Tuesday, April 24, 2012

Mindrys' homework assignments








Chapter #17 study questions
1.      What are cognates?
R: is word in other language that has a similar form and is or was used with a similar meaning.

2.      Languages groups reated from a historical point of view:
R: Bengali–Urdu, Breton–welsh, English–Swedish, French–Portuguese, Kurdish–Pashto, Ukrainian–Czech.

3.      On the basis of the following data, what are the most likely proto-forms?
Language
1                             2                3
Cosa              chose           cosa      _ (“thing”)
Capo              chef             cabo     (“head”)
Capra            chevre         cabra   (“goat”)

Number 1 is most likely to be proto-forms.


4.      The following words are likely to be from Old English and which from French: Venison, ox, veal and calf.
5.      What types sounds changes are illustrated by the following pairs:
(a)   Thridda – third =    metathesis           
(b)    scriber – escribir = prothesis       
(c)     glimsian – glimps = epenthesis
(d)    hring – ring =   epenthesis             
(e)     slummer – slumber = metathesis   
(f)     beorht – bright = metathesis
6.      The Old English verb steorfan (“to die, from any cause”) is the source of the modern English verb starve (“to die, from lack food”).  What is the ethnical term used to describe this type of meaning change?
R: Is the most obvious way I which Modern English differs from old English is in the number of borrowed words that have cone into the language since the Old English period.
  







Study questions chapter #7
1.      Identify all the parts of speech used in this sentence:
The woman kept a large snake in a cage, but it escaped recently
R: The     woman   kept     a         large         snake         in             a      cage,
   Article    noun    verb   article   adjective    object    preposition   article 

but                   it           escaped   recently
Conjunction    pronoun       verb            adverb

2.      What is the difference between grammatical gender and natural gender?
R: the difference between these two is that the natural gender is derived from a biological distinction between male and female and grammatical gender is based on the type o noun (masculine and feminine) and is not tied to sex.

3.      What descriptive of the “proper” use of English are not obeyed in the following sentence and how would they be “corrected”
(i)                 The old theory consistently failed to fully explain all the data.
R: The old theory consistently failed fully to explain all the data.
(ii)               I can’t remember the name of the person I gave the book to.
R: I can’t remember the name of the person to whom I gave the book.

4.      What was wrong with the older Latin-influence definition of English pronouns?
R: In the older definition, pronouns were described as “words used in place of nouns.”

5.      Given these other Gaelic words, translate the following sentences into English.
Mor (“big”)       bead (“small”)      bhuail (“hit”)      duine (“man”)
(i)                 Bhuail an gille beag an cu dubh. = the small boy hit the black dog
(ii)               Chunnaic an cuduine mor. = the dog saw the big man





Study Questions Chapter #5

1.      What is the difference between etymology and entomology?
R: The difference between these two is that etymology is the study of the origin and story of a word while entomology is the study of the insects.

2.      The following pairs contain an example of calque:
a)      Footbooru (Japanese) – Football (English)
b)     Luna de miel (Spanish “moon of honey”) – honey moon (English)
c)      Jardin d’enfants (French “garden of children”) – kindergarten (German “children garden”)

3.      Can u identify the different word-formation processes involved in producing each sound of the underlined word in these sentences:
a)      Don’t you ever worry that you might get AIDS? = Acronym
b)      Do you have a xerox machine? = Coinage
c)      That’s really fundamntastic! = Blending
d)     Shiel still parties every Saturday night. = Convercion
e)      These new skateboards from Zee Designs are kickass. Compounds
f)       When I’m ill, I want to see a doc, not a vet. Clipping
g)      The house next door was burgled when I was babysitting the smiths’ children = Backformation
h)      I like this old sofa Borrowing – it’s nice and comfy = Clipping

4.      Identify the prefixes and suffixes used in these words:
a)      Misfortune, carelessnessdisagreement, ineffective, unfaithfulprepackaged, biodegradable, reincarnation, decentralization.
5.      Processes involved in each sentence:
a)      Are u still using that old car-phone? = Compounding, Blending.
b)      Can you FedEx the book to me today?  = Conversion, Coinage
c)      Police have reported an increase in carjacking in recent months. = blending ,Compounding,
d)     Welcome, everyone, to karaokenight at Cathy’s bar and grill! = Borrowing, Blending.
e)      Jeeves, could you tell the main to be sure to hoover the bedroom carpet? = Conversion, coinage.
f)       Would you prefer a decaf? = Clipping



Study Questions chapter #6

1.      Functional morphemes in the following sentence:
R: When he arrived in the morning the old man had an umbrella and a large plastic bag full of books.

2.      a) Bound morphemes: fearlesslymisleads, previewer, shortenedunhappier.
b)      Bound stem: construct, deceive, introduce, repeat.
c)      Allomorph of the morpheme “past tense”: are didhave = had, must, sitting =satwaits= waited.

3.      Inflectional morphemes in these expressions:
a)      Have u eaten yet?
b)      Do you know how long I’ve been waiting?
c)      She’s younger than me and always dresses in the latest style.
d)     We look through my grandmother’s old photo albums.

4.      Allomorphs of the morpheme “plural” in this set of English words: criteria, dogs, oxen, deer, judges, stimuli.

5.      What is reduplication?
R: reduplication is repeating all or part of form.

6.      Provide the equivalent forms, in the language listed, for the English translation shown on the right below:
a)      Ganda           omulongo     (“twin”)      –  (“twins”)          =      abalongo
b)      Ilocano        tawtawa       (“windows”) –  (“windows”)    =     tawa
c)      Kanuri         nemkeji        (sweetness”) –  (“sweet”)         =     keji
d)     Tagalog       bili              (“buy”)        –  (“will buy”)     =     bibili
e)      Tagalog       kain             (“eat”)         –  (“eat!”)           =      kumain

maɪ neɪm


Hi everybody! My name is Mindrys! 

  1) My name has two syllables min and drys.
min” has the onset of   a front,  voiced, bilabial nasal and has a central vowel.
*the second syllable is “drys” which onset is a voiced alveolar stop.

And the IPA for of my name is: [mIndris]

2)   Saying my name could me a little hard but if you do this steps you could say it without any problem:
*Start by making a nasal sound like mmmm, then open our lips and let an “eh” sound come out and then a “nnnn” sound. Then followed by a “druu” and then a quick “ssss” sound.
 It should sound like: mehdrus

I LOOKED MY NAME UP ON GOOGLE AND THIS IS WHAT IT CAME OUT. WOW!!   
                                   
     Is an old photo when I was in high school in Colombian and those are two of my ex classmates, I miss them so much ! 

Sunday, March 11, 2012

My Second Language Experience


        Like many people, I was afraid to come to a new place and start from zero my entire life. I came to the United States at the age of 16 from Colombia with just a high school diploma and a strong soul that took me to where I am right now. It was hard at first, I didn’t know how to ask questions or answer to people if they would ask me something. So I decided to knock on doors and start talking with those few words I knew from my past high school English classes (which were not that good). After looking everywhere I finally found my first English class, they were open harms who helped me to meet the basic skill I needed to get at job and get into College. After several days I was able to have a conversation with somebody but I wasn't happy with my progress, I could not and still can’t pronounce a lot of the English words and I still have and accent which makes My relationship with this new language not the best. There was a time when I did not care about it, I started to speak more Spanish than English at home, school and even at work, My fear to speak took me to a level where I couldn't say an English word out loud without feeling upset of myself, but this all tough made me realize that I would never progress in this country if I don't speak the language. And then all those negative thoughts change when I started college and found out an amazing thing. I wasn't the only one who just came from a different country and who had an accent; there were even people who didn't speak English at all. That’s how my way of see my life change and I started to go beyond my own brain and start to involve myself in the new context of the English world. I tough that things were going to be easy when I came to the country where dreams come true but they weren’t, I had to make it through a lot of thing that made me stronger day by day and proud of myself because I never thought that I could be in another part of the world learning a new culture and language way different from mines.
                                  
 I'm glad that all this situations happened, Now I don’t mind if I have and accent or not, because that's my sign saying that I'm different from others. Life will never be perfect for some of us and the fact that having an accent or not knowing a language is not an obstacle in this country to success however you want.