Matching the etymology of English words borrowed from Indian languages:

A. mongoose — (IV) Marathi. Derived from the Marathi word mungūs.

B. loot — (III) Hindi/Urdu. Derived from the Hindi word lūṭ (meaning spoils or plunder).

C. curry — (I) Tamil. Derived from the Tamil word kaṟi (meaning sauce or relish).

D. betel — (II) Malayalam. Derived via Portuguese from the Malayalam word veṭṭila.

Paralanguage (or vocalics) refers to the non-lexical component of communication by speech.

It is not what you say (the actual words), but how you say it. Paralanguage includes pitch, volume, intonation, speech rate, and even sighs or gasps. These vocal cues often convey the true emotional meaning behind the spoken words (e.g., detecting sarcasm when someone says "Great job").

Metalanguage is broadly defined as "language used to talk about language."

• (A) True: In linguistics, it is a technical vocabulary used to describe the rules and properties of language (e.g., words like "syntax," "verb," "phoneme").
• (D) True: It is structurally considered a "second-order" language because it operates one level of abstraction above the natural, "first-order" language it is analyzing.

Ferdinand de Saussure divided language into two distinct concepts: Langue and Parole.

Langue is the abstract, hidden structural system of rules and conventions shared by a community at a specific moment in time (synchronically). Parole, on the other hand, is the specific, individual, physical act of speaking or writing. Therefore, option 1 correctly identifies Langue as the underlying system. Option 2 describes Parole, not Langue.

The dichotomy of Competence and Performance was introduced by the American linguist Noam Chomsky (as part of his Generative Grammar theory).

It is similar to Saussure's Langue/Parole. Competence is the idealized, subconscious knowledge a native speaker has of their language's grammar rules. Performance is the actual real-world use of that language (which may contain errors, stutters, or false starts due to memory limits or distractions). Chomsky argued linguistics should primarily study Competence.

This touches on the core theory of modern Semiotics (specifically referencing Roland Barthes's cultural semiotics).

Assertion A is True: No sign (a word, a piece of clothing, an image) is purely objective or "innocent." They always carry cultural, ideological baggage.

Reason R is True & Explanatory: The reason signs are never innocent is that a sign only functions because it belongs to a massive, pre-existing cultural system designed to convey human meanings, biases, and power structures.

Semiotics (or semiology) is broadly defined as the study of signs, symbols, and how meaning is created and communicated within systems.

It goes far beyond just linguistics or human language. Semiotics studies all sign systems, including visual signs (traffic lights, emojis), cultural signs (fashion, rituals), and even non-human signs (like animal communication or medical symptoms). Option 1 describes Phonology.

Matching prominent linguists to their primary theories:

A. Paul Grice — (IV) Cooperative Principle. In Pragmatics, the assumption that participants in a conversation naturally cooperate to convey meaning (involving the 4 Maxims of Conversation).

B. Edward Sapir — (III) Linguistic Relativity. The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, arguing that the structure of a language shapes how its speakers perceive the world.

C. Ferdinand de Saussure — (II) Linguistic signs. The father of Structuralism, defining language as a system of signs (Signifier + Signified).

D. Nancy Dorian — (I) Language death. A pioneer in studying language obsolescence, specifically documenting the death of Scottish Gaelic dialects.

The famous phrase "The medium is the message" was coined by the Canadian media and communication theorist Marshall McLuhan (in his 1964 book Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man).

McLuhan argued that we focus too much on the content of media. In reality, it is the medium itself (e.g., the printing press vs. the television vs. the internet) that fundamentally changes human behavior, psychology, and the structure of society, regardless of what content is being broadcast over it.

Analyzing syntax and semantics using Transformational Generative Grammar:

• (B) Structural Ambiguity: The sentence is structurally ambiguous because the prepositional phrase "on the mountains" can attach differently. Meaning 1: The subject of the poem is the mountains. Meaning 2: Hari was physically sitting on the mountains when he wrote the poem.
• (C) Two deep structures: Because there are two entirely different underlying meanings generating this sentence, Chomskyan linguistics states the sentence has two distinct "deep structures" that happen to result in the exact same "surface structure" (the printed sentence).

Why A and D are wrong: It is not lexical ambiguity (where a single word has two meanings, like "bank"). It only has one surface structure (the printed sentence), not two.