Classics : Language Aptitude Test
Timeallowed : 1 hour
Try toanswer all the questions in all three sections. Write youranswers in the spaces provided on the paper. (You may, if you wish, also writeyour rough work on the paper.) Pleasetake care to write very clearly.
SectionA [30 marks]
1. In English, most nouns form their plurals bythe addition of -s : e.g. cats, dogs, cows, horses. This pluralmarker may be pronounced as [s], as in cats, or [z] as in dogsand cows, or [Iz] as in horses.
Consider the following further examples : socks,slices, plates, ships, jokes, passes, lids, buses, blobs, phases, gears,flakes, pieces, dishes, sighs, slices, stripes, noses, sashes, flutes, whales,grazes, cares, bones, coshes.
On the basis of this list, can you suggest a rule, orrules, for when the plural marker is pronounced [Iz],and give three more examples that fit your rule(s)?
2. In Turkish, the plural marker for nouns is -leror -lar, e.g. ev ‘house’, evler ‘houses’ or pul‘stamp’, pullar ‘stamps’. Here are some more examples :çiçekler‘flowers’, çocuklar ‘children’, kitaplar ‘books’, babalar‘fathers’, kediler ‘cats’, odalar ‘rooms’, adamlar ‘men’, gençler‘young people’.
Whatwould you expect to find as the plural of at ‘horse’, gece‘evening’, okul ‘school’, arkadaş ‘friend’, fil‘elephant’?
3. In Classical Armenian, in one class of nounsand adjectives the genitive singular is formed by adding an ending -oy,e.g. get ‘river’, genitive getoy ‘of a river’. This may be accompanied by some other changeof form; consider these further examples :
beran ‘mouth’, beranoy; mard ‘man’, mardoy; luc ‘yoke’, lcoy;
gorc ‘work’, gorcoy; sur‘sword’, sroy; gin‘price’, gnoy;
ker ‘food’, keroy; nor ‘new’, noroy; surb ‘holy’, srboy;
mis ‘meat’, msoy; eraz ‘dream’, erazoy.
Whatwould you expect to find as the genitive singular forms of the following (whichbelong to the same class)?
sar ‘peak’ hur ‘fire’ cer‘old man’
hin ‘old’ orb ‘orphan’ gir ‘letter’
hum ‘raw’ erg‘song’
SectionB [40 marks]
4. The questions in this section are all basedon an invented language, called Babel. Read each group of examples carefully, paying particular attention todifferent forms of words, and working out what information they convey (just asin English there are differences between e.g. cat and cats, or beckonandbeckons and beckoned). Word order in Babel is different from that of English, and is notentirely fixed; it is not a reliable guide to the meaning of sentences. Note also that Babel has nothing correspondingto English the and a(n), so that e.g. bats may betranslated as ‘the king’ or ‘a king’. You are advised to work through thequestions in this section in the order in which they are given, as the laterones presuppose some information or vocabulary supplied in earlier examples.
(a) bats mug molti ‘the king praises theservant’
bats mugans molti ‘the kingpraises the servants’
mugas bat kadonti ‘the servantshate the king’
mugs batans kadti ‘the servanthates kings’
totans bats lubti ‘the king likeschildren’
Givethe meaning of : mugs tot kadti
batans totas lubonti
Translateinto Babel : ‘the kings praise theservant’
(b) bats mugans nemolto ‘the king did notpraise the servants’
totas gav pelonto ‘the childrenchased the dog’
filans tots lubto ‘the child likedelephants’
filas gavans nelubonti ‘elephants donot like dogs’
mugs totans nikto ‘the servantwashed the children’
Givethe meaning of : gavs fil nepelto
batas mugans nemolonto
Translateinto Babel : ‘the servants did notwash the child’
(c) bats palatte kipti ‘the king issleeping in the palace’
bataks filte hesto ‘the prince rodeon an elephant’
mugas laukanste gortsonti ‘the servantsare working in the fields’
parkanste miaulas loidonto ‘the cats playedin the gardens’
batas batakas-tu palatanste bidonti‘kings and princes live in palaces’
Givethe meaning of : miauls gavs-tu lauktekiponto
totas filanste nehesonti
Translateinto Babel : ‘the servant did not work in the garden’
(d) mipos bats kipti? ‘is the king sleeping?’
mipos gavs sti parkte? ‘is the dog in the garden?’
ko sonti mugas? ‘where are the servants?’
mipos woikanste filas bidonti? ‘do elephants live in houses?’
mipos miaul mugs nepelto? ‘didn’t theservant chase the cat?’
Givethe meaning of : mipos fils palatte nesto?
ko bataks gortsti?
Translateinto Babel : ‘were the dogs in the house?’
TURNOVER
SectionC [30 marks]
5.Foreigners speaking English sometimes have difficulties with questions, andproduce sentences such as : ‘Did he came?’, ‘Did you heard that?’, ‘Did theyliked it?’, etc.
Howwould you explain to them what they are doing wrong?
6. Adverbs may qualify a particular element of asentence, usually a verb or adjective, as in :
‘Curtis casually potted the blue ball.’
‘Sarah was terribly upsetby Jack’s behaviour.’
Orthey may qualify the sentence as a whole, as in :
‘There is unfortunatelylittle chance of a victory for England this summer.’
‘There will probably berain before the end of the Bank Holiday.’
In thefollowing sentences, underline those adverbs that qualify the whole sentence :
‘Sarah dejectedly re-read Jack’s letter.’
‘You have presumably not heard the latest score.’
‘Luckily I had some spare cash hidden in my shoe.’
‘The professor contemptuously ignored theinterruption.’
‘England predictably failed to get a single goal.’
7. In the English sentence ‘Cooking applescan fill the kitchen with a sweet smell’, cooking apples can havethree possible interpretations. One of them would be ‘apples that are cooking’, and a parallel useof -ing could be seen in crying babies, etc.
Whatare the other two possibilities? Can youfind parallels for these uses of the forms in -ing?
8. Rewrite the following sentence as reportedspeech, beginning ‘Susan said that she ...’ :
“I’m sorry tobe late,” said Susan, “but I have been waiting hours for a bus, and I’m afraid that the same thing may happen tomorrowunless they finish the roadworks; if thingshaven’t improved, I shall just have to come on foot.”
本人於40分鐘內完成，得分95%。
