Ch9 Complete Test Bank Why Is Understanding Human Language

Chapter 9: Why Is Understanding Human Language Important?

Test Bank

Type: multiple choice question

Title: [Knowledge of Key Terms and Concepts: Chapter 09 Question 01]

1) The system of arbitrary symbols used to encode one’s experience of the world and of others is

Feedback: Language refers to the system of arbitrary symbols human beings use to encode and communicate about their experience of the world and one another.

Page reference: What Makes Language Distinctively Human?

a. language.

b. communication.

c. speech.

d. talk.

Type: multiple choice question

Title: [Knowledge of Key Terms and Concepts: Chapter 09 Question 02]

2) The transfer of information from one person to another is human

Feedback: Communication refers to the transfer of information from one person to another is human.

Page reference: What Makes Language Distinctively Human?

a. communication.

b. language.

c. writing.

d. speech.

Type: multiple choice question

Title: [Knowledge of Key Terms and Concepts: Chapter 09 Question 03]

3) The scientific study of language is known as

Feedback: Linguistics refers to the scientific study of language.

Page reference: How Are Language and Culture Related?

a. communication studies.

b. linguistics.

c. morphology.

d. semantics.

Type: multiple choice question

Title: [Knowledge of Key Terms and Concepts: Chapter 09 Question 04]

4) According to Peirce, a mode of signification in which the sign looks like that which it represents is called

Feedback: Iconicity, a mode of signification in which the sign (or icon) looks like that which it represents (for example, the stylized image of a moving watch face or hourglass that appears on your computer screen indicates the passage of time while an operation is being performed).

Page reference: How Are Language and Culture Related?

a. a metaphor.

b. an icon.

c. a symbol.

d. an index.

Type: multiple choice question

Title: [Knowledge of Key Terms and Concepts: Chapter 09 Question 05]

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

Feedback: Linguistic competence refers to a term coined by linguist Noam Chomsky to refer to the mastery of adult grammar.

Page reference: How Are Language and Culture Related?

a. duality of patterning.

b. interchangeability.

c. communicative competence.

d. linguistic competence.

Type: multiple choice question

Title: [Knowledge of Key Terms and Concepts: Chapter 09 Question 06]

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

Feedback: Communicative competence, or mastery of adult rules for socially and culturally appropriate speech, is a term introduced by American anthropological linguist Dell Hymes (1972).

Page reference: Type relevant section heading here

a. specialization.

b. discreteness.

c. communicative competence.

d. linguistic competence.

Type: multiple choice question

Title: [Knowledge of Key Terms and Concepts: Chapter 09 Question 07]

7) The principle which asserts that language has the power to shape the way people see the world is

Feedback: Linguistic relativity principle is a position, associated with Edward Sapir and Benjamin Whorf, that asserts that language has the power to shape the way people see the world.

Page reference: What Does It Mean to “Learn” a Language?

a. the linguistic relativity principle.

b. the principle of cultural relativism.

c. the principle of cultural determinism.

d. linguistic activity principle.

Type: multiple choice question

Title: [Knowledge of Key Terms and Concepts: Chapter 09 Question 08]

8) Linguistic determinism holds that

Feedback: The so-called strong version of the linguistic relativity principle is also known as linguistic determinism. It is a totalizing view of language that reduces patterns of thought and culture to the grammatical patterns of the language spoken.

Page reference: What Does It Mean to “Learn” a Language?

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.

Type: multiple choice question

Title: [Knowledge of Key Terms and Concepts: Chapter 09 Question 09]

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

Feedback: Pragmatics is the study of language in the context of its use.
Page reference: What Does It Mean to “Learn” a Language?

a. pragmatics.

b. syntax.

c. reflexivity.

d. phonetics.

Type: multiple choice question

Title: [Knowledge of Key Terms and Concepts: Chapter 09 Question 10]

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

Feedback: Ethnopragmatics is a study of language use which relies on ethnography to illuminate the ways in which speech is both constituted by and constitutive of social interaction.

Page reference: What Does It Mean to “Learn” a Language?

a. ethnopragmatics.

b. morphology.

c. pragmatics.

d. semantics.

Type: multiple choice question

Title: [Knowledge of Key Terms and Concepts: Chapter 09 Question 11]

11) A language with no native speakers that develops in a single generation between members of communities that possess distinct native languages is a

Feedback: A pidgin is a language with no native speakers that develops in a single generation between members of communities that possess distinct native languages.
Page reference: What Happens When Languages Come into Contact?

a. creole.

b. pidgin.

c. dodoh.

d. renn.

Type: multiple choice question

Title: [Knowledge of Key Terms and Concepts: Chapter 09 Question 12]

12) A marker of struggles between social groups with different interests, revealed in what people say and how they say it exemplifies a

Feedback: Language ideology is a marker of struggles between social groups with different interests, revealed in what people say and how they say it. To employ a language ideology is to make value judgments about other people’s speech in a context of domination and subordination.
Page reference: What Does Linguistic Inequality Look Like?

a. ethnopragmatics.

b. language ideology.

c. pidgin.

d. heteroglossia.

Type: multiple choice question

Title: [Knowledge of Key Terms and Concepts: Chapter 09 Question 13]

13) Theorizing race and language together is the project of

Feedback: Raciolinguistics refer to theorizing race and language together, by drawing on diverse methods of linguistic analysis to ask and answer critical questions about the relations between languages, race, and power across diverse ethnoracial contexts and societies.
Page reference: What Is Raciolinguistics?

a. ethnopragmatics.

b. governmentality.

c. raciolinguistics.

d. the pidgin project.

Type: multiple choice question

Title: [Comprehension of Fundamental Concepts: Chapter 09 Question 14]

14) The design feature of language called “openness” refers to the

Feedback: Six of these design features seem especially helpful in defining what makes human language distinctive: openness, displacement, arbitrariness, duality of patterning, semanticity, and prevarication. Openness indicates that human language is productive. Speakers of any given language not only can create new messages but also can understand new messages created by other speakers.
Page reference: What Makes Language Distinctively Human?

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.

Type: multiple choice question

Title: [Comprehension of Fundamental Concepts: Chapter 09 Question 15]

15) Robbins Burling argues that primate call systems

Feedback: The importance of openness for human verbal communication is striking when we compare, for example, spoken human language to the vocal communication systems (or call systems) of monkeys and apes.

Page reference: What Makes Language Distinctively Human?

a. are organized in a way so different from human symbolic language that it is difficult to imagine a sequence that could convert a call system to 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.

Type: multiple choice question

Title: [Comprehension of Fundamental Concepts: Chapter 09 Question 16]

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?

Feedback: Arbitrariness is evident in the design feature of language duality of patterning. Human language, Hockett claimed, is patterned on two different levels: sound and meaning. On the first level, the arrangement of the small set of meaningless sounds (or phonemes) that characterize any particular language is not random but systematically patterned to create meaning-bearing units (or morphemes): in English, the final /ng/ sound in song, for example, is never found at the beginning of a sound sequence, although other languages in the world do allow that combination.

Page reference: What Makes Language Distinctively Human?

a. duality of patterning.

b. reflexiveness.

c. specialization.

d. displacement.

Type: multiple choice question

Title: [Comprehension of Fundamental Concepts: Chapter 09 Question 17]

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

Feedback: Perhaps the most striking consequence of linguistic openness is the design feature prevarication. Hockett’s (1963, 10) remarks about this design feature deserve particular attention: “Linguistic messages can be false, and they can be meaningless in the logician’s sense.” In other words, not only can people use language to lie, but also utterances that seem perfectly well formed grammatically may yield nonsense.
Page reference: What Makes Language Distinctively Human?

a. interchangeability.

b. prevarication.

c. duality of patterning.

d. reflexiveness.

Type: multiple choice question

Title: [Comprehension of Fundamental Concepts: Chapter 09 Question 18]

18) What is the difference between speech and language?

Feedback: Spoken language is speech.

Page reference: How Are Language and Culture Related?

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.

Type: multiple choice question

Title: [Comprehension of Fundamental Concepts: Chapter 09 Question 19]

19) “Primitive” human languages

Feedback: Despite differences in vocabulary and grammar, all natural human languages ever studied by linguists prove to be equally complex. Just as there is no such thing as a primitive human culture, there is no such thing as a primitive human language.
Page reference: How Are Language and Culture Related?

a. have a limited vocabulary.

b. lack elaborate grammatical structure.

c. make use of a reduced set of sounds.

d. do not exist.

Type: multiple choice question

Title: [Comprehension of Fundamental Concepts: Chapter 09 Question 20]

20) In Java it is impossible to

Feedback: In the 1950s, when Clifford Geertz first did fieldwork in Java, he discovered that it was impossible to say anything in Javanese without also communicating your social position relative to the person to whom you are speaking.

Page reference: What Does It Mean to “Learn” a Language?

a. give a one-word answer.

b. refer directly to your mother-in-law.

c. say anything without communicating your relative social position.

d. participate in speech.

Type: multiple choice question

Title: [Comprehension of Fundamental Concepts: Chapter 09 Question 21]

21) Edward Sapir and Benjamin Lee Whorf believed that

Feedback: During the first half of the twentieth century, two American anthropological linguists, Edward Sapir and Benjamin Whorf, observed that the grammars of different languages often described the same situation in different ways. They concluded that language has the power to shape the way people see the world. This claim has been called the linguistic relativity principle, or the “ Sapir–Whorf hypothesis.” This principle has been highly controversial because it is a radical proposition that is difficult to test and, when it has been tested, the results have been ambiguous.

Page reference: What Does It Mean to “Learn” a Language?

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.

Type: multiple choice question

Title: [Comprehension of Fundamental Concepts: Chapter 09 Question 22]

22) Recent research on the creation of pidgins has emphasized

Feedback: Viewing pidgin creation as a form of communicative practice means that attention must be paid to the role of pidgin creators as agents in the process. As we negotiate meaning across language barriers, it appears that all humans have intuitions about which parts of our speech carry the most meaning and which parts can be safely dropped.
Page reference: What Happens When Languages Come into Contact?

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. the lack of participation among pidgin speakers in the creation of pidgins.

Type: multiple choice question

Title: [Comprehension of Fundamental Concepts: Chapter 09 Question 23]

23) 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

Feedback: When African American children were in the classroom (a European American–dominated context) being interrogated by European American adults about topics of no interest to them, they said little. This did not necessarily mean, Labov argued, that they had no language. Rather, their minimal responses were better understood as defensive attempts to keep threatening European American questioners from learning anything about them. For the African American children, the classroom was only one part of a broader racist culture. The psychologists, because of their ethnocentrism, had been oblivious to the effect this context might have on their research.
Page reference: What Does Linguistic Inequality Look Like?

a. were linguistically deprived.

b. felt threatened in the classroom context.

c. had nothing to say.

d. were never asked any questions in the classroom.

Type: multiple choice question

Title: [Comprehension of Fundamental Concepts: Chapter 09 Question 24]

24) The research on African American language ideology by Marcyliena Morgan reveals the importance of _________.

Feedback: Moreover, members of all of these subgroups use both Standard English and AAE in their speech. Morgan reports, for example, that upper middle-class African American students at elite colleges who did not grow up speaking AAE regularly adopt many of its features and that hip-hop artists combine the grammar of Standard English with the phonology and morphology of AAE (Morgan 1995, 338). This situation is not so paradoxical if we recall, once again, the politically charged context of African American life in the United States. African Americans both affirm and deny the significance of AAE for their identity, perhaps because AAE symbolizes both the oppression of slavery and the resistance to that oppression (Morgan 1995, 339).

Page reference: What Does Linguistic Inequality Look Like?

a. combining different features of language

b. rhythmic speech

c. secrecy

d. silence

Type: multiple choice question

Title: [Comprehension of Fundamental Concepts: Chapter 09 Question 25]

25) The purpose of raciolinguistics is

Feedback: Raciolinguistics refer to theorizing race and language together, by drawing on diverse methods of linguistic analysis to ask and answer critical questions about the relations between languages, race, and power across diverse ethnoracial contexts and societies.
Page reference: What Is Raciolinguistics?

a. to eliminate linguistic variation.

b. to celebrate linguistic diversity in the scholarly community.

c. to ask and answer critical questions about the relations between language, race, and power.

d. through the methods and data of linguistics, to separate language, race, and power.

Type: multiple choice question

Title: [Comprehension of Fundamental Concepts: Chapter 09 Question 26]

26) At the beginning of the twenty-first century, many anthropologists and linguists have become involved in projects ______ languages with small numbers of native speakers.

Feedback: At the beginning of the twenty-first century, many anthropologists and linguists have become involved in projects to maintain or revive languages with small numbers of native speakers. These languages are in danger of disappearing as younger people in the speech community stop using the language or never learn it in the first place. Communities concerned about language revitalization can range from Irish speakers in the United Kingdom to Kiowa speakers in Oklahoma to users of indigenous sign languages in Australia.
Page reference: What Is Lost If a Language Dies?

a. reviving

b. absolving

c. curating

d. mimicking

Type: multiple choice question

Title: [Comprehension of Fundamental Concepts: Chapter 09 Question 27]

27) What did Evans-Pritchard discover in the early twentieth century about Azande language practices?

Feedback: When E. E. Evans-Pritchard lived among the Azande of Central Africa in the early twentieth century, he found that they experienced a similar form of disorientation. The Azande people, he wrote, were well aware of the ambiguity inherent in language, and they exploited it by using metaphor (what they called sanza) to disguise speech that might be received badly if uttered directly. Evans-Pritchard later observed that sanza “adds greatly to the difficulties of anthropological inquiry. Eventually the anthropologist’s sense of security is undermined and his confidence shaken. He learns the language, can say what he wants to say in it, and can understand what he hears, but then he begins to wonder whether he has really understood . . . he cannot be sure, and even they [the Azande] cannot be sure, whether the words do have a nuance or someone imagines that they do” (228).
Page reference: How Are Language and Truth Connected?

a. They were well note aware of the ambiguity inherent in language.

b. They did use metaphor in speech.

c. They did not care if parts of their speech would that might be received badly if uttered directly.

d. Even the Azande cannot be sure whether words do have a nuance or someone imagines that they do.

Type: true-false

Title: [Comprehension of Fundamental Concepts: Chapter 09 Question 28]

28) Changes in the volume, tone, or rhythm of speech in language is known as prosody.

Feedback: Human calls appear to have coevolved alongside symbolic language, together with gestures and the changes in speech rhythm, volume, and tonality that linguists call speech prosody. This would explain why calls and speech integrate with one another so smoothly when we communicate vocally with one another.

Page reference: What Makes Language Distinctively Human?

a. True

b. False

Type: true-false

Title: [Comprehension of Fundamental Concepts: Chapter 09 Question 29]

29) However much we learn about language, we will never be able to exhaust its meanings or circumscribe its rules once and for all.

Feedback: However much we learn about language, we will never be able to exhaust its meanings or circumscribe its rules once and for all. Human language is an open system, and as long as human history continues, new forms will be created and old forms will continue to be put to new uses.
Page reference: How Are Language and Truth Connected?

a. True

b. False

Type: multiple choice question

Title: [Application of Concepts: Chapter 09 Question 30]

30) 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

Feedback: Six of these design features seem especially helpful in defining what makes human language distinctive: openness, displacement, arbitrariness, duality of patterning, semanticity, and prevarication. Closed call systems also lack displacement, our human ability to talk about absent or nonexistent objects and past or future events as easily as we discuss our immediate situations.
Page reference: What Makes Language Distinctively Human?

a. complete feedback.

b. displacement.

c. discreteness.

d. semanticity.

Type: multiple choice question

Title: [Application of Concepts: Chapter 09 Question 31]

31) 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

Feedback: Closed call systems also lack arbitrariness, the fact that there is no universal, necessary link between particular linguistic sounds and particular linguistic meanings. For example, the sound sequence /boi/ refers to a “young male human being” in English but means “more” or “many” in Fulfulde, a major language in northern Cameroon. One aspect of linguistic creativity is the free, creative production of new links between sounds and meanings. Thus, arbitrariness and openness imply each other: if all links between sound and meaning are open, then any particular links between particular sounds and particular meanings in a particular language must be arbitrary.

Page reference: What Makes Language Distinctively Human?

a. specialization.

b. definition.

c. semanticity.

d. arbitrariness.

Type: multiple choice question

Title: [Application of Concepts: Chapter 09 Question 32]

32) Members of a speech community

Feedback: Ahearn argues that the great advantage of thinking about a speech community as a community of practice is that it supports forms of research that “illustrate the emergent nature of communities and the inseparability of language from actual social contexts” (2017, 133). Such studies reveal the way different members of the community make use of linguistic resources in different ways. Consequently, there is a tension in language between diversity and commonality. Individuals and subgroups attempt to use the varied resources of a language to create unique, personal voices or ways of speaking. These efforts are countered by pressures to negotiate shared codes for communication within larger social groups. In this way, language patterns are produced, imitated, or modified through the activity of speakers.
Page reference: How Are Language and Culture Related?

a. have no difficulties in 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.

Type: multiple choice question

Title: [Application of Concepts: Chapter 09 Question 33]

33) In the text, Dan Slobin talks about the “thinking for speaking” hypothesis. An example of this would be

Feedback: Dan Slobin’s “thinking for speaking” hypothesis, for example, suggests that the influence of linguistic forms on thought may be greatest when people prepare to speak to others on a specific topic in a specific setting. “One fits one’s thoughts into available linguistic forms. . . . ‘ Thinking for speaking’ involves picking those characteristics that (a) fit some conceptualization of the event, and (b) are readily encodable in the language” (Slobin 1987, 435).

Page reference: What Does It Mean to “Learn” a Language?

a. talking to yourself.

b. cheering at a sports event.

c. translating from English into Spanish.

d. preparing a talk about what college is like for a class of 13-year-old public school students.

Type: multiple choice question

Title: [Application of Concepts: Chapter 09 Question 34]

34) 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

Feedback: Heteroglossia is the normal condition of linguistic knowledge in any society with internal divisions. Heteroglossia describes a coexisting multiplicity of linguistic norms and forms, many of which are anchored in more than one social subgroup. Because we all participate in more than one of these subgroups, we inevitably become fluent in many varieties of language, even if we speak only English! Our capacity for heteroglossia is an example of linguistic openness: it means that our thought and speech are not imprisoned in a single set of grammatical forms, as linguistic determinists argued.

Page reference: What Does It Mean to “Learn” a Language?

a. multilingualism.

b. a pidgin.

c. heteroglossia.

d. linguistic relativity.

Type: true-false

Title: [Application of Concepts: Chapter 09 Question 35]

35) Recent research has led to the conclusion that pidgins and creoles are the same forms of language.

Feedback: When speakers of a pidgin language pass that language on to a new generation, linguists have traditionally referred to the language as a creole. As linguists studied pidgins and creoles more closely, they discovered that the old distinction between pidgins and creoles did not seem to hold up. In the Pacific, for example, linguists have discovered pidgin dialects, pidgin languages used as main languages of permanently settled groups, and pidgins that have become native languages. Moreover, creolization can take place at any time after a pidgin forms, creoles can exist without having been preceded by pidgins, pidgins can remain pidgins for long periods and undergo linguistic change without acquiring native speakers, and pidgin and creole varieties of the same language can coexist in the same society (Jourdan 1991, 192ff.). In fact, it looks as if heteroglossia is as widespread among speakers of pidgins and creoles as among speakers of other languages.

Page reference: What Happens When Languages Come into Contact?

a. True

b. False

Type: multiple choice question

Title: [Application of Concepts: Chapter 09 Question 36]

36) Which of the following statements about language endangerment do linguistic anthropologists consider correct?

Feedback: Languages are in danger of disappearing as younger people in the speech community stop using the language or never learn it in the first place. Communities concerned about language revitalization can range from Irish speakers in the United Kingdom to Kiowa speakers in Oklahoma to users of indigenous sign languages in Australia.
Page reference: What Is Lost If a Language Dies?

a. Many languages with small numbers of native speakers are in danger of disappearing as younger people in the speech community stop using the language or never learn it in the first place.

b. The spread of “world” languages like English contributes to language growth.

c. Attempts to implement language revitalization have met with complete failure.

d. Linguistic anthropologists have not become involved in project to revive languages.

Type: multiple choice question

Title: [Application of Concepts: Chapter 09 Question 37]

37) Which of the following statements correctly presents a position taken by those whose language is dying?

Feedback: Language loss began with the arrival of European American settlers in the nineteenth century, especially in connection with the California Gold Rush. In later years, indigenous Californians were subjected to a range of disruptive and oppressive practices that undermined their cultures and reduced their numbers severely. By the 1870s, populations began to increase again, but the possibilities of preserving indigenous language and culture were bleak: most tribes had no land base, their children had been sent to boarding schools to forget indigenous traditions, and most California Indians were forced to find work in the wider, English-speaking society. “Thus, California Indians are now immersed in English. There is little or no space in the present-day way of life for the use of indigenous languages” (Hinton 1998, 218).
Page reference: What Is Lost If a Language Dies?

a. Some parents care more about preserving their dying language than they do about making sure their children become literate in a world language.

b. Some indigenous groups are concerned that loss of language will mean loss of access to traditional sources of religious power.

c. Some indigenous speakers would like to see what was once a fully functioning mode of communication reduced to nothing but ceremonial use.

d. Linguistics anthropologists should have nothing to do with language revitalization.

Type: true-false

Title: [Application of Concepts: Chapter 09 Question 38]

38) People’s vocabularies tend to reflect the way they see and/or understand their surroundings and what is important in their cultures.

Feedback: People use language to refer to, and make sense of, and talk about objects and processes in their world. Think about the specialized vocabulary used by baseball fans in the United States as they dispute the way an umpire has called a pitch: for instance, was it “high and inside” or was it “right over the plate?” Any linguistic description of reality is bound to be somewhat arbitrary because all linguistic descriptions are selective, highlighting some features of the world and downplaying others. Each speaker links the same words to the world in different ways.

Page reference: What Makes Language Distinctively Human?

a. True

b. False

Type: true-false

Title: [Application of Concepts: Chapter 09 Question 39]

39) Human communication extends beyond unspoken and spoken language.

Feedback: Language refers to the system of arbitrary symbols human beings use to encode and communicate about their experience of the world and one another.

Page reference: What Makes Language Distinctively Human?

a. True

b. False

Type: multiple choice question

Title: [Application of Concepts: Chapter 09 Question 40]

40) If our understanding of reality is the product of a dialectic between experience and language (or, more broadly, culture), then ambiguity will never be permanently removed from any of the symbolic systems that human beings invent.

Feedback: If our understanding of reality is the product of a dialectic between experience and language (or, more broadly, culture), then ambiguity will never be permanently removed from any of the symbolic systems that human beings invent. Reflexive consciousness makes humans aware of alternatives. The experience of doubt, of not being sure what to believe, is never far behind.
Page reference: How Are Language and Truth Connected?

a. True

b. False

Type: essay/short answer question

Title: [Application of Concepts: Chapter 09 Question 41]

41) Describe three reasons that language has been a central focus of anthropological interest. Provide examples and discuss why they are important.

Feedback: Only human beings have symbolic language, and it is so deeply part of our lives that we rarely even think about how unusual it is. It is unique both biologically and culturally. Answers could include any content from the chapter, from the establishment of meaning to the emphasis on structural inequalities.

Page reference: What Makes Language Distinctively Human?

Type: essay/short answer question

Title: [Application of Concepts: Chapter 09 Question 42]

42) “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 in relation to the design features of language suggested by Hockett.

Feedback: A pidgin is a language with no native speakers that develops in a single generation between members of communities that possess distinct native languages. Human language, Hockett claimed, is patterned on two different levels: sound and meaning. On the first level, the arrangement of the small set of meaningless sounds (or phonemes) that characterize any particular language is not random but systematically patterned to create meaning-bearing units (or morphemes): in English, the final /ng/ sound in song, for example, is never found at the beginning of a sound sequence, although other languages in the world do allow that combination.

Page reference: What Happens When Languages Come into Contact?

Type: essay/short answer question

Title: [Application of Concepts: Chapter 09 Question 43]

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

Feedback: If mutual understanding is shaped by shared routine activity and not by grammar, then communication is possible even if the people interacting with one another speak mutually unintelligible languages. Such mutually coengaged people shape communicative practices that involve spoken language but also include values and shared habitual knowledge that may never be put into words. Because most people in most societies regularly engage in a wide range of practical activities with different subgroups, each one will also end up knowledgeable about a variety of different communicative practices and the linguistic habits that go with them. Each set of linguistic habits she knows is called a discourse genre. Because our student simultaneously knows a multiplicity of different discourse genres she can choose among when she speaks, her linguistic knowledge is characterized by what Bakhtin called heteroglossia (Bakhtin 1981).

Page reference: What Does It Mean to “Learn” a Language?

Type: essay/short answer question

Title: [Analysis and Synthesis: Chapter 09 Question 44]

44) Adopted children commonly refer to their new parents as “mother” and “father.” Using the concepts of literal and metaphorical language, discuss what this usage suggests about the relationship.

Feedback: For the late Thomas Kuhn, a philosopher of science, metaphor lay at the heart of science. He argued that changes in scientific theories were “accompanied by a change in some of the relevant metaphors and in corresponding parts of the network of similarities through which terms attach to nature” (416). Kuhn insisted that these changes in the way scientific terms link to nature are not reducible to logic or grammar. “They come about in response to pressures generated by observation or experiment”— that is, by experience and context. And there is no neutral language into which rival theories can be translated and subsequently evaluated as unambiguously right or wrong (416). Kuhn asks the question, “Is what we refer to as ‘the world’ perhaps a product of mutual accommodation between experience and language?”

Page reference: What Is Lost If a Language Dies?

Type: essay/short answer question

Title: [Analysis and Synthesis: Chapter 09 Question 45]

45) Define and discuss the six design features of language that were singled out in the text. Using an example, identify why they are important for understanding human language use.

Feedback: In 1966, the anthropological linguist Charles Hockett listed 16 different design features of human language that, in his estimation, set it apart from other forms of animal communication. Six of these design features seem especially helpful in defining what makes human language distinctive: openness, displacement, arbitrariness, duality of patterning, semanticity, and prevarication.

Page reference: What Makes Language Distinctively Human?

Type: essay/short answer question

Title: [Analysis and Synthesis: Chapter 09 Question 46]

46) 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?

Feedback: Heteroglossia is the normal condition of linguistic knowledge in any society with internal divisions. Heteroglossia describes a coexisting multiplicity of linguistic norms and forms, many of which are anchored in more than one social subgroup. Because we all participate in more than one of these subgroups, we inevitably become fluent in many varieties of language, even if we speak only English! Our capacity for heteroglossia is an example of linguistic openness: it means that our thought and speech are not imprisoned in a single set of grammatical forms, as linguistic determinists argued.

Page reference: What Does It Mean to “Learn” a Language?

Type: essay/short answer question

Title: [Analysis and Synthesis: Chapter 09 Question 47]

47) Discuss language ideology and raciolinguistics. Pay 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? How is raciolinguistics connected with fluid ways of establishing identity?.

Feedback: Language ideology is a marker of struggles between social groups with different interests, revealed in what people say and how they say it. To employ a language ideology is to make value judgments about other people’s speech in a context of domination and subordination. Raciolinguistics refers to theorizing race and language together, by drawing on diverse methods of linguistic analysis to ask and answer critical questions about the relations between languages, race, and power across diverse ethnoracial contexts and societies.
Page reference: What Does Linguistic Inequality Look Like?

Module 4 Test Bank

Type: multiple choice question

Title: [Knowledge of Key Terms and Concepts: Chapter 09 Question 01]

1) The study of the sounds of language is called

Feedback: Phonology is the study of the sounds of language.

Page reference: Components of Language

a. phonology

b. morphology

c. syntax

d. semantics

Type: multiple choice question

Title: [Knowledge of Key Terms and Concepts: Chapter 09 Question 02]

2) The minimal units of meaning in language are referred to as

Feedback: The arrangement of the small set of meaningless sounds (or phonemes) that characterize any particular language is not random but systematically patterned to create meaning-bearing units (or morphemes): in English, the final /ng/ sound in song, for example, is never found at the beginning of a sound sequence, although other languages in the world do allow that combination.

Page reference: Components of Language

a. root words

b. morphemes

c. affixes

d. phonology

Type: multiple choice question

Title: [Knowledge of Key Terms and Concepts: Chapter 09 Question 03]

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

Feedback: Syntax is the study of sentence structure.

Page reference: Components of Language

a. phonology

b. morphology

c. syntax

d. semantics

Type: multiple choice question

Title: [Knowledge of Key Terms and Concepts: Chapter 09 Question 04]

4) Semantics is the study of

Feedback: Semantics is the study of meaning.

Page reference: Components of Language

a. meaning

b. speech

c. language use in context

d. speech communities

Type: multiple choice question

Title: [Comprehension of Fundamental Concepts: Chapter 09 Question 05]

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

Feedback: Language is the system of arbitrary vocal symbols used to encode one’s experience of the world and of others.

Page reference: Components of Language

a. sentence structure

b. the sound system of language

c. meaning

d. language

Type: multiple choice question

Title: [Comprehension of Fundamental Concepts: Chapter 09 Question 06]

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

Feedback: Morphology is (1) The physical shape and size of an organism or its body parts; (2) in linguistics, the study of the minimal units of meaning in a language.

Page reference: Components of Language

a. phonology

b. morphology

c. syntax

d. semantics

Type: multiple choice question

Title: [Comprehension of Fundamental Concepts: Chapter 09 Question 07]

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

Feedback: On the second level of patterning, however, the rules of grammar allow for the arrangement and rearrangement of these single morphemes into larger units—utterances or sentences—that can express an infinite number of meanings (“The boy bit the dog” uses the same morphemes as “The dog bit the boy,” but the meaning is completely different).

Page reference: Components of Language

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

Type: multiple choice question

Title: [Comprehension of Fundamental Concepts: Chapter 09 Question 08]

8) The dictionary definition of a word is an example of

Feedback: Denotation refers to what they referred to in the “real world.”

Page reference: Components of Language

a. deep structure

b. surface structure

c. connotation

d. denotation

Type: multiple choice question

Title: [Application of Concepts: Chapter 09 Question 09]

9) American English recognizes 38 significant sounds. These are called

Feedback: The arrangement of the small set of meaningless sounds are called phonemes.

Page reference: Components of Language

a. consonants

b. phonemes

c. phonology

d. the auditory system

Type: multiple choice question

Title: [Application of Concepts: Chapter 09 Question 10]

10) Which of the following sentences shows structural ambiguity?

Feedback: We can explain the ambiguity by assuming that a word’s role in a sentence depends on sentence structure and not on the structure of the word itself. Thus, sentences can be defined as ordered strings of words, and those words can be classified as parts of speech in terms of the function they fulfill in a sentence.
Page reference: Components of Language

a. You have failed this exam.

b. Flying planes can be dangerous.

c. Come over sometime tomorrow.

d. The dog is on the rug.

Type: multiple choice question

Title: [Application of Concepts: Chapter 09 Question 11]

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

Feedback: Words also have connotations, additional meanings that derive from the typical contexts in which they are used in everyday speech.

Page reference: Components of Language

a. radical politics

b. connotation

c. syntax

d. denotation

Type: essay/short answer question

Title: [Application of Concepts: Chapter 09 Question 12]

12) Define phonology and morphology. How do these two constructs interact to help linguistic anthropologists understand language?

Feedback: Phonology is the study of the sounds of language. Morphology is (1) The physical shape and size of an organism or its body parts; (2) in linguistics, the study of the minimal units of meaning in a language.

Page reference: Components of Language

Type: essay/short answer question

Title: [Application of Concepts: Chapter 09 Question 13]

13) Define a metaphor. Describe a metaphor that you often use. How did you come to understand the semantic domains in the metaphor?

Feedback: Metaphor is a form of figurative or nonliteral language that violates the formal rules of denotation by linking expressions from unrelated semantic domains. Metaphors are used all the time in everyday speech.

Page reference: Components of Language

Type: essay/short answer question

Title: [Analysis and Synthesis: Chapter 09 Question 14]

14) Imagine you are provided with audio tapes in another language, which no additional information. Using concepts from the Module, describe how you would determine the characteristics of the language and derive meaning.

Feedback: Linguistic study involves a search for patterns in the way speakers use language; linguists aim to describe these patterns by reducing them to a set of rules called a grammar. As Edward Sapir (1921) once commented, however, “all grammars leak” (38). Over time linguists came to recognize a growing number of language components; each new component was an attempt to plug the “leaks” in an earlier grammar, to explain what had previously resisted explanation. The following discussion pinpoints the various leaks linguists have recognized (as well as their attempts to plug the leaks) and demonstrates how culture and language influence each other.

Page reference: Components of Language

Type: essay/short answer question

Title: [Analysis and Synthesis: Chapter 09 Question 15]

15) Identify a sentence that could exhibit structural ambiguity. How do speakers reconcile structural ambiguity? Are these ambiguities translatable in other languages?

Feedback: We can explain the ambiguity by assuming that a word’s role in a sentence depends on sentence structure and not on the structure of the word itself. Thus, sentences can be defined as ordered strings of words, and those words can be classified as parts of speech in terms of the function they fulfill in a sentence.

Page reference: Components of Language