Language change quiz

For each question below, click on the circle next to the correct answer. When you are finished with the test, push the “Score my test” button at the bottom of the page. Good luck!

Question #1
“Pejoration” is a process by which

A. words increasingly acquire positive meanings
B. words increasingly acquire negative meanings
C. words are used incorrectly with regard to their original meaning

Question #2
“Ethnic cleansing”, “collateral damage” and “nuclear deterrent” are examples of

A. hypercorrection
B. an assertive foreign policy
C. euphemism

Question #3
“Dialect levelling”is

A. a decrease in dialect differences
B. the belief that no dialect is linguistically superior to another
C. the belief that young people can’t speak properly any more

Question #4
“Prescriptivism” is

A. the study of language with the intention of controlling it – by dictating rules of usage
B. the study of language with the intention of recording and analysing how it is used
C. the study of the almost indecipherable handwriting of doctors

Question #5
1755 is significant for the development of the English language because

A. it is almost six o’clock and that’s when The Simpsons begins
B. it is when Samuel Johnson published his dictionary
C. it is the number of books David Crystal has written on the subject

Question #6
“Jargon” is

A. technical language or highly field-specific vocabulary
B. the Greek god of lexicographers
C. gobbledygook

Question #7
“Amelioration” is a process by which

A. words simplify their spellings – e.g. ‘color’ for ‘colour’; ‘nite’ for ‘night’
B. words become less socially acceptable – e.g. ‘spastic’
C. words become more socially acceptable or prestigious

Question #8
Which one of the following processes could the word “cupboard” not be used as an example of

A. compounding
B. borrowing
C. phonological change
D. generalisation

Question #9
The “etymological fallacy” is

A. the mistaken belief that the earliest historical meaning of a word is its only true meaning
B. the mistaken belief that the study of word origins is intrinsically interesting
C. the obsessive cataloguing of neologisms

Question #10
“Time” was once pronounced more like “team”, “see” like “say”, “now” like “noo” and “so” like “saw”: these are all examples of the phonological differences brought about by

A. the rise of estuary English
B. the fitting of dentures
C. the Great Vowel Shift

Question #11
“Fax”, “flu”, “celeb” “bike”, “gym” and “memo” are all examples of

A. blending
B. eponyms
C. borrowing
D. clipping, reduction or shortening

Question #12
The use, in the USA, of phrases such as “I guess” [for “I think”] and “gotten” are examples of

A. the corrupting inaccuracy of American speech
B. Americans retaining an earlier English form after its use has largely died out in Britain
C. Verbal depravation

Question #13
“Bidialectalism” is a term used, by Professor David Crystal and others, to describe

A. the ability to use two dialects of the same language
B. the disintegration of English into mutually unintelligible dialects
C. gender-specific conversational behaviour

Question #14
“Government”, “peasant”, “crime”, “justice”, “fashion”, “biscuit” and “leisure” are words loaned from

A. Greek
B. Latin
C. French
D. German

Question #15
The prescriptive “Short Introduction to English Grammar” [1762] was written by

A. Bishop Robert Lowth
B. Doctor Samuel Johnson
C. Professor Jean Aitchison
D. William Labov [dude]
E. Sir J A H Murray

Question #16
The printing press was introduced into England by

A. William Shakespeare in 1592
B. Geoffrey Chaucer in 1398
C. William Caxton in 1476
D. Rupert Murdoch’s great-great grandfather in 1755

Question #17
“Accommodation theory” was developed by Howard Giles to suggest

A. the number of student classes will always exceed the number of rooms available at college
B. we adjust our accent/speech in response to the person we are addressing
C. co-operation between participants as the fundamental principle underlying conversation

Question #18
The words “children”, “oxen”, “geese”, “mice” and “teeth” are among a handful of now irregular mutated plurals that are a survival from a time when English had a greater number of

A. inflections
B. lexical items
C. Latinate words
D. bovine ruminants

Question #19
What is Jonathan Green describing as “the counter language...the language of the rebel, the outlaw, the despised, the marginal, the young”?

A. jargon
B. slang
C. plain English
D. Estuary English
E. Ann Widdecombe’s idiolect

Question #20
“The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis” puts forward the theory that

A. language reflects the way we think
B. language controls or determines the way we think
C. language influences but doesn’t govern our thoughts
D. language is essentially ‘thinking out loud’
E. Häagen Dazs has over 50 words for “ice cream”