Sociolinguistics

Vitality, the second of Bell’s seven criteria, refers to_

• the historical reconstruction of a language’s proto-forms

• the sustained intergenerational transmission and active use of a language within a speech community

• the codification of a language’s grammar and orthography

• the socio-political status a language enjoys within a nation

• Haugen (1966) highlights that the distinction between language and dialect is not purely linguistic but also involves sociopolitical and prestige factors.

• TRUE

• FALSE

___________denotes the phenomenon whereby a community anchors its collective identity in the continued use of a specific language, perceiving it as an intrinsic marker of group membership.

When a variety is classified under Reduction in Bell’s criteria, it implies ____

• that it is undergoing rapid attrition in speaker numbers

• The economic factors behind language shift

• a derivative or non-autonomous form rather than an independent language

• that its orthography has been streamlined for literacy campaigns

In State X, the constitution remains silent on matters of official language policy. Nonetheless, Language A overwhelmingly dominates government administration, higher education, mass media, and interregional communication, functioning as the unmarked linguistic norm. This scenario exemplifies:

• Heritage

• De facto

• Auxiliary lingua franca

• De jure

Despite political borders and separate standardized grammars, two varieties retain such parallel phonological, syntactic, and lexical systems that speakers can negotiate meaning without translation. This is an example of:

• Substratum influence

• Pidginization

• Code-mixing

• Mutual intelligibility

A sociolinguistic survey in City Y finds that teenagers use innovative slang, intonation, and discourse markers that clearly differentiate their speech from that of older adults living in the same neighborhoods. This age-based linguistic variation represents a:

Over several centuries, Country M has maintained a single national language with an officially standardized grammar. Nevertheless, linguistic fieldwork reveals that the speech of residents in the mountainous north differs markedly from that of the lowland south. Northern speakers retain older verb endings, distinctive vowel systems, and locally specific idioms, whereas southern speakers have innovated new tense markers and borrowed vocabulary from neighboring languages. These differences persist across all social classes within each region. This situation exemplifies regional dialect.

• TRUE

• FALSE

An anthropologist documents how a rural teacher addresses her students with formal instructional language, yet uses relaxed, slang-filled speech at home. The variation is driven by situational formality rather than geography or social class. This pattern exemplifies:

• Code-switching

• Register

Do you think regional vocabulary differences (like “soda” vs. “pop”) are disappearing over time? Explain your view.