Ling 250
CA Prop 227 was passed in 1998 and repealed in 2016. According to (the now repealed) Prop 227, a student in a CA public school (k-12) was allowed support in a minority language for maximally how long?
1 year
According to the research by Parodi & Guerrero, what is true regarding the knowledge of distinctly Salvadorian vocabulary by Californian speakers who are 1st or 2nd generation Mexican-Americans living in Los Angeles?
1st generation Mexican-Americans are generally more familiar with the Salvadorian terms than the 2nd generation Mexican-Americans.
A morpheme is the 'minimal meaningful unit' of language. Given this definition, how many morphemes does the word "unthinkable" have?
3
A public service office (post office, DMV, ect) must include materials in a given language if that language is used by what percent of people in the relevant district?
5
The current best-guess by linguists working on CA Native American languages is that, prior to European contact, there were how many 'top-level' languages families?
7
According to Parodi & Guerrero (who are following Labov), what is a dialect 'marker' (as opposed to a dialect 'indicator' and dialect 'stereotype')?
A dialect feature noticed by speakers but which carries little social importance.
The Chumash people lived in what is now Ventura and Santa Barbara counties and surrounding areas. When we talk about `Chumash' in linguistic terms, what are we talking about?
A language family that includes several languages or dialects
Which of the following is crucial in order to optimize internet search functions and other text/keyword matching algorithms.
A large dataset (or 'corpus') of natural examples.
The term 'conlang' typically refers to what kind of language?
A made-up language that is used either for personal enjoyment of for the purpose of 'world building' as in science fiction and fantasy media.
Which of the following descriptions describes a heritage language speaker/signer?
A person in the US whose parents immigrated from Vietnam; this person can understand Vietnamese but can't really speak it
What is a/the 'Turing Test?'
A test to see if a human can determine whether they are text-messaging/chatting with another human versus a computer.
According to the standard view in linguistics, which statement best represents the historical relationships among (non-creole) languages (such as English, Japanese, Spanish, Mandarin Chinese, etc.)?
All languages are not related; languages belong to one of several major families, but these families are not related to each other
Some languages spoken by Native Americans in pre-contact CA are part of much more widespread families. Which of the following language family has languages in both CA and other parts of the current United States?
Athabaskan (also known as Na-Dene)
Spanish dialects vary in their use of 2nd person pronouns: Why is there so much dialect variation with respect to 2 person forms in Spanish?
Because 2nd person forms have formality distinctions that were changing during the Spanish colonial period
Some Spanish dialects treat the words 'caza' (hunting) and 'casa' (house) as homophonous; this is true for most Spanish dialect in the Americans. Most Spanish dialects in Europe pronounce these words differently, with a 'th' (IPA: theta) sound in the middle of the word. Why is this?
Because Latin American dialects have undergone a phonological merger
Of the 7 top-level groups (2 language stocks and 5 language families) believed to exist in pre-contact CA, which two were isolated to California? Group of answer choices
Chumashan and Yukian
What is the primary method of (historical) linguistic reconstruction?
Comparing simple vocabulary items such as numbers and kinship terms to see if these words are cognate
Given the ways in which language-based technologies tend to work, what trend has been observed regarding the use of specific languages on the internet?
Complete access to web-based tools and information is available for only a very small number of languages.
What kinds of language documentation efforts have been aided by use of computer and web-based technology?
Creation of audio-based dictionaries and preservation of oral culture
Spanish speakers in CA come from many different countries. What kind of regional dialect features are included in LA Vernacular Spanish (LAVS)?
Despite the diversity of Spanish speakers, LAVS includes primarily Mexican dialectal features.
According to this wikipedia page, in which language family is the language Tamil?
Dravidian
True or False: When it comes to verbal inflection, English has more than Spanish.
False
In the video on natural language generation, which of the following issues is discussed as the most challenging part of successful natural language generation (for example, as used by an 'assistant' type machine such as Alexa or Google Assistant)?
Getting the assistant to respond in natural, human-like conversational patterns.
I argued that some constructed languages involve subtle (or sometimes, not so subtle) stereotypes (which can then reinforce racist or bigoted thinking). If a constructed language uses language features from some real language, in what situation could one argue that the constructed language is using stereotypes?
If the character using the constructed language taps into stereotypes about speakers of the real language
What do Parodi & Guerrero find with respect to attitudes about these words by LAVS speakers? How do 1st generation Mexican-Americans in CA differ in their attitudes compared with 2nd generation Mexican-Americans regarding these words?
In their second method regarding attitudes towards terms, Parodi & Guerrero found that 1st generation speakers find the terms to be stigmatized (hickish) while the 2nd generation speakers found them to be normal (not stigmatized). This shows that the stigmas were carried over from Mexico, and thus are not present in the younger American born/raised speakers. This goes to show that LAVS is truly its own dialect.
The top-level and also subgroup family that English belongs to is the following:
Indo-European and Germanic
Is Esperanto a natural language or not?
It depends: it is not for adult learners, but it is for those who were exposed to it in the first years of life
The Navaho language has a sizable number of speakers (just over 150,000) and is spoken to children in the home, mostly in households that are on Navaho lands in Arizona and New Mexico. However, Navaho speakers are constantly exposed to English in the media and in day-to-day interactions. How might we characterize the status of this language.
It is not endangered but has potential to be endangered.
Again according to Parodi & Guerrero, what does it mean for a dialect feature to be an 'indicator' (as opposed to a 'marker' or 'stereotype')?
It's a real dialect feature that is not really noticed by the public.
'Diasporic Languages' are those that are spoken by immigrants (and their children) from foreign counties. Some of the most common diasporic languages *besides Spanish* in CA (and especially in Los Angeles) include:
Korean, Tagalog, and Mandarin Chinese
Which of the following languages is a `natural language?'
Latin
Why is it that Spanish dialects differ so much with respect to formal/informal pronouns, when English does not have variation in this way?
Middle English's use of formal pronouns underwent extinction before becoming a globalized language, while Spanish was still changing during periods of exploration and colonization.
Fort Ross was a Russian settlement most active during the first half of the 1800s. Russian trading relationships resulted in some cultural and linguistic connections between which groups of Native Americans:
Native Americans in California and also in Alaska
English number terms are grouped in units of tens. Once English speakers get to 10 units of 10 (= "one hundred"), the counting words start over ("one hundred one," "one hundred two," ect.). How does this system compare to other counting systems.
Other counting systems exist, including grouping in units of 5 and 4.
Imagine an alternate reality in which the English sentence with the *meaning* "Watson ate the kibble" was actually said as the following: - "Watson the kibble ate" [interpreted as ``Watson ate the kibble''] In this alternate-reality version of English, what is the basic word order?
SOV
The major difference between sign language and spoken language is the following:
Signed languages use the hands and face for expression and the eyes for comprehension
Some conlangs, in addition to some 'Hollywood' (made up) varieties of English, exhibit what social properties?
Stereotyped features (such as accents or particular sounds) from the world of `real languages' are sometimes included.
Mass media portrayals of Native Americans have historically represented and perpetuated the following false belief:
That Native Americans are linguistically and culturally non-diverse
Los Angeles Vernacular Spanish has been called a 'rural/urban koine.' ... But, what is meant by the term 'rural/urban' with respect to LA Vernacular Spanish?
The original speakers came from rural Mexico and settled in urban Southern California.
In terms of digital use, a language is considered to be at the 'emergent' stage if:
The primary use of the language is for person-to-person communication (e.g. texting and social media posts)
For Spanish and other languages like it (e.g. Italian and Latin), what does the term 'pro-drop' refer to?
The subject of the sentence is usually allowed to go unexpressed
The Penutian and Hokan groups are known as 'language stocks.' What does this mean?
Their status as language families is hypothesized but not fully clear
Which of the following statements is true regarding the number of Spanish speakers in California?
There are almost as many speakers of Spanish in California as there are in Spain.
Which statement best characterizes the relationship between ASL and English?
These are different languages: ASL is used in the United States but not in the United Kingdom
Geographic areas with abundant resources (in terms of food sources, housing materials, etc.) typically have what type of linguistic landscape in the pre-colonization era:
These areas typically have a lot of language diversity (many languages with relatively few speakers)
Colonization by the Unites States (and earlier by New Spain/Mexico) influenced Native American languages in what way:
These powers eradicated or decimated many languages through both official and unofficial policies
Languages differ in the number of words for colors that they have. Some languages, such as English, have many words for colors, while others, such as Ancient Greek, have/had relatively few. If somebody believes that Ancient Greek speakers saw and perceived colors in exactly the same way as English speakers, despite differences in the number of words for colors, this person has what type of view:
They are against 'linguistic relativity'
The verb meaning `to chop wood' in Wintu (Penutian, Sacramento region) is *pi. I put the '*' marker next to the word because *pi itself cannot stand alone. Instead, it must be attached to a suffix. Here are two examples: pi-kupake = he is chopping wood (somebody told me) pi-kupare = he is chopping wood (I infer it, e.g. I saw him leave with his axe) What type of suffixes are these
They are evidential markers
The podcast on heritage language learners primarily focused on which of the following motivations for heritage language learners to take courses in their heritage language:
They took classes in order to connect to their cultural identity/ethnicity
What does it mean for a category to be obligatory marked? Give an example (from any language) of an obligatorily marking.
When a category is obligatorily marked, the concept or grammatical feature is mandatorily expressed within a word. These concepts can include number, gender, shapes/sizes, evidentiality, and more. One example of this is Spanish, which obligatorily marks both number and gender. Besides irregulars, the presence of an 's' at the end of the word means that there is more than one of the object. Ex: gatos (cats) instead of gato (a cat). Gender is also marked, typically with the 'o' ending meaning male and the 'a' ending meaning female. Ex: gato (male cat) and gata (female cat). Finally these can be used together as well. Ex: gatas (more than one female cats).
Spanish sentences are allowed to omit the subject of the sentence under which conditions:
When the sentence has a neutral interpretation
How might we characterize dialects (such as Mexican Spanish) in which 'casa' and 'caza' are pronounced the same (both with [s] between the vowels), using the terminology of descriptive linguistics?
[s] and [θ] are merged
The term 'Spanglish' is used by linguists to describe what?
a dialect of Spanish that has been noticeably influenced by English
What are language ideologies?
a set of beliefs that are commonly held by the public, but which don't have scientific basis
Unlike English, number is not obligatorily marked in Japanese. What does this mean in practical terms?
a simple noun by itself is ambiguous between singular and plural
When a language obligatorily marks evidentiality (like Wintu), what does this mean?
a statement must include information about the evidence that the statement is based on
What percentage of CA households report that Spanish is a language used to communicate at home (either alone or in addition to other languages, such as English)?
about 28%
The total number of individual indigenous languages in what is now CA is hard to state exactly. A close approximation for pre-contact CA would be:
about 50
What would it take for a constructed language to become a natural language?
adults would have to use the constructed language around children
As discussed in class, there are no good estimates about the number of people who are native ASL signers in the United States. What can, we say, however, about who is a native signer of ASL?
anybody, hearing or deaf, who was exposed to ASL as a child as a primary language of communication
Modern day languages users (speaking English, Spanish, or some other language) in CA use words that are directly derived from Native American words in what contexts:
as place names
One cultural practice that remains important for the Kumeyaay is the following:
basket weaving
When English speakers claim (as they often do) that German is a 'harsh' sounding language, what is the evidence that this is based on prejudice (and nothing about the German language itself)?
because English speakers used to consider German a 'beautiful' language
Why have so many people referenced color terms when studying linguistic relativity?
because actual color exists on a spectrum, but languages differ in how many color words they have
In English, horses that are living freely in the wild are typically referred to as 'wild horses.' Why is the 'wild' adjective usually given in this case?
because it is considered 'normal' for horses to be domesticated
'Early' bilingualism and/or multi-lingualism is possible when a child is naturally exposed (e.g. in the home) to two or more languages during what period of life?
birth to 7-10 years old
A language that is 'healthy' and neither endangered nor facing any threat of endangerment usually has several key indicators of language health. These include a minimum number of speakers (a typical estimate is ~100,000), somewhat broad cultural domains of use (not just in the home but also in public, at work, etc.), and what other major factor:
children are learning the language at home as a primary language
In linguistics, what distinguishes a 'constructed' language from a 'formal' language (even though both are 'constructed' in the common sense use of the word)?
constructed languages mimic natural language and are often (not always) used for entertainment purposes
Most English speakers refer to undomesticated and unowned horses as 'wild horses,' not just 'horses.' This suggests what regarding the (subconscious) mind of such an English speaker:
domestication is somewhat inherent to the meaning of the word 'horse'
One of the most important aspects of current Tolowa culture is the following:
environmental conservation
Children who grow up bilingual are thought to have a cognitive advantage in which of the following areas?
executive control
Consider the following sentence: What did you buy? The above sentence makes it seem like English is a verb-final language. Why is this not a valid claim (because English is, in fact, a verb-middle sentence)? In other words, what is wrong with the example sentence as a diagnostic for basic word order?
it is a question, not a statement
For most people in the United States, their beliefs about Native Americans is largely based on what?
mass media (movies, TV shows, etc)
Prior to European colonization, the number of languages spoken in what is now the 'lower 48' United States (the 48 states excluding Alaska and Hawai'i) would be best characterized in the following way:
more than 100
One aspect of the language ideology of 'purity,' which is not accepted by linguists, is the following:
older forms of a language are better than current forms
A 'language nest' type revitalization program does the following:
pairs young children with older speakers in pre-school settings
When it comes to color identification, the only scientifically sound differences among people who use different color terminologies references what measure?
reaction time in identifying colors
Why is the term 'red head' interesting from the perspective of color terminology?
red hair is not actually red
For those English dialects which have it, the pronoun 'ya'll' has what person and number?
second person plural
Unlike English, Spanish encodes formal/honorific distinctions in the grammar. In addition to verbal inflection, where does Spanish grammaticality encode formality/honorifics?
second person pronouns
The term 'bilingual education' can have a number of different meanings, but generally it refers to which of the following:
students who use a minority language are supported in their language and gradually introduced to the majority language
Spanish verbs have 'rich' inflectional endings (aka conjugation patterns). What kind of information do these suffixes (e.g. -o, -as, -a, ect.) encode?
tense/aspect, as well as the person & number of the subject
What is idea (not necessarily true) is meant by the term 'linguistic relativity?'
that the language a person uses affects how that person thinks
In English, the word "cat" is just one morpheme that stands alone. Yet, even this example illustrates that number (singular vs. plural) is obligatorily marked in English. How is that possible when the word "cat" can stand alone?
the absence of plural marking necessarily implies that it is singular
When a bilingual code-switches between two languages, what is the 'matrix language?'
the dominant language for any given sentence - the other language language is embedded
The concept of 'arbitrariness' applies to the vast majority of words/signs in all languages (both spoken and signed). Which of the following statements sums of the principle of arbitrariness, as defined by the linguist Saussure?
the relationship between a word and its meaning is random
When linguists try to determine if two languages belong to the same family, they compare (potential) cognate words. What does it mean for words to be cognate?
the two words come from the same one historical source
According to Leonard, a language is 'sleeping' if the following two conditions apply:
there are no native speakers; documentation of the language exists
If two language are different 'top-level' language families, what does this mean? (examples include German (Indo-European) and Hungarian (Uralic), both in Central Europe, as well as Tolowa (Athabaskin) and Karuk (Hokan), both in North-West California) Group of answer choices
they are completely unrelated - we expect no similarity
I discussed two languages that are either base-4 or base-8 in their counting systems, whereas most known languages use either a base-5 or (most commonly) base-10 system. The base-5 and base-10 systems are generally thought to reference the number of fingers on one or both hands. The base-4 and base-8 systems are also thought to reference the fingers on one or both hands, but how can this be when there are, in fact, 5 fingers (including the thumb) on each hand?
they are counting the spaces between each finger
When k-12 students who use a minority language at home are expected to use only the majority language at school (a type of total immersion, sometimes known as a 'sink-or-swim' approach), what counter-intuitive result has been found with respect to how fast they learn the majority language?
they don't learn the majority language as quickly compared to those who are allowed to use the minority language at school
When a child, under age 5, is exposed to two languages at home in roughly equal measure, what is the expected outcome for lexical, not grammatical, development?
they will learn the same number of words as a monolingual child, but this total number will be divided between the two lexicons
When a child, under age 5, is exposed to two languages at home in roughly equal measure, what is the expected outcome for grammatical, not lexical, development?
they will learn two grammars, each just as quickly as if they were learning one
The ultimate goal of any language revitalization effort is the following:
to expose young children to the language
Consider parents who speak a minority language, and who want their children to i) know and use the minority language, and ii) also know and use the majority language (i.e. they want their children to be bilingual). What kind of language behavior do linguists recommend to parents like this?
use the minority language in the home most of the time
What is usually meant by the term grammaticalization?
when a 'content' word in a language becomes a 'functional' word or affix over many generations
Let's say some person is completely fluent in one language and can speak/sign the language as well as understand it. This same person can understand everything in another language, but they don't feel fully comfortable speaking/signing in this other language. Is that person bilingual?
yes: language understanding requires language knowledge