[Fwd: scavenger hunt score keeping!]

[Lynne Murphy]

Hi ADSers--

The below is the message I sent to our campus linguistics e-list regarding
the end of the scavenger hunt.  What I don't say there is that only 2
students actually entered the contest!  Since several of you were
interested in trying this activity, I thought that the results would
interest you...

Lynne

Lynne Murphy wrote:

> Here are some answers for the Scavenger Hunt.  Read on for news of the
> results!  I've marked the answers with a couple of symbols.  % means
> everybody got this one right.  * means everybody got this one wrong.
>
> 1. the word for ‘cheese’ in Estonian
> % juust
>
> 2. the longest word in English that uses no letter more than once
> % uncopyrightable
>
> 3. the name, nationality, and profession of the inventor of the Volapük
> language
> % Johann Martin Schleyer, German priest
>
> 4. five languages spoken in the Philippines
> %  there are tons of these, but some of them are:  Tagalog, Cebuano,
> Ilocano, Mandarin, English, Palawano, Philipine Sign Language, Sama,
> etc.
>
> 5. a nine-letter English word that has only one syllable
> % strengths or screeched
>
> 6. the sound that a dog makes in Swedish
> % vov vov
>
> 7. a language that has only three vowel sounds
> There are a few of these: Gudanji, Aranda, Greenlandic, Amuesha, etc.
>
> 8. the 11 official languages of South Africa
> % Afrikaans, English, (isi)Ndebele, sePedi, seSotho, siSwati (Swazi),
> Tsonga (Shangaan), Setswana, Venda, Xhosa, Zulu
>
> 9. an English word that can be a verb, noun, adjective, and preposition
> (example sentences required)  There are a few of these:  out, down, etc.
>
> 10. the regional word for "drinking fountain" that's used in Wisconsin
> % bubbler
>
> 11. a university where American Sign Language courses count toward the
> foreign language requirement
> There are a few of these, listed at
> http://www.unm.edu/~wilcox/ASLFL/univlist.html:  But note that this list
> is misleading—e.g., Baylor U Arts & Sciences students can’t take ASL as
> foreign lg, but Baylor’s on the list because Education students can
  So
> I did not give full credit for Baylor, because the University doesn't
> count ASL, just the College of Education does.
>
> 12. four different sounds that the letter "s" can symbolize in English
> spelling (examples)
> I gave full credit for those who listed the sounds, not just the
> spellings (i.e.,  sounds in IPA or phonetic description ), and partial
> credit for those who only listed spellings.  Voiceless alveolar
> fricative (in sit), voiced alveolar fricative (in busy), voiceless
> palatal fricative (in sure), voiced palatal fricative (in pleasure).
>
> 13. the language that Jesus spoke
> % Aramaic
>
> 14. the American equivalent of the British word "ex-directory"
> % unlisted (phone number)
>
> 15. five words that are legal plays in Scrabble and that have only two
> letters, one of which is "x"
> ax, ex, xi, ox, xu
>
> 16. a language that doesn’t have the sound /t/
> % Hawaiian
>
> 17. the inventor of the script that illustrates the cover of the Baylor
> linguistics pamphlet
> * King Njoya of the Bamum (Cameroon)
>
> 18. three ten-letter words that can be typed using only the top row of a
> standard keyboard (qwertyuiop)  % Possibilities are:  repertoire,
> proprietor, perpetuity, typewriter, peppertree
>
> 19. a dozen dead Indo-European languages with no living direct
> descendants
> * Everyone managed to include some with descendants, so no one got
> credit.  Ones with no living descendants = Tocharian, Dardic,
> Nuristani/Kafiri, Avestan, Sogdian, Pahlavi, Anatolian, Hittite, Palaic,
> Luvian, Lycian, Lydian, Phrygian, Thracian, Illyrian, Ubmrian, Oscan,
> Faliscan, Lepontic, Celtiberian, Gaulish, Gothic, Old Church Slavonic,
> Old Prussian.
>
> 20. a pair of "false friends" in Spanish and English and their meanings
> % There lots of these:  e.g.,  embarasada = 'pregnant', not
> 'embarrassed'
>
> 21. four Inuit (Eskimo) words for ‘snow’
> % See http://www.teelfamily.com/activities/snow/activities.html
>
> 22. a language whose standard word order is Verb-Subject-Object
> % There are a number of these:  Welsh, Tongan, Squamish, Tagalog,
> Maori,  etc.
>
> 23. the motto of the Klingon Language Institute
> % language opens worlds.  See www.kli.org for the Klingon version.
>
> 24. four apes who have learned some sign language
> % There are lots of these... nim, koko, washoe, kanzi

>
> 25. a language-related holiday and the country that celebrates it (
> Hangul day - Korea (celebrates the Hangul writing system)
>
> 26. three common nouns derived from the names of mythological characters
>
> Lots of these:  mercury, morphine, athenaeum, atlas, calypso
>
> 27. a school/college in North America where you can study the Albanian
> language
> A few possibilities:  Cameron, Chicago Indiana, Kansas, Lawrence,
> Northeastern IL, St. Mary’s, UC San Diego
>
> 28. identities of five Baylor faculty with degrees in Linguistics
> I'm counting Applied Linguistics and Philology as Linguistics here:
> * In English:  Murphy, Denton, Gitlin;  In MFL: Lahaie, Lazda, Long,
> McManness... And there might be some others that I'm not sure about...
>
> 29. a word that’s included in the Oxford English Dictionary that means
> ‘a person whose hair has never been cut’
> * acersecomic
>
> 30. three languages that have become extinct in the 20th century
> There are lots of these...  See www.sil.org/Ethnologue.
>
> 31. a prefix or suffix that used to be part of English, but dropped out
> (and its use/meaning)
> % There are lots of these...  E.g., ge- for perfect aspect/tense on
> verbs and the various case suffixes for nouns.
>
> 32. a web site dedicated to careers or jobs in linguistics  (give URL)
> % People found a few of these, but here's one:
> http://web.gc.cuny.edu/dept/lingu/enter/
>
> 33. a word with two meanings, one of which is the opposite of the other
> % There are a few of these, e.g., temper = to harden/to soften, cleave =
> to split apart/stick together, sanction = approval/disapproval
>
> 34. a word written in Amharic (not using Latin alphabet, with
> translation)
> I can't reprint the Amharic alphabet here, so we'll leave this one to
> your imagination.
>
> 35. five sounds that the letter "q" symbolizes in different languages of
> the world (identify the sound and the language)
> Arabic: q = uvular stop; Xhosa / Zulu: q = (alveo)palatal click;
> Quechua: q = velar fricative; Albanian: q = palatal stop;
> English/Spanish/French = voiceless velar stop.
>
> 36. photocopies or print-outs of the American and British Sign Language
> alphabets
> % For BSL see www.deafblind.com/deafsign.html;  For ASL see
> www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0200808.html
>
> 37. number of different "click" sounds in the language !X˜u
> There are 48.  See the Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language for the list.
>
> 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
>
> There's no particular correct answer for this one...
>
> 39. identity of the person who said "England and America are two
> countries divided by a common language"
> George Bernard Shaw (other people who have said it were quoting Shaw!)
>
> 40. International Phonetic Alphabet symbol for a  rounded mid central
> vowel
> % It looks like a squat theta--o w/ horizontal line through it.
>
> 41. seven English words for types of food and the Native American words
> that they are derived from (identify the language, too)
> See http://www.zompist.com/indianwd.html
>
> 42. Russian word derived from the name of a British train station (& the
> name of the train station) * Russian word for train (which is something
> like boksal when transliterated in to roman alphabet) derives from
> Vauxhall Station.
>
> 43. five-letter English word that’s pronounced the same when you delete
> four of its letters
> % queue
>
> 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)
> % macron
>
> 45. four countries where a creole language is the most widely spoken
> language
> % There are lots of these...Sierra Leone, Haiti, Vanuatu, Mauritius,
> Papua-New Guinea, others
  (Some people gave me islands that aren't
> countries, though!)
>
> 46. six sounds that "ough" spells in English, with examples
> % [^f] tough, [^p] hiccough, [u] through, [o] thorough, [Of] cough, [au]
> bough
>
> 47. what "apples" means in Cockney rhyming slang
> % from 'apples&pears' -- means ‘stairs’
>
> 48. a comic strip (NOT from a textbook!) whose joke depends on lexical
> ambiguity
> Variety of good answers.
>
> 49. an example of a "Tom Swiftie"
> % Lots of possibilities, e.g., "I like modern paintings," said Tom,
> abstractly.
>
> 50. a word that entered the English language in the 1970s
> % Lots of possibilities, e.g., dink ('jerk, idiot' 1974), disco (verb
> --'to dance to disco music' 1979), punt (monetary unit of Ireland,
> 1975), microgravity (1974), fractal (type of shape, 1975), femtosecond
> ('a quadrillionth of a second' 1976), faux ('false' 1975), pro-choice
> (1975), bodysuit (1970), telecommute, teleconferencing (both 1974)
> These are easy to find using  Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary,
> since they put the origin date early in their entries.
>
> ---------------
> And now... The winner is....    Elizabeth Arosemena!  (Make an
> acceptance speech, Elizabeth.)
> Elizabeth got 37 of these right.  (She turned in 42, but 5 of her
> answers were disqualified.)
> She can come to my office and pick up her Fabulous Prize Package
> on/after Monday.
>
> If you entered and turned in more than 37, then you didn't win because
> some of your answers were disqualified as being wrong.  One thing that
> led to such disqualifications was reliance on bad websites. (The other
> was failure to follow instructions properly.)  Remember, just because
> someone puts some information on their homepage doesn't mean that they
> got it right!  Also, general reference sources like Encyclopedia
> Brittanica have worse language information than more specific sources
> because they're assuming a rather linguistically-ignorant audience.
> Better is to use more specific reference works, like Cambridge
> Encyclopedia of Language or Atlas of the World's Languages.
>
> Second place (and honorable mention) goes to Brittany Rasmussen, who
> scored 33.
>
> Thanks to all who played!
>
> If anyone wants to discuss any of these questions/answers, please post
> to the BAYLING list!
>
> Happy Halloween,
> Lynne
>
> --
>
> 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

--

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