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Ling 101/Anth 110 (Fall 2015) Midterm Review Sheet

Exam format The exam will be posted online. The due date for submitting the exam is Sunday 11

th. The exam

will look much like the quizzes; multiple-choice and some short answer. The midterm is worth

30% of your total course grade. To study for the exam Review the questions that were on the

quizzes. These will provide a good model for the types of problems that will be presented on the

exam (although you will see a few types of questions that were not on a quiz). You are expected

to be familiar with all content presented on this review sheet. Review the book chapters and

posted slides carefully. For topics you maybe did not fully understand take advantage of the

tutors at CAPS (Fazal) or send your problems and questions to me by email.

EXAM CONTETNS

What is language? Linguistics?

Prescriptivism vs. Descriptivism

Hockett’s Design Features of language

1. Mode of Communication

2. Pragmatic Function

3. Displacement

4. Arbitrariness

5. Productivity

6. Cultural Transmission

7. Duality

Phonetics

International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) – Keep the chart next to you at the exam time.

• Consonants; be able to describe and identify:

o Voicing

o Place of articulation

o Manner of articulation

• Vowels; be able to describe and identify:

o Tongue Height

o Tongue Advancement

o Rounding

o Tenseness

- Be able to give features for an IPA symbol

• Exp: [p] => voiceless, bilabial, stop

2

- Be able to give the IPA symbol for provided features

• Exp: voiceless, bilabial, stop => [p]

Transcription (be able to identify the correct multiple choice answer)

• IPA Orthography

o [kæt] cat

• Orthography IPA

o peach [piʧ]

Phonology

Identifying minimal pairs

Phonemes vs. allophones

Natural classes

Phonological processes (be able to identify the type of phonological process that is responsible

for the appearance of some sound or sequence of sounds, if asked)

• Assimilation

• Nasalization

• Elision

Morphology

Morpheme types

• Free vs. Bound

• Lexical vs. Functional

• Inflectional vs. Derivational

o You might be asked to provide the morpheme breaks of a word in English or another

language unfamiliar to you and then to identify the morpheme type(s).

Allomorphs

Morphological analysis of a small data set

• Deciphering morphemes and their meanings

• Deciphering morpheme types

Syntax

• Identifying syntactic categories (nouns, verbs, prepositions, adjectives, determiners, etc.)

• Identifying syntactic phrases (e.g., NP, VP, PP, etc)

o (Phrase Structure Rules will be provided for you on the exam. You just need to

understand how to read them.)

• Understanding how to read and produce syntactic tree representations in general

• Understanding how to identify and interpret structural ambiguity