The Second in a Series of Occasional Linguistics Quizzes

Two words from the following list share an affix.

Do you know which two and why?

wetter

manner

ruler

fewer

For answer please scroll down.

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The answer is: wetter and fewer

The words wetter and fewer both contain the inflectional, comparative -er suffix.

The word ruler contains the derivational -er suffix, changing the verb rule to the noun ruler.

The word manner is a single morpheme and does not have a suffix.

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In morphology, the same forms do not always have the same functions.

The First in a Series of Occasional Linguistics Quizzes

The fact that native Spanish speakers have difficulty pronouncing the English word "skate" indicates that English and Spanish______

a. are prescriptive languages.
b. have different phonotactic constraints.
c. are nearly impossible to learn.
d. are not rule governed.

For answer click here.

The First in a Series of Occasional Linguistics Quizzes - Answer

The correct answer to the First in a Series of Occasional Linguistics Quizzes is b.

English and Spanish have different phonotactic constraints.

While the /sk/ consonant cluster is perfectly acceptable to English speakers and is not usually even given a second thought, the cluster is not a psychological reality to Spanish speakers. Because Spanish speakers do not recognize the cluster, their phonotactic constraints do not allow the /sk/ cluster to appear in the same syllable. The result is Spanish speakers will insert the vowel /e/ before the cluster which forms another syllable and breaks apart the /sk/cluster.

English
/sket/

Spanish
/es ket/

A Linguistics Quiz

If you love linguistics and have been reading this blog on a fairly regular basis, you will enjoy the August 2008 Reader's Digest Word Power page and you should be able to answer all of the "Words at Play" quiz questions correctly. Here are a few of the quiz questions to get you started:

1. A pangram is a - A. jumble of a word's letters. B. phrase using all 26 letters of the alphabet. C. person's surname used as a common noun.

2. A retronym is a - A. form of mirror writing. B. modified name for an old item. C. guessing game invented by bored astronauts.

3. A portmantaeu word is a - A. French word playfully Anglicized. B. sailors' slang. C. word blend of two other words.