Exam II Review Questions
3. Cognates are words in various languages that are very much alike in form and in meaning. For example, the word mutter in German is a cognate of the word mother in English, both meaning "a female parent". Another example of cognates are bras (French), braccio (Italian), braço (Portuguese) and brazo (Spanish) which all mean "arm" and all derived from the Italic branch of Indo- European. Cognates help us identify what languages are related and if they share common ancestors.
11. William Labov conducted a study of three department stores that varied in social status. Labov tried to elicit the response "fourth floor" in order to listern to the pronounciation of the salespeople's postvocalic /r/ sound, to hear if it was present or not. This study helped identify the different types of socio-economic classes in New york City. It resulted in that the higher the socio-economic status, the higher the percentage of the pronounciation of the postvocalic /r/. The lower working class postvocalic /r/ was barely pronounced.
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