Test #2 Tips
Please send any questions about this page to Colin Phillips
(colin@udel.edu) or Ted Eastwick (tbear@udel.edu).
Scope of the Test
The test will cover material covered in the class lectures,
discussion sections, readings and homework assignments since the
beginning of the semester, with the main emphasis on Morphology,
Syntax and Semantics. Below is a list of some of the most
important topics and concepts covered so far. You can use this as a
check-list to see if you are prepared for the test. Note: this
list is not exhaustive, but it does cover most of the key areas.
The test is worth 10% of the course grade. The test can be
completed in the 50 minute class period, but you will be allowed 1
hour to finish it. There will be no make-up tests. Let us
repeat this, in case you didn't catch it the first time -
there will be no make-up
tests.
Format
Examples of the kinds of questions that may be asked include:
- questions requiring analysis of unfamiliar language data
(applying methods already practiced)
- multiple-choice or true-false questions
- questions requiring brief written explanations or
diagrams
- short answer questions
Content of the test [posted
11/11/98]. There is a maximum of 55 points
available on the test, but your score will be out of 50; in
other words, it is possible to lose points and still get full credit,
or to get above 100%. True/false (4 points), phonetics/phonology (2
questions, 10 points total); morphology (3 questions: 17 points
total, includes questions on English and unfamiliar languages);
syntax (4 questions, 18 points total, includes tree drawing in
English and an unfamilar language, ambiguity, arguments vs.
modifiers); semantics (1 question, 6 points total).
Remember that we can only give you credit for answering the
questions that we ask. So answer the question that is asked, and
not some other question. Good efforts and near misses can also
receive credit. But answers to phantom questions cannot!
Resources
Some Examples of Useful Study Activities
To succeed in this, as in many other areas, you do not need
to just work hard and feel that you have suffered and therefore must
benefit. Rather you must study intelligently: if you use a
small amount of time effectively you can benefit much more than if
you study for a long while ineffectively. If you don't believe this:
try it, and you'll be surprised; if you do believe it, then remember
to practice what you believe! In order to learn effectively, you must
study actively. Some ways of doing this...
- Before reviewing your notes (or after a quick 2-minute scan),
try to create for yourself on a sheet of paper a table or
diagram of the main points and concepts in that area. As yourself
what the best evidence for these points is.
- Using the list of topics below, scribble down for yourself
what you already know about these topics. As you write down one
thing, does this start to bring other things to mind? If you can
remember a little about some topic, but are not sure about a
particular aspect of this, write down questions for
yourself to look up, before going to the notes/textbook.
- Imagine that you have to explain about syntax (or semantics,
or whatever) to another student who has missed a number of classes
due to sickness ... how would you go about explaining this area?
What examples would you use to support your points?
- Look in the textbook at an exercise that we did not
already cover, and see if you can answer it.
- Imagine that you are constructing this test yourself
(and that you are not intent on evilly creating trick questions):
ask yourself what kinds of questions you would ask. Could you
answer these questions?
- Take advantage of the on-line lecture notes and the study
notes prepared by Prof. William Idsardi and Tom Purnell (see the
'Study Notes' link above).
Remember also, that the instructor and TA can help, too: come to
office hours, send email or arrange an appointment.
Some Not Particularly Useful Study Activities
- Reading the textbook or your notes straight through from
beginning to end, passively. Just because this is unpleasant, it
does not mean that it is good for you!
- Anything else which will lead you to be sitting staring
blankly at writing as your eyes droop uncontrollably. If your
studying is getting like this, then you're wasting your time!
- Blindly committing lists of facts to memory. This is not
medical school!
A Note on Pinker's Book
Steven Pinker's book "The Language Instinct" contains a lively
overview of many of the topics that have been covered in class. In
doing so, Pinker provides hundreds of illustrative examples. A number
of people have mentioned that they are worried that they cannot
memorize all that is in Pinker. -- You are not expected to commit
the Pinker readings to memory, but you are expected to have read and
understood the assigned chapters enough to answer multiple-choice
questions, and to answer short essay questions about topics that he
discusses (e.g. why he views language as an instinct; prescriptive
and descriptive grammar).
Check-list of Topics (this is a VERY incomplete
list; use it as a rough guide of the topics we've covered since the
last test)
Note: we recommend that you focus
your studying on the material that we have covered in class and in
homework exercises. You should give this priority over the material
in Fromkin & Rodman's textbook. You do not need to read Fromkin
& Rodman's semantics chapter.
Morphology
- Morphemes: the basic units of meaning
- Structure of the Mental Dictionary: what it contains and how
it is organized
- Evidence for the structure of the mental dictionary
- Morphological rules: how morphemes are combined
- Productivity: some morphemes are more productive than
others
- Predictability: what can you predict about a word based on its
morphemes?
- Allomorphs: the different forms of morphemes and the rules
which govern them
Syntax
- Linguistic creativity: how many sentences can you
produce?
- Syntax vs. meaning
- Rules for building a basic grammar in English, and what these
rules have to say about grammaticality
- Extending phrase structure rules (Modifiers and
Recursion)
- Argument structure: Modifiers vs. Arguments (necessary and
unnecessary parts of a verb phrase and the structure associated
with them)
- Evidence for recursion: VP and N deletion
- Ambiguity: How can diffeerences in meaning be explained by
different syntactic structures?
- Word order differences in the world's languages: how are they
reflected in the syntax?
- Transformational Grammar (Movement): other word order
patterns, question formation, auxiliary movement
Semantics
- Language and Thought: Linguistic Determinism, The Sapir-Whorf
Hypothesis
- The Great Eskimo Vocabulary Hoax: Does our language determine
our thoughts?
- Evidence that thought (or perception) is independant from
language: color terms across languages
- Evidence that language reflects thought: representation of
space through langauge
- Learning word meanings and the syntactic possibilities of
verbs
Topics covered before Test 1
- Languages of the World
- Language as an instinct
- Phonetics
- Phonology
Practice
Here are some other topics that you may wish to review; Fromkin
and Rodman contains some relevant exercises that we did not cover in
class or on homeworks:
- Drawing trees freehand (you won't have the TREES Program to
use in the test!!)
- Drawing trees for ambiguous sentences. Remember to check your
structures to make sure that they match up with the meaning you
are trying to diagram.
- Using the "do-so" test to determine the argument structure for
a verb
- Morphological problem sets
Tree pieces that we have used
Here is a partial list of the tree structures that we have used so
far for English. You may find more tree pieces in the lecture notes
or the homeworks:
- S --> NP VP (basic sentence rule)
- S --> S' VP (complex subject: "That John went to
school surprised them.")
- S --> NP Aux VP
- S' --> that S
- NP --> N
- NP --> Det N
- NP --> NP PP (NP modifier rule)
- N --> AdjP N (N modifer rule)
- N --> N and N (N conjunction rule)
- VP --> V (intransitive verb [1 argument]:
"sleep")
- VP --> V NP (transitive verb [2 arguments]:
"hit")
- VP --> V NP PP (ditransitive verb [3 arguments]:
"put")
- VP --> VP PP (VP modifier rule)
- VP --> Adv VP
- VP --> VP Adv
- PP --> P NP
- AdjP --> Adj
- AdjP --> Adv AdjP (AdjP modifier rule)
Last updated by Ted Eastwick on
10/4/98
Here
are some practice exercises for Morphology
and Syntax&Semantics.