Midterm #3 will cover, from the textbook, Chapters 8 and 10, as well as the part of Ch. 3 on neologisms that formed part of the basis for doing your Word Journal assignment (the word formation types), which you should now recognize easily when given clear examples of them.
It will also cover class discussions and web pages linked on the course schedule. It focuses on these topics: genetic relationships of languages, the Indo-European language family, and Proto-Indo-European vocabulary and what it reveals about Indo-European culture; a little on languages that are NOT Indo-European; and language variation and varieties of English, including slang, jargon, and varieties associated with particular groups like gamers and college students.
Questions in the midterm will assume knowledge of concepts introduced in the previous chapters, and will include some loanword language identification and parsing of words introduced or discussed in class and quizzes.
Genetic relationship, Indo-European language family, the Indo-Europeans
genetic relationship related languages vs. languages affected by culture contact (and therefore borrowing) language family family tree metaphor parent language, mother language, ancestor language sister language daughter language dialects language breakup (due to loss of contact + different changes in different places) Grimm's law sound change reasons for persistence of evidence of relationship: regularity of sound change resistance to change of basic vocabulary Indo-European Proto-Indo-European Germanic North Germanic East Germanic West Germanic Celtic Welsh Scots Gaelic, Irish Gaelic Italic / Romance Hellenic (Greek) Baltic Slavic Armenian Albanian Indo-Iranian Tocharian Hittite language (Anatolian family) Sanskrit Hindi Finnish Hungarian Estonian Basque 4 language families of Africa 3 language families of the Americas The Indo-Europeans reconstruction of words reconstruction of aspects of culture
Language Variation and Language in Society
prescriptivism descriptivism standardization and education standard, nonstandard formality formal, informal varieties contractions orthography; sound vs. spelling spoken vs. written language taboo euphemism jargon (words used by a professional or interest group) slang, characteristics of slang in-group vs. outgroup language as a marker of a group shibbolethsNeologisms
neologism derivation zero-derivation affixation compounds, compounding: phrasal compounds, rhyming compounds blends, blending acronyms clipping, clippings folk etymology reanalysis analogy novel creation sound symbolism/onomotopeia
Parsing
Review the Parsing page. Words from quizzes on elements 9-11 are given on the updated parsing page and the listed words are the ones from which the words in the parsing problems on Midterm 3 will be taken.
gloss transparent opaque
© 2008
Suzanne Kemmer
Last modified 3 Dec 08