Quiz #4 – Introduction to Language (Spring 2023)

Covering the materials from weeks 10 and 11.

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1. Why does John McWhorter say "God bless Urban Dictionary"?*

Because it is where his daughter learned “Yas, Queen!” from.

He is being sarcastic; he would rather slang go undocumented.

Because it documents slang, which would often otherwise go undocumented.

It is a useful source for cartoonists to find catchphrases for their characters, e.g. when Bugs Bunny said “What’s up, doc?”

2. Obviously, not all new words are slang. For example, when the word COVID-19 entered all of our vocabularies a few years ago, it was a new word, but it certainly wasn't slang. So what, in your own words, makes slang slang? Consider what McWhorter and Crystal both have to say about it.*

3. A morpheme can be defined as:*

a word with only one phoneme

the lexicon of an ergative language

a phoneme’s form in spoken language

the smallest linguistic unit of meaning

4. Identify all of the morphemes in each of the four below words, and identify whether each morpheme is bound or free. For example, if you were doing the word "bottleneck," your answer would be "there are two morphemes: bottle and neck. Both are free." This question is worth 2 points.*

a. applesauce
b. borrower
c. sergeant
d. swimming

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