3.30.2007

Exam Grading


I'm in the middle of grading exams for Linguistics 101. Below is one of my favorite answers so far:

2b) In morphology, what is the difference between a root and a base? Use the word restarting to exemplify your answer.

A base word is kind of like a Mr. Potato Head. The base would be the potato, then you can mix and match the arms, legs, etc. (the affixes), and you have a new potatohead. If you want you restart and make something different, pull off all the affixes and put different ones on the base


In addition to being a very strange analogy, they're wrong (the potato would be the root, not the base) and they were actually supposed to talk about what the bases and root are in restarting, not use it in a sentence.

2 comments:

Jobonga said...

Check out these other students who don't let utter failure crush their spirits. Damn, I don't know how to make a link live. Will someone learn me?
http://www.scribd.com/doc/5107/They-didnt-study

wb said...

I really like the elephant excuse. I might give that one some points.