PREVIOUS QUESTIONS

Introduction to Linguistics

2016

English

Subject Code: 231115

(Introduction to Linguistics)

Time: 4 Hours                                                                                                       Full Marks: 80

Part-A

1. Answer any ten of the following questions                                                           1 × 10 = 10

a) What are the major levels of linguistics?

     Ans: Phonetics, Phonology, Morphology, Syntax, Semantics, Pragmatics, Graphology and Lexicology are the major levels of linguistics.

b) What is parole?

     Ans: According to Saussure, parole refers to the concrete instances of the use of langue. This is the individual, personal phenomenon of language as a series of speech acts made by a linguistic subject’.

c) Define voicing.

     Ans: Voicing refers to either the physical production of vibration by the vocal folds as part of articulation, or the potential phonological distinction this allows.

d) What is assimilation?

     Ans: Assimilation is the influence of one sound on another sound to become more like it.

e) What is IC?

     Ans: IC Analysis or Immediate Constituent Analysis a system of grammatical analysis that divides sentences into successive layers or constituents until, in the final layer, each constituent consists of only a word or meaningful part of a word.

f) What is schema?

     Ans: A schema is a mental structure of preconceived ideas, a framework representing some aspect of the world, or a system of organizing and perceiving new information.

g) What is psycholinguistics?

     Ans: Psycholinguistics is the study of the psychological and neuro-biological factors that facilitate humans to acquire, use, understand and produce language.

h) Name the passive articulators.

     Ans: The passive articulators are the upper lip, the teeth, the alveolar ridge, the palate, the velum and the pharynx.

i) What is diphthong?

     Ans: Diphthong is a vowel sound formed by the combination of two monophthongs in a single syllable, in which the sound begins as one vowel and moves towards another.

j) What is syntax?

     Ans: Syntax is the rules and principles of the sentence structure of a language.

k) What is IPA?

     Ans: IPA stands for International Phonetic Alphabet devised by the International Phonetic Association in the late 19th century as a standardized representation of the sounds of spoken language.

1) What is acronym?

     Ans: An acronym is a word or name formed as an abbreviation from the initial components in a phrase or a word.

Part-B

Answer any five of the following questions:                                                               4 × 5 = 20

2. Define ‘stress’ and ‘tone’.

3. What is elision? Mention the rules of elision.

4. Explain deep and surface Structures.

5. Discuss Code-switching?

6. What are the functions of intonation?

7. Why is linguistics considered a science?

8. Explain telegraphic speech.

9. Transcribe any four of the following words phonetically:

College Prestige, Sugar, Prolong, Graduate, Adjective

Part-C

Answer any five questions:                                                                                        10 × 5 = 50

10. How has Chomsky distinguished between competence and performance?

11. Show different stages of child language development.

12. What is semantics? Provide an analysis of major lexical relations.

13. Give an account of Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis.

14. Discuss the relationship between language and culture.

15. What is the cooperative principle? Discuss with reference to Grecian maxims?

16. What 1s morphology? Classify the morphemes in detail.

17. Describe the different organs of speech with a diagram.