Linguists Quiz

The Department of World Languages and Literatures at Western Michigan University has put together a list of questions that you will want to be able to answer if you desire to be a linguist.

• What is language?
• What was the first language and how did it develop into all others? Explain, particularly, Icelandic and Basque.
• Who was its first speaker?
• Give four reasons for Hungarian. Include "isogloss" in your answer.
• Show (cleverly) how discourse analysis is related to palmistry.
• Assume you are conducting field work in the Amazon Basin and are in the process of eliciting words for poisonous plants. Suddenly, your informant falls to her knees and viciously bites your calf. What do you do? (You have a steno pad and a ball-point pen.)
• The relationship between physical chemistry and sociolinguistics has seldom been discussed. What excuse is most often given? What is the real reason?
• What is the most ordinary language you can think of? How does it compare to Sanskrit?
• What effect does the enlargement of the genioglossus have on child language development?
• To what extent can we say that context plays a part in events? Why do we say this?
• There is much discussion currently about syntax. Discuss phonology.
• How does a language become synchronic?
• If a linguist fell down, alone, in the forest, would she make a sound? If so, who would transcribe it? How does this affect theories of universal grammar?
• Those afflicted with glottochronology must be treated before they are completely incapacitated. What are its classical symptoms?
• Why is there so much embedding going on these days?
• Distinguish between conjunction and insubordination.
• Descriptive linguists avoid judgment of locutions such as "ain't." Be prescriptive.
• How can reduplication be drastically reduced or perhaps eliminated altogether?
• Discuss language change. Show, in particular and in some detail, how you would go about changing French.
• You have been asked to address a congress of Persian ornithologists. What would you tell them about morphology? Relativisation?