Deck 5: What Is Human Language

Question 1

Language, like culture, is

A) Learned.
B) Coded in symbols.
C) Shared.
D) All of the above.

Answer 1

D

Question 2

Which of the following is NOT a reason for anthropological interest in language?

A) Fieldworkers need to communicate with their informants.
B) Language can be lifted out of its cultural context and analyzed on its own.
C) To understand another language is to understand another culture fully.
D) Language is the way people encode their experience and structure their understanding of the world.

Answer 2

C

Question 3

The transfer of information from one person to another is

A) Communication.
B) Language.
C) Language.
D) Speech.

Answer 3

A

Question 4

What is the difference between speech and language?

A) Speech is spoken language.
B) Language is a kind of speech.
C) Language must be written.
D) There is no difference between the two.

Question 5

Human communication can be defined as

A) Speaking, reading, and writing in societies in which writing is found.
B) The transfer of information from one person to another.
C) Language.
D) Speech acts.

Question 6

"Primitive" human languages

A) Have a limited vocabulary.
B) Lack elaborate grammatical structure.
C) Make use of a reduced set of sounds.
D) Do not exist.

Question 7

Members of a speech community

A) Have no difficulties understanding one another.
B) Do not all possess identical knowledge about the language they share.
C) Use the varied resources of their common language in the same ways.
D) Live in the same place.

Question 8

Which of the following statements about a speech community is true?

A) All members possess identical knowledge about the language.
B) There is no tension involved in verbal communication because all members use the same set of linguistic forms.
C) Once the language of a speech community is established, it is passed on for at least three generations.
D) None of the above is true.

Question 9

The design feature of language called "openness" refers to the

A) Possibility of speaking without fear of a censor.
B) Capacity of putting the speaker's true feelings into words.
C) Ability to create new linguistic messages freely and easily.
D) Connection between sound and brain.

Question 10

There are few calls in the vocal communication systems of apes, and any particular call is produced only when the animal finds itself in a particular situation. This means that ape vocal communication systems lack the linguistic design feature of

A) Openness.
B) Rapid fading.
C) Interchangeability.
D) Specialization.

Question 11

As reported in the text, Terrence Deacon argues that primate call systems

A) Do not map onto any of the elements of human symbolic language.
B) Are directly related to the human use of language.
C) Allowed our ape ancestors to communicate orally.
D) And human symbolic language are controlled by the same part of the brain.

Question 12

Nonhuman primates cannot communicate vocally about absent or nonexistent objects or past or future events. Thus, their call systems lack the linguistic design feature of

A) Complete feedback.
B) Displacement.
C) Discreteness.
D) Semanticity.

Question 13

"Displacement" in language refers to the

A) Tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon.
B) Ability to refer to things remote in time or place.
C) Use of foreign words in one's native language.
D) Ability to talk and breathe at the same time.

Question 14

In ape call systems, the link between the sound of a call and its meaning appears to be fixed and under considerable direct biological control. Thus, ape call systems lack the linguistic design feature of

A) Displacement.
B) Duality of patterning.
C) Arbitrariness.
D) Discreteness.

Question 15

There is nothing inherent in the nature of a large quadruped well suited for long-distance running that requires us to call this creature a "horse." This illustrates the linguistic design feature of

A) Specialization.
B) Definition.
C) Semanticity.
D) Arbitrariness.

Question 16

Human languages are patterned at different levels, and the patterns that characterize one level cannot be reduced to the pattern of any other level. Hockett recognized this phenomenon in which of his linguistic design features?

A) Duality of patterning.
B) Reflexiveness.
C) Specialization.
D) Displacement.

Question 17

The association of linguistic signals with aspects of the social, cultural, and physical world of a speech community is called

A) Displacement.
B) Duality of patterning.
C) Openness.
D) Semanticity.

Question 18

Linguistic messages can be false, and they can be meaningless in the logician's sense. This highlights the linguistic design feature of

A) Interchangeability.
B) Prevarication.
C) Duality of patterning.
D) Reflexiveness.

Question 19

Which design feature of language accounts for the ability to lie and to formulate hypotheses?

A) Prevarication.
B) Semanticity.
C) Duality of patterning.
D) Discreteness.

Question 20

The ability of native speakers of a language to distinguish correctly between grammatical and ungrammatical sentences is called

A) Duality of patterning.
B) Interchangeability.
C) Communicative competence.
D) Linguistic competence.

Question 21

The mastery of adult grammar is called

A) Specialization.
B) Discreteness.
C) Communicative competence.
D) Linguistic competence.

Question 22

The ability of native speakers of a language to use words in ways that are socially and culturally appropriate is called

A) Specialization.
B) Discreteness.
C) Communicative competence.
D) Linguistic competence.

Question 23

In Java it is impossible to

A) Give a one-word answer.
B) Refer directly to your mother-in-law.
C) Say anything without communicating your relative social position.
D) None of the above.

Question 24

Edward Sapir and Benjamin Lee Whorf believed that

A) Language determines thought.
B) Thought determines language.
C) Language has the power to shape the way people see the world.
D) How people see the world has the power to shape their language.

Question 25

Linguistic determinism holds that

A) The grammars of people's native languages determine how they think about the world.
B) How people speak, especially the correctness of grammatical use, determines their likelihood for success.
C) Language is the basis for culture.
D) The vocabulary of a language is a result of the environment in which the speakers of the language live.

Question 26

People who grow up bilingual

A) Grow up schizophrenic.
B) Suffer from a slight confusion of the two languages.
C) Can switch readily from one language to the other.
D) Are better adjusted than monolingual people.

Question 27

A set of rules that aim to describe fully the patterns of linguistic usage observed by members of a particular speech community is a definition of

A) Grammar.
B) Language.
C) Pragmatics.
D) Syntax.

Question 28

Phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics are components of

A) Sentence structure.
B) The sound system of language.
C) Meaning.
D) Language.

Question 29

The study of the sounds of language is called

A) Phonology.
B) Morphology.
C) Syntax.
D) Semantics.

Question 30

Which component of language is concerned with the way in which words are put together?

A) Phonology.
B) Morphology.
C) Syntax.
D) Semantics.

Question 31

American English recognizes 38 significant sounds. These are called

A) Consonants.
B) Phonemes.
C) Phonology.
D) The auditory system.

Question 32

The minimal units of meaning in language are referred to as

A) Root words.
B) Morphemes.
C) Affixes.
D) All of the above.

Question 33

The concept of the morpheme was helpful to linguists because it allowed them to

A) Break down phonemes into their distinctive features.
B) Refer both to words and meaning-bearing parts of utterances.
C) Construct operational definitions for the first time.
D) Distinguish denotation from connotation.

Question 34

How many morphemes are in the sentence "John and Sally walked home"?

A) Four.
B) Five.
C) Six.
D) Seven.

Question 35

The way in which patterns of words are put together into sentences is called

A) Phonology.
B) Morphology.
C) Syntax.
D) Semantics.

Question 36

Which of the following sentences shows structural ambiguity?

A) You have failed this exam.
B) Flying planes can be dangerous.
C) Come over sometime tomorrow.
D) The dog is on the rug.

Question 37

Semantics is the study of

A) Meaning.
B) Speech.
C) Language use in context.
D) Speech communities.

Question 38

Referring to a police officer as a pig is an example of

A) Radical politics.
B) Connotation.
C) Syntax.
D) Denotation.

Question 39

The dictionary definition of a word is an example of

A) Deep structure.
B) Surface structure.
C) Connotation.
D) Denotation.

Question 40

The study of the way speakers of a language actually use the language to communicate with one another is called

A) Pragmatics.
B) Syntax.
C) Reflexivity.
D) Phonetics.

Question 41

A stretch of speech longer than a sentence, united by a common theme, is called

A) Deep structure.
B) Surface structure.
C) Discourse.
D) Pragmatics.

Question 42

Linguistic context refers to the other ____ that surround the expression whose meaning is being determined.

A) Words.
B) Expressions.
C) Sentences.
D) All of the above.

Question 43

To understand the meaning of the sentence, "Who's standing by that building," we need to know the

A) Ethnopragmatic context.
B) Linguistic context.
C) Nonlinguistic context.
D) Semantic domains of the sentence.

Question 44

The study of language that uses ethnography to illuminate the ways in which speech and social interaction influence each other is called

A) Ethnopragmatics.
B) Morphology.
C) Pragmatics.
D) Semantics.

Question 45

Ethnopragmatics is an approach to language that

A) Takes "grammar" as sets of resources that people can make use of.
B) Emphasizes how people talk rather than what they say.
C) Directs attention to the rules of grammar in specific languages.
D) Explains how people learn foreign languages.

Question 46

Communicative practices include which of the following?

A) Spoken language.
B) Values.
C) Shared habitual knowledge.
D) All of the above.

Question 47

David is a college student who knows the different linguistic habits appropriate to his mother and stepfather's home, his father's home, his university residence hall, his anthropology class, his job at an elegant restaurant, and his religious tradition. The term used in the text to describe his complex linguistic knowledge is

A) Multilingualism.
B) Pidgin.
C) Heteroglossia.
D) Ergative agent.

Question 48

In semantic terms, a willful initiator of an event that may be depicted as having consequences is a(n)

A) Discourse genre.
B) Ergative agent.
C) Orator.
D) Pidgin.

Question 49

Which of the following statements about pidgin languages is true?

A) Pidgins are languages with no native speakers.
B) A pidgin language cannot be reduced to either of the languages that gave birth to it.
C) The study of pidgin languages is the study of the negotiation of new meaning.
D) All of the above are true.

Question 50

According to the text, scholars have recently made the case that a creole is

A) What happens to a pidgin language when people grow up speaking it.
B) A language spoken in a place where the native language has been wiped out.
C) A main language in a speech community that may be derived from a pidgin.
D) A "trade language" used by people who already speak a native language.

Question 51

Recent research on the creation of pidgins has emphasized

A) The role of pidgin creators as agents in the process.
B) The importance of the dominating language in the process.
C) The significance of trying to learn the other's language.
D) All of the above.

Question 52

According to William Labov's work in the 1960s, African American children living in urban areas did not perform well linguistically in the classroom because they

A) Were linguistically deprived.
B) Felt threatened in the classroom context.
C) Had nothing to say.
D) All of the above.

Question 53

Recent research on African American language habits demonstrates that

A) The African American community is characterized by heteroglossia.
B) These habits are shaped by social class, age, and gender.
C) The African American community is homogenous in regard to language.
D) Both a and b

Question 54

________ is a marker of struggles between social groups with different interests, revealed in what people say and how they say it.

A) Ethnopragmatics.
B) Language ideology.
C) The ergative agent.
D) Heteroglossia.

Question 55

The study of language ideology discloses which of the following?

A) Speakers' basic understandings of the world.
B) Power differences in the social world of the speakers.
C) Universal grammatical features of language.
D) Both a and b

Question 56

The research on African American language ideology by Marcyliena Morgan reveals the importance of

A) Indirectness.
B) Rhythmic speech.
C) Secrecy.
D) Silence.

Question 57

When Joel Kuipers worked among the Weyéwa of Indonesia in the 1980s, he discovered forms of ritual speech that differed for

A) Women and men.
B) Young men and old men.
C) Consanguineal kin and in-laws.
D) The Weyéwa and their non-Weyéwa neighbors.

Question 58

Ritual speech that includes funeral laments, work songs, humorous storytelling, and the production of trilling sounds was the specialty of

A) Weyéwa women.
B) Weyéwa men.
C) In-laws.
D) Non-Weyéwa neighbors.

Question 59

Ritual speech that involved the use of pairs of poetic couplets in the context of prayer, divination, placation, lament, and blessing was the specialty of

A) Weyéwa women.
B) Weyéwa men.
C) In-laws.
D) Non-Weyéwa neighbors.

Question 60

Kuipers found that these specialized forms of Weyéwa ritual speech were most important during

A) Marriage rituals.
B) Birth rituals.
C) Postcalamity rituals.
D) Postmodern rituals.

Question 61

Kuipers argues that specialization in ritual speech was divided between Weyéwa women and men in the way it was because

A) Women are more emotionally expressive than men.
B) Divisions in gendered speech mirror the gendered division of labor in Weyéwa society.
C) It is only men who have the local, temporal continuity to know and master the history of their kinship group, which makes them responsible for communication with the sacred spirits.
D) All of the above.

Question 62

Attempts by linguists and activists to preserve or revive languages with few native speakers that appear to be on the verge of extinction are called

A) Linguistic relativity.
B) Language revitalization.
C) Pidginization.
D) Creolization.

Question 63

When the functions of an endangered language are transferred to a different language, as happened in the case of colonial languages like Spanish and English, it is called

A) Pidginization.
B) Creolization.
C) Language loss.
D) Indigenization.

Question 64

According to scholars, language loss

A) First began at the time of Columbus.
B) First began at the end of the nineteenth century.
C) Goes back at least to the time of the ancient Romans.
D) Is never followed by the birth of new languages.

Question 65

Which of the following is an obstacle to the revival of endangered languages?

A) Parents who care less about preserving their dying language than they do about making sure their children become literate in a world language.
B) Lack of activism among speakers of small languages that extinction is a genuine possibility.
C) That only linguists and anthropologists care about language loss.
D) Both b and c

Question 66

Language has been a central focus of anthropological interest for at least three reasons. List these reasons and discuss why they are important.

Question 67

Adopted children commonly refer to their new parents as "mother" and "father." What does this usage suggest about the relationship between literal and metaphorical language?

Question 68

"There is no moment at which a particular pidgin suddenly comes into existence, but rather a process of variety-creation called pidginization, by which pidgin is gradually built up out of nothing." What does this suggest about the nature of human language? Discuss this in relation to the design features of language suggested by Hockett.

Question 69

Six design features of language were singled out in the text for particular attention. Which features were they, and why are they so important?

Question 70

Discuss the three kinds of context that influence the meaning of our speech.

Question 71

What is a referential perspective? Discuss how referential perspectives are related to language use in particular contexts.

Question 72

What are the five components of language? Why do linguists find it necessary to analyze language in terms of different components? What does this suggest about the nature of human language?

Question 73

Why is the study of metaphor important to understanding the nature of language?

Question 74

What are discourse genres? Define and give examples. What makes discourse genres important in linguistic anthropology?

Question 75

Discuss the concept of heteroglossia in linguistic anthropology. What is the concept? Why is it important? What advantages does it provide in understanding human language?

Question 76

Discuss language ideology, paying particular attention to power differentials and the importance of heteroglossia. Are there situations in which you find language ideology playing a role in your own language use?