ENG509 Midterm Past Papers Spring 2025

ENG509

Mid-Term

ABSTRACT This comprehensive collection of notes is accurately crafted to empower students to excel academically, ensuring they achieve a minimum of 80% marks in their examinations. The content is organized with clarity and precision, focusing on key concepts, critical analyses, and practical applications tailored to the syllabus. These notes serve as a reliable resource for both thorough preparation and last-minute revision. Designed to inspire confidence and mastery, this guide is an essential tool for students striving for academic excellence.

Maha Malik

Spring 2025

Q. Descriptive Grammar

Descriptive grammar objectively describes how a language is actually used by speakers, without judging it as correct or incorrect. It contrasts with prescriptive grammar, which dictates language rules.

Q3. Words with the PREFIX un-

1. Unhappy
2. Unkind
3. Uncertain

Q. Why Does Russian Use Gender Agreement in Past Tense?

In Russian, past tense verb forms agree in gender with the subject because historically, the past tense was formed using participles, which behaved like adjectives. Adjectives in Russian must agree with the gender of the noun.

Q5. Phrases with Determiner, Quantifier, and Adjective

1. All these beautiful flowers
2. Some old books
3. Many young children
4. Every little mistake
5. Most delicious fruits

(Structure: Quantifier + Determiner + Adjective + Noun)

Q. Features of Primary Affixes

•  Usually of Latin-Romance origin
•  Cause stress shift
•  Occur closer to the stem
•  Semantics are less compositional
•  Can attach to non-lexical stems
•  May have allomorphs

Q. Passivation with Examples

Passivation converts an active sentence into passive voice.

•  Active: The cat chased the mouse.
•  Passive: The mouse was chased by the cat.

Q. Item and Process Approach

This morphological approach sees word formation as a process applied to morphemes (items). For example, adding -ed to a verb stem like walk becomes walked. This contrasts with the Item-andArrangement approach.

Q. Difference Between Inflection and Derivation (With Examples)

•  Inflection modifies a word’s form to express grammatical features without changing its category: walk → walks, walked.
•  Derivation creates a new word with a new meaning or category: teach → teacher.

Q. Define Mental Lexicon

The mental lexicon is the mental dictionary of words and morphemes known by a speaker. It includes information on meaning, pronunciation, and grammar.

Q. Three Verbs Derived from Verbs (Like repaint from paint)

1. Rebuild → build
2. Rewrite → write
3. Reorganize → organize

Q. Concept of Bracketing Paradox

This paradox arises when morphological and phonological structures conflict. Example: unhappier could be parsed as \[un\[happy]er] or \[\[unhappy]er], depending on whether affix scope or pronunciation is considered first.

Q. One Principle of Morphological Analysis

Compositionality: Meaning of a complex word is derived from its parts. Example: unhappiness = un + happy + ness

Q3. Words Using Re- Prefix

1. Rebuild
2. Reread
3. Reconnect

Q. How to Identify or Spot Adverbs

Adverbs modify verbs, adjectives, or entire clauses. Often end in -ly (e.g., quickly). They answer questions like how, when, where, and to what extent.