Introduction to Linguistics

[Brief Question]

1. What is language?
2. What is meant by duality?
3. What is linguistics?
4. What are the major levels of linguistics?
5. What is phonetics?
6. What is parole?
7. What is competence?
8. Who is Saussure?
9. What is langue?
10. Who is Noam Chomsky?
11. What is IPA?
12. What is diphthong?
13. What is allophone?
14. What is phone? 15.Define voicing.
15. Name the passive articulators.
16. What is the smallest phonological unit?
17. What is tonic stress?
18. What are bilabial sounds?
19. What is tone?
20. What is intonation?
21. What is assimilation?
22. What is a minimal pair?
23. What is pitch?
24. What is bound morpheme?
25. What is a zero allomorph?
26. What is bound stem?
27. What is a monophthong?
28. What is syntax?
29. What is recursion?
30. What is IC?
31. What is acronym?
32. What is schema?
33. What is psycholinguistics?
34. What is Accommodation Theory in SLA?
35. What is sociolinguistics?
36. What is idiolect?
37. What is register?
38. What is dialect?
39. What is isogloss?

Introduction to Linguistics

[Brief Solution]

1. Ans. Language is a symbol system which can be spoken or written by means of which human beings communicate.
2. Ans. Duality is also known as double articulation. It refers to a layer of sounds which combine into a second layer of larger units.
3. Ans. The scientific study of human language is called linguistics.
4. Ans. There are three major levels of linguistics: Descriptive, Historical and Applied Linguistics.
5. Ans. The scientific study of speech sounds is called phonetics.
6. Ans. Parole is a term used by Ferdinand de Saussure which deals with individual’s actual speech.
7. Ans. Competence is the abstract ability of an individual to speak the language which he/she has learned as native language in his/her childhood.
8. Ans. Ferdinand de Saussure is the originator of the 20^th century reappearance of structuralism.
9. Ans. Langue is a term used by Ferdinand de Saussure which refers to the collective knowledge of a community of the language spoken by its members.
10. Ans.Noam Chomsky is one of the most important theorists of linguistics.
11. Ans.IPA stands for International Phonetic Alphabet. It’s a system of transcribing sounds of a language.
12. Ans.When one vowel glides toward another vowel, it’s called diphthong. For example:

/el/.

13. Ans.Allophone is the linguistically non-significant variant of each phoneme.
14. Ans.Phone means sound or voice.
15. Ans.Speech sounds which are produced with the vocal cords vibrating are called voicing.
16. Ans.The passive articulators are upper lip, upper jaw, teeth ridge, had and soft palate and uvula.
17. Ans.Phoneme is the smallest phonological unit.
18. Ans.Tonic stress is extra strong stress on words to show special focus.
19. Ans.The sounds made by the two lips are called bilabial. For example: /p/, /b/, /m/.
20. Ans.A tone stands for a syllable which initiates a contrast in pitch level or direction.
21. Ans.Intonation is a pattern of changing pitch during an utterance to provide linguistic information.
22. Ans.Assimilation is a linguistic process by which a sound becomes similar to an adjacent sound.
23. Ans.Minimal pair is a pair of two words in a language which differ from each other by only one distinctive sound and which also differ in meaning.
24. Ans.Pitch is the rhythmic frequency of vocal folds.
25. Ans.The morphemes that cannot function alone and are added to root words is called bound morpheme. For example: less, ness, ment, un etc.
26. Ans.Zero allomorph is an inflection on nouns or verbs presumed to be present although invisible.
27. Ans.A bound stem is a stem which cannot occur as a separate word apart from any other morpheme.
28. Ans.A monophthong is a simple or pure vowel articulated without any obstacles in the vocal tract.
29. Ans.The study of sentence structure is called syntax.
30. Ans.In recursion, rules can be applied more than once in generating sentences.
31. Ans.IC stands for Immediate Constituent which is any one of the largest grammatical units that constitute a construction.
32. Ans.An acronym is a kind of abbreviation. It’s a word formed by taking letters from a phrase that is too long to use comfortably. For example: NATO – North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
33. Ans.Schema is the background knowledge that enables us to make predictions about what we might expect to experience in a given context.
34. Ans.The study of language with reference to human psychology is called psycholinguistics.
35. Ans.Accommodation Theory in SLA refers to the adaptation of language through changing or alerting the existing scheme for new information.
36. Ans.The study of the use of language in society is called sociolinguistics.
37. Ans.Idiolect is the language of an individual as opposed to that of a group.
38. Ans.A register is a subset of a language used for a particular purpose or in a particular social setting.
39. Ans.Dialect is a traditional term referring to a variety of a language spoken in a certain place. There are urban and rural dialects.
40. Ans.Isogloss is a boundary line between places or regions that differ in a particular linguistic feature such as the pronunciation of a vowel.