Deck 10: Language and Communication 

Question 1

Research on the communication skills of nonhuman primates reveals their inability to refer to objects that are not immediately present in their environment, such as food and danger. The ability to describe things and events that are not present is called

A) productivity.
B) cultural transmission.
C) linguistic imagination.
D) phonology.
E) displacement.

Answer 1

displacement.

Question 2

What is the term for the ability to create new expressions by combining other expressions?

A) displacement
B) phonemic utility
C) diglossia
D) productivity
E) morphemic utility

Answer 2

productivity

Question 3

Which of the following was studied by Sapir and Whorf?

A) the interaction of thought and surface structure
B) the influence of deep structure on surface structure
C) the influence of deep structure on semantic domains
D) the influence of culture on language
E) the influence of language on thought

Answer 3

the influence of language on thought

Question 4

A sociolinguist studies

A) the universal grammar of language.
B) linguistic competence.
C) cross-cultural comparisons of phonemic distinctions.
D) the interaction of history and sociology.
E) speech in its social context.

Question 5

A key feature of language that helps explain anthropologists' continued interest in studying it is that it

A) helps them distinguish between the more and less evolved human races.
B) rarely changes, so it provides a good window into linguistic uses of the past.
C) enables us to compare human and nonhuman primate linguistic grammars.
D) is always changing.
E) tells us a lot about the present, although nothing about the past.

Question 6

Romance languages like French and Spanish are daughter languages of Latin, which is their common

A) focal vocabulary.
B) syntax.
C) protolanguage.
D) diglossia.
E) call system.

Question 7

What is the study of the sounds used in speech?

A) phones
B) phonology
C) phonetics
D) phonemes
E) phonemics

Question 8

What are phonemes?

A) the rules by which deep structure is translated into surface structure
B) the minimal sound contrasts that distinguish meaning in a language
C) electromagnetic signals that carry messages between speakers in a telephone conversation
D) syntactical structures that distinguish passive constructions from active ones
E) regional differences in dialect

Question 9

What term refers to the existence of "high" and "low" dialects within a single language?

A) semantics
B) lexicon
C) kinesics
D) diglossia
E) displacement

Question 10

What term refers to the arrangement and order of words into sentences?

A) grammar
B) lexicon
C) syntax
D) phonology
E) morphology

Question 11

Just as in other areas of anthropology, the study of language involves investigating what is or isn't shared across human populations and why these differences or similarities exist. The linguist Noam Chomsky has argued that the human brain contains a limited set of rules for organizing language, so that all languages have a common structural basis. He calls this set of rules

A) linguistic structuralism.
B) generalities.
C) the universal grammar.
D) a global mental map.
E) the evolutionary linguistic imprint.

Question 12

Language and communication involve much more than just verbal speech. The study of communication through body movements, stances, gestures, and facial expressions is known as

A) biosemantics.
B) diglossia.
C) protolinguistics.
D) kinesics.
E) linguistic physiology.

Question 13

Which of the following statements about chimpanzee call systems is NOT true?

A) Like language, they include displacement and cultural transmission.
B) They are stimuli dependent.
C) They consist of sounds that vary in intensity and duration.
D) Calls cannot be combined when multiple stimuli are present.
E) They consist of a limited number of sounds.

Question 14

________ refers to the specialized set of terms and distinctions that are particularly important to certain groups.

A) Spatial vocabulary
B) Focal vocabulary
C) Syntactical vocabulary
D) Vernacular vocabulary
E) Temporal vocabulary

Question 15

Sapir and Whorf argued that the grammatical categories of different languages lead their speakers to think about things in particular ways. However, studies on the differences between female and male Americans with regard to the color terms they use suggest that

A) women spend more money on status goods than do men.
B) changes in the U.S. economy, society, and culture had no impact on the use of color terms, or on any other terms for that matter.
C) in support of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, different languages produce different ways of thinking.
D) women and men are equally sensitive to the marketing tactics of the cosmetic industry.
E) it might be more reasonable to say that changes in culture produce changes in language and thought, rather than the reverse.

Question 16

What is the term for variations in speech due to different contexts or situations?

A) linguistic confusion
B) contextual phonetics
C) Chomskian verbosity
D) style shifts
E) situational syntax

Question 17

Which of the following statements about sociolinguists is FALSE?

A) They are more interested in the rules that govern language than the actual use of language in everyday life.
B) They look at society and at language.
C) They are concerned with linguistic change.
D) They are concerned more with performance than with competence.
E) They focus on surface structure.

Question 18

Recent research on the origins of language suggests that a key mutation might have something to do with it. Comparing chimp and human genomes, it appears that

A) a speech-friendly mutation occurred among Neandertals in Europe and spread to other human populations through gene flow.
B) chimps lack the tongue-rolling gene that all humans have, which might explain why they struggle to achieve clear speech.
C) the speech-friendly form of the gene FOXP2 took hold in humans some 150,000 years ago.
D) chimps share with humans all the genetic propensities for language but lack the language-activation mutation.
E) the speech mutation occurred even before the hominin line split from the rest of the hominids.

Question 19

Linguistic anthropologists also are interested in investigating the structure of language and how it varies across time and space. What is the study of the forms in which sounds combine to form words?

A) morphology
B) syntax
C) grammar
D) lexicon
E) phonology

Question 20

The lexicon of a language is

A) a dictionary containing all of its morphemes and their meanings.
B) its degree of complexity.
C) the set of rules that govern the written but not spoken language.
D) the range of speech sounds.
E) its symbolic and poetic value.

Question 21

One aspect of linguistic history is language loss. When a language disappears,

A) humanity is that much closer to global integration.
B) so does pride in one's heritage.
C) historical linguists have confirmation that language is also a victim of evolutionary forces.
D) cultural diversity is reduced as well.
E) less strain is put on the educational system, because it has less language diversity to deal with.

Question 22

Focal vocabularies are found only in non-Western societies like the Eskimo and the Nuer.

Question 23

Sociolinguists study linguistic performance by categorizing speakers as inadequate, competent, or highly proficient.

Question 24

Diglossia refers to linguistic groups, like those in Papua New Guinea and Australia, that distinguish between only two colors: black and white or dark and light.

Question 25

Animal call systems exhibit linguistic productivity.

Question 26

Sapir and Whorf argued that all humans share a single set of universal grammatical categories.

Question 27

Words that clearly descend from the same ancestral word are known as

A) cognates.
B) subgroups.
C) synonyms.
D) homonyms.
E) daughters.

Question 28

What is an example of what Bourdieu calls symbolic domination in the context of language use?

A) the fact that in a stratified society, even people who do not speak the prestige dialect tend to accept it as standard or superior
B) Chomsky's insistence that the universal grammar defines all culture
C) focal vocabulary contrasts among groups
D) in an egalitarian society, the promotion of linguistic diversity
E) pride in one's linguistic heritage, regardless of what the majority thinks

Question 29

What term refers to languages that have descended from the same ancestral language?

A) F2 languages
B) daughter languages
C) protolanguages
D) sibling languages
E) brother languages

Question 30

In this chapter, an alternative to the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis suggests that cultural changes lead to changes in language.

Question 31

Kinesics is the study of communication through body movements, stances, gestures, and facial expressions.

Question 32

What is pidgin?

A) a set of languages believed to be most like the original human language, spoken by a small population of Indian Ocean islanders
B) a partial language that results from primitive tribes' attempts to learn the language of a modern industrialized state
C) metalanguage, developed by computer programmers, that has yielded valuable insights into the workings of the human brain
D) a rhythmic sublanguage present in any human language as the result of a universally shared mutation
E) a mixed language that develops to ease communication between members of different cultures in contact, usually in situations of trade or colonial domination

Question 33

Linguistic productivity refers to the fixed linguistic structures that prevent the creation of new expressions.

Question 34

All human nonverbal communication is instinctive, not influenced by cultural factors.

Question 35

Sociolinguistics has demonstrated that men lack the linguistic capacity to distinguish between slight changes in color.

Question 36

Syntax refers to the rules that dictate the order of words in a language.

Question 37

All languages and dialects are equally effective as systems of communication, regardless of whether or not they carry greater or lesser symbolic capital.

Question 38

Recent genetic research suggests that a speech-friendly mutation took hold in humans around 150,000 years ago.

Question 39

Bourdieu argues that languages with the highest symbolic capital are those that are better systems of communication.

Question 40

Phonology is the study of speech sounds.

Question 41

African American Vernacular English (AAVE) is an incomplete linguistic system that is able only to express thoughts and ideas related to life in inner-city communities.

Question 42

Linguistic stratification can occur between dialects when one is considered a prestige dialect, as is the case with High German and Low German.

Question 43

Problems arise with contemporary means of communication, such as texting and online messaging, because much of what we communicate is a nonverbal reflection of emotional states.

Question 44

Creole languages are commonly found in regions where different linguistic groups come into contact with one another.

Question 45

Historical linguists use linguistic similarities and differences in the world today to study long-term changes in language.

Question 46

The world's linguistic diversity has been cut in half, as measured by the number of distinct languages extant, in the past 500 years; and half the remaining languages are predicted to disappear during this century.

Question 47

Studies investigating differences in the way men and women talk are examples of sociolinguistics.