Semantics Antics
Mission Acquisition
A Linguist walks into a bar...
Anything Goes
100
the thematic role assignment of the PP "with a pen" in the sentence "The poet slew the sword-wielding warrior with a pen."
instrument
100
This natural phonetic class, with regard to place of articulation, is generally the first to be acquired.
[bilabial]
100
...and orders an "enormous libation." The barter barks: "If you can tell me what you want in prosodically appropriate, Germanic heritage words, I'll be happy to serve you." The linguist replies: Fine, I'll have a ______ _____.
big drink
100
In the sentence "My brother liked the girl who I'm dating," the constituent "who I'm dating is a _____ phrase"
complementizer
200
the adverbs "ever" and "anymore" are, for most speakers of English, marked as _____ ______ items
negative polarity
200
The _____ hypothesis suggests that we are born with the propensity to acquire language.
innateness
200
...with a parrot on his shoulder. "Peer!" it cries. The bartender looks at it intensely. "Beer!" it screeches. "What kind," the bartender asks. "Peer!" the parrot responds. The bartender again looks at it intensely. "Pardon my bird," the linguist explains. We spent the morning working on ______ features of English phonemes; you know, the ones that are unpredictable.
distinctive
200
Give the phonemic transcription of
/skwInti/
300
verbs like "dare" or "nominate" are known as ______ verbs, which are also examples of speech acts of language
performative
300
This natural phonetic class, with respect to manner of production, is generally the last to be acquired in English
[affricate]
300
...and challenges the guy slumped over the jukebox: "I bet you a beer that you can't tell me the thematic role of the indirect object in the following sentence: 'The hungover man brought a beer to the linguist.'" The man mumbles, "the indirect object is assigned the thematic role of ______."
goal
300
categorize each lexical and functional syntactic category in the phrase "mad about my exam"
AP PP NP / A P Det N
M
e
n
u