Introduction to Linguistics - Assignment 2 James Madison University

DIRECTIONS: Please write or print this entire assignment in a form that may be submitted in class. [This assignment will be marked only as an acceptable or unacceptable effort.]

1. Take a look at the sentence examples posted on Canvas by other students for assignment one. Do you disagree with any categorizations made by other students? If so, which examples? (FYI, it is common for prescriptive judgments, familiarity with particular constructions, and even overall acceptability judgments to vary a bit. :) )
2. Take a look at the examples of acceptable sentence fragments posted on Canvas by other students for assignment one (from question 3). Which posted example (other than your own) would you characterize as the most commonly used expression and which would you characterize as the most unusual? For two additional posted fragment examples, write down a speculation about what might have been a possible context in which each example occurred.
3. Write down an example of a full sentence in English that you have said or have heard said to an animal. How well would you say the animal would have needed to understand English to understand that sentence? What kind of animal was it?
4. Watch at least two short Koko (the gorilla) Youtube videos that are NOT from when she was a baby and that DO involve both some communication between her and humans and some use of sign language. (There are many videos of Koko, and some are long, but you just need to make sure you get some of her communicative interactions with humans and a few examples of her sign language!) How communicative, in the broad sense of the term, does Koko seem to be? In what ways, if any, does what you saw suggest that Koko's use of sign language as one of her means of communication is similar to how humans use sign language? In what ways, if any, does it seem different?
5. Do just parts a and b of exercise 14 at the end of Chapter 1 in your textbook.
6. Find and write down a grammatical sentence at least 12 words long from any written source (from a favorite novel, a textbook, a newspaper, a pizza coupon, etc.) and then rewrite it minus any words that you think do not contribute significantly to the meaning of the sentence. How would you describe this new version of the sentence?