Linguistics 101

Practice Test

1. We discussed several properties of language acquisition which led to the hypothesis that there is an innate Language Acquisition Device. Which of the following is not such a property?

2. A hypothesis that uses words like 'precedes' or 'first' is

3. What kind of learning can we expect from rats using behaviorist stimulus-reinforcement training?

4. Which of the following would be needed for language to be acquired by trial-and-error?

5. The sentence, "Who do you wanna win the game?" almost never occurs in child or adult speech. This can be explained on which of the following assumptions?

6. Suppose George and Bob are watching the news together on TV. George yells and screams whenever Dan Rather is talking. Bob just sits there. According to the Behaviorist theory:

7. When we described some properties of language acquisition, which of the following claims was made?

8. In English, the pronoun she in "She thinks Rebecca is tall" cannot refer to Rebecca (i.e., the sentence cannot mean that Rebecca thinks that she herself is tall.) This fact follows from:

9. Our linguistic 'knowledge in the absence of experience' includes knowledge of:

10. The mental grammar we are attempting to discover contains: