Answer The Following Questions: What Is Linguistics?

Tripoli University: English department
Illustrative Questions for LINGUISTICS final exam

T. Naima Ali--- 2020
1. Answer the following questions
1. What is Linguistics?
a. Linguistics is concerned with human languages as a universal
and recognizable part of the human behavior and of the human
faculties perhaps one of the most important to human.
b. Linguistics basically deals with the characteristics of languages
in general regardless of the characteristics of a particular
language.
c. Linguistics comes out with the ways of contrasting two
languages at different levels and put forward the similarities
and dissimilates between them that help in understanding the
general nature of these languages.
d. It can be said that linguistics is a very comprehensive, very
analytical and ever growing field of knowledge that intends to
explain the details of langu7age in total.
2. What is the differences between Standard English and dialect? And why
standard English to be more favorable than dialect?
Dialects are different, understandable and familiar lexical and grammatical aspects of
the same language. Speakers of one dialect can understand speakers of another dialect.
Any lives language has dialects.
Standard English also a dialect. The difference between standard English and other
dialects of English is that the latter are regional whereas the former is national and
neutral among other dialects, and is now the international standard dialect of English.
Therefore, it is considered more favourable than regional dialects. Standard English
is described as good, acceptable English, while others regional dialects are generally
not favoured. It is also known as the Queen's English and BBC English .
3. What is the differences between language and A language?

When we talk about the medium of communication of the whole human race, it is
'language' in general, that is universal phenomenon of human society. On the other
hand, when we talk about the medium of communication of a particular society which
has the one language, we are surely talking about 'a language'. To clarify it further,
the term 'language' is used to indicate that common linguistic characteristic of human
being which it possesses as a member of human race, whereas the term 'a language' is
Naima Swueee Ali

Department of translation 2020
used to indicate that common linguistic characteristic of human being which it

possesses as a member of a particular social group. Thus 'language' is specific to
human race, whereas 'A language' is specific to a particular society of human race. As
a member of human race we acquire ' language' but as a member of a particular society
we acquire ' a language' that is specific to this society only, such as , Arabic is a
language specific to Arab society.
4. What are the main functions of language?
a) The transactional function, which is used to communicate facts
throughout society.
b) The social function, which is used for social survival. That is to say,
the language used for social chat.
c) The literary function which is related to the highly specialized
language used for imaginative creation
5. True and false statement

The following statements will appear in the exam in a form of true or false.
Please note that all of them are correct. However, it will appear in the exam
with slight change.
a. In the early 20th century, linguistics expanded to include the study of unwritten
languages
b. Language is a purely human and non-intensive method of communicating ideas,
emotion and desires by means of a system of voluntarily produced symbols.
Saper ( 1921).
c. Language is a system based on pure or arbitrary conventions.. Robins (1985The
main concern of modern linguistics is to describe language, to study its nature
and to establish a theory of language.
d. The spoken and the written form of language treated objectively in the course
of study brings linguistics close to natural science, whereas the part of
linguistics that deals with derivation of meaning from spoken and written forms
leads it close to social sciences.
e. Linguistics starts with the descriptive of the smallest units of language that are
sounds (phonic) and letters (graphic), and it goes up to the level of discourse
analysis.
f. Language has a hierarchical structure, what does that mean?
Naima Swueee Ali

This means that it is made up of units which are themselves made up of smaller
units which are made of still smaller
g. Saussure made a distinction between two aspects of language: langue and parole
h. Langue is social, a set of conventions shared by all the speakers of a language.
i. Langue is abstract, as these particular conventions exist in the minds of the
speakers who belong to that society that has created the language.
j. Parole, on the other hand, belongs to the individual. When those conventions
that exist in the mind as langue are used in a tangible form in real speech or
writing, they become example of parole. Parole is the real sound and sentences
produced by an individual speaker or writer.
k. Competence, according to Chomsky, is the native speakers' knowledge of his
language, the mastery of the system of rules, while performance is the production
of actual sentences in use in real –life situation.
l. Computational linguistics is the study which involves the use of computers to
develop and test models of language processing.
m. Historical linguistics is the study of language over time.
n. A LANGUAGE is a set of sentences, each finite in length and constructed out of
a finite set of elements. Noam Chomsky ( 1957).
6. Sentence completion
1. Branches of linguistics:
a. Theoretical linguistic
b. Descriptive linguistics
c. Applied linguistics
d. Comparative linguistics
e. Historical linguistics
f. Computational linguistics
g. Sociolinguistics
h. Psycholinguistics
i. Philosophical linguistics
2. Characteristics of languages:
a. Language is a means of communication
b. Language is arbitrary
c. Language is a system of systems
d. Language is a form of social behavior
e. Language is conventional and non-instinctive
f. Language is unique, creative, complex and modifiable
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g. Productivity
h. Displacement
i. Language is human and structurally complex.
3. Functions of Language:
a. The transactional function, which is used to communicate facts
throughout society.
b. The social function, which is used for social survival. That is to say, the
language used for social chat.
c. The literary function which is related to the highly specialized language
used for imaginative creation.
4. levels of linguistics analysis
1. Levels of analysis 2. levels of structure
a. Phonetics and phonology a. Sound
b. Morphology b. Word formation
c. Syntax c. Sentence formation
d. Semantics d. Meaning
e. Discourse e. Connected sentences
Naima Swueee Ali


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Tripoli University: English department

Illustrative Questions for LINGUISTICS final exam

1. Answer the following questions

3. What is the differences between language and A language?

Naima Swueee Ali

used to indicate that common linguistic characteristic of human being which it

5. True and false statement

Naima Swueee Ali

Naima Swueee Ali

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