linguistic scavenger hunt

Tue Oct 5 23:28:30 UTC 1999

Thank you to people who helped with items for the linguistic scavenger
hunt.  I've been too disorganized lately to say exactly who those people
are, and I regret that.  If you gave me a suggestion and I didn't take
it, it's either because I couldn't figure out a good way to phrase it as
an item or because it was something that I'd used as an example in class
(too easy for my students, but perhaps good idea for others).

Below is the list.  Some items are Baylor-specific, but feel free to use
whatever you like of it.  The answers are not here because I don't want
them floating around together on an e-mail list before the deadline of
the contest.  So if you need any answers or clues as to where to look
for any of these items, e-mail me directly.

Thanks again for your help.
--

M. Lynne Murphy, Assistant Professor in Linguistics
Department of English, Baylor University
PO Box 97404, Waco, TX 76798 USA
Phone:  254-710-6983     Fax:  254-710-3894
http://www.baylor.edu/~M_Lynne_Murphy

LINGUISTIC SCAVENGER HUNT

Your mission:  to find and turn in as many items on this list as you can

Your goal:  to win faaaabulous prizes  (prize package includes:
t-shirt, coffee mug, poster, stress ball with all linguistics themes,
plus we’ll throw in some halloween stuff for good measure!)
Your deadline:  5pm, Thursday 28 October
Your judge:  Dr. Murphy

To qualify, you must:
o be a Baylor student, but not necessarily one in a linguistics class.
o put your name and e-mail address on anything you turn in.
o word-process or handwrite neatly your list of answers, using the
numbers given here, in the order that they are given here.
o for items that cannot be listed (e.g., photocopied pages), indicate on
your ordered list "see attached," staple the extra page to the list, and
put the appropriate list number on it.
o turn in your findings by the deadline to:  Dr. Murphy, Carroll Science
405.

It is recommended that you:
o keep a record of your sources in case of a query from or dispute with
the judge.  It’s a good idea to cite your sources for each item on the
list that you turn in.
o work alone, although two-person teams will be allowed if they are
willing to split the prize.

In the event of a tie:  there will be an extra item to find within the
following two days.

HAVE FUN AND GOOD LUCK!

1. the word for ‘cheese’ in Estonian
2. the longest word in English that uses no letter more than once
3. the name, nationality, and profession of the inventor of the Volapük
language
4. five languages spoken in the Philippines
5. a nine-letter English word that has only one syllable
6. the sound that a dog makes in Swedish
7. a language that has only three vowel sounds
8. the 11 official languages of South Africa
9. an English word that can be a verb, noun, adjective, and preposition
(example sentences required)
10. the regional word for "drinking fountain" that's used in Wisconsin
11. a university where American Sign Language courses count toward the
foreign language requirement
12. four different sounds that the letter "s" can symbolize in English
spelling (examples)
13. the language that Jesus spoke
14. the American equivalent of the British word "ex-directory"
15. five words that are legal plays in Scrabble and that have only two
letters, one of which is "x"
16. a language that doesn’t have the sound /t/
17. the inventor of the script that illustrates the cover of the Baylor
linguistics pamphlet
18. three ten-letter words that can be typed using only the top row of a
standard keyboard (qwertyuiop)
19. a dozen dead Indo-European languages with no living direct
descendants
20. a pair of "false friends" in Spanish and English and their meanings
21. four Inuit (Eskimo) words for ‘snow’
22. a language whose standard word order is Verb-Subject-Object
23. the motto of the Klingon Language Institute
24. four apes who have learned some sign language
25. a language-related holiday and the country that celebrates it
26. three common nouns derived from the names of mythological characters

27. a school/college in North America where you can study the Albanian
language
28. identities of five Baylor faculty with degrees in Linguistics
29. a word that’s included in the Oxford English Dictionary that means
‘a person whose hair has never been cut’
30. three languages that have become extinct in the 20th century
31. a prefix or suffix that used to be part of English, but dropped out
(and its use/meaning)
32. a web site dedicated to careers or jobs in linguistics  (give URL)
33. a word with two meanings, one of which is the opposite of the other
34. a word written in Amharic (not using Latin alphabet, with
translation)
35. five sounds that the letter "q" symbolizes in different languages of
the world (identify the sound and the language)
36. photocopies or print-outs of the American and British Sign Language
alphabets
37. number of different "click" sounds in the language !X˜u
38. the business card or yellow pages ad of a person whose surname is
historically suited to their profession, plus an etymology of their name
(e.g., Murphy comes from a Gaelic word for ‘sea-serpent’, so it would be
a good name for a pirate!)
39. identity of the person who said "England and America are two
countries divided by a common language"
40. International Phonetic Alphabet symbol for a  rounded mid central
vowel
41. seven English words for types of food and the Native American words
that they are derived from (identify the language, too)
42. Russian word derived from the name of a British train station (& the
name of the train station)
43. five-letter English word that’s pronounced the same when you delete
four of its letters
44. name of the straight line that is used over vowels to signal that
they are so-called "long vowels" (e.g., in dictionary pronunciation
guides)
45. four countries where a creole language is the most widely spoken
language
46. six sounds that "ough" spells in English, with examples
47. what "apples" means in Cockney rhyming slang
48. a comic strip (NOT from a textbook!) whose joke depends on lexical
ambiguity
49. an example of a "Tom Swiftie"
50. a word that entered the English language in the 1970s