Quiz · Reconstructing the Indo-European Family

Question 1What is this lecture on the Indo-European language family mainly about?

The written records left behind by early Indo-European speakers. How scholars reconstructed and debated the Indo-European language family. Why Sanskrit replaced Greek and Latin in eighteenth century scholarship. The archaeological proof for the Anatolian homeland theory.

Question 2What effect did the discovery of Hittite have on linguists?

It confirmed the reconstruction was complete by the nineteenth century. It proved the original homeland lay in central Turkey beyond dispute. It showed written records of the ancestral tongue had survived. It forced them to revise rules they had considered completely settled.

Question 3How is knowledge of the ancestral Indo-European tongue obtained?

By comparing sounds across its daughter languages. By translating its surviving clay tablet inscriptions. By studying records written down by its original speakers. By analyzing the alphabet once used in western Ireland.

Question 4What did William Jones notice in the late eighteenth century?

Striking similarities between Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin. Written records of the ancestral Indo-European tongue. That Hittite belonged to the Indo-European family. That Greek had replaced Latin in scholarship.

Question 5What is unusual about the ancestral Indo-European tongue, according to the lecture?

It was written down on clay tablets in Turkey. It left behind no written records of any kind. It was spoken only in western Ireland. It was reconstructed from a single inscription.

Question 6Which word does the speaker use to illustrate consistent sound patterns?

The word for water. The word for mother. The word for father. The word for king.

Question 7Which statement is closest in meaning to the speaker's point that reconstruction is an argument, not a photograph of the past?

Reconstruction gives an exact picture of how the language sounded. Reconstruction is a reasoned interpretation rather than direct evidence. Reconstruction relies on photographs found in central Turkey. Reconstruction was finished by the nineteenth century.

Question 8Where was the Hittite language discovered, according to the lecture?

In western Ireland. In northern India. On the Anatolian steppe. In central Turkey.

Question 9Which hypothesis about the Indo-European homeland currently dominates the field?

The Anatolian hypothesis. The maritime hypothesis. The steppe hypothesis. The Indian hypothesis.

Question 10What will the seminar next week do with the competing homeland theories?

Dismiss the steppe hypothesis as outdated. Translate Hittite texts that support them. Debate whether reconstruction is possible at all. Test them against archaeological and genetic evidence.