Maximum Marks = 100
(The following sample questions are indicative, not exhaustive)
Time = 3 Hours
1. Find out the correct answer for each of the following questions: 1.5 x10 = 15
(a) The following sub-fields of Linguistics deal with language in different contexts. Find out the odd pair from the following.
(i) Sociolinguistics: Society and language (ii) Computational linguistics: Computer science and language
(iii) Neurolinguistics: Language and brain (iv) Psycholinguistics: Language and politics
(b) The symbols used for writing any language are together called:
(i) Logogram (ii) Orthography (iii) Script (iv) Pictogram
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(c) Smallest units of sound used in language are:
(i) Phonemes (ii) Vowels (iv) Consonants (v) Allophones
(d) How many phonemes are there in the word height?
(i) 3 (ii) 4 (iii) 6
(e) Smallest meaningful constituents of a word are:
(i) Phonemes (ii) Morphemes (iii) Allophones (iv) Allomorphs
(f) What kind of morpheme is attached to the word boys?
(i) Plural morpheme (ii) Past morpheme (iii) Negative morpheme (iv) Future morpheme
(g) People from different parts of Assam speak Assamese differently. What is the term for this kind of variation?
(i) Creole (ii) Code-mixing (iii) Dialect (iv) Register
(h) A multilingual person is one who
(i) can speak or understand more than 1 language (ii) can speak or understand more than 2 languages
(iii) can speak or understand more than 3 languages (iv) can speak or understand more than 4 languages
(i) A noun, e.g. dog, refers to a type of thing; on the other hand, a noun phrase, e.g. some big dogs, refers to
(i) a kind of thing (ii) one member of the type
(iii) a member or some members of the type (iv) many members of the type
(j) A transitive verb, e.g. tear, takes at least two participants, and they are:
(i) Subject and Object (ii) Subject and Complement
(iii) Complement and Object (iv) Subject and Adjective
2. The following words are from Michoacan Aztec (spoken in Mexico): 2×5 =10
a. nokali ‘my house’ b. mokali ‘your house’
c. nokalimes ‘my houses’ d. ipelo ‘his dog’
e. ikali ‘his house’ f. nokwahmili ‘your cornfield’3
Now consider the above data and construct the following words in Michoacan Aztec:
(i) Your dogs (ii) His cornfields (iii) His dogs (iv) My cornfields (v) My dog
3. An action, which is denoted by a verb, is temporal: it is grounded either in the past, the present, or the future time. But sometimes we may think of an action outside time. Consider the following data and underline the verbs which are not grammatically grounded in any of the three times. 2.5 x 2 = 5
a. John likes to swim.
b. Once John liked to play football.
4. Consider the following data from the Bugun language of Arunachal Pradesh and note two important grammatical differences between Bugun and English (write your answer in not more than 4 sentences). 2.5 x 2 = 5
a. hi ka mimua
this my sister
‘This is my sister.’
b. hi nyu ka?
this what Q
‘What is this?’
c. hi chei bia?
this dog Q
‘Is this a dog?’
5. Consider the follwoing data from Assamese and say what the morphomes –o and –y mean. 2.5×2 = 5
a. moi mās nākhāo
moi mās nā-khā-o
I fish no-eat-o
‘I don’t eat fish.’
b. tai mās nākhāy
tai mās nā-khā-y
she fish no-eat-y
‘She doesn’t eat fish.’ 4
6. Explian the semantic difference between the two sentences below (write your answer in not more than 5 sentences). 4
(i) I read this novel. (ii) I have read this novel.
7. Each of the following sentences has at least two meanings. Give both meanings for each of them. 3 x 2 = 6
(i) The chicken is ready to eat. (ii) They are hunting dogs.
(iii) The leopard was caught by the man with a rope.
8 a. Give an account of the language families of the world. Which language families do the Indian languages belong to? 10
Or,
b. Give a general account of the indegenous languages spoken in North-East India. Which language families do they belong to?
9. Pick up any one of the topics from each group and write short notes on any five of them. 8 x 5 = 40
Group 1:
a. Competence and performance; b. Synchronic and diachronic study of language;
c. Word and the world; d. Communicative competence; e. Speech and writing
Group 2:
a. Consonant and vowel; b. Phoneme and allophone; c. Voiceless and voiced sounds; d. Structuralism; e. Aspiration
Group 3:
a. Morpheme; b. Allomorph; c. Prefixes and suffixes; d. Compounding
Group 4:
a. Denotation and connotation; b. Homophones; c. Speech acts; d. Sense and reference
Group 5:
a. Language and dialect; b. Multilingualism; c. Pidgins and creoles; d. Code switching; e. Language death
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