English Language

Linguistics and Language Evolution

2,754 Questions

Linguistics and language evolution explores how languages develop, interact, and change over time. Questions focus on terminology related to extinct languages, multilingualism, and language dominance. This specialized topic is relevant for English language, literature, and linguistics sections of competitive exams.

Language extinction termsMultilingualism conceptsLanguage evolution processLinguistic dominance termsSanskrit language influence

Linguistics and Language Evolution Questions

Multiple choice

A figure of speech in which a qualifying adjective is sometimes transferred from a person to a thing or from one word to another, to which it does not strictly belong, is called

  1. Metonymy

  2. Transferred Epithet

  3. Apostrophe

  4. Personification
Reveal answer Fill a bubble to check yourself
B Correct answer
Explanation

A Transferred Epithet is when an adjective describing a person is transferred to an inanimate object or abstract quality, such as 'an angry lecture' (where the speaker is angry, not the lecture itself). This distinguishes it from metonymy, apostrophe, or personification.

Multiple choice

What is that person called, who compiles dictionaries?

  1. Lexicographer

  2. Linguist

  3. Polyglot

  4. Grammaticalization

  5. Phonetician
Reveal answer Fill a bubble to check yourself
A Correct answer
Explanation

A lexicographer is a person who compiles dictionaries. Practical lexicography is the art or craft of compiling, writing and editing dictionaries.

Multiple choice

Which of the following is the smallest contrastive linguistic unit, which may bring about a change of meaning?

  1. Lemma

  2. Lexeme

  3. Word stem

  4. Morpheme

  5. Phoneme
Reveal answer Fill a bubble to check yourself
E Correct answer
Explanation

A phoneme is a basic unit of a language's phonology, which is combined with other phonemes to form meaningful units such as words or morphemes. The phoneme can be described as the smallest contrastive linguistic unit which may bring about a change of meaning.

Multiple choice

Which of these occurs when a speaker alternates between two or more languages in the context of a single conversation?

  1. Language transfer

  2. Pidgin

  3. Code-switching

  4. Loanword

  5. Translation
Reveal answer Fill a bubble to check yourself
C Correct answer
Explanation

In linguistics, code-switching occurs when a speaker alternates between two or more languages or language varieties, in the context of a single conversation. Multilinguals—speakers of more than one language—sometimes use elements of multiple languages when conversing with each other. Thus, code-switching is the use of more than one linguistic variety in a manner consistent with the syntax and phonology of each variety.

Multiple choice

Which of these is a process of language change?

  1. Etymology

  2. Grammaticalisation

  3. Compound

  4. Neologism

  5. Orthography
Reveal answer Fill a bubble to check yourself
B Correct answer
Explanation

In linguistics, grammaticalisation (also known as grammatisation, grammaticisation) is a process of language change by which words representing objects and actions (i.e., nouns and verbs) transform to become grammatical markers (affixes, prepositions, etc).

Multiple choice

Directions: Choose the word that best suits the given sentence/phrase.

A language which is used for communication between groups of people who speak different languages but which is not used between members of the same group.

  1. dialect

  2. lingua franca

  3. accent

  4. diabolic
Reveal answer Fill a bubble to check yourself
B Correct answer
Explanation

A lingua franca is a language used for communication between groups speaking different native languages, but not used within the same group. A dialect is a regional variety, accent is pronunciation, and diabolic means devilish.

Multiple choice

What is the basis of difference in the world’s languages?

Directions: Read the following passage and answer the questions.

Morphology, the study of forms, is the branch of linguistics that deals with the internal structure of complex words. The term was first used in linguistics by August Schleicher in 1859. Linguists distinguish between simple words, which can be analyzed into meaningful parts. The world’s languages differ greatly in the complexity of their morphology. Languages also differ in the devices that are used to form complex words and the functions that this complexity serves. The study of morphology is one of the oldest branches of linguistics. The oldest known linguistic work, Panini’s grammar of Sanskrit, consisted entirely of morphology, and the classical Greek, Latin, and Semitic grammarians also concerned themselves largely with morphology. In modern-day linguistics, which began in the 19th century, morphology is one of the core areas of grammar, along with phonetics, phonology, syntax, and semantics/pragmatics.

  1. Complexity of their morphology

  2. The internal structure of complex words

  3. The syntax of linguistics

  4. All of the above

  5. .
Reveal answer Fill a bubble to check yourself
A Correct answer
Explanation

This is the correct answer. The world’s languages differ greatly in the complexity of their morphology.