Model Test 4

I.Directions: Each of the statements below is followed by four alternative answers. Choose the one that would best complete the statement and put the letter in the bracket on your answer sheet.(30%)

1)        The characteristics of the basic word stock include ____________.

a. stability  b. productivity    c. national characters   d.all the above  

2)        The definition of a word includes ___________.

a.  a minimal free form that can function alone

b. a unit of meaning

c.  a sound unity

d. all of the above  

3)        The relationship between sound and meaning is _________.

a.  arbitrary and conventional

b. logical and  conventional

c.  logical but not conventional

d. conventional but not arbitrary  

4)        The internal reason for sounds and forms to disagree with each other is _________.

a.  spoken forms are less developed than written forms

b. the early scribes worked in haste to make more money

c.  the English alphabet was adopted from the Romans

d. the pronunciation has changed more rapidly than spelling

5)        ________ consists of technical terms used in particular disciplines and academic areas.

a. Slang      b. Argot            c. Dialect        d. Terminology  

6)        Content words are ever growing in number while the functional words remain ______.

a. limited in use     b. Unstable     c. Active in change    d. Stable  

7)        Which of the following group of words belong to the Denizens:

a.   confrere, wunderkind and mikado

b.  chopstick, silk and typhoon

c.   dream, gift and black humour

d.  die, skirt and husband  

8)        Germanic language branch of the Indo-European language family includes such languages as _____________.

a. Irish, French, and German        b. Swedish, Dutch and English

c.Polish, Slovenian and Welsh       d. Greek, Italian and Icelandic  

9)        People generally refer to __________ as Old English.

a. Celtic    b. Breton      c.Anglo-Saxon       d.Romans  

10. Modern English began _______ in England.

a. with the establishment of printing

b. with the placement of a Danish king

c. with the arrival of Norman French speakers

d. with the outbreak of the World War II  

11.An affix that indicates grammatical relationships is ________.

   a. an derivational affix        b. A free morpheme

   c. an inflectional affix         d. An inflectional root  

12.What remains of a word after the removal of all affixes is a __________.

   a. root      b. Stem       c. Allomorph      d. Free morpheme  

13. The method of creating words by removing the supposed suffixes is called ______.

a. clipping         b. Shortening     c. Back-formation     d.suffixation  

II.       Directions: Complete the following statements or paragraphs with proper expressions according to the course book on your answer sheet(10%)

1)        From a _______ point of view, words can be studied at a point in time. From a ________ perspective, linguistics will consider the word historically, looking into its origin and changes in form and meaning.

2)        A word is a minimal_________ form of a language that has a given sound and meaning and syntactic function.  

3)        Words may fall into the basic word stock and non-basic vocabulary by use ________, into content words and functional words by ________, and into native words and borrowed words by _____________.  

4)        ______ words denote clear notions and thus are known as ________ words. __________ words do not have notions of their own. Therefore, they also called __________ words. As their chief function is to express the _________ between notions, they are known as _______ words.  

5)        Morphemes are _______ units, which are realized in speech by discrete units known as __________.The morpheme is to the morph what a __________ is to a phone. Some morphemes are realized by more than one morph. Such alternative morphs are known as ___________.  

6)        Old English was a highly ______ language. It was a language of _______ endings. Middle English was one of _______ endings, because it retained fewer inflections. In modern English, word endings were mostly _______. English has evolved from a _______language(Old English) to the present _______ language.  

7)        Modern English vocabulary develops through three channels: ________, semantic change and borrowing.

8)        The chief function of prefixes is to change ________ of the stems.  

9)        When a word is first coined, it is always ________.But in the course of development, the same symbol must be used to express more meanings. The result is __________. From the diachronic point of view, polysemy is the result of growth of the _________ structure of one and same word.. The first meaning that a word originally had is the _________ meaning. The later meanings of the same word are called __________ meanings. Synchronically, polysemy is the __________ of various meanings of the same word in a certain historical period of time. The basic meaning of a word is the core of word-meaning called _______ Meaning. The derived meanings, are __________ meanings.  

10)    The development of word-meaning from monosemy to polysemy follows two courses, traditionally known as _______ and concatenation.  

11)    Contrary terms, are best viewed in terms of a ________ running between two poles or extremes. The two opposites are __________. And one exists in __________ with the other. Contradictory terms are so opposed to each other that they are mutually _________ and admit no __________ between them. The assertion of one is the _______ of the other. They are non-__________. They can’t be qualified by adverbs of ________, therefore can’t be used in __________ degrees. Relative terms consist of ________ opposites. The pairs indicate a ____________ social relationship  

12)    Extension of meaning, also known as ________, is the name given to the ___________ of meaning which some words undergo. It is a process by which a word which originally had a _________ meaning has now become ___________. In other words, the term has extended to cover a ________ and often _______ definite concept.   

13)    _________ of meaning, also called _______ , is the opposite of widening meaning. It is a process by which a word of wide meaning acquires a ________or _________ sense. In other words, a word which used to have a more general sense becomes ________ in its application .  

14)    Two major factors that cause changes in meaning are extra-linguistic factors and linguistic factors.  The former________ include __________,__________ and ___________. The latter include ____________, ____________ and _____________.  

15)    Context, in a narrow sense, refers to the _______, ______, _______ in which a word appears. It is known as __________ context. In a broad sense, it includes the _________ ________.This is called _________ or _________ context, which embraces the people, ______, _____ and even the whole ________ background.  

16)    Linguistic context can be subdivided into ________ context and _________ context.  

17)    The roles of context include the _________ of __________, indication of ________ and _________ of __________ for inferring word meaning.  

18)    Idioms manifest apparent rhetorical colouring in such respects as of _________ manipulation, __________ manipulation and __________ of speech. Phonetic manipulation includes ________ and __________. Lexical manipulation includes __________, ______ and __________. Figures of speech include smile, _______, __________, ________ , _________ and ____________.  

19)    English idioms are characterized by ______ _______ and _________ __________.  

20)    Meaning and concept are closely ________ but not __________.They are both related directly to __________ and are notions of the words but belong to different categories. Concept, is the result of ________ __________, reflecting the objective world in the human mind. It is _________ to all men alike whereas meaning belongs to _________, so is restricted to language use.  

III.     Directions: Match the words in Column A with the words in Column B and mark your answers on your answer sheet. (10%)          

  IV.    Directions: Study the following words and decide(1) how words were formed (2)how words  were changed in meaning.  Put your answers in the bracket on your answer sheet.(10%)

(1) how words were formed:

1)         disunite

2)         employee

3)         autocide

4)         copter

5)         TEFL

6)         Enthuse  

(2) how words were changed in meaning:

7)         Butcher, manuscript, mill, journal, bonfire, companion, thing

8)         Wife, deer, corn, garage, liquor, meat, disease, poison, accident, girl

9)         Governor, nice, marshal, angel, knight, earl, fond, minister

10)    Silly, boor, churl, wench, villain, knave, lewd, criticize, lust,

11) paper, pen, car  

V.       Directions: Define the following terms.(10%)

1) morphemes(bound morphemes, free morphemes, affix (both derivational and inflectional),   root ,a free root, a bound root, stem.)

10)    affixation (compounding, conversion (full and partial), blending, clipping, acronymy, back-formation)

11)    motivation(onomatopoetic motivation, morphological motivation, semantic motivation, etymological motivation)

12)    reference, concept, sense

13)    meaning (grammatical, lexical, conceptual, associative, connotative, stylistic, affective, collocative)

14)    radiation

15)    concatenation

16)    homonymy (synonymy, antonymy, hyponymy)

17)    semantic field

10) elevation (degradation, extension, narrowing, transfer)  

VI.    Directions: Answer the following questions. Your answers should be clear and short. Write your answers on your answer sheet. (12%)

1)        How is English lexicology related to other linguistic academic disciplines

2)        What is the relationship between sound and meaning. Give some examples.

3)        What are the reasons for the disagreement between English written forms and oral forms ?

4)        What is the difference between content words and functional words?

5)        Explain with examples the differences between denizens, aliens, translation-loans and semantic-loans.

6)        Draw a tree diagram to show how the languages in the Indo-European family are related to each other.

7)        What are the three sources of new words and the major modes of vocabulary development?

8)        Cite with examples the major characteristics of compounds.

9)        How are verbs which are converted from nouns semantically related to the original nouns?

10)    How are the nouns which are converted from verbs related to the original verbs?

11)    What is the difference between homonyms and polysemants?

12)    What are the types of synonyms and sources of synonyms and how can we discriminate between synonyms?

13)    How many groups can antonyms be classified into and what are the characteristics of each group?

14)    What are the context clues which can help us infer word meanings?

15)    How do you understand the semantic unity and structural stability of English idioms? Are variations of English idioms possible ?If yes, how? How English idioms can be classified?

16)    What are the types into which dictionaries can be divided? What are the characteristics of each type of dictionaries? Cite three good general dictionaries and discuss their features.

VII.  Directions: Comment on the following sentences according to the instructions in the brackets. Write your answers on your answer sheet(18)