-
I. Decide whether each of the following
statements is True or False:
1. One of the tasks of the historical
linguists is to explore methods to
reconstruct linguistic history and
establish the relationship between
languages.
2.
Language change is a gradual and constant process,
therefore often
indiscernible to
speakers of the same generation.
3.
The
history
of
the
English
language
is
divided
into
the
periods
of
Old
English,
Middle English and
Modern English.
4.
Middle
English
began
with
the
arrival
of
Anglo-
Saxons,
who
invaded
the
British
Isles
from northern Europe.
5. In
Old English, all the nouns are inflected to mark
nominative, genitive,
dative and
accusative cases.
6.
In
Old
English,
the
verb
of
a
sentence
often
precedes
the
subject
rather
than
follows it.
7. A direct consequence of the
Renaissance Movement was the revival of French
as a literary language.
8.
In
general,
linguistic
change
in
grammar
is
more
noticeable
than
that
in
the
sound system and the
vocabulary of a language.
9.
The
sound
changes include
changes in
vowel
sounds,
and in
the loss,
gain and
movement of sounds.
10.
The
least
widely-spread
morphological
changes
in
the
historical
development
of English are the loss and addition of
affixes.
11.
In
Old
English, the
morphosyntactic rule
of
adjective agreement
stipulated
that
the
endings of adjective
must agree with
the head
noun
in
case,
number
and
gender.
12.
The
word
order of
Modern
English is more variable
than that
of Old
English.
13.
Derivation
refers
to
the
process
by
which
new
words
are
formed
by
the
addition
of affixes to the roots, stems, or
words.
14. “Smog” is a word
formed by the word
-forming process
called acronymy.
15.
“fridge” is a word formed by abbreviation.
16.
Modern
linguists
are
able
to
provide
a
consistent
account
for
the
exact
causes
of
all types of language change.
17.
Sound
assimilation
may
bring
about
the
loss
of
one
of
two
phonetically
similar
syllables
in
sequence,
as
in
the
case
of
change
of
“Engla
-
land”
to
“England”.
18.
Rule
elaboration
occurs
when
there
is
a
need
to
reduce
ambiguity
and
increase
communicative clarity or
expressiveness.
19.
Language change is always a change towards the
simplification of language
rules
20. The way children
acquire the language is one of the causes for
language
change.
II. Fill in each of the following
blanks with one word which begins with the
letter given:
21.
H________
linguistics is
the subfield
of
linguistics
that
studies language
change.
22. The historical study of
language is a d________ study of language rather
than a synchronic study.
23.
European
R________
Movement
separates
the
period
of
Middle
English
from
that
of modern English.
24.
An
important
set
of
extensive
sound
changes,
which
affected
7
long
or
tense
vowels and which led to one of the
major discrepancies between phonemic
representations
of
words
and
morphemes
at
the
end
of
the
Middle
English
Period,
is known as the
Great V_______ Shift.
25.
A_______ involves the deletion of a word-final
vowel segment.
26. A change
that involves the insertion of a consonant or
vowel sound to the
middle of a word is
known as e__________.
27.
The three sets of consonant shifts that Grimm
discovered became known
collectively as
Grimm s L ____.
28. Sound
change as a result of sound movement, known as
m_______, involves a
reversal in
position of two adjoining sound segments.
29. B________ is a process
by which new words are formed by taking away the
supposed suffixes of exiting words.
30. Semantic b________
refers to the process in which the meaning of a
word
becomes more general or inclusive
than its historically earlier denotation.
31. The original form of a
language family that has ceased to exist is called
the p_________.
32.
Sound
a________
refers
to
the
physiological
effect
of
one
sound
on
another.
In
this
process,
successive
sounds
are
made
identical
or
similar
to
one
another
in terms of place or
manner of articulation.
33.
In order to reduce the exceptional or irregular
morphemes, speakers of a
particular
language may borrow a rule from one part of the
grammar and apply
it generally. This
phenomenon is called i_________ borrowing.
34.
By
identifying
and
comparing
similar
linguistic
forms
with
similar
meanings
across related
languages, historical linguists reconstruct the
proto form in
the
common
ancestral
language.
This
process
is
called
c________
reconstruction.
35. The m ____ rule of adjective
agreement has been lost from English.
III.
There
are
four
choices
following
each
statement.
Mark
the
choice
that
can
best complete the
statement:
36. Historical
linguistics explores ________________.
A. the nature of language change B. the
causes that lead to language change
C. the relationship between languages
D. all of the above
37.
Language change is ______________.
A. universal, continuous and ,to a
large extent, regular and systematic
B. continuous, regular, systematic, but
not universal
C. universal,
continuous, but not regular and systematic
D. always regular and
systematic, but not universal and continuous
38. Modern English period
starts roughly _____________.
A. from 449 to 1100 B. from 1500 to the
present
C. from 1100 to the
present D. from 1700 to the present
39. Old English dates back to the mid-
fifth century when _________.
A. the Norman French invaders under
William the Conqueror arrived in England
B. the printing technology
was invented
C. Anglo-
Saxons invaded the British Isles from northern
Europe
D. the Celtic people
began to inhabit England
40. Middle English was deeply
influenced by ___________.
A. Norman French in vocabulary and
grammar
B. Greek and Latin
because of the European renaissance movement
C. Danish languages because
Denmark placed a king on the throne of England
D. the Celtic people who
were the first inhabitants of England
41. Language change is essentially a
matter of change ________.
A. in collocations B. in meaning
C. in grammar D. in usages
42. In Old and Middle
English, both /k/ and /n/ in the word “knight”
were
pronounced, but in modern English,
/k/ in the sound /kn-/ clusters was not
pronounced. This phenomenon is known as
________.
A. sound addition
B. sound loss
C. sound
shift D. sound movement
43.
A change that involves the insertion of a
consonant or vowel sound to the
middle
of a word is known as _____.
A. apocope B. epenthesis
C. parenthesis D. antithesis
44. Segment switch of sound
positions can be seen in the example of the modern
word “ bird” which comes from the old
English word “bridd”. The change of
the
word from “bridd” to “bird” is a case of
_________.
A. metathesis B.
sound loss
C. sound
addition D. apocope
45.
_________
is
a
process
of
combining
two
or
more
words
into
one
lexical
unit.
A. Derivation B. Blending
C. Compounding D.
Abbreviation
46.
“Wife”,
which used to refer
to
any
woman,
stands for
“ a
married
woman”
in modern English. This
phenomenon is known as ________.
A. semantic shift B. semantic
broadening
C. semantic
elevation D. semantic narrowing
47. English language belongs to
_________.
A. Indo-European
Family B. Sino-Tibetan Family
C. Austronesian Family D. Afroasiatic
Family
48. By analogy to
the plural formation of the
word
“dog
-
s”, speakers started
saying
“cows”
as
the
plural
of
“cow”
instead
of
the
earlier
plural
“kine”.
This is the case of _________.
A. elaboration B. external
borrowing
C. sound
assimilation D. internal borrowing
49. Morphologcial changes can involve
__________.
A. the loss of
morphological rules
B. the
addition of morphological rules
C. the alteration of morphological
rules
D. all of the above
50. The most dramatic
morphological loss concerns the loss of ________.
A. comparative markers B.
tense markers
C. gender and
case markers D. none of the above
IV. Define the following terms:
51. Apocope 52. Metathesis
53. Derivation
54. back-
formation 55. semantic narrowing
57. haplology 58. epenthesis 59.
Compounding
60. Blending
61. semantic broadening 62. semantic shift
63. Great Vowel Shift 64.
acronym 65. sound assimilation
V. Answer the following questions:
66. What is the purpose or
significance of the historical study of language
67. What are the
characteristics of the nature of language change
68. What are the major
periods in the history of English
69. As language changes over time, the
meaning of a word may deviate from its
original denotation. Discuss the major
types of semantic changes.
70.
Over
the
years
from
Old
English
period
to
the
Modern
English
period,
English
has undergone some
major sound changes. Illustrate these changes with
some
examples.
71. What are the most widely-spread
morphological changes in the historical
development of English
72. What are the causes of language
change Discuss them in detail.
Chapter 7 Historical Linguistics
I. Decide whether each of
the following statements is True or False:
16. F 17. T 18. T 19. F
II. Fill in each of the
following blanks with one word which begins with
the
letter given:
28. Metathesis 35.
morphosyntactic
III. There
are four choices following each statement. Mark
the choice that can
best complete the
statement:
46. D 48. D 49. D 50. C
IV. Define the following
terms:
1. Apocope : Apocope
is the deletion of a word-final vowel segment.
2.
Metathesis:
Sound
change
as
a
result
of
sound
movement
is
known
as
metathesis.
It involves a
reversal in position of two neighbouring sound
seg-ments.