LINGUISTICS
LINGUISTICS SYLLABUS
(These syllabus may change from time to time. Please check with the relevant Public Service Commission website for any changes in the syllabus)
Paper-II
1. Language and Linguistics
Notions of Language : Language as written text—Philological and literary notions i.e., norm, purity and their preservation, language as a cultural heritage—Codification and transmission of cultural knowledge and behaviour, language as a marker of social identity—Language boundary, Dialect and language—Codes of special groups—Use of language( s ) to express multiple identities; Language as an object i.e., notion of autonomy, structure and its units and components; Language in spoken and written modes and relation between them; Writing system—-Units of writing—Sound ( alphabetic ), or Syllable ( syllabic ) and Morpheme/Word ( logographic ).
Approaches to the Study of Language : Semiotic approach—Interpretation of sign; language as a system of social behaviour—Use of language in family, community and country; Language as a system of communication— Communicative functions—Emotive, Conative, Referential, Poetic, Metalinguistic and Phatic; Sign language; Animal communication system and formal language; Design features of language—Arbitrariness, Double articulation, Displacement, interchangeability and specialisation; Language as a congnitive system—Knowledge representation; Relation with culture and thought, i.e., concept formation; existence of language faculty; linguistic competence, ideal speaker-hearer.
Structure of Language : Levels and their hierarchy—Phonological. Morphological, Syntactic and semantic, their interrelations; Universal and specific properties of language—Formal and substantive universals. Synchronic and diachronic view of language; Language relation—Genetic, areal and typological; Concepts of langue and parole, idiolect and language.
Grammatical Analysis : Linguistic units and their distribution at different levels; Notions of contrast and complementation; -etic and -emic categorisation; Paradigmatic and syntagmatic relations; Notions of word classes ( parts of speech ) and grammatical categories; Grammatical relations and case relations; notion of rule at different levels; description vs explanation of grammatical facts.
Linguistics and Others Fields : Relevance of linguistics to other fields of enquiry—Philosophy, Anthropology, Sociology, Political Science, Psychology, Education, Computer Science and Literature.
2. Phonetics, Phonology and Morphology
Phonetics : Definition; Mechanisms of speech production—Airstream mechanism, oro-nasal process, Phonation process and articulation ( place and manner ); cardinal vowels ( primary and secondary ); vowels and consonants ( liquids, glides ); secondary articulation; coarticulation; syllable; phonetic transcription ( IPA ); suprasegmentals—Length, stress, tone, intonation and juncture.
Phonology : Phonetics vs phonology; concept of phoneme, phone and allophone; Principles of phonemic analysis—Phonetic similarity, contrast, complementary distribution, free variation, economy, pattern congruity; alternation and neutralization; distinctive features; syllable in phonology.
Morphology : Scope and nature: concept of morpheme, morph, allomorph, portmanteau morph, lexeme and word; identification of morphemes; morphological alternation; morphophonemic process; internal and external sandhi; derivation vs inflection; root and stem; grammatical categories—tense, aspect, mood, person, gender, number, case; case marker and case relation; pre- and post-positions; affixes vs clitics; stem vs word-based morphology; paradigmatic and syntagmatic relations.
3. Syntax and Semantics
Traditional and Structuralist Syntax : Parts of speech; Indian classification of grammatical categories (naama, aakhyaata, upasarga, nipaata ); structural syntactic categories (word, phrase, clause etc.); functional syntactic categories (subject, object, etc.); construction types (exocentric, indocentric, etc), Immediate Constituent Analysis.
Generative Syntax : Universal grammar. Innateness Hypothesis, meaning of the term ‘generative’, Transformational generative grammar, criteria for determining constituents, Aspects model, Problems with the Aspects model, Ross’s constraints; Principles and Parameters.
Meaning : Types of meaning; descriptive, emotive and phatic; sense and reference, connotation and denotation, sense relations ( homonymy, synonymy, etc.); types of opposition (taxonomic, polar, etc. ); ambiguity, sentence meaning and truth conditions, presupposition, entailment and implicature speech acts, deixis, definiteness, mood and modality, componential analysis.
4. Historical Linguistics and South Asian Language Families
Introduction : Synchronic and diachronic approaches to language; interrelationship between diachronic and synchronic data; use of written records for historical studies; language classification; notion of language family, criteria for identifying family relationships among languages; definition of the word ‘cognate’; language isolates; criteria for typological classification—agglutinative, inflectional, analytic, synthetic and polysynthetic; basic word order typology—SVO, SOV, etc.
Linguistic Change and Reconstruction : Sound change; Neogrammarian theory of gradualness and regularity of sound change; genesis and spread of sound change; phonetic and phonemic change; split and merger; conditioned vs unconditioned change; types of change—assimilation and dissimilation, coalescence, metathesis^ deletion, epenthesis; Transformational-generative approach to sound change—rule addition, rule deletion, rule generalisation, rule ordering; social motivation for change; lexical diffusion of sound change; analogy and its relationship to sound change; reconstructing the proto-stages of languages, internal reconstruction and comparative method—their scopes and limitations; innovation and retention; sub grouping within a family; family tree and wave models; relative chronology of different changes.
Language Contact and Dialect Geography : Linguistic borrowing—lexical and structural; motivations—Prestige and need-filling ( including culture-based ); Classification of loan words—Loan translation, loan blend, calque, assimilated and unassimilated loans ( tadbhava and tatsama ); Bilingualism as the source for borrowing; dialect, idiolect; isogloss; methods of preparing dialect atlas, focal area, transition area and relic area.
Language Families of South Asia : Indo-Aryan, Dravidian-, Austro-Asiatic, Tibeto-Burman; language isolates—Bumshaski, Nahali—-their. geographical distribution, enumeration; characteristics.
Areal Features of South Asia : South Asia as a linguistic area—phonological—length contrast in vowels and consonants, retroflexion, open syllable structure; morphemic structure rules; morphological and syntactical—agglutination, ergativity, agreement; productive use of conjunctive participles; passives; causatives; echowords; phenomenon of reduplication; copulative compounds; compound verbs, relative clause construction; dative /genitive subject construction.
5. Socio-linguistics and Applied Linguistics
Language and Society : Speech community; verbal repertoire; linguistic and communicative competence; linguistic variability and ethnography of speaking; socio-linguistic variables; patterns of variation; regional, social and stylistic; restricted and elaborated codes; diglossia.
Languages in Contact : Types of bilingualism and bilinguals; borrowing; convergence; pidgins and creoles; language maintenance and shift.
Sociology of Language : Language planning; language standardization and modernization; language and power; literacy—autonomous us ideological.
Scope of Applied Linguistics : Language teaching; translation studies; lexicography; stylistics; speech pathology; mass media and communication; language and computers.
Language Learning and Language Teaching : First and second language learning; language acquisition in multilingual settings; behaviouristic and cognitive theories of language learning; social and psychological aspects of second language acquisition; methods, materials and teaching-aids in language teaching; Computer Assisted Language Teaching ( CALT ); types of tests and their standardization.
Paper-III ( A )
[Core Group]
Unit—I
Phonetics : Phonetics as a study of speech sounds; articulatory and acoustic phonetics; mechanisms of speech production—air stream, phonation, oronasal process and articulation; classification of sounds; complex articulation—secondary articulation and coarticulation.
Acoustic Phonetics : Sound waves—frequency, amplitude; periodic complex harmonics; fundamental , frequency, resonance, filtering, spectrum, spectrogram, pitch, loudness, length; formants, transition, burst; voice onset time; aspiration; noise spectra; cues for place and manner.
Phonemics : Phoneme, Phone and allophone; contrast and complementary < distribution; preliminary and analytical procedures of phonemic analysis.
Generative Phonology : Two levels of phonological representation; phonological rules; distinctive features ( Major class, Manner. Place, etc. ), Abstractness controversy; Rule ordering types.
Lexical Phonology : Distinction between lexical and post-lexical rules; principles of lexical phonology-—structure preservation; strict cyclicity.
Unit—II
Types of Morphemes : Root, stem, base, suffix, infix, prefix, portmanteau morpheme; affixes vs clitics.
Morphological Processes : Derivational vs inflectional processes ( conjugation and declension ); primary us secondary derivation.
Level-ordered Morphology : Hierarchical organization of words; lexical us non-lexical categories; morphology—phonology interface.
Types of Compounding : Endocentric ( karmadhaaraya, tatpurusha ), exocentric ( bahuvriihi ) copulative compound ( dvandva ) and headedness of compounds; reduplication—morphological, lexical and semantic; non- concatenative morphology.
Morphology-Syntax Interface : Nominalization and the Lexicalist hypothesis; auxiliation ( explicator compound verb ); incorporation and the morphology—syntax interface.
Unit—III
General Notions : Structure and structure-dependence, diagnostics for structure; reference, co reference and anaphoric reference; deixis— Demonstratives, tense, pronominals; context; topic, focus, focusing devices; mood; thematic roles ( agent, patient, etc. ); grammatical relations ( subject, object, etc. ); case ( nominative, accusative, etc. )—their interrelationships.
Phrase Structure : X-bar theory; head, complement, specifier; binary branching: S as IP, S-bar as CP; DP analysis of noun phrases; head-complement parameter.
Some Syntactic Operations and Constructions : Movement and trace: passive, raising, WH- movement ( questions, relativization ), topicalization, scrambling; adjunction and substitution; head-to-head movement, movement to SPL deletion ( gapping and VP-deletion ); ECM ( exceptional case-marking ), constructions, small clauses; clefts and psuedo clefts.
Some Principles of Grammar : Constraints on movement—Ross’s constraints explained in terms of Subjacency; Government and Proper Government; Case theory, case as motivation for movement; Anaphors and Pronouns; Binding Theory ( Principles A, B and C ); strong and weak cross-over; theta theory, theta marking; PRO as subject of infinitives; quantifiers ( universal and existential ); quantifier raising, scope ambiguity.
Unit—IV
Meaning ( descriptive, emotive, phatic ); sense and reference, connotation and denotation; homonymy, hyponymy, antonymy, synonymy; propositions, ambiguity, specific vs generic; definite and indefinite; compositionality and its limitations; abihidha, laksana, vyanjana.
Pragmatics : Presupposition, entailment and implicature; speech acts, indexicals.
Formal Foundations : Membership, union, intersection, cardinality, powersets: mapping and functions; propositions, truth values, sentential connectives; arguments, predicates, quantifiers, variables.
Model-theoretic Semantics : Different models and interpretation; possible words; mood and modality; tense and aspect, counterfactuals.
Unit—V
Phonological Reconstruction : Comparative method, collection of cognates, establishing phonological correspondences; reconstruction of the phonemes of the proto-language based on contrast and complementation; internal reconstruction as opposed to comparative reconstruction; morphophonemic alternations as the source for reconstruction; recovering historical contrasts by comparing, alternating and non-alternating paradigms; accounting for exceptions to sound change—analogy, borrowing, onomatopoeia, the interplay of analogy and sound change; regularisation by analogy; paradigmatic analogy and pattern analogy; role of transparency in analogy; status of reconstructed forms, dialect variation in proto-language.
Borrowing : Lexical and structural; different types of borrowing-—cultural, intimate and dialect; classification of loanwords; impact of borrowing on language; pidgins and creoles.
Dialect Geography : Preparation of questionnaire; selection of informants and localities; elicitation of data; preparation of isogloss maps; deciding dialect and -sub-dialect areas: correlating political and cultural history with regional and social dialects.
Extensions of the Neogrammarian Theory : Social motivation of social change: study of sound change in progress; socio-linguistic studies of Martha’s. Vineyard. and New York City; lexical diffusion—concept and application,
Morphosyntactic Reconstruction, and Semantic Change ; Phonological reconstruction applied to morphological reconstruction; phonological change leading to changes in morphology and syntax; syncretism, grammaticalisation and lexicalisation; principles of recovering grammatical categories and contrasts; semantic change—extension, narrowing, figurative speech, subreption, postulation of past-cultural systems—kinship and social system, environment, etc.
Unit—VI
Speech as Social Interaction : Speech community and language boundaries; communicative competence; speech event and its components; rules of speaking; social significance of Gricean Maxims and conversational implicature; pragmatics of politeness; semantics of power and solidarity; social processes and linguistic structures; cross-cultural perspectives on speech events.
Linguistic Variability : Variation in linguistic behaviour; language and identity; restricted and elaborated codes; linguistic variables and their linguistic, social and psychological dimensions; language and social inequality; linguistic and social attitudes and stereotypes.
Language Contact : Bilingualism; bilingual proficiency; code-mixing and code-switching; effects of bilingualism on the individual and the society; languages of wider communication; lingua franca; language loyalty, language maintenance and shift; language convergence; pidginization and creolization.
Language Development : Language planning; corpus and status planning; codification and elaboration; language movements—State and societal interventions, e.g., writers and NGOs; script development and modifications; problems of linguistic minorities; literacy—socio-linguistic and political aspects.
Sociolinguistic Methodology : Sampling and tools; identification of socio-linguistic variables and their variants; data processing and interpretation; quantitative analysis; variable rules; ethnomethodology; participant observation; qualitative analysis of data.
Unit—VII
Linguistics and Psycholinguistics : Language and other signalling systems: biological bases of human language—experimental studies of teaching language to primates, language in evolutionary context, brain-language relationship and its models, cerebral dominance and lateralization, bilingual brain, the critical period hypothesis; the different theoretical orientations— empiricist-behaviourist, biological nativist, and congnitive—interactionalist; language and cognition—-Linguistic relativity and perceptual categories.
Developmental Psycho-linguistics : First language acquisition and second language learning; bilingual acquisition, issues and processes in language acquisition; three periods in the history of child language studies—diary, large sample and longitudinal; stages of language acquisition; acquisition of formal aspects of language—speech sounds, lexical items, grammatical and syntactic categories; language and environmental factors—Motherese; second language learning—implications of first language acquisitions; social and psychological factors in second language learning; learning of reading and writing skills.
Language Processing : The processes of perception—comprehension and production; perceptual units and perceptual strategies; parsing and parsing strategies; steps in comprehension; sentence comprehension and discourse comprehension; mental representation of language and lexicon; relationship between comprehension and production; sentence and discourse strategies in comprehension and production; speech errors as evidence of language production.
Applied Psycho-linguistics : Aphasia and its clinical and linguistic classifications; anomia, and dyslexia; stuttering; language in mental retardation; language in schizophrenia; language loss in aging; language in the hearing-impaired; data from normative and pathological language and their use for assessment of speech and language impairment; therapeutic intervention.
Unit—VIII
Processes of Learning : Language as a formal system and as a major factor in communication; learning a language and learning through language; behaviourist and cognitive theories of language learning including—Skinner, Piaget and Chomsky, etc., learning and communicative strategies, focus on the learner.
Language Teaching Analysis : Goals of language teaching and needs of analysis —First and Second language acquisition, Linguistic theory and language teaching syllabus—methods and materials; the role of the teacher and teacher training; role of self-access packages; socio-linguistic and psychological aspects of language teaching.
Learner Output : Conceptualising language proficiency in multi-lingual settings; interaction between the learner’s languages and the target languages— Contrastive Analysis ( CA ), Error analysis and Interlanguage; Basic Interpersonal Communicative Skills ( BICS ) and Cognitive Advanced Language Proficiency ( CALP ); types of tests and their validity and reliability.
Literacy : Conceptualising literacy; role of language in literacy; oralcy and literacy; literacy development and empowerment; State initiatives, campaign- based programmes and other non-governmental initiatives; literacy drives emergence and role of social movements.
Mass Communication : Role of language in mass communication; impact of mass media on language, types of language used in mass media e.g., news, advertising, editorials, etc.; language of mass media and social change.
Unit—IX
Language Typology, Universals and Linguistic Relatedness : Language typology and language universals; Morphological types of languages—agglutinative, analytical ( isolating ), synthetic fusional ( inflecting ), infixing and polysynthetic ( incorporating ) languages. Formal and substantive universals, Absolute and statistical universals; Implicational and Non-implicational universals; Linguistic relatedness—Genetic, typological and areal classification of languages.
Inductive vs Deductive Approaches : Parametric variation and language universals; Word Order typology; Greenberg’s characteristics for verb final and verb medial languages and related features in the context of South Asian Languages.
Salient Features of South Asian Language Families : Phonetic, phonological, morphological, and syntactic features of Indo-Aryan, Dravidian, Austro-Asiatic, and Tibeto-Burman language families of South Asia; Language contact and convergence with special reference to the concept of ‘India as a Linguistic Area’; Contact induced typological change; convergence and syntactic change.
Phonology, Morphology and Syntax of South Asian Languages : An in-depth study of retroflexion, vowel harmony, reduplication, echo formation, expressives ( onomatopoeia ), morphological, lexical and periphrastic causatives, explicator compound verbs, participles ( conjunctive, perfect, imperfect ), relative-correlative clauses, experiencer constructions ( dative/genitive subject ), anaphora, complementation, verb be, the quotative and agreement.
Unit—X
Making of a Dictionary ; Dictionary entries—arrangement and information, meaning descriptions—synonymy, polysemy, homonymy, antonymy and hyponymy; treatment of technical terms vs general words.
Types of Dictionaries : Comprehensive and concise, monolingual and bilingual, general and learner’s, historical and etymological, dictionary of idioms and phrases, encyclopaedic dictionary, electronic dictionary, reverse dictionary, thesaurus and other distinguishing purposes and features of various types; difference between glossing, dictionary and lexicon.
Nature of Translation : Paraphrase, translation and transcreation; translation of literary text and technical text; theories of translation; use of linguistics in translation; linguistic affinity and translatability. ’
Methods of Translation : Unit of translation; equivalence of meaning and style; translation loss; problems of cultural terms; scientific terms; idioms, metaphors and proverbs; evaluation of translation; fidelity and readability; types of translation—simultaneous interpretation, machine aided translation, media translation ( dubbing, copy-editing, advertisement, slogans, jingles, etc. )
Nature and Methods of Stylistic Analysis : Style—stylistic individual, style, period, style as choice, style as deviation, style as riiti, style as alankaara; style as vyanjana ( vakrokti ) foregrounding; parallelism levels of stylistic analysis—phonological, lexical, syntactic and semantic.
Paper-III ( B )
[ Elective / Optional ]
Elective—I
Introduction : Computational linguistics and its relation to allied disciplines in cognitive science—philosophy, psychology and artificial intelligence; a brief history of the area of inquiry—Babbage to von Neuman, computing machines from the abacus to the IBM PC; hardware—the basic components and peripherals of a digital computer; software—machine langauge, compilers; interpreters—information processing, structuring and manipulating data.
Phonology, Morphology and Lexicography : Finite state implementation of phonological rules, item- and arrangement-morphology and its implementation, item- and process-morphology; a brief introduction to KIMMO; morphological recognizers, analyzers and generators for Indian languages.
Computational Lexicography : The craft of dictionary making; the digital computer as a lexicographic tool; lexical databases and on-line dictionary— corpus-based dictionaries; lexical acquisition from Machine Readable Dictionaries ( MRDs ); major lexicographical projects—the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English ( LDOCE ) and the Collins Cobuild Project.
Parsing, Syntax and Semantics : Parsing and generation, top-down and bottom up parsing; types of parsers; unification and unification-based grammars— Definite Clause Grammar ( DCG ), Generalised Phrase Structure Grammar ( GPSG ); Lexical Functional Grammar ( LFG ), Head-driven Phrase Structure Grammar ( HPSG ) and Tree Adjoining Grammar ( TAG ).
Reference and compositionality, Functions and arguments, Meanings of referring expressions and predicates; Meanings of determiners, quantifiers, adverbs, adjectives and prepositions; Putting meanings.
Corpus Linguistics : Corpus-building and corpus-processing, SGML and Text Encoding Initiative, Corpus tagging and Tree banks, Corpus projects—the Brown Corpus and Lancaster-Oslo Bergen ( LOB ) Corpus, the Survey of English Usage ( SEU ), Corpus and London-Lund Corpus of Spoken English ( LLC ), The Kolhapur Corpus of Indian English; the TDIL Corpus Project of the Deptt. of Electronics.
Language Technology : Natural language interface to databases, Cooperative response systems, Speech .technology—text-to-speech and speech-to-text systems, Machine ( aided ) translation; computer aided language teaching; text processing; Major European and American Projects; the Japanese Fifth Generation Initiative, Natural langauge processing in India.
Elective—II
Basic Issues in the Principles and Parameters Theory : Interaction of principles within certain parameters, language specific examples and the question of basic word order; problems with the theory.
From Principles and Parameters Theory to the Minimalist Program : Reasons for discarding D-structure and S-structure. How does the computational system work in the Minimalist Program? Functional categories and the significance of DP analysis; AGRsP, AGRoP, and Tense- Phrase; scope for innovation to account for language specific phrasal categories.
Some Key Concepts in the Minimalist Program : Spell-out, greed, procrastination, last resort, AGR-based case theory, multiple-spec hypothesis, strong and weak features; interpretable and non-interpretable features.
Transformational Components : The copy theory of Movement, its properties., motivation for move Alpha, LF and PF movement, checking devices and features of convergence.
Elective—III
Prosodic Phonology ; The syllable, the Foot, the word, the phonological phrase, the International phrase, Generalizations based on prosodic units.
Auto segmental Phonology : Tone. Nasal spread, vowel harmony; C-V tier; Prosodic Morphology; feature hierarchy.
Non-derivational Phonology : Optimality theory—main theoretical assumptions: Constraint rankings.
Elective—IV
Socio-Linguistics : Socio-linguistic perspective to the process of language change; social motivation and mechanisms of sound change. Language, ideology and social change, the power-politics of language standardization; Implications for literacy and school education; language and gender.
Communication Networks : Networks and speech and verbal repertoire, ‘Types of network, Redefining ‘speech community’ in terms of networks, Speech and multiple identities.
Ethnography of Communication and Ethnomethodology ; ‘Talk’, ‘Discourse’ and ‘turntaking’; Redefining communicative competence; Communication and social structure.
Elective—V
Brain-language Relationship : Issues in neurolinguistics and linguistics aphasiology, cerebral dominance, lateralization and handedness; models of brain-language relationship—Classical connectionist, hierarchical, global and process models.
Brain Pathology and Language Breakdown : Aphasia and its classification; classical categories, linguistic account, overview of linguistic aphasiology, anomia and agrammatism; dyslexia and its classification.
Linguistics and Language Pathology : Use of linguistics in diagnosis and prognosis of language disorders; language pathology and normal language,
Language Pathology and Language Disorders ; Stuttering; nature and analysis of language in psychopathological conditions; schizophrenic language: language in mental retardation.
Language Disorders and Intervention : Variation in language disorders; need and scope of intervention: therapeutic use of language.
Paper-II
1. Language and Linguistics
Notions of Language : Language as written text—Philological and literary notions i.e., norm, purity and their preservation, language as a cultural heritage—Codification and transmission of cultural knowledge and behaviour, language as a marker of social identity—Language boundary, Dialect and language—Codes of special groups—Use of language( s ) to express multiple identities; Language as an object i.e., notion of autonomy, structure and its units and components; Language in spoken and written modes and relation between them; Writing system—-Units of writing—Sound ( alphabetic ), or Syllable ( syllabic ) and Morpheme/Word ( logographic ).
Approaches to the Study of Language : Semiotic approach—Interpretation of sign; language as a system of social behaviour—Use of language in family, community and country; Language as a system of communication— Communicative functions—Emotive, Conative, Referential, Poetic, Metalinguistic and Phatic; Sign language; Animal communication system and formal language; Design features of language—Arbitrariness, Double articulation, Displacement, interchangeability and specialisation; Language as a congnitive system—Knowledge representation; Relation with culture and thought, i.e., concept formation; existence of language faculty; linguistic competence, ideal speaker-hearer.
Structure of Language : Levels and their hierarchy—Phonological. Morphological, Syntactic and semantic, their interrelations; Universal and specific properties of language—Formal and substantive universals. Synchronic and diachronic view of language; Language relation—Genetic, areal and typological; Concepts of langue and parole, idiolect and language.
Grammatical Analysis : Linguistic units and their distribution at different levels; Notions of contrast and complementation; -etic and -emic categorisation; Paradigmatic and syntagmatic relations; Notions of word classes ( parts of speech ) and grammatical categories; Grammatical relations and case relations; notion of rule at different levels; description vs explanation of grammatical facts.
Linguistics and Others Fields : Relevance of linguistics to other fields of enquiry—Philosophy, Anthropology, Sociology, Political Science, Psychology, Education, Computer Science and Literature.
2. Phonetics, Phonology and Morphology
Phonetics : Definition; Mechanisms of speech production—Airstream mechanism, oro-nasal process, Phonation process and articulation ( place and manner ); cardinal vowels ( primary and secondary ); vowels and consonants ( liquids, glides ); secondary articulation; coarticulation; syllable; phonetic transcription ( IPA ); suprasegmentals—Length, stress, tone, intonation and juncture.
Phonology : Phonetics vs phonology; concept of phoneme, phone and allophone; Principles of phonemic analysis—Phonetic similarity, contrast, complementary distribution, free variation, economy, pattern congruity; alternation and neutralization; distinctive features; syllable in phonology.
Morphology : Scope and nature: concept of morpheme, morph, allomorph, portmanteau morph, lexeme and word; identification of morphemes; morphological alternation; morphophonemic process; internal and external sandhi; derivation vs inflection; root and stem; grammatical categories—tense, aspect, mood, person, gender, number, case; case marker and case relation; pre- and post-positions; affixes vs clitics; stem vs word-based morphology; paradigmatic and syntagmatic relations.
3. Syntax and Semantics
Traditional and Structuralist Syntax : Parts of speech; Indian classification of grammatical categories (naama, aakhyaata, upasarga, nipaata ); structural syntactic categories (word, phrase, clause etc.); functional syntactic categories (subject, object, etc.); construction types (exocentric, indocentric, etc), Immediate Constituent Analysis.
Generative Syntax : Universal grammar. Innateness Hypothesis, meaning of the term ‘generative’, Transformational generative grammar, criteria for determining constituents, Aspects model, Problems with the Aspects model, Ross’s constraints; Principles and Parameters.
Meaning : Types of meaning; descriptive, emotive and phatic; sense and reference, connotation and denotation, sense relations ( homonymy, synonymy, etc.); types of opposition (taxonomic, polar, etc. ); ambiguity, sentence meaning and truth conditions, presupposition, entailment and implicature speech acts, deixis, definiteness, mood and modality, componential analysis.
4. Historical Linguistics and South Asian Language Families
Introduction : Synchronic and diachronic approaches to language; interrelationship between diachronic and synchronic data; use of written records for historical studies; language classification; notion of language family, criteria for identifying family relationships among languages; definition of the word ‘cognate’; language isolates; criteria for typological classification—agglutinative, inflectional, analytic, synthetic and polysynthetic; basic word order typology—SVO, SOV, etc.
Linguistic Change and Reconstruction : Sound change; Neogrammarian theory of gradualness and regularity of sound change; genesis and spread of sound change; phonetic and phonemic change; split and merger; conditioned vs unconditioned change; types of change—assimilation and dissimilation, coalescence, metathesis^ deletion, epenthesis; Transformational-generative approach to sound change—rule addition, rule deletion, rule generalisation, rule ordering; social motivation for change; lexical diffusion of sound change; analogy and its relationship to sound change; reconstructing the proto-stages of languages, internal reconstruction and comparative method—their scopes and limitations; innovation and retention; sub grouping within a family; family tree and wave models; relative chronology of different changes.
Language Contact and Dialect Geography : Linguistic borrowing—lexical and structural; motivations—Prestige and need-filling ( including culture-based ); Classification of loan words—Loan translation, loan blend, calque, assimilated and unassimilated loans ( tadbhava and tatsama ); Bilingualism as the source for borrowing; dialect, idiolect; isogloss; methods of preparing dialect atlas, focal area, transition area and relic area.
Language Families of South Asia : Indo-Aryan, Dravidian-, Austro-Asiatic, Tibeto-Burman; language isolates—Bumshaski, Nahali—-their. geographical distribution, enumeration; characteristics.
Areal Features of South Asia : South Asia as a linguistic area—phonological—length contrast in vowels and consonants, retroflexion, open syllable structure; morphemic structure rules; morphological and syntactical—agglutination, ergativity, agreement; productive use of conjunctive participles; passives; causatives; echowords; phenomenon of reduplication; copulative compounds; compound verbs, relative clause construction; dative /genitive subject construction.
5. Socio-linguistics and Applied Linguistics
Language and Society : Speech community; verbal repertoire; linguistic and communicative competence; linguistic variability and ethnography of speaking; socio-linguistic variables; patterns of variation; regional, social and stylistic; restricted and elaborated codes; diglossia.
Languages in Contact : Types of bilingualism and bilinguals; borrowing; convergence; pidgins and creoles; language maintenance and shift.
Sociology of Language : Language planning; language standardization and modernization; language and power; literacy—autonomous us ideological.
Scope of Applied Linguistics : Language teaching; translation studies; lexicography; stylistics; speech pathology; mass media and communication; language and computers.
Language Learning and Language Teaching : First and second language learning; language acquisition in multilingual settings; behaviouristic and cognitive theories of language learning; social and psychological aspects of second language acquisition; methods, materials and teaching-aids in language teaching; Computer Assisted Language Teaching ( CALT ); types of tests and their standardization.
Paper-III ( A )
[Core Group]
Unit—I
Phonetics : Phonetics as a study of speech sounds; articulatory and acoustic phonetics; mechanisms of speech production—air stream, phonation, oronasal process and articulation; classification of sounds; complex articulation—secondary articulation and coarticulation.
Acoustic Phonetics : Sound waves—frequency, amplitude; periodic complex harmonics; fundamental , frequency, resonance, filtering, spectrum, spectrogram, pitch, loudness, length; formants, transition, burst; voice onset time; aspiration; noise spectra; cues for place and manner.
Phonemics : Phoneme, Phone and allophone; contrast and complementary < distribution; preliminary and analytical procedures of phonemic analysis.
Generative Phonology : Two levels of phonological representation; phonological rules; distinctive features ( Major class, Manner. Place, etc. ), Abstractness controversy; Rule ordering types.
Lexical Phonology : Distinction between lexical and post-lexical rules; principles of lexical phonology-—structure preservation; strict cyclicity.
Unit—II
Types of Morphemes : Root, stem, base, suffix, infix, prefix, portmanteau morpheme; affixes vs clitics.
Morphological Processes : Derivational vs inflectional processes ( conjugation and declension ); primary us secondary derivation.
Level-ordered Morphology : Hierarchical organization of words; lexical us non-lexical categories; morphology—phonology interface.
Types of Compounding : Endocentric ( karmadhaaraya, tatpurusha ), exocentric ( bahuvriihi ) copulative compound ( dvandva ) and headedness of compounds; reduplication—morphological, lexical and semantic; non- concatenative morphology.
Morphology-Syntax Interface : Nominalization and the Lexicalist hypothesis; auxiliation ( explicator compound verb ); incorporation and the morphology—syntax interface.
Unit—III
General Notions : Structure and structure-dependence, diagnostics for structure; reference, co reference and anaphoric reference; deixis— Demonstratives, tense, pronominals; context; topic, focus, focusing devices; mood; thematic roles ( agent, patient, etc. ); grammatical relations ( subject, object, etc. ); case ( nominative, accusative, etc. )—their interrelationships.
Phrase Structure : X-bar theory; head, complement, specifier; binary branching: S as IP, S-bar as CP; DP analysis of noun phrases; head-complement parameter.
Some Syntactic Operations and Constructions : Movement and trace: passive, raising, WH- movement ( questions, relativization ), topicalization, scrambling; adjunction and substitution; head-to-head movement, movement to SPL deletion ( gapping and VP-deletion ); ECM ( exceptional case-marking ), constructions, small clauses; clefts and psuedo clefts.
Some Principles of Grammar : Constraints on movement—Ross’s constraints explained in terms of Subjacency; Government and Proper Government; Case theory, case as motivation for movement; Anaphors and Pronouns; Binding Theory ( Principles A, B and C ); strong and weak cross-over; theta theory, theta marking; PRO as subject of infinitives; quantifiers ( universal and existential ); quantifier raising, scope ambiguity.
Unit—IV
Meaning ( descriptive, emotive, phatic ); sense and reference, connotation and denotation; homonymy, hyponymy, antonymy, synonymy; propositions, ambiguity, specific vs generic; definite and indefinite; compositionality and its limitations; abihidha, laksana, vyanjana.
Pragmatics : Presupposition, entailment and implicature; speech acts, indexicals.
Formal Foundations : Membership, union, intersection, cardinality, powersets: mapping and functions; propositions, truth values, sentential connectives; arguments, predicates, quantifiers, variables.
Model-theoretic Semantics : Different models and interpretation; possible words; mood and modality; tense and aspect, counterfactuals.
Unit—V
Phonological Reconstruction : Comparative method, collection of cognates, establishing phonological correspondences; reconstruction of the phonemes of the proto-language based on contrast and complementation; internal reconstruction as opposed to comparative reconstruction; morphophonemic alternations as the source for reconstruction; recovering historical contrasts by comparing, alternating and non-alternating paradigms; accounting for exceptions to sound change—analogy, borrowing, onomatopoeia, the interplay of analogy and sound change; regularisation by analogy; paradigmatic analogy and pattern analogy; role of transparency in analogy; status of reconstructed forms, dialect variation in proto-language.
Borrowing : Lexical and structural; different types of borrowing-—cultural, intimate and dialect; classification of loanwords; impact of borrowing on language; pidgins and creoles.
Dialect Geography : Preparation of questionnaire; selection of informants and localities; elicitation of data; preparation of isogloss maps; deciding dialect and -sub-dialect areas: correlating political and cultural history with regional and social dialects.
Extensions of the Neogrammarian Theory : Social motivation of social change: study of sound change in progress; socio-linguistic studies of Martha’s. Vineyard. and New York City; lexical diffusion—concept and application,
Morphosyntactic Reconstruction, and Semantic Change ; Phonological reconstruction applied to morphological reconstruction; phonological change leading to changes in morphology and syntax; syncretism, grammaticalisation and lexicalisation; principles of recovering grammatical categories and contrasts; semantic change—extension, narrowing, figurative speech, subreption, postulation of past-cultural systems—kinship and social system, environment, etc.
Unit—VI
Speech as Social Interaction : Speech community and language boundaries; communicative competence; speech event and its components; rules of speaking; social significance of Gricean Maxims and conversational implicature; pragmatics of politeness; semantics of power and solidarity; social processes and linguistic structures; cross-cultural perspectives on speech events.
Linguistic Variability : Variation in linguistic behaviour; language and identity; restricted and elaborated codes; linguistic variables and their linguistic, social and psychological dimensions; language and social inequality; linguistic and social attitudes and stereotypes.
Language Contact : Bilingualism; bilingual proficiency; code-mixing and code-switching; effects of bilingualism on the individual and the society; languages of wider communication; lingua franca; language loyalty, language maintenance and shift; language convergence; pidginization and creolization.
Language Development : Language planning; corpus and status planning; codification and elaboration; language movements—State and societal interventions, e.g., writers and NGOs; script development and modifications; problems of linguistic minorities; literacy—socio-linguistic and political aspects.
Sociolinguistic Methodology : Sampling and tools; identification of socio-linguistic variables and their variants; data processing and interpretation; quantitative analysis; variable rules; ethnomethodology; participant observation; qualitative analysis of data.
Unit—VII
Linguistics and Psycholinguistics : Language and other signalling systems: biological bases of human language—experimental studies of teaching language to primates, language in evolutionary context, brain-language relationship and its models, cerebral dominance and lateralization, bilingual brain, the critical period hypothesis; the different theoretical orientations— empiricist-behaviourist, biological nativist, and congnitive—interactionalist; language and cognition—-Linguistic relativity and perceptual categories.
Developmental Psycho-linguistics : First language acquisition and second language learning; bilingual acquisition, issues and processes in language acquisition; three periods in the history of child language studies—diary, large sample and longitudinal; stages of language acquisition; acquisition of formal aspects of language—speech sounds, lexical items, grammatical and syntactic categories; language and environmental factors—Motherese; second language learning—implications of first language acquisitions; social and psychological factors in second language learning; learning of reading and writing skills.
Language Processing : The processes of perception—comprehension and production; perceptual units and perceptual strategies; parsing and parsing strategies; steps in comprehension; sentence comprehension and discourse comprehension; mental representation of language and lexicon; relationship between comprehension and production; sentence and discourse strategies in comprehension and production; speech errors as evidence of language production.
Applied Psycho-linguistics : Aphasia and its clinical and linguistic classifications; anomia, and dyslexia; stuttering; language in mental retardation; language in schizophrenia; language loss in aging; language in the hearing-impaired; data from normative and pathological language and their use for assessment of speech and language impairment; therapeutic intervention.
Unit—VIII
Processes of Learning : Language as a formal system and as a major factor in communication; learning a language and learning through language; behaviourist and cognitive theories of language learning including—Skinner, Piaget and Chomsky, etc., learning and communicative strategies, focus on the learner.
Language Teaching Analysis : Goals of language teaching and needs of analysis —First and Second language acquisition, Linguistic theory and language teaching syllabus—methods and materials; the role of the teacher and teacher training; role of self-access packages; socio-linguistic and psychological aspects of language teaching.
Learner Output : Conceptualising language proficiency in multi-lingual settings; interaction between the learner’s languages and the target languages— Contrastive Analysis ( CA ), Error analysis and Interlanguage; Basic Interpersonal Communicative Skills ( BICS ) and Cognitive Advanced Language Proficiency ( CALP ); types of tests and their validity and reliability.
Literacy : Conceptualising literacy; role of language in literacy; oralcy and literacy; literacy development and empowerment; State initiatives, campaign- based programmes and other non-governmental initiatives; literacy drives emergence and role of social movements.
Mass Communication : Role of language in mass communication; impact of mass media on language, types of language used in mass media e.g., news, advertising, editorials, etc.; language of mass media and social change.
Unit—IX
Language Typology, Universals and Linguistic Relatedness : Language typology and language universals; Morphological types of languages—agglutinative, analytical ( isolating ), synthetic fusional ( inflecting ), infixing and polysynthetic ( incorporating ) languages. Formal and substantive universals, Absolute and statistical universals; Implicational and Non-implicational universals; Linguistic relatedness—Genetic, typological and areal classification of languages.
Inductive vs Deductive Approaches : Parametric variation and language universals; Word Order typology; Greenberg’s characteristics for verb final and verb medial languages and related features in the context of South Asian Languages.
Salient Features of South Asian Language Families : Phonetic, phonological, morphological, and syntactic features of Indo-Aryan, Dravidian, Austro-Asiatic, and Tibeto-Burman language families of South Asia; Language contact and convergence with special reference to the concept of ‘India as a Linguistic Area’; Contact induced typological change; convergence and syntactic change.
Phonology, Morphology and Syntax of South Asian Languages : An in-depth study of retroflexion, vowel harmony, reduplication, echo formation, expressives ( onomatopoeia ), morphological, lexical and periphrastic causatives, explicator compound verbs, participles ( conjunctive, perfect, imperfect ), relative-correlative clauses, experiencer constructions ( dative/genitive subject ), anaphora, complementation, verb be, the quotative and agreement.
Unit—X
Making of a Dictionary ; Dictionary entries—arrangement and information, meaning descriptions—synonymy, polysemy, homonymy, antonymy and hyponymy; treatment of technical terms vs general words.
Types of Dictionaries : Comprehensive and concise, monolingual and bilingual, general and learner’s, historical and etymological, dictionary of idioms and phrases, encyclopaedic dictionary, electronic dictionary, reverse dictionary, thesaurus and other distinguishing purposes and features of various types; difference between glossing, dictionary and lexicon.
Nature of Translation : Paraphrase, translation and transcreation; translation of literary text and technical text; theories of translation; use of linguistics in translation; linguistic affinity and translatability. ’
Methods of Translation : Unit of translation; equivalence of meaning and style; translation loss; problems of cultural terms; scientific terms; idioms, metaphors and proverbs; evaluation of translation; fidelity and readability; types of translation—simultaneous interpretation, machine aided translation, media translation ( dubbing, copy-editing, advertisement, slogans, jingles, etc. )
Nature and Methods of Stylistic Analysis : Style—stylistic individual, style, period, style as choice, style as deviation, style as riiti, style as alankaara; style as vyanjana ( vakrokti ) foregrounding; parallelism levels of stylistic analysis—phonological, lexical, syntactic and semantic.
Paper-III ( B )
[ Elective / Optional ]
Elective—I
Introduction : Computational linguistics and its relation to allied disciplines in cognitive science—philosophy, psychology and artificial intelligence; a brief history of the area of inquiry—Babbage to von Neuman, computing machines from the abacus to the IBM PC; hardware—the basic components and peripherals of a digital computer; software—machine langauge, compilers; interpreters—information processing, structuring and manipulating data.
Phonology, Morphology and Lexicography : Finite state implementation of phonological rules, item- and arrangement-morphology and its implementation, item- and process-morphology; a brief introduction to KIMMO; morphological recognizers, analyzers and generators for Indian languages.
Computational Lexicography : The craft of dictionary making; the digital computer as a lexicographic tool; lexical databases and on-line dictionary— corpus-based dictionaries; lexical acquisition from Machine Readable Dictionaries ( MRDs ); major lexicographical projects—the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English ( LDOCE ) and the Collins Cobuild Project.
Parsing, Syntax and Semantics : Parsing and generation, top-down and bottom up parsing; types of parsers; unification and unification-based grammars— Definite Clause Grammar ( DCG ), Generalised Phrase Structure Grammar ( GPSG ); Lexical Functional Grammar ( LFG ), Head-driven Phrase Structure Grammar ( HPSG ) and Tree Adjoining Grammar ( TAG ).
Reference and compositionality, Functions and arguments, Meanings of referring expressions and predicates; Meanings of determiners, quantifiers, adverbs, adjectives and prepositions; Putting meanings.
Corpus Linguistics : Corpus-building and corpus-processing, SGML and Text Encoding Initiative, Corpus tagging and Tree banks, Corpus projects—the Brown Corpus and Lancaster-Oslo Bergen ( LOB ) Corpus, the Survey of English Usage ( SEU ), Corpus and London-Lund Corpus of Spoken English ( LLC ), The Kolhapur Corpus of Indian English; the TDIL Corpus Project of the Deptt. of Electronics.
Language Technology : Natural language interface to databases, Cooperative response systems, Speech .technology—text-to-speech and speech-to-text systems, Machine ( aided ) translation; computer aided language teaching; text processing; Major European and American Projects; the Japanese Fifth Generation Initiative, Natural langauge processing in India.
Elective—II
Basic Issues in the Principles and Parameters Theory : Interaction of principles within certain parameters, language specific examples and the question of basic word order; problems with the theory.
From Principles and Parameters Theory to the Minimalist Program : Reasons for discarding D-structure and S-structure. How does the computational system work in the Minimalist Program? Functional categories and the significance of DP analysis; AGRsP, AGRoP, and Tense- Phrase; scope for innovation to account for language specific phrasal categories.
Some Key Concepts in the Minimalist Program : Spell-out, greed, procrastination, last resort, AGR-based case theory, multiple-spec hypothesis, strong and weak features; interpretable and non-interpretable features.
Transformational Components : The copy theory of Movement, its properties., motivation for move Alpha, LF and PF movement, checking devices and features of convergence.
Elective—III
Prosodic Phonology ; The syllable, the Foot, the word, the phonological phrase, the International phrase, Generalizations based on prosodic units.
Auto segmental Phonology : Tone. Nasal spread, vowel harmony; C-V tier; Prosodic Morphology; feature hierarchy.
Non-derivational Phonology : Optimality theory—main theoretical assumptions: Constraint rankings.
Elective—IV
Socio-Linguistics : Socio-linguistic perspective to the process of language change; social motivation and mechanisms of sound change. Language, ideology and social change, the power-politics of language standardization; Implications for literacy and school education; language and gender.
Communication Networks : Networks and speech and verbal repertoire, ‘Types of network, Redefining ‘speech community’ in terms of networks, Speech and multiple identities.
Ethnography of Communication and Ethnomethodology ; ‘Talk’, ‘Discourse’ and ‘turntaking’; Redefining communicative competence; Communication and social structure.
Elective—V
Brain-language Relationship : Issues in neurolinguistics and linguistics aphasiology, cerebral dominance, lateralization and handedness; models of brain-language relationship—Classical connectionist, hierarchical, global and process models.
Brain Pathology and Language Breakdown : Aphasia and its classification; classical categories, linguistic account, overview of linguistic aphasiology, anomia and agrammatism; dyslexia and its classification.
Linguistics and Language Pathology : Use of linguistics in diagnosis and prognosis of language disorders; language pathology and normal language,
Language Pathology and Language Disorders ; Stuttering; nature and analysis of language in psychopathological conditions; schizophrenic language: language in mental retardation.
Language Disorders and Intervention : Variation in language disorders; need and scope of intervention: therapeutic use of language.
LINGUISTICS MCQs
1. The processes by which a child adopts to acquire a language, viz,
(i) Acquiring syntactic forms from meaning and,
(ii) Acquiring meaning from forms respectively is called:
(A) Semantic bootstrapping and syntactic bootstrapping
(B) Syntactic bootstrapping and semantic bootstrapping
(C) Form and content acquisition
(D) Content and form acquisition
Ans: A
2. Assertion I: A deep dyslexic may interact with words but they are not able to associate with the direct phonemic graphemic relations with meaning.
Assertion II: Deep dyslexic may be termed as phonemic dyslexia.
Codes:
(A) (I) is true, (II) is false.
(B) (I) is false, (II) is true.
(C) Both (I) and (II) are true.
(D) Both (I) and (II) are false.
Ans: C
3. Blindness in one half of the visual field is known as
(A) Hemifield viewing
(B) Hemiplegia
(C) Hemianopia
(D) Hemiprosis
Ans: C
4. Match the following with List – I and List – II and choose correct answer from the codes given below:
List – I List – II
a.Agnosia i. acquired difficulty in reading
b. Agraphia ii. Impairment of voluntary and purposive movements
c. Alexia iii. Inability to associate meaning with sensation
d. Apraxia iv. Acquired difficulty in writing
Codes:
a b c d
(A) iii iv i ii
(B) iv iii ii i
(C) ii i iv iii
(D) i ii iii iv
Ans: A
5. “Interpersonal communicative and cognitive processes that everywhere and always shape language” is the part of
(A) Cognitive theories
(B) Constructionist theories
(C) Usage-based theories
(D) Construction grammar and phraseological theories
Ans: C
6. A symbolic structure is nothing more than the pairing of a
(A) Syntactic structure and a semantic structure.
(B) Morphological structure and a syntactic structure.
(C) Semantic structure and a phonological structure.
(D) Phonological structure and a syntactic structure.
Ans: C
7. The lexical selection is dependent on these following factors as in order below:
(A) Conceptual, Syntactic and Phonological
(B) Syntactic, Conceptual and Phonological
(C) Phonological, Conceptual and Syntactical
(D) Conceptual, Phonological and Syntactical
Ans: A
8. Which one of the following pairs is correctly matched?
(A) Receptive aphasia i. non-fluent
(B) Expressive aphasia ii. Alzheimer’s disease
(C) Pure aphasia iii. Alexia, agraphiaand verbal agnosia
(D) Primary progressive aphasia iv. fluent
Ans: C
9. The MT system based on statistical method is
(A) Google translate
(B) Anglabharati
(C) Anusaarak
(D) Mantra
Ans: A
10. To articulate a central vowel the tongue is
(A) Forwarded
(B) Retracted
(C) Raised
(D) Neither forwarded nor retracted
Ans: D
11. The ‘Pulse’ or ‘Motor’ theory was put forward by
(A) D. Jones
(B) R.H. Stetson
(C) A.M. Bell
(D) P. Ladefoged
Ans: B
12. In aspirated stops, voicing
(A) Takes place throughout the closure and release of the airstream in the mouth cavity.
(B) Takes place during the part of the closure.
(C) Starts immediately at the moment of the release of the closure.
(D) Starts considerably after the release of the closure.
Ans: D
13. Acoustic information regarding the place of articulation of a particular stop can be obtained from
(A) Voice bar
(B) Transitions
(C) VOT
(D) Aperiodic vibrations
Ans: B
14. Assertion I: The machine used for the analysis and measurement of frequency, duration of speech sounds, and the like is known as a spectrogram.
Assertion II: The output of the above machine is a spectrograph.
Codes:
(A) Both (I) and (II) are false.
(B) Both (I) and (II) are true.
(C) (I) is true and (II) is false.
(D) (I) is false and (II) is true.
Ans: A
15. In any preliminary transcription if separate symbols are used for two or more variants of a single phoneme, the phenomenon is known as
(A) Overextension
(B) Overdifferentiation
(C) Underdifferentiation
(D) Overcorrection
Ans: B
16. Match the following with List – I with those in List – II and choose correct answer from the codes given below:
List – I List – II
a. Insertion i. Skt. Jagāma‘he went’
b. Metathesis ii. Eng. pants > in a variety of eng. pans
c. Deletion iii. Eng. wasp <old eng.wæps
d. Reduplication iv. Eng. film > in a Variety of eng.fil∂m
Codes:
a b c d
(A) i ii iii iv
(B) ii i iii iv
(C) iv iii ii i
(D) iii iv i ii
Ans: C
17. The words in the List – I contain affixes. Match the affixes in the List – I with the types in the List – II.
List – I List – II
a. look – ing i. prefix
b. un – do ii. interfix
c. speed – o – meter iii. Suffix
d. German – gefragt ‘asked’ iv. circumfix
Codes:
a b c d
(A) i iii iv ii
(B) ii iii i iv
(C) iv ii iii i
(D) iii i ii iv
Ans: D
18. The English word ‘biotech’ is an example of
(A) Blend
(B) Back formation
(C) Compound
(D) Acronym
Ans: A
19. The term ‘three dimensional phonology’ refers to
(A) Generative Phonology
(B) Structural Phonology
(C) Natural Phonology
(D) Non-linear Phonology
Ans: D
20. Assertion I: Generative phonology rejects the concept of phoneme, but prosodic phonology does not reject it.
Assertion II: Both generative phonology and prosodic phonology reject the concept of phoneme.
Codes:
(A) Both (I) and (II) are true
(B) Both (I) and (II) are false
(C) (I) is true and (II) is false
(D) (I) is false and (II) is true
Ans: D
21. Match the items in List – I with those in List – II and select the correct answer from the codes:
List – I List – II
a. Systematic, phonetic and systematic phonemic representation i. Metrical phonology
b. Syllable prominence and hierarchy ii. Auto-segmental phonology
c. Tiers and association lines iii. Generative phonology
d. Constraint rankings iv. Optimality theory
Codes:
a b c d
(A) iii i ii iv
(B) ii i iv iii
(C) iv ii iii i
(D) i ii iv iii
Ans: A
22. In the English word ‘handful’ the part ‘– ful’ is a/an
(A) Inflectional suffix
(B) Derivational suffix
(C) Post position
(D) clitic
Ans: B
23. Assertion I: In optimality theory, the well-formedness constraints are grounded in universal markedness principles. A constraint reflects a universal tendency.
Assertion II: Constraints cannot be violated.
Codes:
(A) Both (I) and (II) are true
(B) Both (I) and (II) are false
(C) (I) is true and (II) is false
(D) (I) is false and (II) is true
Ans: C
24. Match the items in List – I and with those in List – II and select the correct answer from the codes:
List – I List – II
a. Speech processing i. Formal analysis of a sentence by computer
b. Information retrieval ii. Pattern recognition
c. Parsing iii. Stemming
d. Optical character recognition iv. Speech recognition and text to speech
Codes:
a b c d
(A) iv iii i ii
(B) i ii iii iv
(C) iii ii iv i
(D) ii i iii iv
Ans: A
25. The notion ‘Transformational Grammar’ (TG) or ‘Transformational Generative Grammar’ (TGG) was first discussed by Noam Chomsky in
(A) The Sound Pattern of English,1968
(B) Aspects of the Theory of Syntax, 1965
(C) Syntactic Structures, 1957
(D) Current issues in Linguistic Theory, 1964
Ans: C
26. Match the items in List – I with List – II and select the correct answer from the codes given below:
List – I List – II
a. Cognates i. Phonetics
b. Speech Sounds ii. Dialect Geography
c. Speech Variation iii. Lexicography
d. Dictionary iv. Comparative method
Codes:
a b c d
(A) iv iii ii i
(B) i iv ii iii
(C) iv i ii iii
(D) iii ii iv i
Ans: C
27. Select the correct sequence according to the development of grammars:
(A) Universal grammar, traditional grammar, transformational grammar, structural grammar.
(B) Traditional grammar, structural grammar, transformational grammar and universal grammar.
(C) Traditional grammar, universal grammar, transformational grammar, structural grammar.
(D) Transformational grammar, structural grammar, traditional grammar and universal grammar.
Ans: B
28. The basic word order in Dravidian languages is
(A) SVO
(B) SOV
(C) VSO
(D) VOS
Ans: B
29. Match the items in List – I with List – II and select the correct answer from the codes given below:
List – I List – II
a. Language in culture i. Language Planning
b. Linguistic change ii. Historical Linguistics
c. Language in mind iii. Ethno linguistics
d. Conscious and deliberate change of language iv. Psycholinguistics
Codes:
a b c d
(A) ii iii iv i
(B) iii ii iv i
(C) iii iv ii i
(D) ii iii i iv
Ans: B
30. In traditional dialectology the methodology involved selection of informants as:
(A) Mobile, rural older people
(B) Non-mobile, older, rural people
(C) Rural non-mobile young people
(D) Non-mobile, urban old people
Ans: B
31. Identify the odd item from the following:
(A) Idiolect
(B) Dialect
(C) Imperative
(D) Mutual intelligibility
Ans: C
32. Assertion I: Analogy brings about regularity in the paradigm.
Assertion II: Analogy destroys the paradigmatic regularity.
Codes:
(A) (I) and (II) are false
(B) (I) and (II) are true
(C) (I) is false (II) is true
(D) (I) is true (II) is false
Ans: D
33. Kota, Toda and Kui languages come under:
(A) Central Dravidian group
(B) North Dravidian group
(C) South Dravidian group
(D) Tibato-Burman group
Ans: A
34. The term isogloss is associated with
(A) Lexicograpy
(B) Graphology
(C) Dialectology
(D) Pragmatics
Ans: C
35. When linguistic forms of genetically related languages show phonological and semantic identify, they are termed as
(A) Relic forms
(B) Synonyms
(C) Antonyms
(D) Cognates
Ans: D
36. A term used in linguistics, referring to the quantification of the extent to which languages have diverged from a common source is
(A) Geographical linguistics
(B) Glottochronology
(C) Analytical linguistics
(D) Areal linguistics
Ans: B
37. A language which is characterized by words typically containing linear sequence of morphs is termed as
(A) Isolating language
(B) Synthetic language
(C) Agglutinating language
(D) Polysynthetic language
Ans: C
38. The study of a language at different points on the time dimension is called
(A) Synchronic
(B) Diachronic
(C) Contrastive
(D) Descriptive
Ans: B
39. Assertion I: The comparative method is a technique which allows us to trace back to the earlier stage of the languages. These languages are related and belong to the same family.
Assertion II: The technique involves comparing alternants of a single language.
Codes:
(A) Both (I) and (II) are true.
(B) Both (I) and (II) are false.
(C) (I) is false, but (II) is true.
(D) (I) is true, but (II) is false.
Ans: D
40. The notion that India is a linguistic area was proposed by
(A) Peter Edwin Hook
(B) M.B. Emeneau
(C) P.B. Pandit
(D) Collin P. Masica
Ans: B
41. Match the following with the items in List – I and in List – II and select the correct answer from the codes given below:
List – I List – II
a. Proficiency tests i. are administered at the end of the course
b. Diagnostic tests ii. Measure people’s ability in a language
c. Placement tests iii. Are administered to identify student’s strength and weakness
d. Achievement tests iv. Are used to assign students to classes at different levels.
Codes:
a b c d
(A) i ii iii iv
(B) ii iii iv i
(C) iii iv ii i
(D) iv iii i ii
Ans: B
42. The ability to deal adequately with a written system of communication is known as
(A) Orthography
(B) Literacy
(C) Computer
(D) Illiteracy
Ans: B
43. In the language of mass media the communicators strategies are sometimes ‘responsive’ and sometimes “initiative”. The ‘responsive’ strategy is known as
(A) Audience design
(B) Audience choice
(C) Audience preferences
(D) Style
Ans: A
44. The stage theory of ‘Cognitive Development’ is a description of cognitive development as four stages in children. The originator of the theory is
(A) Jean Piaget
(B) Bernard Weiner
(C) N. Chomsky
(D) B.F. Skinner
Ans: A
45. Classical conditioning is a reflexive learning in which a stimulus acquires the capacity to evoke a response. It was first described by
(A) N. Chomsky
(B) Ivan Pavalov
(C) B.F. Skinner
(D) A. Bandura
Ans: B
46. Match the items in List – I with those in List – II and select the correct answer from the codes given below:
List – I List – II
a. Intra lingualtranslation i. Translation fromSL to T.L
b. Interlingual Translation ii. Translation within the same language
c. Inter semiotic translation iii. Translation of the verbal sign by a non-verbal sign
d. Interpreting iv. Transferring ideas orally
Codes:
a b c d
(A) ii i iii iv
(B) i ii iii iv
(C) iii ii i iv
(D) iv iii ii i
Ans: A
47. Catford was very much criticized for his linguistic theory of translation. One of the most scathing criticismscame from
(A) E. Nida
(B) P. Newmark
(C) Snell – Hornby
(D) Pym Anthony
Ans: C
48. The source text and target text words, triggering the same or similar associations in the minds of native speakers of two languages are known as
(A) Dynamic equivalence
(B) Null equivalence
(C) Formal equivalence
(D) Textual equivalence
Ans: A
49. Grammatically plural nouns that have no corresponding singular forms such as “scissors”, and “spectacles” are known as
(A) Pluraliatantum
(B) Pleonasm
(C) Polar autonyms
(D) Polarity
Ans: A
50. Match the items in List – I with those in List – II with the codes given below:
List – I List – II
a. Locution i. A sentence with grammatical structure and a linguistic meaning
b. Illocution ii. The effect of the speech act on the hearer
c. Perlocution iii. The speaker’s intention
d. Expressives iv. Speaker’s psychological state or attitude.
Codes:
a b c d
(A) iv iii i ii
(B) i iii ii iv
(C) ii i iii iv
(D) i ii iii iv
Ans: B
(i) Acquiring syntactic forms from meaning and,
(ii) Acquiring meaning from forms respectively is called:
(A) Semantic bootstrapping and syntactic bootstrapping
(B) Syntactic bootstrapping and semantic bootstrapping
(C) Form and content acquisition
(D) Content and form acquisition
Ans: A
2. Assertion I: A deep dyslexic may interact with words but they are not able to associate with the direct phonemic graphemic relations with meaning.
Assertion II: Deep dyslexic may be termed as phonemic dyslexia.
Codes:
(A) (I) is true, (II) is false.
(B) (I) is false, (II) is true.
(C) Both (I) and (II) are true.
(D) Both (I) and (II) are false.
Ans: C
3. Blindness in one half of the visual field is known as
(A) Hemifield viewing
(B) Hemiplegia
(C) Hemianopia
(D) Hemiprosis
Ans: C
4. Match the following with List – I and List – II and choose correct answer from the codes given below:
List – I List – II
a.Agnosia i. acquired difficulty in reading
b. Agraphia ii. Impairment of voluntary and purposive movements
c. Alexia iii. Inability to associate meaning with sensation
d. Apraxia iv. Acquired difficulty in writing
Codes:
a b c d
(A) iii iv i ii
(B) iv iii ii i
(C) ii i iv iii
(D) i ii iii iv
Ans: A
5. “Interpersonal communicative and cognitive processes that everywhere and always shape language” is the part of
(A) Cognitive theories
(B) Constructionist theories
(C) Usage-based theories
(D) Construction grammar and phraseological theories
Ans: C
6. A symbolic structure is nothing more than the pairing of a
(A) Syntactic structure and a semantic structure.
(B) Morphological structure and a syntactic structure.
(C) Semantic structure and a phonological structure.
(D) Phonological structure and a syntactic structure.
Ans: C
7. The lexical selection is dependent on these following factors as in order below:
(A) Conceptual, Syntactic and Phonological
(B) Syntactic, Conceptual and Phonological
(C) Phonological, Conceptual and Syntactical
(D) Conceptual, Phonological and Syntactical
Ans: A
8. Which one of the following pairs is correctly matched?
(A) Receptive aphasia i. non-fluent
(B) Expressive aphasia ii. Alzheimer’s disease
(C) Pure aphasia iii. Alexia, agraphiaand verbal agnosia
(D) Primary progressive aphasia iv. fluent
Ans: C
9. The MT system based on statistical method is
(A) Google translate
(B) Anglabharati
(C) Anusaarak
(D) Mantra
Ans: A
10. To articulate a central vowel the tongue is
(A) Forwarded
(B) Retracted
(C) Raised
(D) Neither forwarded nor retracted
Ans: D
11. The ‘Pulse’ or ‘Motor’ theory was put forward by
(A) D. Jones
(B) R.H. Stetson
(C) A.M. Bell
(D) P. Ladefoged
Ans: B
12. In aspirated stops, voicing
(A) Takes place throughout the closure and release of the airstream in the mouth cavity.
(B) Takes place during the part of the closure.
(C) Starts immediately at the moment of the release of the closure.
(D) Starts considerably after the release of the closure.
Ans: D
13. Acoustic information regarding the place of articulation of a particular stop can be obtained from
(A) Voice bar
(B) Transitions
(C) VOT
(D) Aperiodic vibrations
Ans: B
14. Assertion I: The machine used for the analysis and measurement of frequency, duration of speech sounds, and the like is known as a spectrogram.
Assertion II: The output of the above machine is a spectrograph.
Codes:
(A) Both (I) and (II) are false.
(B) Both (I) and (II) are true.
(C) (I) is true and (II) is false.
(D) (I) is false and (II) is true.
Ans: A
15. In any preliminary transcription if separate symbols are used for two or more variants of a single phoneme, the phenomenon is known as
(A) Overextension
(B) Overdifferentiation
(C) Underdifferentiation
(D) Overcorrection
Ans: B
16. Match the following with List – I with those in List – II and choose correct answer from the codes given below:
List – I List – II
a. Insertion i. Skt. Jagāma‘he went’
b. Metathesis ii. Eng. pants > in a variety of eng. pans
c. Deletion iii. Eng. wasp <old eng.wæps
d. Reduplication iv. Eng. film > in a Variety of eng.fil∂m
Codes:
a b c d
(A) i ii iii iv
(B) ii i iii iv
(C) iv iii ii i
(D) iii iv i ii
Ans: C
17. The words in the List – I contain affixes. Match the affixes in the List – I with the types in the List – II.
List – I List – II
a. look – ing i. prefix
b. un – do ii. interfix
c. speed – o – meter iii. Suffix
d. German – gefragt ‘asked’ iv. circumfix
Codes:
a b c d
(A) i iii iv ii
(B) ii iii i iv
(C) iv ii iii i
(D) iii i ii iv
Ans: D
18. The English word ‘biotech’ is an example of
(A) Blend
(B) Back formation
(C) Compound
(D) Acronym
Ans: A
19. The term ‘three dimensional phonology’ refers to
(A) Generative Phonology
(B) Structural Phonology
(C) Natural Phonology
(D) Non-linear Phonology
Ans: D
20. Assertion I: Generative phonology rejects the concept of phoneme, but prosodic phonology does not reject it.
Assertion II: Both generative phonology and prosodic phonology reject the concept of phoneme.
Codes:
(A) Both (I) and (II) are true
(B) Both (I) and (II) are false
(C) (I) is true and (II) is false
(D) (I) is false and (II) is true
Ans: D
21. Match the items in List – I with those in List – II and select the correct answer from the codes:
List – I List – II
a. Systematic, phonetic and systematic phonemic representation i. Metrical phonology
b. Syllable prominence and hierarchy ii. Auto-segmental phonology
c. Tiers and association lines iii. Generative phonology
d. Constraint rankings iv. Optimality theory
Codes:
a b c d
(A) iii i ii iv
(B) ii i iv iii
(C) iv ii iii i
(D) i ii iv iii
Ans: A
22. In the English word ‘handful’ the part ‘– ful’ is a/an
(A) Inflectional suffix
(B) Derivational suffix
(C) Post position
(D) clitic
Ans: B
23. Assertion I: In optimality theory, the well-formedness constraints are grounded in universal markedness principles. A constraint reflects a universal tendency.
Assertion II: Constraints cannot be violated.
Codes:
(A) Both (I) and (II) are true
(B) Both (I) and (II) are false
(C) (I) is true and (II) is false
(D) (I) is false and (II) is true
Ans: C
24. Match the items in List – I and with those in List – II and select the correct answer from the codes:
List – I List – II
a. Speech processing i. Formal analysis of a sentence by computer
b. Information retrieval ii. Pattern recognition
c. Parsing iii. Stemming
d. Optical character recognition iv. Speech recognition and text to speech
Codes:
a b c d
(A) iv iii i ii
(B) i ii iii iv
(C) iii ii iv i
(D) ii i iii iv
Ans: A
25. The notion ‘Transformational Grammar’ (TG) or ‘Transformational Generative Grammar’ (TGG) was first discussed by Noam Chomsky in
(A) The Sound Pattern of English,1968
(B) Aspects of the Theory of Syntax, 1965
(C) Syntactic Structures, 1957
(D) Current issues in Linguistic Theory, 1964
Ans: C
26. Match the items in List – I with List – II and select the correct answer from the codes given below:
List – I List – II
a. Cognates i. Phonetics
b. Speech Sounds ii. Dialect Geography
c. Speech Variation iii. Lexicography
d. Dictionary iv. Comparative method
Codes:
a b c d
(A) iv iii ii i
(B) i iv ii iii
(C) iv i ii iii
(D) iii ii iv i
Ans: C
27. Select the correct sequence according to the development of grammars:
(A) Universal grammar, traditional grammar, transformational grammar, structural grammar.
(B) Traditional grammar, structural grammar, transformational grammar and universal grammar.
(C) Traditional grammar, universal grammar, transformational grammar, structural grammar.
(D) Transformational grammar, structural grammar, traditional grammar and universal grammar.
Ans: B
28. The basic word order in Dravidian languages is
(A) SVO
(B) SOV
(C) VSO
(D) VOS
Ans: B
29. Match the items in List – I with List – II and select the correct answer from the codes given below:
List – I List – II
a. Language in culture i. Language Planning
b. Linguistic change ii. Historical Linguistics
c. Language in mind iii. Ethno linguistics
d. Conscious and deliberate change of language iv. Psycholinguistics
Codes:
a b c d
(A) ii iii iv i
(B) iii ii iv i
(C) iii iv ii i
(D) ii iii i iv
Ans: B
30. In traditional dialectology the methodology involved selection of informants as:
(A) Mobile, rural older people
(B) Non-mobile, older, rural people
(C) Rural non-mobile young people
(D) Non-mobile, urban old people
Ans: B
31. Identify the odd item from the following:
(A) Idiolect
(B) Dialect
(C) Imperative
(D) Mutual intelligibility
Ans: C
32. Assertion I: Analogy brings about regularity in the paradigm.
Assertion II: Analogy destroys the paradigmatic regularity.
Codes:
(A) (I) and (II) are false
(B) (I) and (II) are true
(C) (I) is false (II) is true
(D) (I) is true (II) is false
Ans: D
33. Kota, Toda and Kui languages come under:
(A) Central Dravidian group
(B) North Dravidian group
(C) South Dravidian group
(D) Tibato-Burman group
Ans: A
34. The term isogloss is associated with
(A) Lexicograpy
(B) Graphology
(C) Dialectology
(D) Pragmatics
Ans: C
35. When linguistic forms of genetically related languages show phonological and semantic identify, they are termed as
(A) Relic forms
(B) Synonyms
(C) Antonyms
(D) Cognates
Ans: D
36. A term used in linguistics, referring to the quantification of the extent to which languages have diverged from a common source is
(A) Geographical linguistics
(B) Glottochronology
(C) Analytical linguistics
(D) Areal linguistics
Ans: B
37. A language which is characterized by words typically containing linear sequence of morphs is termed as
(A) Isolating language
(B) Synthetic language
(C) Agglutinating language
(D) Polysynthetic language
Ans: C
38. The study of a language at different points on the time dimension is called
(A) Synchronic
(B) Diachronic
(C) Contrastive
(D) Descriptive
Ans: B
39. Assertion I: The comparative method is a technique which allows us to trace back to the earlier stage of the languages. These languages are related and belong to the same family.
Assertion II: The technique involves comparing alternants of a single language.
Codes:
(A) Both (I) and (II) are true.
(B) Both (I) and (II) are false.
(C) (I) is false, but (II) is true.
(D) (I) is true, but (II) is false.
Ans: D
40. The notion that India is a linguistic area was proposed by
(A) Peter Edwin Hook
(B) M.B. Emeneau
(C) P.B. Pandit
(D) Collin P. Masica
Ans: B
41. Match the following with the items in List – I and in List – II and select the correct answer from the codes given below:
List – I List – II
a. Proficiency tests i. are administered at the end of the course
b. Diagnostic tests ii. Measure people’s ability in a language
c. Placement tests iii. Are administered to identify student’s strength and weakness
d. Achievement tests iv. Are used to assign students to classes at different levels.
Codes:
a b c d
(A) i ii iii iv
(B) ii iii iv i
(C) iii iv ii i
(D) iv iii i ii
Ans: B
42. The ability to deal adequately with a written system of communication is known as
(A) Orthography
(B) Literacy
(C) Computer
(D) Illiteracy
Ans: B
43. In the language of mass media the communicators strategies are sometimes ‘responsive’ and sometimes “initiative”. The ‘responsive’ strategy is known as
(A) Audience design
(B) Audience choice
(C) Audience preferences
(D) Style
Ans: A
44. The stage theory of ‘Cognitive Development’ is a description of cognitive development as four stages in children. The originator of the theory is
(A) Jean Piaget
(B) Bernard Weiner
(C) N. Chomsky
(D) B.F. Skinner
Ans: A
45. Classical conditioning is a reflexive learning in which a stimulus acquires the capacity to evoke a response. It was first described by
(A) N. Chomsky
(B) Ivan Pavalov
(C) B.F. Skinner
(D) A. Bandura
Ans: B
46. Match the items in List – I with those in List – II and select the correct answer from the codes given below:
List – I List – II
a. Intra lingualtranslation i. Translation fromSL to T.L
b. Interlingual Translation ii. Translation within the same language
c. Inter semiotic translation iii. Translation of the verbal sign by a non-verbal sign
d. Interpreting iv. Transferring ideas orally
Codes:
a b c d
(A) ii i iii iv
(B) i ii iii iv
(C) iii ii i iv
(D) iv iii ii i
Ans: A
47. Catford was very much criticized for his linguistic theory of translation. One of the most scathing criticismscame from
(A) E. Nida
(B) P. Newmark
(C) Snell – Hornby
(D) Pym Anthony
Ans: C
48. The source text and target text words, triggering the same or similar associations in the minds of native speakers of two languages are known as
(A) Dynamic equivalence
(B) Null equivalence
(C) Formal equivalence
(D) Textual equivalence
Ans: A
49. Grammatically plural nouns that have no corresponding singular forms such as “scissors”, and “spectacles” are known as
(A) Pluraliatantum
(B) Pleonasm
(C) Polar autonyms
(D) Polarity
Ans: A
50. Match the items in List – I with those in List – II with the codes given below:
List – I List – II
a. Locution i. A sentence with grammatical structure and a linguistic meaning
b. Illocution ii. The effect of the speech act on the hearer
c. Perlocution iii. The speaker’s intention
d. Expressives iv. Speaker’s psychological state or attitude.
Codes:
a b c d
(A) iv iii i ii
(B) i iii ii iv
(C) ii i iii iv
(D) i ii iii iv
Ans: B
51. The terms ‘endocentric’ and ‘exocentric’ were coined by
(A) L. Bloomfield
(B) H.A. Gleason
(C) C.F. Hockelt
(D) E. Sapir
Ans: A
52. Assertion – I: A foot is a rhythmical unit in speech consisting of one or more syllables.
Assertion – II: In foot one or more syllables are grouped together according to their stress pattern.
Codes:
(A) Both I and II are true.
(B) Both I and II are false.
(C) I is true and II is false.
(D) I is false but II is true.
Ans: A
53. In the English word ‘untruthful’ the morphemes
(A) Display a linear order and also a hierarchical structure.
(B) Display a linear order and does not display a hierarchical structure.
(C) Does not display a linear order but display a hierarchical structure.
(D) Display neither a linear order nor a hierarchical structure.
Ans: B
54. Match the items in List – I with those in List – II and choose the correct answer from the codes given below:
List – I List – II
a. Prosodic phonology i. A prince and P. Smolensky
b. Autosegmental phonology ii. J. Goldsmith
c. Generative phonology iii. J.R. Firth
d. Constraints based phonology iv. N. Chomsky and M. Halle
Codes:
a b c d
(A) i iii ii iv
(B) ii iv i iii
(C) iii ii iv i
(D) iv i iii ii
Ans: C
55. Assertion – I: NLP aims at devising techniques which will automatically analyse large quantities of spoken and written texts.
Assertion – II: The notion of parsing is very useful in NLP
Codes:
(A) Both I and II are true.
(B) Both I and II are false.
(C) I is true and II is false.
(D) I is false but II is true.
Ans: A
56. ‘Vernacular’ in William Labov’s model of sociolinguistics refers to
(A) The speech which is consciously monitored.
(B) A regional standard variety.
(C) The least self-conscious style of speech.
(D) A dialect which is substandard.
Ans: C
57. Assertion – I: Isoglosses are lines which show the distribution of linguistic features in a dialect atlas.
Assertion – II: Bundles of isoglosses serve to mark the dialect boundaries.
Codes:
(A) I is true, but II is false.
(B) Both I and II are false.
(C) I is false, but II is true.
(D) Both I and II are true.
Ans: D
58. Assertion – I: The cultural characteristics of a speech community are all preserved and transmitted by language.
Assertion – II: The cultural characteristics are not inherited through the genes.
Codes:
(A) Both I and II are true.
(B) I is true, but II is false.
(C) I is false, but II is true.
(D) Both I and II are false.
Ans: A
59. Assertion – I: The concept of ‘communicative competence’ is a contribution of Dell Hymes in sociolinguistics.
Assertion – II: It means ‘Linguistic competence’ plus knowledge of appropriate language use in different social situations.
Codes:
(A) I is true, but II is false.
(B) I is false, but II is true.
(C) Both I and II are false.
(D) Both I and II are true.
Ans: D
60. Assertion – I: The speakers of non-standard varieties are capable of complex, logical, symbolic and expressive speech.
Assertion – II: We tend to use the norms of the standard variety and normally label the nonstandard ones as ‘incorrect’ and ‘illogical’.
Codes:
(A) I is false but II is true.
(B) Both I and II are true.
(C) I is true but II is false.
(D) Both I and II are false.
Ans: B
61. Assertion – I: Acoustic phonetics studies the physical properties of speech sounds as transmitted from mouth to ear.
Assertion – II: Physiological phonetics studies the perceptual response to speech sounds.
Codes:
(A) Both I and II are true.
(B) Both I and II are false.
(C) I is true and II is false.
(D) I is false and II is true.
Ans: C
62. Assertion – I: A main clause is usually finite and is equivalent to a simple sentence.
Assertion – II: A subordinate clause may be finite or nonfinite and usually functions within other clauses or phrases.
Codes:
(A) Both I and II are true.
(B) I is false, but II is true.
(C) I is true, but II is false.
(D) Both I and II are false.
Ans: A
63. A sentence composed of a main clause and at least one subordinate clause is a
(A) Simple sentence
(B) Complex sentence
(C) Complement sentence
(D) Compound sentence
Ans: B
64. Assertion – I: An adverbial clause is a type of subordinate clause that functions as adverbial in sentences.
Assertion – II: An adverbial clause is usually introduced by a subordinating conjunction.
Codes:
(A) I is true but II is false.
(B) I is false but II is true.
(C) Both I and II are false.
(D) Both I and II are true.
Ans: D
65. The principle that linguistic rules are sensitive to constituent structure is known as
(A) Principle of categorical scope
(B) Principle of reference
(C) Principle of structure dependency of linguistic rules
(D) Principle of knowledge
Ans: C
66. Lexical information is syntactically represented by
(A) Extended projection principle
(B) Projection principle
(C) Theta criterion
(D) Argument structure
Ans: B
67. “When an immediately higher subject differs in persons from a lower subject, long distance antecedents are blocked” is called as
(A) M. Command
(B) ECP
(C) Parasitic gap
(D) Blocking effects
Ans: D
68. A linguistic area indicates
(A) Share linguistic features within a language family.
(B) Geographical boundaries of a language family.
(C) Shared linguistic features across language family.
(D) Linguistic features separating language families.
Ans: C
69. Assertion – I: Intra-language and inter-language switching are sociolinguistic universals.
Assertion – II: Code-switching is context-governed.
Codes:
(A) I is true, but II is false.
(B) Both I and II are true.
(C) I is false, but II is true.
(D) Both I and II are false.
Ans: B
70. Stylistics is the study of interpretation of texts from a linguistic perspective as a discipline it links
(A) Literary criticism and linguistics
(B) Phonology and morphology
(C) Morphology and syntax
(D) Literary criticism and translation
Ans: A
71. In the English word ‘uneasiness’ there are _________ morphemes.
(A) two
(B) Three
(C) four
(D) five
Ans: C
72. The process by which humans acquire the capacity to perceive and comprehend language, as well as to produce and use words and sentences to communicate is known as
(A) Language Acquisition
(B) Language Learning
(C) Language Perception
(D) Language Reception
Ans: A
73. Assertion – I: Both external and internal Sandhi rules operate within words.
Assertion – II: External Sandhi rules operate across word boundaries and internal Sandhi rules operate within words.
Codes:
(A) Both I and II are true.
(B) Both (I) and (II) are false.
(C) (I) is true and (II) is false.
(D) (I) is false and (II) is true.
Ans: D
74. Assertion – I: A root is a type of morpheme which forms the kernel of a word and to which affixes may be joined to form derivations.
Assertion – II: A stem is a word that may not be further affixed to derive a new word.
Codes:
(A) I is true, but II is false.
(B) Both I and II are false.
(C) Both I and II are true.
(D) I is false, but II is true.
Ans: A
75. A synthetic language distinguished from agglutinative languages by its tendency to overlay many morphemes to denote grammatical, syntactic or semantic change is known as
(A) Isolating language
(B) Polysynthetic language
(C) Agglutinative language
(D) Fusional language
Ans: D
76. Choose the correct year of publication of the book ‘Logical Structure of Linguistic Theory’?
(A) 1975
(B) 1957
(C) 1965
(D) 1977
Ans: A
77. The hierarchy of number of languages recorded for the four dominant families of languages of South Asia is
(A) Tibeto Burman, Indo Aryan, Dravidian, Austro Asiatic
(B) Indo Aryan, Tibeto Burman, Dravidian, Austro Asiatic
(C) Dravidian, Indo Aryan, Tibeto Burman, Austro Asiatic
(D) Austro Asiatic, Indo Aryan,Tibeto Burman, Dravidian
Ans: A
78. The most widely spoken language of the North Dravidian group is
(A) Tamil
(B) Kurukh
(C) Malto
(D) Brahui
Ans: B
79. One South Asian language that has not been shown convincingly to be genetically related to any other language or language family is
(A) Burashaski
(B) Brahui
(C) Malto
(D) Kurukh
Ans: A
80. The complimentizer consistent with the implicational universal of SOV word order, follow the clause in all the Dravidian languages and Nepalese, Assamese and Sinhalese. However, in Kashmiri, Hindi-Urdu the complimentizer occurs,
(A) To the left of the subordinate clause.
(B) To the right of the subordinate clause.
(C) In between the subordinate clause.
(D) At the top of the subordinate clause.
Ans: A
81. Assertion I: Sound change is regular.
Assertion II: Sound change is purely phonetically conditioned.
Codes:
(A) Both (I) and (II) are true.
(B) Both (I) and (II) are false.
(C) (I) is true but (II) is false.
(D) (I) is false but (II) is true.
Ans: A
82. Assertion I: The comparative method is a set of techniques that permits us to recover linguistic constructs of earlier stages in a family of related languages.
Assertion II: The techniques involve comparison of cognate material from two or more related languages.
Codes:
(A) (I) is true but (II) is false.
(B) (I) is false but (II) is true.
(C) Both (I) and (II) are true.
(D) Both (I) and (II) are false.
Ans: C
83. A change in which one sound becomes more similar to another sound through the influence of a neighbouring or adjacent sound is known as
(A) Retroflexation
(B) Assibilation
(C) Assimilation
(D) Labialization
Ans: C
84. A wide variety of fusion of sound (phonological processes) across word boundaries and alteration of sounds due to the neighbouring sound or due to the grammatical function of adjacent word is known as
(A) Palatalization
(B) Sandhi
(C) Elision
(D) Lenition
Ans: B
85. Germanic consonant shift is also known as
(A) Grimm’s Law
(B) Grassmann’s Law
(C) Verner’s Law
(D) Fortunatov Law
Ans: A
86. Phonetic disintegration includes
(A) Phonemic paraphasia
(B) Agraphia
(C) Dyslexia
(D) Anomia
Ans: A
87. The concept of ‘Langue’ and ‘Parole’ is associated with
(A) Dell Hymes
(B) Edward Sapir
(C) Ferdinand De Saussare
(D) N. Chomsky
Ans: C
88. Dell Hymes introduced the term ‘Communicative Approach’ in the period of
(A) 1950s
(B) 1960s
(C) 1970s
(D) 1980s
Ans: B
89. ‘Drive into the par cark’ refers to
(A) Malapropisms
(B) Spoonerisms
(C) Stuttering
(D) Metathesis
Ans: B
90. Assertion I: The various strands of what we now call the qualitative approach have been visible within sociology since the 1920s.
Assertion II: Since the 1980s this approach has become prominent in the study of language.
Codes:
(A) Both (I) and (II) are true.
(B) (I) is true but (II) is false.
(C) Both (I) and (II) are false.
(D) (I) is false but (II) is true.
Ans: A
91. Match the items in the List – I with List – II and select the correct answer from the codes given below:
List – I List – II
a. Corpora i. Kwic format
b. Concordance ii. Words in a node
c. Span iii. Corpus undergone parsing
d. Tree bank iv. Transcribed speech
Codes:
a b c d
(A) iii i ii iv
(B) ii i iv iii
(C) i iii iv ii
(D) iv i ii iii
Ans: D
92. Assertion I: Pidgin which has acquired native users is a Creole.
Assertion II: A Creole is developed into a complex speech community.
Codes:
(A) Both (I) and (II) are true.
(B) (I) is true, (II) is false.
(C) Both (I) and (II) are false.
(D) (I) is false but (II) is true.
Ans: A
93. Arrange the following concepts of Piaget in a chronological order in which they appeared.
(A) Concrete operations, Intuitive thought, Pre-conceptual thought, sensory-motor intelligence.
(B) Sensory-motor intelligence, concrete operations, intuitive thought, pre-conceptual thought
(C) Sensory-motor intelligence, pre-conceptual thought, intuitive thought, concrete operations
(D) Pre-conceptual thought, intuitive thought, sensory motor intelligence, concrete operations
Ans: C
94. A term which refers to the distribution of linguistic variables in relation to the various levels is
(A) Standardization
(B) Stratification
(C) Substitution
(D) Satisfaction
95. William Labov’s ‘sociolinguistic patterns’ was published in the year
(A) 1952
(B) 1962
(C) 1972
(D) 1982
Ans: C
96. When a message describe a situation, an object or mental state, it is known as
(A) Referential function of language
(B) Conative function of language
(C) Emotive function of language
(D) Phatic function of language
Ans: A
97. The most familiar and most widely used primary medium is
(A) Sign language
(B) Speech
(C) Writing
(D) Finger spelling
Ans: B
98. ‘Design feature’ is a term coined by
(A) L. Bloomfield
(B) C. Hockett
(C) N. Chomsky
(D) Ferdinand De Saussure
Ans: B
99. Assertion I: Isoglosses are lines which show the distribution of linguistic features.
Assertion II: A bundle of isoglosses serves to mark the dialect boundary.
Codes:
(A) (I) is true, but (II) is false.
(B) Both (I) and (II) are false.
(C) (I) is false and (II) is true.
(D) Both (I) and (II) are true.
Ans: D
100. Of all the fundamental features of human language the feature which is also found in animal communication is
(A) Displacement
(B) Arbitrariness
(C) Duality of patterning
(D) Open-endedness
Ans: B
(A) L. Bloomfield
(B) H.A. Gleason
(C) C.F. Hockelt
(D) E. Sapir
Ans: A
52. Assertion – I: A foot is a rhythmical unit in speech consisting of one or more syllables.
Assertion – II: In foot one or more syllables are grouped together according to their stress pattern.
Codes:
(A) Both I and II are true.
(B) Both I and II are false.
(C) I is true and II is false.
(D) I is false but II is true.
Ans: A
53. In the English word ‘untruthful’ the morphemes
(A) Display a linear order and also a hierarchical structure.
(B) Display a linear order and does not display a hierarchical structure.
(C) Does not display a linear order but display a hierarchical structure.
(D) Display neither a linear order nor a hierarchical structure.
Ans: B
54. Match the items in List – I with those in List – II and choose the correct answer from the codes given below:
List – I List – II
a. Prosodic phonology i. A prince and P. Smolensky
b. Autosegmental phonology ii. J. Goldsmith
c. Generative phonology iii. J.R. Firth
d. Constraints based phonology iv. N. Chomsky and M. Halle
Codes:
a b c d
(A) i iii ii iv
(B) ii iv i iii
(C) iii ii iv i
(D) iv i iii ii
Ans: C
55. Assertion – I: NLP aims at devising techniques which will automatically analyse large quantities of spoken and written texts.
Assertion – II: The notion of parsing is very useful in NLP
Codes:
(A) Both I and II are true.
(B) Both I and II are false.
(C) I is true and II is false.
(D) I is false but II is true.
Ans: A
56. ‘Vernacular’ in William Labov’s model of sociolinguistics refers to
(A) The speech which is consciously monitored.
(B) A regional standard variety.
(C) The least self-conscious style of speech.
(D) A dialect which is substandard.
Ans: C
57. Assertion – I: Isoglosses are lines which show the distribution of linguistic features in a dialect atlas.
Assertion – II: Bundles of isoglosses serve to mark the dialect boundaries.
Codes:
(A) I is true, but II is false.
(B) Both I and II are false.
(C) I is false, but II is true.
(D) Both I and II are true.
Ans: D
58. Assertion – I: The cultural characteristics of a speech community are all preserved and transmitted by language.
Assertion – II: The cultural characteristics are not inherited through the genes.
Codes:
(A) Both I and II are true.
(B) I is true, but II is false.
(C) I is false, but II is true.
(D) Both I and II are false.
Ans: A
59. Assertion – I: The concept of ‘communicative competence’ is a contribution of Dell Hymes in sociolinguistics.
Assertion – II: It means ‘Linguistic competence’ plus knowledge of appropriate language use in different social situations.
Codes:
(A) I is true, but II is false.
(B) I is false, but II is true.
(C) Both I and II are false.
(D) Both I and II are true.
Ans: D
60. Assertion – I: The speakers of non-standard varieties are capable of complex, logical, symbolic and expressive speech.
Assertion – II: We tend to use the norms of the standard variety and normally label the nonstandard ones as ‘incorrect’ and ‘illogical’.
Codes:
(A) I is false but II is true.
(B) Both I and II are true.
(C) I is true but II is false.
(D) Both I and II are false.
Ans: B
61. Assertion – I: Acoustic phonetics studies the physical properties of speech sounds as transmitted from mouth to ear.
Assertion – II: Physiological phonetics studies the perceptual response to speech sounds.
Codes:
(A) Both I and II are true.
(B) Both I and II are false.
(C) I is true and II is false.
(D) I is false and II is true.
Ans: C
62. Assertion – I: A main clause is usually finite and is equivalent to a simple sentence.
Assertion – II: A subordinate clause may be finite or nonfinite and usually functions within other clauses or phrases.
Codes:
(A) Both I and II are true.
(B) I is false, but II is true.
(C) I is true, but II is false.
(D) Both I and II are false.
Ans: A
63. A sentence composed of a main clause and at least one subordinate clause is a
(A) Simple sentence
(B) Complex sentence
(C) Complement sentence
(D) Compound sentence
Ans: B
64. Assertion – I: An adverbial clause is a type of subordinate clause that functions as adverbial in sentences.
Assertion – II: An adverbial clause is usually introduced by a subordinating conjunction.
Codes:
(A) I is true but II is false.
(B) I is false but II is true.
(C) Both I and II are false.
(D) Both I and II are true.
Ans: D
65. The principle that linguistic rules are sensitive to constituent structure is known as
(A) Principle of categorical scope
(B) Principle of reference
(C) Principle of structure dependency of linguistic rules
(D) Principle of knowledge
Ans: C
66. Lexical information is syntactically represented by
(A) Extended projection principle
(B) Projection principle
(C) Theta criterion
(D) Argument structure
Ans: B
67. “When an immediately higher subject differs in persons from a lower subject, long distance antecedents are blocked” is called as
(A) M. Command
(B) ECP
(C) Parasitic gap
(D) Blocking effects
Ans: D
68. A linguistic area indicates
(A) Share linguistic features within a language family.
(B) Geographical boundaries of a language family.
(C) Shared linguistic features across language family.
(D) Linguistic features separating language families.
Ans: C
69. Assertion – I: Intra-language and inter-language switching are sociolinguistic universals.
Assertion – II: Code-switching is context-governed.
Codes:
(A) I is true, but II is false.
(B) Both I and II are true.
(C) I is false, but II is true.
(D) Both I and II are false.
Ans: B
70. Stylistics is the study of interpretation of texts from a linguistic perspective as a discipline it links
(A) Literary criticism and linguistics
(B) Phonology and morphology
(C) Morphology and syntax
(D) Literary criticism and translation
Ans: A
71. In the English word ‘uneasiness’ there are _________ morphemes.
(A) two
(B) Three
(C) four
(D) five
Ans: C
72. The process by which humans acquire the capacity to perceive and comprehend language, as well as to produce and use words and sentences to communicate is known as
(A) Language Acquisition
(B) Language Learning
(C) Language Perception
(D) Language Reception
Ans: A
73. Assertion – I: Both external and internal Sandhi rules operate within words.
Assertion – II: External Sandhi rules operate across word boundaries and internal Sandhi rules operate within words.
Codes:
(A) Both I and II are true.
(B) Both (I) and (II) are false.
(C) (I) is true and (II) is false.
(D) (I) is false and (II) is true.
Ans: D
74. Assertion – I: A root is a type of morpheme which forms the kernel of a word and to which affixes may be joined to form derivations.
Assertion – II: A stem is a word that may not be further affixed to derive a new word.
Codes:
(A) I is true, but II is false.
(B) Both I and II are false.
(C) Both I and II are true.
(D) I is false, but II is true.
Ans: A
75. A synthetic language distinguished from agglutinative languages by its tendency to overlay many morphemes to denote grammatical, syntactic or semantic change is known as
(A) Isolating language
(B) Polysynthetic language
(C) Agglutinative language
(D) Fusional language
Ans: D
76. Choose the correct year of publication of the book ‘Logical Structure of Linguistic Theory’?
(A) 1975
(B) 1957
(C) 1965
(D) 1977
Ans: A
77. The hierarchy of number of languages recorded for the four dominant families of languages of South Asia is
(A) Tibeto Burman, Indo Aryan, Dravidian, Austro Asiatic
(B) Indo Aryan, Tibeto Burman, Dravidian, Austro Asiatic
(C) Dravidian, Indo Aryan, Tibeto Burman, Austro Asiatic
(D) Austro Asiatic, Indo Aryan,Tibeto Burman, Dravidian
Ans: A
78. The most widely spoken language of the North Dravidian group is
(A) Tamil
(B) Kurukh
(C) Malto
(D) Brahui
Ans: B
79. One South Asian language that has not been shown convincingly to be genetically related to any other language or language family is
(A) Burashaski
(B) Brahui
(C) Malto
(D) Kurukh
Ans: A
80. The complimentizer consistent with the implicational universal of SOV word order, follow the clause in all the Dravidian languages and Nepalese, Assamese and Sinhalese. However, in Kashmiri, Hindi-Urdu the complimentizer occurs,
(A) To the left of the subordinate clause.
(B) To the right of the subordinate clause.
(C) In between the subordinate clause.
(D) At the top of the subordinate clause.
Ans: A
81. Assertion I: Sound change is regular.
Assertion II: Sound change is purely phonetically conditioned.
Codes:
(A) Both (I) and (II) are true.
(B) Both (I) and (II) are false.
(C) (I) is true but (II) is false.
(D) (I) is false but (II) is true.
Ans: A
82. Assertion I: The comparative method is a set of techniques that permits us to recover linguistic constructs of earlier stages in a family of related languages.
Assertion II: The techniques involve comparison of cognate material from two or more related languages.
Codes:
(A) (I) is true but (II) is false.
(B) (I) is false but (II) is true.
(C) Both (I) and (II) are true.
(D) Both (I) and (II) are false.
Ans: C
83. A change in which one sound becomes more similar to another sound through the influence of a neighbouring or adjacent sound is known as
(A) Retroflexation
(B) Assibilation
(C) Assimilation
(D) Labialization
Ans: C
84. A wide variety of fusion of sound (phonological processes) across word boundaries and alteration of sounds due to the neighbouring sound or due to the grammatical function of adjacent word is known as
(A) Palatalization
(B) Sandhi
(C) Elision
(D) Lenition
Ans: B
85. Germanic consonant shift is also known as
(A) Grimm’s Law
(B) Grassmann’s Law
(C) Verner’s Law
(D) Fortunatov Law
Ans: A
86. Phonetic disintegration includes
(A) Phonemic paraphasia
(B) Agraphia
(C) Dyslexia
(D) Anomia
Ans: A
87. The concept of ‘Langue’ and ‘Parole’ is associated with
(A) Dell Hymes
(B) Edward Sapir
(C) Ferdinand De Saussare
(D) N. Chomsky
Ans: C
88. Dell Hymes introduced the term ‘Communicative Approach’ in the period of
(A) 1950s
(B) 1960s
(C) 1970s
(D) 1980s
Ans: B
89. ‘Drive into the par cark’ refers to
(A) Malapropisms
(B) Spoonerisms
(C) Stuttering
(D) Metathesis
Ans: B
90. Assertion I: The various strands of what we now call the qualitative approach have been visible within sociology since the 1920s.
Assertion II: Since the 1980s this approach has become prominent in the study of language.
Codes:
(A) Both (I) and (II) are true.
(B) (I) is true but (II) is false.
(C) Both (I) and (II) are false.
(D) (I) is false but (II) is true.
Ans: A
91. Match the items in the List – I with List – II and select the correct answer from the codes given below:
List – I List – II
a. Corpora i. Kwic format
b. Concordance ii. Words in a node
c. Span iii. Corpus undergone parsing
d. Tree bank iv. Transcribed speech
Codes:
a b c d
(A) iii i ii iv
(B) ii i iv iii
(C) i iii iv ii
(D) iv i ii iii
Ans: D
92. Assertion I: Pidgin which has acquired native users is a Creole.
Assertion II: A Creole is developed into a complex speech community.
Codes:
(A) Both (I) and (II) are true.
(B) (I) is true, (II) is false.
(C) Both (I) and (II) are false.
(D) (I) is false but (II) is true.
Ans: A
93. Arrange the following concepts of Piaget in a chronological order in which they appeared.
(A) Concrete operations, Intuitive thought, Pre-conceptual thought, sensory-motor intelligence.
(B) Sensory-motor intelligence, concrete operations, intuitive thought, pre-conceptual thought
(C) Sensory-motor intelligence, pre-conceptual thought, intuitive thought, concrete operations
(D) Pre-conceptual thought, intuitive thought, sensory motor intelligence, concrete operations
Ans: C
94. A term which refers to the distribution of linguistic variables in relation to the various levels is
(A) Standardization
(B) Stratification
(C) Substitution
(D) Satisfaction
95. William Labov’s ‘sociolinguistic patterns’ was published in the year
(A) 1952
(B) 1962
(C) 1972
(D) 1982
Ans: C
96. When a message describe a situation, an object or mental state, it is known as
(A) Referential function of language
(B) Conative function of language
(C) Emotive function of language
(D) Phatic function of language
Ans: A
97. The most familiar and most widely used primary medium is
(A) Sign language
(B) Speech
(C) Writing
(D) Finger spelling
Ans: B
98. ‘Design feature’ is a term coined by
(A) L. Bloomfield
(B) C. Hockett
(C) N. Chomsky
(D) Ferdinand De Saussure
Ans: B
99. Assertion I: Isoglosses are lines which show the distribution of linguistic features.
Assertion II: A bundle of isoglosses serves to mark the dialect boundary.
Codes:
(A) (I) is true, but (II) is false.
(B) Both (I) and (II) are false.
(C) (I) is false and (II) is true.
(D) Both (I) and (II) are true.
Ans: D
100. Of all the fundamental features of human language the feature which is also found in animal communication is
(A) Displacement
(B) Arbitrariness
(C) Duality of patterning
(D) Open-endedness
Ans: B