3. Language Change

Language Contact — Quiz

Test your understanding of language contact with 5 practice questions.

Practice Questions

Question 1

Which linguistic phenomenon involves the adoption of a new phonological rule or sound pattern from a contact language, leading to systematic changes in the pronunciation of words in the borrowing language?

Question 2

In a situation of prolonged language contact, if a substrate language (L1) adopts a significant number of grammatical features, including word order and morphological patterns, from a superstrate language (L2), what is the most likely long-term outcome for L1's grammatical system?

Question 3

Consider the historical development of English. The loss of many Old English inflections and the move towards a more fixed word order are often attributed, in part, to intense contact with Old Norse and Norman French. This illustrates how language contact can fundamentally alter a language's:

Question 4

Which of the following scenarios best exemplifies the process of 'creole continuum' in a post-creole speaking community?

Question 5

When a language borrows a word from another language, but the borrowed word undergoes a change in its grammatical category (e.g., a noun becoming a verb), this is an example of an alteration in the borrowing language's: