HGAP Language Vocab

Question 1

A system of communication through the use of speech, a collection of sounds understood by a group of people to have the same meaning

Answer 1

Language

Question 2

The form of a language used for official government business, education, and mass communications

Answer 2

Standard language

Question 3

Local or regional characteristics of a language. While accent refers to the pronunciation differences of a standard language, a dialect, in addition to pronunciation variation, has distinctive grammar and vocabulary

Answer 3

Dialects

Question 4

A boundary that separates regions in which different language usages predominate

Answer 4

Isogloss

Question 5

The ability of two people to understand each other when speaking

Answer 5

Mutual intelligibility

Question 6

A set of contiguous dialects in which the dialects nearest to each other at any place in the chain are most closely related

Answer 6

Dialect chains

Question 7

A group of languages with a shared but fairly distant origin. Sentence” English in Britain and English in the U.S. are classified as a language family

Answer 7

Language families

Question 8

Divisions within a language family where the commonalities are more definite and the origin is more recent

Answer 8

Subfamilies

Question 9

Slight change in a word across languages within a subfamily or through a language family from the present backward toward its origin

Answer 9

Sound shift

Question 10

Mother tongue of the modern Western European languages as well as sanskrit ancient Greek and Latin

Answer 10

Proto-Indo-European

Question 11

The tracking of sound shifts and hardening of consonants “backward” toward the original language

Answer 11

Backward reconstruction

Question 12

A language that was once used by people in daily activities but is no longer used

Answer 12

Extinct language

Question 13

Technique using the vocabulary of an extinct language to re-create the language that proceeded the extinct language

Answer 13

Deep reconstruction

Question 14

Hypothesized ancestral language of Proto-Indo-European, as well as other ancestral language families

Answer 14

Nostratic

Question 15

New languages are formed when a language breaks into dialects

Answer 15

Language divergence

Question 16

Collapsing of two languages into one resulting from the consistent spatial interaction of peoples with different languages

Answer 16

Language convergence

Question 17

Hypothesis developed by British scholar Colin Renfrew where in he proposed that three areas in and near the first agricultural hearth, the Fertile Crescent, gave rise to 3 language families: Europe’s Indo-European languages , North African and Arabian Languages and the languages in present day Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India

Answer 17

Renfrew hypothesis

Question 18

The theory that early Proto-Indo-European speakers spread westward on horseback, overpowering earlier inhabitants and beginning the diffusion and differentiation of Indo-European tounges

Answer 18

Conquest theory

Question 19

A language that began as a pidgin language but was later adopted as the mother tongue by a people in place of the mother tongue

Answer 19

Creole language

Question 20

A form of speech that adopts a simplified grammar and limited vocabulary of a lingua franca, used for communications among speakers of two different languages

Answer 20

Pidgin language

Question 21

Hypothesis which holds that the Indo-European languages that arose from Proto-Indo-European were first carried eastward into Southwest Asia, next around the Caspian Sea, and then across the Russian-Ukrainian plains and onto the Balkans.

Answer 21

Dispersal hypothesis

Question 22

Languages (English, German, Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish) that reflect the expansion of peoples out of Northern Europe to the west and south

Answer 22

Germanic language

Question 23

Languages (Russian, Polish, Czech, Slovak, Ukrainian, Slovenian, Serbo-Croatian, and Bulgarian) that developed as Slavic people migrated from a base in present-day Ukraine close to 2000 years ago

Answer 23

Slavic language

Question 24

A language mutually understood and commonly used in trade by people who have different native languages

Answer 24

Lingua franca

Question 25

Country where only on language is spoken

Answer 25

Monolingual language

Question 26

Countries in which more than one language is spoken

Answer 26

Multilingual states

Question 27

Used by government, The language adopted for use by the government for the conduct of business and publication of documents

Answer 27

Official language

Question 28

The language used most commonly around the world; defined on the basis of either the number of speakers of the language, or prevalence of use in commerce and trade

Answer 28

Global language

Question 29

A place name. Gives a quick glimpse into the history of a place. Sentence: If you said George Washington's house it would give yoga glimpse of a very old house with much porcelain and gold

Answer 29

Toponym

Question 30

A collection of languages related through a common ancestor that existed several thousand years ago. Differences are not as extensive or old as with language families, and archaeological evidence can confirm that these derived from the same family.

Answer 30

Language branch

Question 31

A collection of languages related through a common origin in the relatively recent past and display relatively few differences in grammar and vocabularly

Answer 31

Language group

Question 32

Symbol used to represent an entire word

Answer 32

Logogram

Question 33

The system of writing used in China and other East Asian countries in which each symbol represents an idea or concept rather than a specific sound, as is the case with letters in English

Answer 33

Ideogram