Linguistics 203 - Languages of the World Language Study Guide

This exam may consist of anything discussed on or after October 20. Be sure to check out the slides on the class webpage for this date onward, as well as the syntax/morphology language notes.

This guide discusses the aspects of specific languages we looked at, and you will want to look at the notes of specific languages in the ‘language notes: syntax/morphology’ section of the webpage for examples and basic explanations. This guide does not discuss the linguistic topics we discussed in a more general sense (i.e. where we didn’t focus on a specific language), but you are expected to understand these area as well. On the webpage, these areas are found in the ‘lecture notes/slides’ section.

As you study, keep in mind that there are a number of ways I might pose a question to test your knowledge. If you understand the concept, you should be able to answer any of them. These include:

 Definitional If a language is considered an ergative-absolutive language, what does this mean?

 Contrastive (definitional) Explain how an ergative-absolutive language differs from a nominative- accusative language.

 Identificational (which may include a definitional question as well...) Looking at the example below, identify whether language A is an ergative- absolutive language or a nominative accusative language. How do you know?

(example)

 Contrastive (identificational) Below are examples from two different languages. In terms of case marking, how is language A different from language B?

(ex. of ergative-absolutive language) (ex. of nominative-accusative language)

 True / False question T F Basque is an ergative-absolutive language.

Linguistics 203 - Languages of the World Language Study Guide

For all languages discussed in this half of the course, you should know its name, the language family it belongs to (unless not listed in the online notes), and what makes it interesting (i.e. be able to connect the stuff below to the language).

Arabic  Roots (what do they consist of, how are they used to form words, how are templates used with roots)  There is no need to memorize specific templates, but you should understand how they work, and how they are associated with meaning/function.

Basque  ergative-absolutive language  allocutive agreement  both subject-verb and object-verb agreement

Czech  prefixes, suffixes on verbs marking perfective vs. imperfective aspect

Dyirbal (and other Australian languages)  mother-in-law language (for ‘taboo’ relatives)  noun class distinction (how are the categories defined? what else influences what class a noun might belong to?)  what is the cultural/political importance of languages and language ‘ownership’ in northern Australian aboriginal societies?

Finnish  large case system  accusative vs. partitive case

German (the topics for German are not really German-specific...)  case (nominative, accusative, genitive, dative)  agreement (subject-verb, noun phrase agreement)

Korean  wh-in-situ language (cf. English, Malay)  categorization of familial terms, which may depend on: speaker gender, parent gender, gender of person referred to, relative age, formality, etc. (no need to memorize any specific forms)  subject honorification  large number of speech levels (could be viewed as ‘addressee honorification’) (no need to memorize them)

Linguistics 203 - Languages of the World Language Study Guide

Malay  head-initial language  classifiers  lack of tense marking on the verb (how do they discuss past, future?)  possible locations of wh-words (cf. English, Korean)

Mohawk  marks dual number (in addition to singular, plural)  inclusive vs. exclusive distinction  polysynthetic language  object incorporation (object may appear separate from verb, or it may attach to verb)

Swahili  noun classes (how does this differ from gender?)  both subject-verb and object-verb agreement

Tok Pisin  started as a pidgin, became a creole (also, why did the pidgin form?)  lingua franca in the region, a national language in Papua New Guinea  marks dual and trial numbers on pronouns  inclusive vs. exclusive distinction  vocabulary is English based  in some ways simplified from English (e.g. sound system), in other ways just different (e.g. marking tense and aspect)