UGC - NET/JRF Previous years' questions - Linguistics

Paper III

Section II - 15 Definitional Type Questions to answered in 30 words each. (15x5=75 marks)

What is a spectogram?
Distinguish between inflection and derivation with suitable examples.
What is the lexicalist hypothesis? Explain.
What is the main difference between weak cross-over and strong cross-over. Provide examples.
Provide a syntactic definition of scrambling.
How do you differentiate between tense and aspect. Give suitable examples.
Discuss salient features of generative phonology.
Provide logical formulation of English universal and existential quantifiers.
Distinguish between intimate, dialect and cultural borrowings.
Distinguish between elaborated code and restricted code.
Write a short note on Broca's aphasia.
List some of the important linguistic features of the languages spoken in South Asia.
Distinguish between corpus planning and status planning.
Write the major differences between literary and scientific translation with examples.
Explain with examples the differences between interlanguage and intralanguage errors.
Section III - Electives

Computational Linguistics
How is computational linguistics related to Philosophy, Psychology and Artifitial Intelligence (A.I)
Discuss the role of morphological analyzer in P.O.S tagging.
Give an account of limitations of machine readable dictionaries.
Write the advantages of tree adjoining grammar in analyzing sentence structure.
Write a short note on the technology of text to speech systems.
Syntax
Discuss the importance of locality of minimalist system of case checking. Illustrate your answer with ECM and small clause constructions.
Discuss the relative advantages of AGR based clausal architecture over a traditional one.
Discuss the advantages of multiple specifiers in the clausal structure.
Discuss the role of least effort principle with respect to the derivation of 'Roshan did not write letters' from the Roshan T Neg AGR following..
Discuss the advantages of Copy Theory of Movement.
Phonology
Distinguish between the phomological phrase and intonational phrase with examples.
Discuss the importance of 'Tableux' in Optimality theory.
Explain the following concepts in relation to prosodic phonology - the syllable, the word and the foot.
Distinguish between marked constraints and faithfulness constraints and discuss their effect on the output.
Write short notes on (a) Constraint Ranking (b) Prosodic Morphology.

Sociolinguistics
Men specially provide norm against which women speak judegement. Explain.
Critically evaluate the statement "Language standardization does not depend on inherent quality of language but power is the main factor leading to standardization.
Enumerate the three ideological barriers Labov has encountered in course of his studies on social motivation of sound change.
What kind of linguistic signals are used to indicate that speaker is about to give up a turn? Discuss.
What is Linguistic Competence? How does Communicative Competence differ from Linguistic Competence.
Neurolinguistics
What is meant by cerebral dominance?
What are the different types of aphasia?
Write a note on stuttering.
Explain how linguistic knowledge helps in devising assessment and therapeutic tools and procedures in disorder of communication.
What are the different types of developmental disorders? Enumerate the recommended intervention procedures.


Section IV - Essay question - To be answered in 1000 words. (40 marks)

Evaluate the merits of Unification based grammars. [Computational Linguistics]
Discuss the status of AGR in Minimalism and the effects of eliminating it from the clause structure. [Syntax]
Write an essay on Prosodic Phonology. [Phonology]
Diversity is precisely the suject matter of sociolinguistics. Explain the statement. [Sociolinguistics]
Write an essay on Models of brain - language relationship. [Neurolinguistics]

December 2008 Paper III Section II-

To be answered in 30 words each. 15x5=75 Marks

Copulative Compounds (Dvanda).

Distinguish between code mixing and code switching.

Distinguish between internal reconstruction and comparative method.

Salient features of communicative language teching.

Distinguish between etymological dictionary and general dictionaries.

Give a semantic definition of proposition with examples.

Distinguish between pre-supposition and entailment. Give suitable examples.

What is air stream mechanism. What is subjacency?

Distinguish between formal and substantive universals.

Mention some types of morphs. Give examples.

Distinguish between acquisition and learning.

Distinguish between topic and focus.

Electives - To be answered in 200 words only. 12x5=60 Marks

Neurolinguistics

What is dyslexia?

What are tests and tools for different types of dyslexia?

What are different models of language - brain relationship? Discuss any two of them.

What are scopes and need of linguistic interventions in disorders of communication?

Write a short note on language in mental retardation.

What are Lateralization, Handedness and Language Deficits?

Essay Question - To be answered in 1000 words. 40 Marks

How can studies on disorders of communication help in understanding language - mind - brain relationship? (Neurolinguistics)

Write an essay on gender in language. (Sociolinguistics)

What is the use of corpus in the study of language.(Computational Linguistics)

Optimality theory. (Phonology)

G.B - Minimalism.(Syntax)

June, 2008 Paper III Section II - [Incomplete]
To be answered in 30 words each. 15x5=75 Marks

Root & stem
Clitics
Synonym & paraphrase
Mono-lingual & Bi-lingual Dictionaries
18 months old child's lg
Entailment
Agent & patient
Typological & aerial classification of lg
Anaphor & Anaphora
Pidgin & Creole
Piaget's theory of lg learning
Elective Syntax
What is parameter?......
Diff. between LF & PF
What is D-str. & S-str.? Do they play any role in M.P.
Sub categorization
Binding
Essay Question
Development of features and lexical items from syntactic str. Till M.P.