General Linguistics 2015

Final Exam
Instructions: You may answer in Dutch or English, but use correct English terminology. Please explain everything. Remember, we cannot read your mind. Good
luck! 1

(1)

Phonetics (1.5 pts)

For each of the following articulatory descriptions, write in phonetic brackets
the sound described.
a. voiced velar nasal
b. voiceless interdental fricative
c. low front unrounded vowel

(2)

Phonetics (2pts)
Match the sets with the types of sounds they describe.
a.
b.
c.
d.

sounds
[p t k g P]
[r l w j]
[M N ]
[M E i l j]

type
i.
approximates
ii. nasals
iii. sonorants
iv. plosives

(3)

Phonemenes vs. allophones (6pts)

The English letter l can be pronounced two ways. One is called the clear
l and the other is called the dark l. Consider the following data and
answer the questions below.
a. [laIf]
life
g. [ph I]
pill
b. [li:p]
leap
h. [fi:]
feel
c. [lu:z]
lose
i. [hep] help
d. [Il@Up] elope
j. [b2k] bulk
e. [dIlaIt] delight k. [s@Ud] sold
f. [sli:p] sleep
l. [fU]
full
a. Do [l] and [] belong to separate phonemes or are they allophones of the
same phoneme?
b. What kind of evidence would identify [l] and [] as separate phonemes?
c. If you believe [l] and [] are allophones, write a rule accounting for the
distribution, making sure to identify the elsewhere phone.

(4)

Phonological rules (3pts)

Write a phonological rule using AVS structures that says that a voiced obstruent changes into a voiceless obstruent when it is proceeded by a voiceless
phone.

(5)

Morphology (8pts)
The following words from Chamorro, spoken in Guam and the Mariana
Islands, shows some morphological processes we learned about in class.

Note: points are an approximation and I reserve the right to change them.

a.
b.
c.
d.
e.
f.
(6)

Inflection or derivation? (5pts) For each of the following groups, say

whether the words are related to one another by processes of inflection or
derivation.
a.
b.
c.
d.
e.

(7)

I.
Root
English
Derived word English
a) add
mimic
aadda
mimicker
b) kanno
eat
kakanno
eater
c) tuge
write
tutuge
writer
II. Root
English
Derived word English
d) atan
look at
atanon
nice to look at
e) sangan tell
sanganon
tellable
f) gugiya
love
guiayayon
lovable
g) tulaika
exchange tulaikayon
exchangeable
h) chalek
laugh
chalekon
laughable
i)
ngangas chew
ngangas
chewable
III Root
English
Derived word English
j)
nalang
hungry
nalalang
very hungry
k) dankolo big
dankololo
very big
l)
metgot strong
metgogot
very strong
m) bunita
pretty
binitata
very pretty
What morphological process is involved in I?
What morphological process is involved in II?
What morphological process is involved in III?
Do any changes in lexical category take place in I, II or III?
Give a rule for how the derived words in I are formed.
The affix in II has more than one allomorph. Write a rule that accounts
for their distribution, identifying clearly which is the elsewhere-morph.

simple, simpler, simplest

Berlin, Berliner
cook, cooks, cooked
secret, secretive, secretly
pen, pens

Semantics:Conservativity (5pts) Consider the following quantifier I created, Mootoo:

Mootoo A B = True if and only if set A has two or more members
that are also in set B and there are no other members of set
B
Given this definition, consider the following sentence:
Mootoo cows are reading.
For picture a. and picture b., say whether the sentence correctly describes
the picture or not. If not, explain why and how to change the picture to make
it a correct description.

a.

b.
c.

Is Mootoo a conservative quantifier? Explain your answer.

(8)

Syntax (6pts)
Name the three syntactic processes that we learned about in class, giving a
brief example of when each process will be necessary for giving a syntactic
analysis of a phrase or sentence.

(9)

Syntax Trees: (12pts)

Draw a syntactic trees for the following DPs.

(10)

a.
b.

a cat
the boy in school
Draw syntactic trees for the following sentences. You can use triangular
notation for DPs. Clearly identify any movement, any traces, etc.

c.
d.

George baked a cake.

What can a monkey say?

Language Acquisition (6pts)

Consider the following naturalistic data taken from Radford (1990:65)
then explain with reference to the examples and what you know about
syntactic structure why some researchers consider this data to be evidence that children know that syntactic structure is hierarchical.
Example 1CHILD: Nice yellow pen, nice one (23 mths)
Example 2CHILD: Thats a brown eye. Another brown eye. No, that one.
(26mths)
Example 3Adult: Ah! Nice little chicken!
3

CHILD: Stroke that one. (23 mths)

(11)

Pragmatics: Violated maxims (4pts)

In an experiment by Siegel et al. childrens knowledge of conversational
maxims was tested by presenting children with dialogues with two puppets,
where one puppet says something and the second puppet responds in a way
that violates one of the conversational maxims developed by Grice. For each
example identify the maxim violated.
a. A: What toys do you have? B: Im hungry.
b. A: Do you want to draw a picture together? B: Yes, I want to draw
a picture with crayons in the kitchen. I want to draw on white paper
with my right hand.
c. A: Do you know where my doll is? B: Yes, somewhere.

(12)

Pragmatics: Presupposition, Implicatures or Entailment? (6pts)

For each of the following pairs of sentences, identify whether there is a
relation of presupposition, implicature or entailment and explain your
answer illustrating with any useful tests.
a. John stopped driving.
John used to drive
b. Johns son is bald.
John has a son.
c. Johns son is bald.
Johns son has no hair.
d. A few of the dogs have fleas. Not all of the dogs have fleas.

(13)

Historical Linguistics (3pts)

Consider the following Romance cognates for the word yes:
French
[si]

a.
b.
c.

Italian Rumanian Spanish

[si]
[Si]
[si]

All these languages are related so it is likely that the Romance word for
yes derives from some common form. There are basically two strategies
for determining this common form if we dont have attested texts that
tell us what it was. We look at the:
(1) phonetic plausibility (Strategy 1) OR allow a
(2) majority vote (Strategy 2) (the most frequent phone is identified
as the proto-phone)
Note that palatalization before an [i] sounds is a common phonological
process. Given all this information:
What is the most likely earlier form according to phonetic plausibility?
Explain your answer.
What is the most likely earlier form according to majority vote? Explain
your answer.
What do we call an earlier, reconstructed form of a word?