Show:
Our Department
The Field of Linguistics
Phonetics and Phonology
Morphology and Syntax
Language Trivia
100
SLUgS takes place in this room.
What is 1229 Dwinelle?
100
You never ask a linguistics major this question.
What is, “How many languages do you speak?”, “Are you basically like an English major?”, or “Do I have to watch my grammar around you now?”
100
This is the most common manner of articulation among the world’s languages.
What are stops?
100
This is used when an argument is nonexistent, but syntactically required.
What is a dummy/pleonastic subject?
100
This language has the second highest number of native speakers after Mandarin Chinese (when the latter is considered a single language).
What is Spanish?
200
This person is the current chair of the Linguistics Department.
Who is Andrew Garrett?
200
Klingon, Dothraki, Esperanto, and Quenya are examples of this.
What is a conlang/constructed language?
200
This experimental technique involves dying the tongue with a mixture of charcoal and olive oil.
What is palatography?
200
This is the class number of the undergrad syntax and semantics course here at Berkeley.
What is 120?
200
This language, spoken in the Brazilian Amazon, has been the subject of one of the largest current controversies within the field of syntax.
What is Pirahã?
300
This is the total minimum number of units required for the major.
What is 30?
300
This theory was advanced by Chomsky and is highly contested by Dan Everett.
What is Universal Grammar (UG)?
300
This is the most common vowel in spoken English.
What is schwa [ə]?
300
This is the lexical category of the word ‘wabe’ in the following sentence: “‘Twas brillig and the slithy toves did gyre and gimble in the wabe.
What is a noun?
300
This famous language was developed largely spontaneously by children in a deaf school.
What is Nicaraguan Sign Language?
400
This professor is the director of the phonology lab
Who is Keith Johnson?
400
This is the method historical linguists use to reconstruct a proto-language using evidence from multiple daughter languages.
What is the comparative method?
400
This sound is represented by [q] in the IPA. (You must provide all three features.)
What is voiceless uvular stop?
400
This man is sometimes described as the “father of modern linguistics” and is a big proponent of generative grammar.
Who is Noam Chomsky?
400
This language is spoken along the Klamath river.
What is Yurok, Karuk, Hupa, or English?
500
This person is the newest addition to the linguistics department staff
Who is Martine Alexander?
500
This program is frequently used to look at the waveforms and spectrograms of speech.
What is Praat, Wavesurfer, or Audacity?
500
This is the number of places of articulation listed on the IPA chart.
What is eleven?
500
This is the most common word order in the world’s language.
What is SOV?
500
This language has uncommon sounds such as voiced oral labialized alveolar approximants and interdental fricatives, preserves Indo-European [w], and has a word that refers to a gesture made by striking one’s own forehead with the palm of the hand.
What is English? [ɹ], [θ], [ð], facepalm.