Linguistics 001 -- Fall 1998 -- Homework B

(Due Monday 9/28)

The assignment is to answer Questions 1-3 in Fromkin & Rodman, pp. 29-30.

Additional instructions for the three questions:

1. (a) In making up the requested five new names for products, do not choose ordinary words of English. Thus "blanch" is not a suitable choice, because (aside from being a poor name for a soap product) it is already an English word. On the other hand, "blinch" (though an equally bad choice from a marketing standpoint) is OK, as long as you make it clear how it is supposed to be pronounced.
   (b) For extra credit, see if you can come up with names that "sound right" as possible brands for some kind of soap product.
2. One way to help explain why a sentence is ungrammatical is to give a version (or versions) of the sentence in which the problem is corrected. If you can, then go on to say something explicit about why the difference changes a "bad" sentence into a "good" one.
3. (a) In making up your ten onomatopoeic words, try to create short phrases describing specific events or actions that have a characteristic sound: a coin spinning to a stop on a table; a tennis serve; opening a pop-top can of soda; etc. Then make up a word evoking the sound of each description.
   (b) Avoid using standard noise-imitating words like "crunch" or "pop" -- your words should not already be in the dictionary.
   (c) If the pronunciation of your made-up word is not obvious from the spelling, add hints as needed (e.g. "prook (rhymes with 'Luke')").
   (d) In order to test the non-arbitrariness of the words you invent, give your five friends a "matching" test. Put your 10 event or action descriptions in one column (in random order), and your 10 words in another column (in a different random order). Ask each friend to match the descriptions with the words. As an alternative, you could write the individual descriptions and the individual words on file cards, with the task to match the file cards. Keep track of each friend's overall score (e.g. "J. matched 8 out of 10 correctly"), and also keep track of the score per word (e.g. "3 out of 5 matched prook correctly").