CSET Test Prep: English Subtest 2

• * Before 3000 b.c.
• * Originated near the Caspian Sea
• * Groups of speakers traveled to distant places
• * Gradually developed into Farse (Persian), Hindi, Armenian, Sanskrit, Greek, Russion, Polish, Irish, Italian, French, Spanish, German, Dustch, Swedish, Norwegian, and English.

• 27 b.c. to a.d. 476
• * Latin influenced languages of Europe, North Africa, and Middle East after Roman armies conquered the countries.
• * Also influenced Britons, a Celtic people living in the British Isles
• * 5th century a.d. England invaded by Anglo-Saxons who added Old Germanic tongue to Celtic of native Britons
• * Vikings invaded the area and added Norse influence
• * Resulting language is what we call Old English

After invasion of England by William the Conquerer (1066), French was spoken by upper classes and used in courts and government, while the Catholic clergy wrote and spoke in Latin.

Common people spoke English but were borrowing words from French, creating Middle English.

Words resulting: government, justice, and literature

Dates from rule of Henry VII in England (1485)

Brought peace and promoted English

After Columbus landed in New World, English sailors spread the English language through the Americas and Europe and enriched language with new words.

• Modern English borrows many words from other languages.
• * Spanish: banana, hammock, tobacco
• *Central America: chocolate, potato, tomoato
• * Netherlands: cruise, knapsack, landscape

English now used worldwide with the spread of science and technology

• 1. Proto-Indo-European
• 2. Old English
• 3. Middle English
• 4. Modern English

In Old English, d.p. and adj were gender-specific and gender was determined by inflection. In Middle English, d.p. and adj became gender-neutral, as in this, these, that, and those.

Period of time between 1450 and 1750 where the pronunciation of long vowels in English gradually changed. Exampe: e in where pronounced as a in late. By the sixteenth century it was pronounced as ee as in keep.

Grammar rules such as phrase structure and phonology shared by all human languages.

The development of a language through the merging of two or more different languages.

The smallest unit of meaning in a language that cannot be further subdivided into meaninful linguistic parts.

A morpheme that stands alone as a complete word. (Example: "bag")

A morpheme that must be attached to a word to have meaning. (Example: "s" in "runs")

• * Add only grammatical information
• * Never change the part of speech
• Examples:
• to nouns: -s, -'s (possessive)
• to verbs: -ed, -ing, -en
• to adjectives: -er, -est

• * make a new word with a new meaning
• * usually change the part of speech

• Examples:
• verb -> noun: speak + er
• adj -> noun: economic + s
• noun -> adj: person + al
• verb -> adj: act + ive
• noun -> verb: victim + ize
• adj -> verb: vocal + ize

The smallest unit of speech sound that combines with other units of speech sound to form a word.

The period of time in early childhood where humans' ability to learn language peaks.

• * Anxiety: older language learners fear ridicule or embarrasement more than younger learners and therefore are less willing to try new things
• * Personality factors: extraverts acquire language better than introverts
• * Motivation:

A reading comprehension activity using a chart to organize information by categories, analyze ideas, make comparisons, and make inferences about what they read.

A speaker alternates between separate language dialects according to the situation or effect.

Elements of one dialect remain distinct from the other.

Ranges from shifting between language style or between two languages.

preposition + object + modifiers

Example: My brother ate four whole hot dogs during the game.

Identifies or describes a nearby noun.

An embedded appositional phrase is set within the sentence rather than at the beginning or end of a sentence.

Phrases that begin with subordinating conjunctions and modify verbs, adjectives, and other adverbs.

English verbs (including can, would, and must) that are characteristically used with other verbs to express mood or tense.

Usage of a pronunciation or language rule that most speakers consider incorrect, but that the speaker uses through misunderstanding of rules. Example: dialect differences between "potato" and "puhtaytuh" where the speaker may hypercorrect others in their pronuncation to "puhtaytuh".

"baby talk"

* beneficial to infants because it imitates verbal interaction and the importance of verbal feedback

* is more effective in getting a baby's attention because the acoustics appeal to infants

A theoretical construct that seeks to unify several related structures.

Example: "Pat loves Chris" and "Chris is loved by Pat" are said to have distinct surface forms but a common deep structure because they mean essentially the same thing.

A fundamental unit in a written language. Example: the letters in the English alphabet are all graphemes