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This test consists of 5 short answer questions and 1 (of 3) essay topics.
Short Answer Questions
1. According to Chapter 8.4, what is the first impulse behind American imitation of English orthography?
2. To how many in number does the comparative adjective relate?
3. Which word do the English always place prior to the proper noun whereas Americans place it after, as Mencken reports at the end of Chapter 10.3?
4. According to the study of E.J. Hills, how many descriptive adjectives are possessed by the average child of two?
5. From what language is "gob" reputed to be derived in Chapter 11.2?
Essay Topics
Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:
Essay Topic 1
An implicit premise throughout Mencken's work is that of the influence the overall national character and spirit has on the formation of a language. Write an essay discussing and analyzing the possibility and evidence of this connection. What are the national characters of Americans and Englishmen? How is this shown in their languages? What influence do these character traits have on linguistic formulations and habits of the people? What are some specific examples by which this influence can be seen? What is the ultimate significance of this connection?
Essay Topic 2
Unlike nouns and adjectives, Mencken devotes considerable inquiry to the nature and alteration of verb forms in The American Language. Write an essay explaining the attention that Mencken pays to verbs. What role do they fulfill in communication? Why do its particular forms change more rapidly than other parts of speech? What does this rapid changing indicate about the relationship between language and circumstance/culture? How do verbs typically change? What is significant about the manner in which they typically change?
Essay Topic 3
Of all the various ways in which the American and British dialects are divergent, perhaps the most obvious is the distinct spellings of words. Analyze the significance of this distinction and put forth an argument in support of one or the other spelling paradigm. How do the two dialects go about determining the spelling of a word? What are the principles that ought to be at work in the conventional acceptance of a word's spelling? Which of these principles is the most important? To which principles does each dialect adhere? What is the greater significance of this adherence?
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This section contains 380 words (approx. 2 pages at 300 words per page) |
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