General Awareness: Basic Linguistics Quiz

1. Firstly, to which of these language groups does English belong?

a) Baltic
b) Romance
c) Germanic
d) Slavonic

The correct answer is c) Germanic

2. In the sentence 'I took my big brown cat to the vet yesterday', which of the following does not appear?

a) Adjective
b) Preposition
c) Adverb
d) Conjunction

The correct answer is d) Conjunction

3. True or false: English has no inflections for grammatical case.

a) True
b) False

The correct answer is b) False

4. What is defined as 'the study of sentence structure'?

a) Morphology
b) Semantics
c) Phonology
d) Syntax

The correct answer is d) Syntax

5. Three of these languages do not have definite articles. Which one does have a structure that serves the purpose of a definite article?

a) Russian
b) Finnish
c) Latin
d) Swedish

The correct answer is d) Swedish

6. In dialectology, what is the line on a map called which divides areas with different forms of a word?

a) Isobar
b) Isogloss--
c) Isotherm
d) Isomer

The correct answer is b) Isogloss

7. The sounds of a language change over time. English spelling does not always reflect this change: how was the 'gh' in 'night' originally pronounced?

a) Like German 'ch' in 'ich', but voiced
b) Like English 'ch' in 'church'
c) Like English 'y' in 'yellow'
d) Like German 'ch' in 'ich'

The correct answer is d) Like German 'ch' in 'ich'

8. Which of these words describes the changing of the form of a verb in order to reflect person, number, tense and mood?

a) Declension
b) Inversion
c) Subordination
d) Conjugation

The correct answer is d) Conjugation

9. The combination of sounds 'ms-' is not acceptable as the beginning of a word or syllable in English. In which of these languages is it acceptable?

a) Dutch
b) French
c) Russian
d) Finnish

The correct answer is c) Russian

10. And finally... Old Norse is almost the same as which modern Scandinavian language?

a) Danish
b) Norwegian
c) Icelandic
d) Swedish

The correct answer is c) Icelandic