Words in English public website
Ling/Engl 215 course information
Rice University
Prof. S. Kemmer

Study Guide: Midterm #3 Review

Fall 2008

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
shibboleths

Neologisms

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

(unknown)