Instructions: For each question, click on the radio button beside your answer. When you have completed the entire quiz, click the “Submit my answers” button at the bottom of the page to receive your results.

Question 1:

According to Terrence Deacon, closed primate call systems ________.
a) contain between 40–55 calls
b) are controlled by one part of the brain
c) do not map onto any of the elements of human language
d) all of the above

Question 2:

The co-existence of multiple discourses in one language is known as ________.
a) multilingualism
b) heteroglossia
c) structural ambiguity
d) linguistic relativity

Question 3:

African American English ________.
a) has been historically ignored by researchers due to its perceived inferiority
b) has been accused of being “linguistically deprived”
c) has remained confined to certain communities
d) is limited in its communicative abilities

Question 4:

A pidgin language ________.
a) is often subject to linguistic ethnocentrism
b) is generally more complex than a creole language
c) typically takes several generations to develop
d) all of the above

Question 5:

________, one of Charles Hockett’s 16 design features, is the ability to talk about the same experiences from different perspectives, using different words and various grammatical constructions.
a) Openness
b) Semanticity
c) Duality of patterning
d) Displacement

Question 6:

Closed call systems lack the ability to ________.
a) talk about absent or non-existent objects
b) talk about past or future events
c) tell lies
d) all of the above

Question 7:

“Colourless green ideas sleep furiously” is Noam Chomsky’s example of ________.
a) semanticity
b) prevarication
c) lack of linguistic context
d) incorrect grammar

Question 8:

According to Terrence Deacon, human calls include ________.
a) laughing and gesturing
b) sighing and whispering
c) sobbing and crying
d) shouting and crying

Question 9:

The following example displays structural ambiguity: ________.
a) “Colourless green ideas sleep furiously”
b) “The man saw the boy with the binoculars”
c) “It’s déjà vu all over again”
d) “Fishy fish fishy fish fish fish fishy fish”

Question 10:

A student who uses different linguistic habits when talking to friends, family, or coworkers is displaying ________.
a) the use of ergative agents
b) the linguistic relativity principle
c) heteroglossia
d) speech prosody

Question 11:

________ best explains the largest barrier to communication.
a) Linguistic diversity
b) Language dimorphism
c) Oratory complacency
d) Language domination

Question 12:

If linguistic determinism were a fact, learning a second language would be impossible.
a) True
b) False

Question 13:

While pidgin languages develop organically, creolization occurs through a formal process of language adoption.
a) True
b) False

Question 14:

Women tend to use language as a social tool in public settings while men tend to use it in private settings.
a) True
b) False

Question 15:

Prevarication refers to the lack of a direct connection between the form of a symbol and the symbol’s function or meaning.
a) True
b) False

Question 16:

Accents are due to differences in phoneme patterns.
a) True
b) False

Question 17:

Metaphors make links between two different syntactic domains.
a) True
b) False

Question 18:

Metaphors are easily understood by all English speakers.
a) True
b) False

Question 19:

People consciously adjust their speech to conform to language ideologies.
a) True
b) False

Question 20:

Discourse can be as short as a single word.
a) True
b) False

Question 21:

Edward Sapir and Benjamin Whorf concluded that language has the power to shape the way people see the world.
a) True
b) False

Question 22:

Language involves grammatical and conceptual complexities that can be analyzed to gain insight into a culture.
a) True
b) False

Higher Education

Cultural Anthropology, Third Edition: Chapter 04