answer 13

trying too hard to use historical linguistic info

Question 14

what is ameleoration?

Answer 14

a negative word getting a positive meaning

Question 15

what is perjoration?

Answer 15

a positive word getting a negative meaning

Question 16

what is narrowing?

Answer 16

the denotation of a word becoming slimmer

Question 17

what is broadening?

Answer 17

the denotation of a word becoming larger

Question 18

what is strengthening?

Answer 18

the potency of a word increasing

Question 19

what is weakening?

Answer 19

the potency of a word decreasing

Question 20

what is the genitive case?

Answer 20

“of”

Question 21

what is a case marker?

Answer 21

a suffix which indicated the case and gender of a noun

Question 22

describe how old english changed

Answer 22

After Norman settlers invaded britian, french became the prestige language and the genitive case was lost

Question 23

what is the modern english word order?

Answer 23

SVO

Question 24

what is expression?

Answer 24

a referent in the real world

Question 25

what is denotation?

Answer 25

all the possible referents (e.g. acacia tree, family tree, syntactic tree)

Question 26

what is analogy?

Answer 26

applying patterns to other words

Question 27

what is levelling?

Answer 27

lack of distinction in sounds

Question 28

what are language-external factors?

Answer 28

from contact with other languages

Question 29

list the language-external factors

Answer 29

borrowing, language death, formation of new languages

Question 30

what are language-internal factors?

Answer 30

changes within a language without external influence

Question 31

list the language-internal factors

Answer 31

simplification through analogy, phonological levelling

Question 32

what was the old english order for declaratives?

Answer 32

SOV, SVO

Question 33

what was the old english order for clauses beginning with adverbs?

Answer 33

VSO

Question 34

what did old english interrogatives do?

Answer 34

inverted the subject and first verb

Question 35

what do modern english interrogatives do?

Answer 35

invert the subject and auxiliary verb. if there is no auxiliary verb it is a do

Question 36

what are grice's maxims?

Answer 36

sociolinguistic rules everyone is expected to follow

Question 37

list grice's maxims

Answer 37

quantity, quality, relevance, manner

Question 38

describe quantity

Answer 38

i) don't leave out info ii) don't give out extra info

Question 39

describe quality

Answer 39

i) don't lie ii) don't say shit that might be false

Question 40

describe relevance

Answer 40

don't say irrelevant things

Question 41

describe manner

Answer 41

be concise, succinct, and brief

Question 42

how can you infringe a maxim?

Answer 42

violation, incompetence, and opting out

Question 43

what is violation?

Answer 43

intentionally infringing on a maxim

Question 44

what is opting out?

Answer 44

intentionally withholding information

Question 45

what is incompetence?

Answer 45

unintentionally infringing on a maxim

Question 46

what is flouting?

Answer 46

infringing a maxim in a cooperative manner

Question 47

what can we draw from maxims?

Answer 47

implicatures

Question 48

what is L1 vs L2 language acquisition?

Answer 48

L1 is the native language and L2 is the second language