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Intro to WL - What is Language? Quiz

Total questions: 15

Worksheet time: 8mins

Name
Class
Date
1.

What do we call researchers who study language?

a)

Linguists

b)

Anthropologists

c)

Archaeologists

d)

Entomologists

2.

Which of these is a widely-used African language?

a)

Urdu

b)

Hausa

c)

Cantonese

d)

Navajo

3.

Which of the following grammatical constructs is important in English?

a)

Particles

b)

Inflection

c)

Word Order

d)

Tone

4.

Non-picturable things can be represented with what type of written language?

a)

ideographs

b)

pie charts

c)

bar graphs

d)

scatterplots

5.

When did spoken language first develop among humans?

a)

12,000 years ago

b)

1 million years ago

c)

100,000 years ago

d)

We do not know

6.

Syntax is another word for what?

a)

alphabet

b)

grammar

c)

vocabulary

d)

gesturing

7.

Which of the following grammatical features is extremely important in Chinese?

a)

Capitalization

b)

Punctuation

c)

Tone

d)

Word Order

8.

Which major world event resulted in the addition of many French and Latin words to the English language?

a)

The Norman Invasion

b)

The French Revolution

c)

World War I

d)

The invention of the printing press

9.

What do we call the set of symbols that represent sounds in written language?

a)

emojis

b)

hieroglyphs

c)

an alphabet

d)

punctuation

10.

English is a member of which major language family?

a)

Austronesian

b)

Sino-Tibetan

c)

Afroasiatic

d)

Indo-European

11.

What are the most important components of language?

a)

Homophones

b)

Words

c)

Particles

d)

Inflections

12.

Language is the ___________________ or transfer of meaning.

a)

expression

b)

injection

c)

gifting

d)

exchange

13.

The ancient language Latin and modern language Russian both feature this grammatical structure, which makes word order non-essential.

a)

Inflection

b)

Particles

c)

Tone

d)

Stress

14.

Symbols or drawings that represent specific objects are called what?

a)

alphabets

b)

ideographs

c)

pictographs

d)

charts

15.

Why are vocabularies in languages constantly changing?

a)

Words are borrowed from other languages

b)

Words fall out of general use

c)

New words are invented

d)

All of the above