Direction: In the following passage some of the words have been left out. Read the passage carefully and choose the correct answer to each question out of the four alternatives and fill in the blanks.
PASSAGE
The Dalmatian of the sole surviving semi- speaker, Tuone Udaina, was surveyed in the late 1870s and again towards the end of his life in the late 1890s. These fairly extensive records curiously suggest that a systematic (......) change took place in those two decades such that by the 1890s the distinction between present and imperfect indicative had largely been neutralized (a development unique among Romance languages) in favour of the imperfect tense is forms. I argue that the data is authentic and that the change, whether it occurred just in Udaina’s head or was already underway in the last years of Dalmatian as a spoken language, is purely ‘internal’ and not (......) by contact with other languages. I explore its internal mechanisms and show that what is involved is a kind of analogical formmeaning levelling whose signatum is an ‘empty’ element of (......) structure. Reinforcement of this essentially ‘nonsensical’ (......) of paradigmatic structure constitutes further evidence for my general view that intraparadigmatic coherence may be no less important than extramorphological transparency. It also suggests that such a development can as easily (......) in a dying language as anyhwere else.(......)
SOME IMPORTANT WORDS
(1) Dalmatian (N.) : a Romance language of Dalmatia (Australian Province) (extinct since 19th century)
(2) signatum (N.) : that which is indicated/designated by something; signified
(3) paradigmatic (Adj.) : that is a typical example/ pattern of something
(4) coherence (N.) : the situation in which all the parts of something fit together well
(5) morpho logical (Adj.) : connected with the forms of words
(6) aberration (N.) : a fact, an action/a way of behaving that is not usual, and that may be unacceptable
(7) oddity (N.) : the quality of being strange/unusual