Quiz #2: LING 3220, Spring, 2009 (25 pts) ANSWERS

1. Give three of the main semantic/content categories of place names which occur among Native America languages. Also list one type which is common among European-American place names, but rare or absent among Native Americans. (4pts)

descriptive (landscape features, plants, animals); fanciful resemblance; human usage/resources; historical events; mythological events/connections
rare: personal-based names

2. What is one social reason that Western Apaches would choose to "speak with placenames?" (1 pt)

use them to indirectly criticize, rather than directly; names have more force, memorability, and social authority

3. Explain how Arapaho place names are arrayed vertically on the landscape, and explain how this seems to match traditional Arapaho religious beliefs. (3 pts)

Fanciful resemblance names linked to religion/mythology tend to be highest up; animal/plant names for streams on slopes and valleys; human use and history names tend to be lowest in elevation; power flows from Creator (up high) through intermediary natural world to humans at base of "power flow"

4. Among the Pomo of California, the word for 'plant' (qhale) is also the word for 'tree'. Is this unusual? Explain why this would occur and what it signifies. Can you give a similar example for another language? (3 pts)

Normal: most important/prototypical item at one level of folk taxonomy often is used as the name for the higher level/the whole category; See Arapaho nii'eihii = bird, also eagle (most prototypical bird)

5. Explain what the term ‘grammaticalized’ means. Give a specific example of how landscape can be grammaticalized into a language, providing details on what information is contained in the grammaticalization. (3 pts)

Grammaticalized means a concept is expressed in an abstract form which occurs as a suffix, prefix or other inflectional or derivational form. In Guarijio, a number of geographical categories (relative elevation, slope, etc) are expressed by a set of suffixes which each encode four different variables related to slope and elevation.

6. Give an example of a language which has a highly developed lexical domain in some specific culturally-important area, and say what that domain is. (2 pts)

Miwok - baskets and/or acorns; Pomo - baskets, basket designs; Arapaho - eagle terms, buffalo terms

7. What is one reasons why a person might choose to change their personal name? (1 pt)

If ill, to change luck and get healthy; due to accomplishment of notable deed; to give name to somone else to benefit them

8. Explain what a death taboo is with regards to personal names. (1 pt). Give an example of one group which has or had such taboos. (1 pt)

Means avoiding saying a dead person's name, and sometimes words that sound like the name. Miwok, Tonkawa.

8. Which type of society is likely to have clearer dialect distinctions, a nomadic one, a small, village-based one, or a large-scale political entity? (1 pt) Why? (1 pt)

Small village - strong sense of village identity (vs nomads) but little contact with other villages (vs. confederation or state). However, large-scale entities may have social hierarchies, and thus rank-based dialects.

9. Explain what an institutionalized kinship relationship is. (1 pt) Give an example of one such relationship in a culture and how that relationship works. (1 pt)

There are set rules for how you must behave within the relationship. For example, in Arapaho, brother-in-law and sister-in-law are required to joke with each other.

10. What is one criteria that affects kinship terminology in both Arapaho and Miwok that doesn’t occur in English? (1 pt)

Relative age of siblings; whether relative is same sex as reference point (i.e. mother's sister treated different from father's sister).

11. Explain briefly how a classifier system would work in a language with such a system (1 pt)

Classifier systems have abstract morphemes which specify size, shape, material, etc. When talking about any item in the language, it must be linked to one specific classifer. Examples: Arapaho "it is strong" verb must have a suffix indicating type of object being described. In Yurok counting, all objects must be classified according to one of around 20 possibilities.