General Knowledge MCQs
Topic Notes: General Knowledge
MCQs and preparation resources for competitive exams, covering important concepts, past papers, and detailed explanations.
Plato
- Biography: Ancient Greek philosopher (427–347 BCE), student of Socrates and teacher of Aristotle, founder of the Academy in Athens.
- Important Ideas:
- Theory of Forms
- Philosopher-King
- Ideal State
31
What is a 'Dialect Continuum'?
Answer:
A range of dialects spoken across a large area where neighbors understand each other, but distant speakers do not
A classic example is the continuum from Dutch to German; there is no sharp line where one ends and the other begins.
32
A variety of language that has 'Covert Prestige' is one that:
Answer:
Is generally considered non-standard but is highly valued within a specific social group for solidarity
Street slang often has covert prestige; it signifies belonging to the group, even if schools or jobs discourage it.
33
What is 'Hypercorrection'?
Answer:
The over-application of a perceived rule of grammar in an attempt to sound formal or correct
An example is saying 'between you and I' instead of 'between you and me', because the speaker wrongly thinks 'I' is always more proper.
34
What is the 'Observer's Paradox' in sociolinguistics?
Answer:
The act of observing or recording people makes them speak less naturally, yet natural speech is what linguists want to study.
Coining by William Labov, it highlights the difficulty of getting 'vernacular' data when a researcher is present.
35
A 'Proto-language' is:
Answer:
A hypothetical reconstructed ancestor of a group of related languages
Examples include Proto-Indo-European (PIE), the ancestor of English, Hindi, Spanish, and many others.
36
A 'Calque' (or loan translation) is:
Answer:
A word-for-word translation of a phrase from another language (e.g., 'Skyscraper' becoming 'Gratte-ciel')
Calques translate the constituent parts of the foreign word into the native language.
37
What is the difference between an Acronym and an Initialism?
Answer:
Acronyms are spoken as words (e.g., NASA); Initialisms are spelled out (e.g., FBI).
Both are abbreviations formed from the first letters, but the pronunciation differs.
38
Shortening 'Influenza' to 'Flu' or 'Mathematics' to 'Math' is a process called:
Answer:
Clipping
Clipping involves reducing a word to one of its parts while retaining the original meaning.
39
What is 'Suppletion'?
Answer:
When a word form changes completely and doesn't resemble its root (e.g., 'go' becoming 'went')
Suppletion occurs when different roots are used for different grammatical forms of the same word (e.g., good/better/best).
40
What characterizes an 'Agglutinative' language (e.g., Turkish, Swahili)?
Answer:
Words are formed by stringing together distinguishable morphemes without changing their spelling
In agglutinative languages, you can 'glue' many affixes to a root, and each affix usually carries one specific meaning.