NEB Class 12 Humanities Linguistics Question Paper 2082 (Set A) Nepal

Two characteristics of speech sounds:

1. Produced by the human vocal organs — speech sounds are made by an egressive (outgoing) airstream from the lungs that is modified by organs such as the vocal cords, tongue, teeth and lips.
2. Linguistic and meaningful — they are the smallest audible units used in human language and combine to form syllables, words and meaning; they are also describable in terms of place and manner of articulation and voicing.

Any four places of articulation:

1. Bilabial (both lips) — e.g. /p, b, m/
2. Dental / Alveolar (teeth / tooth-ridge) — e.g. /t, d, n/
3. Palatal (hard palate) — e.g. /j/
4. Velar (soft palate) — e.g. /k, g/

(Others acceptable: labio-dental, retroflex, glottal.)

Complementary distribution is the situation in which two (or more) sounds (allophones of the same phoneme) never occur in the same phonetic environment — where one occurs the other cannot, and vice versa. For example, in English the aspirated [pʰ] occurs at the start of a stressed syllable (pin) while the unaspirated [p] occurs after /s/ (spin); they are in complementary distribution as allophones of /p/.

Syllable structure refers to the internal organisation of a syllable into its parts: an obligatory nucleus (usually a vowel) optionally preceded by an onset (consonant(s)) and followed by a coda (consonant(s)). It is commonly shown as (C)V(C), e.g. the word cat /kæt/ has the structure CVC — onset /k/, nucleus /æ/, coda /t/.

Word classes are identified mainly on three bases:

1. Morphological (form) — the inflectional/derivational endings a word can take, e.g. -s, -ed, -ing.
2. Syntactic (function/distribution) — the position a word occupies and its relation to other words in a sentence.
3. Semantic (meaning) — the kind of meaning the word carries (thing, action, quality, etc.).

Two examples of antonyms:

1. big — small
2. hot — cold

(Other acceptable pairs: up/down, open/close, true/false.)

Morphological change is the change that takes place over time in the word-forms and word-building system of a language — that is, change in its morphemes, affixes, inflections and word-formation patterns. For example, Old English had many case endings on nouns that have been lost in Modern English, and old plurals like kine were replaced by regular cows.

Contrastive analysis is the systematic comparison of two languages — usually the learner's mother tongue (L1) and the target language (L2) — to identify their structural similarities and differences. It is used to predict the areas of difficulty and likely errors in second-language learning.

Example of error analysis: A Nepali learner of English writes "He go to school every day" instead of "He goes to school every day." Analysing this error shows the learner has omitted the third-person singular -s, revealing an incomplete mastery of subject–verb agreement rather than mother-tongue interference.

Any four languages taught as subjects in Nepal:

1. Nepali
2. English
3. Maithili
4. Newari (Nepal Bhasa)

(Others acceptable: Hindi, Sanskrit, Urdu, Tamang, Limbu.)

Multilingual education (MLE) is an approach to schooling in which more than one language is used as the medium of instruction. In the Nepali context it usually begins with the child's mother tongue in the early grades and gradually introduces other languages (such as Nepali and English), so that children learn through a language they understand while also acquiring additional languages.

Phonetics (with example)

Phonetics is the branch of linguistics that studies the physical production, transmission and perception of speech sounds in human language. It describes how sounds are made by the speech organs, what their acoustic properties are, and how they are heard, independent of any particular language's sound system.

Three main branches:

1. Articulatory phonetics — how speech sounds are produced by the speech organs (lips, tongue, vocal cords). Example: /p/ is a voiceless bilabial plosive made by closing both lips.
2. Acoustic phonetics — the physical properties of the sound wave (frequency, amplitude, duration).
3. Auditory phonetics — how the ear and brain perceive speech sounds.

Example: The word pat is made of three sounds — /p/, /æ/, /t/. Phonetics describes /p/ as a voiceless bilabial stop, /æ/ as an open front vowel, and /t/ as a voiceless alveolar stop.

OR — International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)

The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is a standardised system of symbols devised by the International Phonetic Association (1888) to represent the sounds of all human languages. Its guiding principle is one symbol for one sound, so that each speech sound is written with a unique symbol regardless of spelling.

• It is used to transcribe pronunciation accurately, e.g. English cat = /kæt/, ship = /ʃɪp/.
• It includes separate symbols for consonants, vowels, and diacritics for features such as nasalisation, length and stress.
• It removes the irregularity of ordinary spelling, e.g. the ough in though, through, cough is written differently in IPA: /ðəʊ/, /θruː/, /kɒf/.

Thus the IPA is an essential tool for phoneticians, dictionary-makers and language teachers.

Classification of Phonemes

Classification of phonemes means grouping the distinctive sound units (phonemes) of a language according to the way they are produced and their phonetic features. Phonemes are broadly divided into vowels and consonants.

1. Vowels — produced with an open vocal tract and no obstruction of the airstream. They are classified by:

• Tongue height: high, mid, low — e.g. /iː/ (high), /æ/ (low).
• Tongue position (front/back): front /iː/, central /ə/, back /uː/.
• Lip rounding: rounded /uː/ vs. unrounded /iː/.

2. Consonants — produced with some obstruction of the airstream. They are classified by:

• Place of articulation: bilabial /p, b/, alveolar /t, d/, velar /k, g/, etc.
• Manner of articulation: plosive /p/, fricative /f, s/, nasal /m, n/, lateral /l/.
• Voicing: voiced /b, d, g/ vs. voiceless /p, t, k/.

Example: /b/ is classified as a voiced bilabial plosive, while /s/ is a voiceless alveolar fricative.

Lexical and Functional Words

1. Lexical (content) words carry the main, dictionary meaning of a sentence. They form open classes to which new words are easily added. They include:

• Nouns — book, teacher, Kathmandu
• Main verbs — run, write, eat
• Adjectives — beautiful, large
• Adverbs — quickly, here

2. Functional (grammatical) words carry little independent meaning but signal grammatical relationships between content words. They form closed classes to which new members are rarely added. They include:

• Articles/determiners — a, an, the, this
• Prepositions — in, on, at, of
• Conjunctions — and, but, because
• Pronouns — he, she, it
• Auxiliary verbs — is, have, will

Example: In "The boy is reading a book in the library," the lexical words are boy, reading, book, library, while the functional words are the, is, a, in.

Types of Phrase

A phrase is a group of words (without a finite verb of its own) that functions as a single grammatical unit and is built around a head word. The main types are:

1. Noun Phrase (NP) — has a noun/pronoun as head. Example: the tall boy is playing.
2. Verb Phrase (VP) — has a main verb as head, with auxiliaries. Example: She has been singing.
3. Adjective Phrase (AdjP) — has an adjective as head. Example: The food is very tasty.
4. Adverb Phrase (AdvP) — has an adverb as head. Example: He runs very fast.
5. Prepositional Phrase (PP) — begins with a preposition followed by an NP. Example: The cat is on the table.

Each phrase takes its name and grammatical function from its head word.

Semantic Relations at the Sentence Level

The chief sense relations that hold between sentences are:

1. Entailment — if sentence A is true, B must also be true. Example: "The dog killed the cat" entails "The cat is dead."
2. Paraphrase (synonymy) — two sentences have the same meaning. Example: "The boy hit the ball" = "The ball was hit by the boy."
3. Contradiction — the two sentences cannot both be true at the same time. Example: "Ram is alive" and "Ram is dead."
4. Presupposition — a sentence assumes the truth of another. Example: "Sita stopped smoking" presupposes "Sita used to smoke."
5. Ambiguity — one sentence has more than one meaning. Example: "Visiting relatives can be boring."
6. Anomaly — a sentence that is grammatical but semantically odd. Example: "The stone drank the water."

Language is Constantly Changing — Justification

Language is not static; every living language keeps changing over time at all its levels. This can be justified with the following examples:

1. Phonological change — sounds change. Old English hūs /huːs/ became Modern English house /haʊs/ through the Great Vowel Shift.
2. Lexical change — new words are added and old ones die. Modern words like internet, selfie, app did not exist earlier, while words such as thou and thee have fallen out of use.
3. Semantic change — word meanings shift. Nice once meant "foolish/ignorant" but now means "pleasant"; gay changed from "happy" to its present sense.
4. Grammatical/morphological change — Old English had many case endings on nouns that Modern English has lost.
5. Borrowing and contact — English has borrowed bungalow, jungle (Hindi) and Nepali borrows computer, mobile from English.

These continuous changes across sound, vocabulary, meaning and grammar prove that language is dynamic and ever-changing.

Importance of Contrastive Analysis (CA)

Contrastive analysis compares the learner's first language (L1) with the target language (L2). Its importance in language teaching:

1. Predicts difficulties — areas where L1 and L2 differ are predicted as hard. Example: Nepali has no /θ/, /ð/ sounds, so Nepali learners struggle with English think, this.
2. Explains errors — many learner errors come from L1 interference, e.g. Nepali SOV word order produces "I rice eat."
3. Helps prepare teaching materials — points of difference can be given extra practice.
4. Aids syllabus/test design — difficult contrasts can be sequenced and tested carefully.
5. Saves time — features common to both languages need less teaching.

OR — Use of Linguistic Knowledge in Language Teaching

Knowledge of linguistics greatly improves language teaching:

1. Phonetics/phonology helps teach correct pronunciation, stress and intonation, e.g. distinguishing /ʃ/ and /s/.
2. Morphology helps teach word formation — prefixes, suffixes, plurals and tenses.
3. Syntax helps teach sentence structure and word order, correcting errors like "He no come."
4. Semantics helps teach meaning, synonyms, antonyms and avoid ambiguity.
5. Sociolinguistics helps the teacher use language appropriate to context, dialect and register.
6. Applied linguistics (CA & error analysis) helps predict and remedy learners' difficulties.

Thus a teacher equipped with linguistic knowledge can analyse the language scientifically, anticipate problems and teach more effectively.

State of Mother-Tongue Education in Nepal

Nepal is a multilingual country with over 120 languages, and the Constitution of Nepal (2072) recognises every Nepali community's right to get basic education in its mother tongue.

Positive aspects:

1. The constitution and education policy guarantee the right to mother-tongue education.
2. Multilingual Education (MLE) programmes have been piloted in several districts.
3. Curricula, textbooks and dictionaries have been prepared in languages such as Maithili, Newari, Tharu, Tamang and Limbu.
4. Local levels are empowered to run education in local languages.

Problems/limitations:

1. Shortage of trained teachers and teaching materials in many mother tongues.
2. Lack of standardised scripts and orthographies for some languages.
3. Dominance of Nepali and English reduces motivation for mother-tongue learning.
4. Inadequate funding and weak implementation.

Conclusion: Although strong legal provisions exist, mother-tongue education in Nepal is still at an early, partly implemented stage and needs more resources, trained teachers and materials to become fully effective.

Diagram of the Speech Organs (Vocal Tract)

The speech organs (organs of articulation) are the parts of the body used to produce speech sounds. Since the diagram cannot be drawn here, it is described in words; students should draw a side (sagittal) view of the head showing the vocal tract from the lungs up to the lips and nose, labelling the following parts.

Labelled parts (from inside/below to the lips):

1. Lungs — supply the airstream (power source).
2. Trachea (windpipe) — carries air from the lungs upward.
3. Larynx / Vocal cords (glottis) — vibrate to produce voice; produce voiced and voiceless sounds.
4. Pharynx — the throat cavity above the larynx.
5. Epiglottis — flap above the larynx.
6. Uvula — the soft tip hanging at the back.
7. Soft palate (velum) — back roof of the mouth; controls airflow into the nose for nasal sounds.
8. Hard palate — the bony front roof of the mouth.
9. Alveolar ridge — the tooth ridge behind the upper teeth.
10. Teeth — upper and lower.
11. Tongue — divided into tip, blade, front, back and root; the most active articulator.
12. Lips — upper and lower (bilabial articulator).
13. Nasal cavity — resonating chamber for nasal sounds /m, n, ŋ/.
14. Oral cavity — the mouth chamber.

Diagram (schematic, top = nose/lips, going back into throat):

        Nasal cavity
   ____________________
  /  hard palate  soft palate(velum)
 Lips  alveolar     \  uvula
  |    ridge   tongue \  pharynx
 Teeth   (tip→back→root) |
                         | epiglottis
                      Larynx (vocal cords)
                         |
                       Trachea
                         |
                       Lungs

Each labelled organ plays a role in modifying the airstream to produce different speech sounds.

Morph, Morpheme and Allomorph

1. Morpheme — the smallest meaningful unit of a language that cannot be further divided without losing meaning. It is an abstract unit. Example: the word unkindness has three morphemes — un- + kind + -ness. Morphemes are of two types: free (can stand alone, e.g. book, run) and bound (cannot stand alone, e.g. -s, -ed, un-).

2. Morph — the actual phonetic/written form (segment) that realises a morpheme in speech or writing. It is the concrete shape of a morpheme. Example: in cats, the morph -s realises the plural morpheme.

3. Allomorph — the different forms (variants) of the same morpheme that occur in different environments. Example: the English plural morpheme has three allomorphs:

• /s/ in cats
• /z/ in dogs
• /ɪz/ in buses

The past-tense morpheme -ed similarly has allomorphs /t/ (walked), /d/ (played) and /ɪd/ (wanted).

Relationship: A morpheme is the abstract meaningful unit; a morph is its concrete realisation; allomorphs are the alternative morphs of one morpheme conditioned by their environment.

OR — Word-Formation Process

The word-formation process is the way new words are created in a language from existing materials. The main processes are:

1. Affixation (derivation) — adding prefixes/suffixes. Example: happy → unhappy → unhappiness.
2. Compounding — joining two words. Example: black + board → blackboard; tea + pot → teapot.
3. Conversion (zero derivation) — changing word class without affix. Example: to email (verb) from email (noun).
4. Clipping — shortening a word. Example: advertisement → ad, laboratory → lab.
5. Blending — fusing parts of two words. Example: breakfast + lunch → brunch; smoke + fog → smog.
6. Acronyms/Initialisms — from initial letters. Example: NASA, UNESCO, laser.
7. Borrowing — taking words from other languages. Example: bungalow, jungle (from Hindi).
8. Back-formation — removing an affix. Example: editor → edit; television → televise.

These processes keep the vocabulary of a language growing and dynamic.

Pedagogical Grammar vs. General Grammar

General (descriptive/theoretical) grammar is the complete, scientific description of the rules and structures of a language as it is actually used by its native speakers. It aims to describe the whole system objectively for linguists and scholars.

Pedagogical grammar is a simplified, selective grammar specially designed to teach a language to learners. It selects and grades only those rules that are useful for learning, presents them in an easy, graded sequence with plenty of examples and exercises.

Differences (with examples):

Example illustration: A general grammar would list every rule and exception governing the article the; a pedagogical grammar would first teach the simple rule "use 'the' for something already known," with examples like "the sun, the book on the table," and introduce exceptions gradually.

Conclusion: General grammar describes a language fully and scientifically, whereas pedagogical grammar simplifies and grades that knowledge to make it teachable and learnable.