UGC-NET (NTA) LINGUISTICS, JUNE-2025

Total Questions: 100

31. Which of the following languages is the only Dravidian language spoken in the northern India?

Correct Answer: 4. Kurux
Solution:

Kurux (also called Oraon) is the only Dravidian language spoken in northern India, particularly in Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Odisha, West Bengal, and parts of Madhya Pradesh. Unlike the majority of Dravidian languages, which are concentrated in South India, Kurux represents a northern outlier of the family and is spoken by the Oraon tribal community. It preserves classical Dravidian phonology and grammar despite being geographically isolated from the southern Dravidian belt.

32. Which of the following statements is true about the four-way contrast (unvoiced unaspirated - unvoiced aspirated - voiced unaspirated - voiced aspirated) in a consonant class in Indian languages?

Correct Answer: 4. It is abundant in Tibeto-Burman languages
Solution:

The four-way phonation contrast-unvoiced unaspirated, unvoiced aspirated, voiced unaspirated, and voiced aspirated-is a hallmark of Indo-Aryan phonological systems. Languages such as Hindi, Bengali, Marathi, Gujarati, and Punjabi display this contrast across stop consonants. This feature stems from ancient Indo-Aryan (Sanskrit) and continues to be a prominent characteristic of modern Indo-Aryan languages, unlike Dravidian, Austro-Asiatic, or Tibeto-Burman languages, which typically lack this full four-way distinction.

33. In language acquisition, the 'child-directed speech' refers to

Correct Answer: 1. The study of the language in which parents, grandparents, nannies, and other carers talk to the young children
Solution:

Child-directed speech (CDS), also known as caregiver speech or motherese, refers to the special speech style that adults naturally use with young children. It involves higher pitch, exaggerated intonation, slower tempo, clearer articulation, shorter sentences, and frequent repetition. CDS helps children acquire vocabulary and understand grammatical patterns more easily by making linguistic input more accessible and structured.

34. In neurolinguistics, the term "dyslexia' refers to phenomenon where a person_______.

Correct Answer: 3. Fails to read a text properly
Solution:

Dyslexia is a neurological reading disorder in which an individual has significant difficulty reading despite normal intelligence and adequate instructional exposure. Problems typically include slow decoding, letter-sound confusion, difficulty recognizing written words, and challenges in reading fluency. Dyslexia arises from deficits in phonological processing and affects the ability to map written symbols to spoken language accurately.

35. The competence, which includes the knowledge of vocabulary, grammar, semantics, and phonology that have been the traditional focus of second language learning, is known as_______.

Correct Answer: 2. Linguistic competence
Solution:

Linguistic competence includes knowledge of vocabulary, grammatical rules, phonology, morphology, and semantics, forming the core internalized system of a language. This competence is the foundational area traditionally emphasized in second language teaching because it governs sentence structure, word formation, pronunciation, and meaning. It differs from pragmatic or discourse competence, which deal with language use in context and text-level organization.

36. The linguistic system, which is created by someone in the course of learning a foreign language, different from either the speaker's first language or the target language being acquired, is widely known in language teaching, as_______.

Correct Answer: 4. Interlanguage
Solution:

Interlanguage is the developing linguistic system that a learner constructs while acquiring a second or foreign language. It is neither identical to the learner's first language nor to the target language; instead, it is an evolving rule-governed system shaped by hypotheses, errors, approximations, and gradual refinement. Features such as overgeneralization, fossilization, and transitional rules are typical components of an interlanguage.

37. According to Roman Jakobson (1959), the process of interpretation of verbal signs by means of non-verbal sign systems should be defined as_______.

Correct Answer: 1. Intersemiotic translation
Solution:

According to Roman Jakobson (1959), intersemiotic translation refers to the interpretation of verbal signs using non-verbal sign systems. This includes converting words into images, gestures, symbols, or sounds-for example, turning a written description into a painting or diagram. It contrasts with intralingual translation (within the same language) and interlingual translation (between two languages).

38. Which of the following formal grammars in the Chomsky Hierarchy is correctly labelled with its type?

Correct Answer: 4. Context Free Grammar → type 2
Solution:

In the Chomsky Hierarchy, a Context-Free Grammar (CFG) is correctly classified as Type 2. The correct hierarchy is:
• Type 0 → Unrestricted/recursively enumerable grammars
• Type 1→ Context-sensitive grammars
• Type 2 → Context-free grammars
• Type 3 → Regular grammars
Therefore, only "Context Free Grammar → type 2" is correctly labelled.

39. An etymological dictionary:

Correct Answer: 4. Traces the present word to its oldest form and gives the parent form
Solution:

An etymological dictionary focuses on the origin and historical development of words. It traces a word backward to its earliest attested form, explains its evolution, and provides parent roots, often from older languages such as Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, Proto-Indo-European, or Dravidian roots. It also gives historical pathways such as borrowings, phonological changes, and semantic developments.

40. Which of the following statements on AI Language Models is correct?

Correct Answer: 1. Unlike Small Language Models (SLMs), the Large Language Models (LLMs) are trained on huge datasets and parameters
Solution:

LLMs are characterized by very large training datasets and billions of parameters, which allow them to perform complex tasks, reason better, and generate human-like responses. In contrast, SLMs are trained on smaller datasets with fewer parameters and are suitable for limited or localized tasks. Other options are incorrect because zero-shot methods are used when resources are insufficient, LLMs cannot run on phones without compression, and trained LLMs are not compact in size.