Linguistic: Answering On Language Questions

Answer ALL the following six questions (the maximum number of points for a fully correct answer is given in parentheses). 

1. (1 point)  Is the following rule DESCRIPTIVE or PRESCRIPTIVE?

You should not split an infinitive in English, as in 'To better predict the election result we must have a good sample'.  It should be 'To predict the election result better we must have a good sample'.

2. (3 points)  Sentence (b) below is ungrammatical in English: 

(a)   Here we are in the LIN 1 lecture again.

(b)  *Here we’re in the LIN 1 lecture again.

Identify (i.e. name) the rule that has been misapplied in sentence (b).

State the conditions under which this rule does NOT apply in general (i.e. in all sentence types of English).

State why this rule does not apply in sentence (b).

3. (2 points) In language performance we make use of fewer sentences than our competence knowledge allows us to create, because of limitations of time and (working) memory, and we sometimes use sentences we would judge to be impossible. The following sentence type is grammatically possible according to the syntactic rules of English but would hardly ever be used in performance:

‘I called the professor whose lecture I had unfortunately missed on account of the heavy traffic from San Francisco to Davis up’.

What kind of performance limitation leads to the avoidance of this sentence in performance? Use no more than a few words in your answer.

4.(6 points)  In the lectures I mentioned that there are six logically possible ways in which the orthographic letters of an alphabet can fail to be in a one-to-one correspondence with the sounds that they are designed to represent. All six possibilities are found in English, which has a phonetically very inconsistent orthography. Without giving actual examples of English words, briefly list these six possible inconsistencies numbered (i) through (vi). E.g. (i) one letter for several different sounds, (ii) …, (iii) …, etc, through (vi).

5. (4 points)  Provide the required number of spelling possibilities for each of the vowel sounds indicated below.  Just give the words in their spelled forms and indicate by means of underlining which letter or letters correspond to the vowel sound in question.  E.g. for phonetic [u] one spelling possibility would be fruit.

            (a)  Give 6 different spellings with illustrative words for the sound [i]

            (b)  Give 6 different spellings with illustrative words for the sound [u] (you can use the example given above as one of your words). 

6.         (4 points)  Provide the required number of different sounds for the single orthographic letter in question.  Give the word of English in its spelled form, underline the letter in question, and give the phonetic symbol for this letter.  E.g. for orthographic a in bad the phonetic symbol is [æ].

    (a)  Give 4 different phonetic values for orthographic a in English, i.e. the single-letter a as in bad, not a in immediate combination with other letters (ea, ai, etc). (You can include the [æ] illustrated above among your four.)

            (b)  Give 2 different phonetic values for orthographic u in English, again the single- letter u.