Choose the best answer to complete each statement.

1. The system of social rules that a speaker knows about using language is
(A) grammar
(B) morphology
(C) orthography
(D) pragmatics

Answer: (D). This question involves your understanding basic terms in our course. Remember our address exercise ("Mr. McGowan") applied this term.

2. The smallest distinctive sound units of a language are its
(A) words
(B) affixes
(C) phonemes
(D) morphemes

Answer: (C). The proper use of these four terms continued throughout our course.

3. The OED represents the pronunciation of state as [stet],
(A) an exclusively British pronunciation
(B) using IPA symbols
(C) using inflections
(D) using the usual spelling of the word

Answer: (B). We've worked with the different pronunciation symbols of dictionaries, including continued use of International Phonetic Alphabet symbols. Although British English and American English have differences; pronunciation of state is not one of them.

4. To represent linguistic information about a word concisely and professionally in our course, we would type
(A) "state" a condition or political entity
(B) state /stet/ 'condition, political entity' 
(C) STATE [stAt] "political entity, condition"
(D) st*ate /st

Answer: (B). The word /IPA symbols/ 'meaning' arrangement has been a writing convention in our text community.

5. Comparative linguists propose a common ancestor language for English, Latin, Greek, Persian, Celtic, Russian, Sanskrit, and some other European and Asian languages called
(A) Swahili
(B) Indo-European
(C) Germanic
(D) Old Teutonic

Answer: (B). The Indo-European hypothesis and the AHD showing IE roots have been part of our historical study.

6. English is part of 
(A) the Celtic family
(B) the Latin family
(C) the Germanic family
(D) the Hellenic family

Answer: (C). While English has borrowed words from languages in the other families listed, its basic development if from the Germanic family. 

7. Germanic verbs differ from other verbs in other Indo-Euorpean family languages by having 
(A) no past tense
(B) past tense forms using the dental suffix
(C) stress on various syllables
(D) no inflections

Answer: (B). Germanic languages have "weak" verb forms that use the dental suffix to signal "past." The other answers contradict points in our study. The seven differences that distinguish Germanic were a course topic; a handout gives examples of these, and you should be able to recognize them 

8. Old English sounds
(A) are exactly the same as Modern English 
(B) include /y:/ and /y/, pronunciations of rounded high front vowels, which don't occur in ModE 
(C) are completely different from ModE sounds 
(D) were not represented by an writing system 

Answer: (B). We pronounced these different vowels in cyning and yfel. Remember McGowan has given an oversimplified rule to associate the OE spelling with the IPA vowel symbol it resembles.

9. The Old English dialect associated with Alfred the Great, used as a literary standard throughout England during the tenth century, and appearing in most extant Anglo-Saxon manuscripts was 
(A) Northumbrian 
(B) Kentish 
(C) West Saxon 
(D) Mercian

Answer: (C). The forms we study are from late West Saxon, the language of Wessex which had developed as a prestige written form, a standard.

10. The noun case form for an indirect object in Old English is
(A) nominatinve
(B) genitive
(C) accusative
(D) dative

Answer: (D). We learned these basic case terms.

11. The OE sentence Hine ic lufode contains two pronoun forms: "ic" and "hine." The object in this sentence is 
(A) hine
(B) ic
(C) lufode 
(D) -ode

Answer: (A). A direct object is in the accusative case. Using the item arrangement grammar, you would find an accusative form. Answers (C) and (D) refer to verbs.

12. The sentence in Question 11 means
(A) He loved me.
(B) I love him.
(C) He loves me.
(D) I loved him.

Answer: (D). Ic 'I' is subject, and hine 'him' is object. The verb lufode has the dental suffix to signal 'past tense.'

13. In OE, cyning 'king' is an a-stem strong masculine noun; cwen 'queen' and glof 'glove' are strong feminine long-stem nouns. To say, "Kings give wise queens gloves," an Old English scribe writes
(A) Cyningas gifeþ cwene glofe.
(B) Cyningas gifeþ wisan cwena glofa.
(C) Cyningas gifaþ wisan cwena glofa.
(D) Cyningas gifaþ wisum cwenum glofa.

Answer: (D). This sentence is the only one that has nouns with correct case and number inflections, a third person plural verb, and a strong adjective for 'wise.' In this kind of question, you'll have a copy of the grammar sheet available. All the other sentences are ungrammatical in at least one way.

14. For two kings to tell another person, that they love him, the kings would write
(A) Ic lufie þe.
(B) We lufiaþ þu.
(C) Wit lufiaþ unc.
(D) Wit lufiaþ þe.

Answer: (D). This answer has a dual first person subject pronoun (the two kings are talking about themselves), the correct subject-verb agreement (a plural inflection -aþ present-tense verb), and a singular second-person object (the kings speak to one person).

15. The accusative singular form of biscop, an a-stem strong masculine noun is
(A) biscop
(B) biscope
(C) biscopas
(D) biscopum

Answer: (A). The item-arrangment grammar shows you no ending in nominative and accusative singular for this declension.

16. During the latter half of the fourteenth century, Chaucer wrote The Canterbury Tales
(A) in Old English
(B) in Middle English
(C) in Present Day English
(D) in IPA symbols

Answer: (B). Our historical study included dating of major periods of English language history.

17. The AHD gives the following etymological information about raven: Middle English, from OE hræfn. Raven is 
(A) a native word
(B) borrowed from Old Norse
(C) borrowed from Latin
(D) a translation loan

Answer: (A). The dictionary shows an OE form that developed into our PDE word. There is no evidence of borrowing in the etymological entry.

18. The OE word in Question 17 was pronounced
(A) /re:vIn/
(B) /ry:vIn/
(C) /hrævn/
(D) /hro:vn/

Answer: (C). The vowel's IPA symbol resembles the OE graph <æ>, and the pronunciation includes all the consonants written. McGowan's rules for transcribing OE words is to pronounce all consonants and use the IPA symbol like the OE graph. You can quickly eliminate the wrong pronunciations here. The sound [v] is the OE allophone of the labiodental phoneme /F/ between two voiced sounds.

19. From Old Norse, Old English borrowed
(A) the "th"-forms of the third person plural pronouns and some common vocabularly, such as awkward and husband
(B) religious words of Christianity, such as altar and Bible
(C) hardly any words, mostly placenames
(D) words of the Italic family

Answer: (A). (B) describes some of the borrowing from Latin, and (C), the very small borrowing of Celtic words from the Britons. ON is a Germanic language, like OE; in fact, linguists suggests that Viking settlers and Anglo-Saxons could talk to one another. It isn't an Italic family member. The borrowing of pronoun forms from ON is an unusual instance of English borrowing a basic function word from another language.

20. To efficiently search for an Old English word for a religious concept that later was replaced by a Latin or Old French borrowing, a student might use
(A) Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionaryheadword search
(B) American Heritage Dictionary IE roots
(C) a special search in the on-line OED using the later word in the definitions slot and "OE" in the etymologies slot
(D) a full-text search of the OED for the phrase "obsolete Old English"

Answer: (C). McGowan did this kind of search in class for OE words meaning "Trinity" and "baptize." (A) and (B) would not list the Old English words because they are Modern English dictionaries. (D) wouldn't find any hits because this word combination occurs nowhere in the OED.