UGC-NET (NTA) LINGUISTICS, JUNE-2025

Total Questions: 100

11. A morph postulated to account for internal alternations as man - men, take - took is called as a_______.

Correct Answer: 3. Replacive morph
Solution:

A replacive morph refers to a morphological element where internal change within the root signals grammatical meaning. In forms such as "man → men (vowel changes from /æ/ to /e/) and take → took (vowel changes from /eɪ/ to /ʊ/), no additional morpheme is attached; instead, a segment inside the root is replaced to mark plural or past tense. This internal alternation is what defines a replacive morph, as opposed to a suppletive or zero morph."

12. Identify the morphemes in the English word "thermometer":

Correct Answer: 1. therm-o-meter
Solution:

The word thermometer is historically and morphologically composed of:
• therm- meaning heat (from Greek thermos)
• -o- a connecting vowel commonly used in Greek compounds
• -meter meaning measure
Thus, the scientifically accurate segmentation is therm-o-meter, representing a compound meaning "device that measures heat."

13. What does the term akhyata from the Indian POS categories translate to?

Correct Answer: 2. Verbs
Solution:

In the Indian grammatical tradition, especially in Panini's system, the term akhyāta corresponds to verbs. Panini categorizes words into major groups such as nãma (nouns), akhyāta (verbs), upasarga (preverbs), and nipāta (indeclinables). The term akhyāta specifically denotes verbal roots or finite verb forms that denote action, state, or process.

14. How would you label the following transformation in the English sentence pair Bresnan criticized Chomsky → Bresnan's criticism of Chomsky:

Correct Answer: 1. Nominalization
Solution:

The transformation from "Bresnan criticized Chomsky" to "Bresnan's criticism of Chomsky" involves converting a verb phrase into a noun phrase. The verb criticized is turned into the noun criticism, and the structure becomes a complex noun phrase. This process is a classic case of nominalization, where verbal meaning is expressed through a derived noun while preserving the thematic relations.

15. Which of the following books authored by Noam Chomsky is NOT correctly paired with its year of publication?

Correct Answer: 2. Syntactic structures (1967)
Solution:

Among the listed works, "Syntactic Structures" was published in 1957, not 1967. It is Chomsky's foundational early work introducing transformational-generative grammar. The other publication years are correct:
• Aspects of the Theory of Syntax (1965) Remarks on Nominalization (1970)
• Lectures on Government and Binding (1981)
Therefore, option 2 is the incorrectly paired year.

16. The sentence "my frying pan realizes that I am a lousy cook" is linguistically.

Correct Answer: 3. well-formed and pragmatically anomalous
Solution:

The sentence "my frying pan realizes that I am a lousy cook" is grammatically correct: it follows English syntax, has proper subject-verb agreement, and is structurally well-formed. However, it violates real-world knowledge because a frying pan is an inanimate object and cannot "realize" anything. The anomaly arises from pragmatics, not grammar, making the sentence well-formed but pragmatically odd.

17. This property of a linguistic expression refers to that aspect of its meaning which is involved in its potential for use in making true statements about the world. In semantics, this particular property is known as_______.

Correct Answer: 2. Denotation
Solution:

In semantics, the part of meaning related to the ability of an expression to refer to realworld entities, events, or situations-the aspect involved in evaluating truth-is called denotation. For example, "dog" denotes the class of dogs, enabling sentences like "The dog is barking" to be judged true or false. Denotation is central to truth-conditional semantics because it anchors linguistic meaning to the external world.

18. A proposition P entails a proposition Q, if and only if the truth of Qfollows inescapably from the truth of P.

This relation, in semantics, is known as_____.

Correct Answer: 3. Entailment
Solution:

The relation where the truth of proposition P guarantees the truth of proposition Q is called entailment. For example:
• P: "All mammals are warm-blooded."
• Q: "Whales are warm-blooded."
If P is true, Q must necessarily be true. Entailment is a logical, irreversible relation and is a core concept in semantic inference and truth-conditional analysis.

19. This is a theory of meaning which holds that word meanings can only be properly understood and described against the background of a particular body of knowledge and assumptions. This theory is popularly known as:

Correct Answer: 2. Frame semantics
Solution:

Frame semantics, proposed by Charles J. Fillmore, argues that the meaning of a word can only be understood with reference to a broader system of knowledge-called a frame. For example, the meaning of "buy" invokes a commercial transaction frame involving buyer, seller, goods, and money. This theory emphasizes background knowledge, cultural schemas, and encyclopedic information rather than purely dictionary definitions.

20. In lexical semantics, when unrelated meanings are signaled by the same linguistic form, as with 'bank' (side of river) and 'bank' (financial institution), the phenomenon is recognized as an instance of______.

Correct Answer: 3. Homonymy
Solution:

When two unrelated meanings share the same phonological or orthographic form, the phenomenon is homonymy. The word "bank" meaning "financial institution" and "bank" meaning "river side" have entirely different origins and meanings but share the same form. Homonymy contrasts with polysemy, where multiple related meanings arise from a single underlying concept (e.g., "mouth" of a person and "mouth" of a river).