1. What is a natural language?

It is a language that is someone's mother tongue.

2. What is the structure of linguistics?
It consists of three levels: the phonetic, the grammatical and the semantic.
3. What is structuralism?
The theoretical approach proposed by the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure
which studies the language as the structured system where each element is in
the relation to other elements of the system.
4. Name the Saussurean dichotomies and explain each of them.
LANGUE VS. PAROLE the system that enables people to understand the
utterances vs. the actual utterances; THE SIGNIFIED VS. THE SIGNIFIER the
concept vs. What stands in the concept; SYNTAGMIC VS. PARADIGMATIC
syntagmic presents all the relations between linguistic elements which are
present in the structure and paradigmatic presents the set of elements that can
enter the structure
5. What do we consider under the term of knowledge of a language?
KNOWLEDGE OF THE SOUND SYSTEM knowing which sounds exist and which
dont; KNOWLEDGE OF WORDS knowing that a certain sound signifies a certain
meaning; CREATIVITY ability to combine sounds into morphemes, morphemes
into words and so on; KNOWLEDGE OF GRAMMAR knowing what is
grammatically correct and what is not
6. What is the difference between linguistic competence and
performance?
Linguistic competence is the ability to produce language and linguistic
performance is the actual act of performing a language.
7. How did the language appear? Name and explain the speculations.
There is no exact answer to that question due to the lack of hard evidence and a
distant time scale, just some speculations; THE SURROUNDING SOUND SOURCE,
THE ORAL GESTURE SOURCE, THE INSTINCTIVE SOUND SOURCE, THE
COORDINATING and THE ROMANTIC SOUND SOURCE.
8. What is the difference between animal and human voice productive
organs?
Humans have more flexible tongue, upright teeth, difference in positions of the
larynx, considerably different scull.
9. Which are universal characteristics of a language?
SEMANTICITY symbols that convey the meaning; ARBITRARINESS linguistic
signs do not represent the idea in any way (dog = furry four-legged creature);
DISCRETNESS language signals are clearly distinct with each other; DUALITY OF
PATTERING property of combining small meaningless units into bigger
meaningful ones; PRODUCTIVITY the infinite human capacity to produce and
understand the meaning; DISPLACEMENT ability to refer to things and events
that are physically and temporary displaced and even about the things that do
not exist.
10. What are the main functions of a language?

COMMUNICATION to transfer information; SOCIAL INTERACTION to function in

the society, create social networks, express emotions; COGNITIVE GROWTH only
humans are able to think about the reality in from different perspectives
11. What is the difference between phonetics and phonology?
Phonetics studies sound from the point of view of their production, transmission
and perception, and phonology explores the properties of the smallest discrete
units of language that do not have a meaning but can change it at higher levels.
12. How do we divide phonetics?
Into articulatory (the study of how sounds are made), acoustic (the physical
properties of sound waves in transmission) and auditory (the perception of the
sound via the ear)
13. Which are the organs involved in the articulation of language?
Lungs (generator), trachea, larynx (vibrator), pharynx (resonator), teeth, tongue,
lips, cheek.
14. What is the difference between voiceless and voiced sounds?
Voiceless sounds are produced when the air from the lungs passes freely and
voiced are produced by vibrating of the vocal cords.
15. How are the sounds divided considering the place of articulation?
Into bilabials, labiodentals, dentals, alveolar, alveo-palatal, velars, glottala.
16. Considering the manner of articulation?
Stop, fricative, affricative, nasal, liquid and glide.
17. How are the vowels produced?
When the flow of the air through the vocal tract is free.
18. What is IPA?
International Phonetic Alphabet the system of graphic notation used to
represent the sounds of a spoken language.
19. What is the distinction between phonemes (sound type) and phones
(sound token)?
Phonemes are the meaning distinguishing sounds and phones are the realizations
of phonemes.
20. What is allophone?
Two phonemes of a same phone.
21. What is the difference between phonemes and allophones?
If we substitute one phoneme for another, we will get a different meaning, but if
we do that with allophones, we will only get a different pronunciation.
22. The difference between minimal pair and set?
Minimal pair is a pair of words that have the identical form except in one point
(pet and bet) and minimal set is a group of words differentiated only in one
position (fat, feat, fit, fate...)
23. What is phonological competence?
Knowing which combinations of sounds are possible and which are not.

24. What is considered under the term of writing?

Visual system of representing language including handwriting, printing and
electronic display.
25. What is the distinction between pictograms and scripts?
Pictograms express the whole idea, scripts code segments of a language (words,
syllables, morphemes).
26. Describe the logographic system.
One graphic sign stand for a morpheme or a word.
27. Describe the syllabic system.
One graphic sign stands for one consonant and vowel pair.
28. What are the abugida and abjad?
The scripts between the syllabic and alphabetic form.
29. What is the difference between shallow and deep orthography?
In shallow orthography there is one-to-one correspondence between phonemes
and letters and in deep orthography there is spelling-to-sound correspondence
the same letter can be used for a different phoneme or the same phoneme can
be presented by a different letter.
30. What is morphology?
It is the study of patterns and rules of word formation in a language.
31. What is the distinction between a word and a lexeme?
Lexeme is a set of words that are different forms of the same word (play, plays,
played).
32. How do we divide morphemes?
Into free and bound morphemes.
33. Explain the difference between the lexical and functional free
morpheme.
LEXICAL morphemes belong to the open-end class which accepts new members
and FUNCTIONAL are conjunctions, prepositions, articles and pronouns they
dont express the content but specify the relationship between one lexical
morpheme and another.
34. What is the difference between derivational and inflexional bound
morpheme?
DERIVATIONAL carry the semantic information and are used to make new words
of a different grammatical category and INFLEXIONAL carry the grammatical
information without deriving a new word.
35. What are the ways new words are entering the lexicon? Give
examples.
COMPOUNDING; BLENDING joining two words but in a joint or mixed form
(smoge = smoke+ fog); CLIPPING reducing to a shorter (telephone = phone),
BACKFORMATION removing affixes (option = opt); CONVERSION changing the
function (to paper = to put the wallpaper); METAPHORICAL EXTENSION
modification of a basic meaning (to surf the web); BORROWING; *LOAN-

TRANSLATION; WORD COINAGE (brand names xerox, clinex); ACRONIMS (NATO,

NASA, laser)