STUDENT NUMBER (NUMERO DI MATRICOLA): ____________________

2022/2023; Semester 2
Lingua inglese 1
Mock mid-term optional exam (Simulazione del Parziale 1)
Dr Maria Cristina Seccia
5
Time allowed: 30 minutes max

Please read the following newspaper article and do the activities below.

10 No more 'nagging wives': how Oxford Dictionaries is cleaning up sexist language

After a huge project that involved picking over tens of thousands of example sentences,
Oxford University Press has been replacing hundreds of examples that “unnecessarily
perpetuate sexist stereotypes” in Oxford Dictionaries, which are licensed by Apple and Google.

15 The extensive research was prompted by a complaint made by the Canadian anthropologist
Michael Oman-Reagan, who had noticed that the adjective “nagging” used the example phrase
“a nagging wife”.

“People were talking about stereotypes being perpetuated by example sentences. That was
20 something we’d never considered before,” said Katherine Martin, head of language content
and data at OUP. “We’ve done a really extensive project looking at every example sentence
that had a female pronoun in it, involving thousands and thousands of examples, looking for
patterns to check if this was a valid critique.”

We noticed that there was a lot of stuff about women’s appearance that wasn’t necessary to
25 explain what the meanings of words were,” said Martin.

Housework, for example, had been illustrated with the sentence, “She was doing the
housework”. OUP’s lexicographers went back to the dictionary’s corpus to find relevant
examples.

Around 500 changes to example sentences have been made to date in the ongoing project,
30 including words to do with appearance (anatomy, hip, hot, ugly), sexuality and sexual
behaviour (arouse, frumpy, frigid, grope), personality traits (avaricious, brainy, high-
maintenance, shopaholic, stubborn), and concepts of traditional gender roles (housework,
chore, domestically, housekeeping). Professors of language and communication welcomed the
changes.

1
5 STUDENT NUMBER (NUMERO DI MATRICOLA): ____________________

35 1. Please identify the verbs in the following sentence and indicate whether they are
avalent/monovalent/divalent or trivalent.

We’ve done a really extensive project. (line 10)

____/2 points

40 2. Please identify the verbs in the following sentence and indicate whether IN THIS CASE
they are intransitive, monotransitive, ditransitive or complex transitive.

That was something we’d never considered before. (lines 8–9)

____/2 points

3. Please divide the following sentence into phrases and classify them (e.g. noun phrase/
45 verb phrase/adjective phrase/preposition phrase etc.).

Professors of language and communication welcomed the changes. (lines 22–23)

____/4 points

4. Please divide the following sentence into phrases and specify their syntactical function
(eg. subject/predicate/direct object/complement).
50
People were talking about stereotypes. (line 8)

____/4 points

55 5. Please divide the following sentence into phrases and identify the thematic role played
by the arguments
(eg.agent/experiencer/predicate/theme/location/source/instrument/goal) based on the
meaning relation that they have with the predicate.

60 OUP lexicographers went back to the dictionary’s corpus to find relevant examples.
(lines 16–1 7)

____/4 points

65 6. Please read the sentence below and:

- Identify the verbs;
- divide the sentence into clauses;
- indicate whether these are main/independent and/or subordinate/dependent
clauses;
70 - if there are any subordinate/dependent clauses, indicate whether this is/these are
finite or non-finite;
- indicate whether overall the sentence is simple or non-simple;
- if the sentence is non-simple, indicate whether this is compound or complex.

2
 STUDENT NUMBER (NUMERO DI MATRICOLA): ____________________
10
75 Oxford University Press has been replacing hundreds of examples that “unnecessarily
perpetuate sexist stereotypes” in Oxford Dictionaries, which are licensed by Apple and
Google. (lines 1–3)

____/12 points

7. Please read the following sentence and:

80 - formulate a question the answer to which should be the segment underlined
below;
- indicate whether it is a YES/NO question or a Wh- question;
- indicate whether you have opted for a move operation or do insertion.

85 The extensive research was prompted by a complaint made by the Canadian

anthropologist Michael Oman-Reagan. (lines 4–5)

_________________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________________

____/3 points

90 8. Please explain the difference between speaking a standard language variety with an
accent and speaking a regional dialect. Please give at least one example of an English
standard variety as well as of an accent and of a regional dialect used in an anglophone
country.

_________________________________________________________________________
95 _________________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________________

____/12 points

100 Total: ____/43 points

____ : 43 = X: 31  ____ x 31: 43  Final mark: _____/30 e lode