Prof.Abdelhamid Fouda 

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 **  LINGUISTICS  

Short Questions & Answers of Linguistics **

What is semantics? 

Ans. Semantics is the study of the meanings of words, phrases and sentences

Q. What is Signifier? 

Ans. Signifier is the sound or pronunciation of a word

Q. What is Signified? 

Ans. Signified is the meaning indicated by the signifier/pronunciation of a word

Q. What is Conceptual meaning? 

Ans. The basic meaning conveyed by words e.g. the word needle means "thin, sharp, steel instrument"

Q. What is Associative meaning? 

Ans. The type of meaning that people connect with words e.g. the word needle may be associated with "pain, illness, blood, drugs or knitting"

Q. Conceptual meaning is also called? 

Ans. Denotative meaning which means dictionary meaning

Q. Associative meaning is also called? 

Ans. Connotative meaning which means what the words actually connote in different situations

Q. What is meant by Semantic Features in Semantics? 

Ans. Basic elements such as 'human' included as plus (+human) or minus (-human) used in the analysis of words.

Q. Give an example of a semantically incorrect sentence? 

Ans. "The horse is reading the newspaper." This sentence is structurally correct but semantically incorrect

Q. What is Semantic Role? 

Ans. The part played by a noun phrase, such as the subject, in a sentence is called semantic role 

Q. Semantic Roles are also called? 

Ans. Thematic Roles

Q. How many common semantic roles are there? 

Ans. 7

Q. What is the first semantic role called Agent OR Doer? 

Ans. Agent is the doer of an action e.g. 'Ahmad' in the sentence, "Ahmad called me."

Q. What is the second semantic role called Patient OR Theme? 

Ans. It refers to what is acted upon by the Agent e.g. 'boat' in the sentence, "John steered the boat."

Q. What is the third semantic role called Recipient OR Receiver? 

Ans. It indicates a receiver in a situation e.g. 'Ali' in the sentence, "The children sent Ali a postcard."

Q. What is the fourth semantic role called Instrument? 

Ans. It identifies the entity that is used to perform an action e.g. 'Razor' in the sentence, "The boy cut the rope with a razor."

Q. What is the fifth semantic role called Experimenter? 

Ans. It is the entity that has the feeling e.g. 'The Boy' in the sentence, "The Boy feels bad."

Q. What is the sixth semantic role called Source? 

Ans. It identifies where an entity moves from e.g. 'The House' in the sentence, "The Boy ran from the house."

Q. What is the seventh semantic role called Goal? 

Ans. It identifies where an entity moves to e.g. The Window in the sentence, "The boy walked to the window."

Q. Does a semantic role change in passive voice? 

Ans. No, because nothing changes in the real world e.g. "John steered the boat" becomes "The boat was steered by John." Still John is the Agent

Q. What is Synonymy? 

Ans. The lexical relation in which two or more words have very closely related meanings e.g. 'Conceal' is a synonym of 'Hide'

Q. What is Antonymy? 

Ans. The lexical relation in which words have opposite meanings e.g. 'Shallow' is an Antonym of 'Deep'

Q. What are Gradable Antonyms? 

Ans. Words with opposite meanings along a scale e.g. small-medium-large-extra large

Q. What are Non-gradable Antonyms? 

Ans. Words which are direct opposites e.g. alive-dead

Q. What is Hyponymy? 

Ans. The lexical relation in which the meaning of one word is included in the meaning of another word e.g. daffodil is a hyponym of flower because flower is common name for different flower

Q. What are Co-hyponyms? 

Ans. Two or more words that share the same broader category are co-hyponyms e.g. dog and horse are co-hyponyms as both are animals

Q. What is Superordinate? 

Ans. Superordinate means higher-level term e.g. dog and horse both have the same Superordinate "Animal"

Q. What is Prototype? 

Ans. The most common example of a category is called prototype e.g. Robin is the prototype of bird

Q. What are Homophones? 

Ans. Two or more words with different spellings and meanings but the same pronunciation e.g. to-too-two

Q. What are Homonyms? 

Ans. Two words with the same spellings and pronunciation but different meanings e.g. mole(on a skin) and mole(an animal) 

Q. What is Polysemy? 

Ans. A word having two or more related meanings e.g. foot of a person, of bed, of mountain

Q. What are mostly used for Word Play? 

Ans. Homophones, homonyms and Polysemy

Q. What is Metonymy? 

Ans. A word used in place of another with which it is closely connected in everyday experience e.g. Hollywood is used for English movies while it is actually a district of USA

Q. What is Collocation? 

Ans. Words that frequently occur together e.g. salt and pepper

Q. The basic principle of Lexicography is? Ans. Synonymy. Note: lexicography is the process of writing, editing and compiling a dictionary

Q. The soul of language is? 

Ans. Meaning

Q. Words are not only associated with situations but also with? 

Ans. Other words

Q. Who developed a field called general semantics? 

Ans. Alfred Habdank

Q. What are the two main areas of semantics? 

Ans. Logical semantics and lexical semantics

Q. Macro Linguistics? 

Ans. It is concerned with the way languages are acquired, stored in the brain and used for various functions

Q. Geographical Linguistics? 

Ans. It studies the geographic distribution of language

Q. Diachronic OR Historical Linguistics? 

Ans. It studies the history and development of languages

Q. Comparative OR Contrastive Linguistics? Ans. The study of similarities and differences between languages

Q. Psycholinguistics? 

Ans. It examines how humans acquire, use and understand language 

Q. Sociolinguistics? 

Ans. It studies the relationship between language and society. It tells how language is affected by social factors such as gender, ethnicity, age or social class

Q. Ethnolinguistics? 

Ans. It studies the relationship between language and culture

Q. Biolinguistics? 

Ans. The study of language functions as derived from the biological characteristics of an organism.

Q. Creolistics? 

Ans. It is the study of both creoles and the pidgin languages from which creoles develop.

Q. Evolutionary linguistics? 

Ans. The study of the origin and subsequent development of language.

Q. Clinical Linguistics? 

Ans. It deals with the application of linguistic science to the study of communication disability in order to treat an individual

Q. Forensic Linguistics? 

Ans. It helps in legal domain to identify speaker from voice recording etc

Q. Cognitive Linguistics? 

Ans. It describes how language interacts with cognition, how language forms our thoughts. It is the study of language as a mental phenomenon

Q. Corpus Linguistics? 

Ans. It deals with the principles and practice of using corpora in language study. It studies language as expressed in corpora (samples) of real world text

Q. Philosophy Of Linguistics? 

Ans. Philosophy of linguistics is the philosophy of other special sciences as applied to linguistics

Q. Text Linguistics? 

Ans. It is concerned with the description and analysis of extended texts (either spoken or written) in communicative contexts.

Q. Discourse Analysis? 

Ans. It is a research method for studying written or spoken language in relation to its social context.

Q. Neurolinguistics? 

Ans. It deals with the relationship between language and the structure and functioning of the brain

Q. Applied linguistics? 

Ans. The study of applying linguistics to real-life situations e.g. language teaching

Q. Computational Linguistics? 

Ans. The application of computer science to the analysis, synthesis and comprehension of written and spoken language

Q. Linguistic Philosophy? 

Ans. It tells that philosophical problems could be solved either by reforming language or by understanding more about the language that we presently use

🔸 MICRO LINGUISTICS 🔸

Q. Micro Linguistics? 

Ans. It is concerned only with the structures of the language system

Q. Phonology? 

Ans. It is the study of how speech sounds function in a particular language 

Q. Synchronic Linguistics? 

Ans. Synchronic linguistics is the study of a language at one particular period (usually the present). It is also known as descriptive linguistics

Q. Descriptive Linguistics? 

Ans. It describes the structure of a language as it exists, without reference to its history or to comparison with other languages

Q. Grammar OR Syntax? 

Ans. Grammar is the way we arrange words to make proper sentences

Q. Semantics? 

Ans. It is the study of the relationship between words and how we draw meaning from those words

Q. Pragmatics? 

Ans. It studies how context affects meaning in human language

Q. Dialectology? 

Ans. The branch of linguistics concerned with the study of dialects. Dialect is a regional variety of language 

Q. Morphology? 

Ans. The study of words, how they are formed, and their relationship to other words in the same language

Q. Phonetics? 

Ans. It studies the sounds of human speech

Q. Phonemics? 

Ans. It is the study of phonemes. The /s/ in ‘soar’ distinguishes it from /r/ in ‘roar’ in pronunciation as well as meaning

Q. Morphophonology? 

Ans. It deals with the phonological representation of morphemes. E.g. plurals "-es" and "-s", as in "bus, buses", versus "bun, buns"

Q. Lexicology? 

Ans. It studies the stock of words (the lexicon OR vocabulary) in a given language

Q. Lexicography? 

Ans. The process of writing, editing and compiling a dictionary

Q. Translation Theory? 

Ans. Translation Theory is concerned with the translation method appropriately used for a certain type of text

Q. Etymology? 

Ans. The study of the origin of words and the way in which their meanings have changed throughout history

Q. Stylistics? 

Ans. It is concerned with the study of style in texts especially literary works

Q. Phraseology? 

Ans. It is the study of fixed expressions, such as idioms and phrasal verbs whose meanings can't be predicted by translating every single word

Q. Quantitative Linguistics? 

Ans. Statistical and other quantitative concepts, models and methods which are used in the analysis of languages OR texts.

Q. What is Morphology? 

Ans. Morphology is the study and analysis of the structure, form and classes of words

Q. We can also say that morphology is the study of? 

Ans. Morphemes

Q. What is a morpheme? 

Ans. A word or a part of a word that has a meaning or a function e.g. in the word 'dogs', the morpheme dog has meaning but the morpheme -s makes it plural

Q. The plural suffix must follow? 

Ans. The stem of the word e.g. dog-s, cat-s, stone-s

Q. Each functional and lexical piece of a word is called? 

Ans. A morpheme e.g. the word 'dog' has one morpheme and the word 'dogs' has two morphemes

Q. The term Morphology means? 

Ans. The study of forms which means the study of morphemes

Q. Although Morphology was first used in Biology, when was it used for the first time in the study of language? 

Ans. In the middle of the 19th century

Q. What is the main difference between word and morpheme? 

Ans. A word stands by itself and a morpheme may or may not stand alone

Q. When a morpheme stands by itself, it is called? 

Ans. Root because it has a meaning of its own e.g. the morpheme 'cat'

Q. When a morpheme depends on another morpheme it is called? 

Ans. An affix because it has a grammatical function e.g. 's' in cats

Q. What are Free Morphemes? 

Ans. Morphemes that stand by themselves as single words e.g the words open and tour

Q. What are Bound Morphemes? 

Ans. Morphemes such as 'un' or 'ed' that can't stand alone and must be attached to another morpheme as 'un and ed' in the word undressed

Q. Free Morphemes fall into? 

Ans. Two categories Lexical and Functional 

Q. What is Lexical Morpheme? 

Ans. A free morpheme that is a content word such as a noun or verb e.g. Girl or hit

Q. What is Functional Morpheme? 

Ans. A morpheme that is used as function word such as a conjunction (and) or a preposition (in)

Q. Lexical Morphemes are? 

Ans. Verbs, nouns, adverbs and adjectives 

Q. Functional morphemes are?

 Ans. Conjunctions, prepositions, articles and pronouns

Q. Lexical Morphemes are also called? 

Ans. Open class words... Because new words are added to them everyday

Q. Functional Morphemes are also called? 

Ans. Closed class words... because new words can't be added to them

Q. Bound Morphemes fall into? 

Ans. Two categories, derivational and inflectional

Q. What is Derivational morpheme? 

Ans. Morphemes that make words of different grammatical category from the stem e.g. Derivational morpheme 'ness' changes the adjective good to the noun goodness

Q. What is inflectional morpheme? 

Ans. Inflectional morphemes are used to show if a word is plural or singular, if it is paste tense or not, and if it is comparative or possessive form

Q. English has how many inflectional morphemes? 

Ans. Only eight... For noun -'s for possession and -s for plural; for verb -s, - ing, -ed, -en; for adjective -er and -est

Q. The main difference between inflectional and derivational morphemes is? 

Ans. Inflectional morpheme doesn't change the category of word while derivational changes the category

Q. What is Morph? 

Ans. Morph is the other name of morpheme e.g. the word cats consists of two morphemes cat and -s... Cat is lexical morpheme and -s is inflectional morpheme

Q. What is Allomorph? 

Ans. One of a set of forms that a morpheme may take in different contexts e.g. the -s of cats, the -en of oxen are allomorphs of the English plural morpheme

Q. Morphology plays an important role in? Ans. Theories of the acquisition of language and in theories of language change

Q. Our morphological knowledge has what two components? 

Ans. Knowledge of the individual morphemes

 AND knowledge of the rules that combine them

Q. What is Syntax? 

Ans. The way in which words are put together to form phrases, clauses, or sentences

Q. What allow(s) the grammatical inflection of words and are used to change the syntactic class of words? 

Ans. Morphemes

Q. Allow and kick are examples of which type of morpheme? 

Ans. Free morpheme

Q. What is Eponym? 

Ans. New words based on the name of a person or place are called Eponyms e.g. the word jeans from the Italian city Genoa where this type of cloth was first made

Q. What is Backformation? 

Ans. The process of reducing a word such as a noun to a shorter version and using it as a new word such as a verb e.g. Babysit from babysitter

Q. What is Coinage? 

Ans. The invention of new words e.g xerox

Q. The most typical sources of Coinage are? Ans. Commercial products that become general terms e.g. aspirin, nylon, zipper

Q. The most salient contemporary example of Coinage is? 

Ans. The word google which is originally a misspelling for the word googol

Q. What is Borrowing? 

Ans. The process of taking words from other languages... As English has taken words from many languages

Q. What is Compounding? 

Ans. The process of combining two or more words to form a new word e.g. Bookcases, textbook, fingerprint

Q. What is Blending? 

Ans. The process of combining the beginning of one word and the end of another word to form a new word e.g. Brunch from breakfast and lunch; smog from smoke and fog

Q. What is clipping? 

Ans. The process of reducing a word of more than one syllable to a shorter form e.g. 'ad' from advertisement and 'flu' from influenza 

Q. What is Hypocorism? 

Ans. A process in which a longer word is reduced to a shorter form with y or ie at the end e.g 'movie' from moving pictures and 'telly' from television

Q. What is Conversion? 

Ans. The process of changing the function of a word, such as a noun to a verb e.g. the noun vacation as a verb in 'they are vacationing in Lahore'

Q. What are Acronyms? 

Ans. Acronyms are new words formed from the initial letters of a set of other words e.g. NASA from National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Q. What is Affix? 

Ans. A bound morpheme such as un- or ed- added to a word e.g. undressed

Q. What is Derivation? 

Ans. The process of forming new words by adding affixes e.g. Unhappy from happy and misrepresent from represent

Q. What is etymology? 

Ans. The study of the origin and history of words

Q. The word etymology is originated from? Ans. Greek

Q. What is suffix? 

Ans. A bound morpheme added to the end of a word e.g. ness in illness

Q. What is prefix? 

Ans. A bound morpheme added to the beginning of a word e.g. 'un' in unclear

Q. What is the general name for prefixes and suffixes? 

Ans. Affixes

Q. The study of the systems and patterns of speech sounds is? 

Ans. Phonology

Q. Phonology is based on the theory that? Ans. Every speaker of a language unconsciously knows about the sound patterns of that language

Q. Phonology is about? 

Ans. The general sounds i.e. when we think of the 't' sound in the words "tar, star, writer" as being the same, we actually mean that phonologically although phonetically they are different 

Q. What is used to indicate phoneme in abstract? 

Ans. Slash marks e.g. /t/, /k/

Q. What is used to indicate each physically produced sound also called stops or plosives? 

Ans. Square brackets as in [t], [k]

Q. An essential property of phoneme is that? 

Ans. It functions contrastively e.g. the phonemes /f/ and /v/ in fat and vat.. Meaning changes if we substitute f or v

Q. What is phoneme? 

Ans. The smallest unit of speech that can be used to make one word different from another word e.g. c and b are different phonemes in the words cat and bat

Q. In phonology what do we use in charts for an existing feature or missing feature?

 Ans. Plus + and Minus - respectively... e.g. +voice for voiced sounds and -voice for voiceless

Q. What are aspirated speech sounds? 

Ans. aspirated sounds are pronounced with a forceful expulsion of air e.g. p, t and k in pat, top and keel

Q. Nasal sounds in English are represented by a small mark called? 

Ans. Tilde

Q. What is minimal pair? 

Ans. Two or more words that are identical in form except for a contrast in one phoneme in the same position in each word e.g. bad, mad

Q. What is Phonotactics? 

Ans. Constraints on the permissible combination of phonemes in a language e.g. we can never have words like "fsig" or "rnig"

Q. What is syllable? 

Ans. Any one of the parts into which a word is naturally 

divided when it is pronounced. Each part must have a vowel e.g. the word doctor has two syllables doc and tor

Q. The basic elements of syllable are? 

Ans. Three... They are Onset, Rhyme and Coda

Q. What is Onset? 

Ans. The part of the syllable before the vowel e.g. 'Cl' in clean

Q. What is Rhyme? 

Ans. The part of the syllable which consists of a vowel e.g 'ea' in clean

Q. What is Coda? 

Ans. The part of a syllable after the vowel e.g. 'n' in clean

Q. What are Open Syllables? 

Ans. Syllables which have Onset and Rhyme but no Coda are open syllables e.g. Me, to, no

Q. What are Closed Syllables? 

Ans. Syllables which end which a consonant or coda e.g. Chit, kit, kick

Q. What is Consonant Cluster? 

Ans. Two or more consonants in sequence is called Consonant Cluster e.g. st in stop

Q. What is Co-articulation? 

Ans. In spoken language, the process of making one sound almost at the same time as the next sound is called Co-articulation

Q. What are the two well-known co-articulation effects? 

Ans. Assimilation and Elision

Q. What is Assimilation? 

Ans. The process by which one sound becomes more like a nearby sound e.g. Handbag is pronounced as hanbag

Q. What is Elision? 

Ans. Elision is the omission of sounds in speech e.g. we pronounce the phrase 'he must be' as 'he mus be'

Q. Assimilation and elision are parts of? 

Ans. Normal speech

Q. What are phones? 

Ans. Phones are general human sounds irrespective of their place in the sound system of a language

Q. What are allophones? 

Ans. One of two or more variants of the same phoneme. The aspirated 'p' of pin and the unaspirated 'p' of spin are allophones the phoneme p.