Ch. 11 - Language

Question 1

language

Answer 1

system of communication using sounds or symbols

- express feelings, thoughts, ideas, and experiences

Question 2

lexicon

Answer 2

all words a person understand (personal dictionary)

Question 3

phonemes

Answer 3

shortest segments of speech that, if changed, changes the meaning of the word

• bit, pit, bat, bid

Question 4

morphemes

Answer 4

smallest units of language that has meaning or grammatical function

• truck vs. truck(s)

Question 5

word superiority effect

Answer 5

the finding that letters are easier to recognize when they are contained in a word than when they appear alone or are contained in a nonword

Question 6

lexical decision task

Answer 6

read a list of words quickly, and determine whether they are words or non words

task: to read silently and say “yes” to words. time yourself to see how fast you answer
ex: governor, wefe, voluble, bless, maisle

Question 7

word frequency effect

Answer 7

respond more rapidly to high-frequency words

look at low-frequency words longer (focused longer)

Question 8

speech segmentation

Answer 8

ability to perceive individual words

• context
• understanding of meaning
• understanding of sound & syntactic rules
• statistical learning

Question 9

lexical ambiguity

Answer 9

words have more than one meaning

-context up ambiguity after all meanings of a word have been briefly accessed

Question 10

meaning dominance

Answer 10

the fact that some words are used more frequently than others

Question 11

biased dominance

Answer 11

when words have two or more meaning with different dominance

Question 12

balanced dominance

Answer 12

when words have two or more meanings with about the same dominance

Question 13

Wernicke’s aphasia

Answer 13

difficulty in understanding language.

damage to Wernicke’s area causes this

Question 14

garden path sentence

Answer 14

sentences that begin by appearing mean one thing, but then end up meaning something else

Question 15

temporary ambiguity

Answer 15

when the initial words are ambiguous, but the meaning is made clear by the end of the sentence

Question 16

syntax-first approach to parsing

Answer 16

grammatical structure of sentence determine parsing

Question 17

late closure

Answer 17

parser assumes new word is part of the current phrase

Question 18

interactionist approach to parsing

Answer 18

semantics & syntx both influence processing as one roads a sentence

-contrasts w/ the syntax first approach

Question 19

coherence

Answer 19

representation of the text in one’s mind so that information from one part of the text can be related to information in another part of the text

Question 20

inferences

Answer 20

readers create information during reading not explicitly stated in the text

Question 21

anaphoric

Answer 21

connecting objects/people

Question 22

instrumental

Answer 22

tools or methods

Question 23

casual

Answer 23

events in one clause by events in previous sentence

Question 24

given-new contract

Answer 24

speaker constructs sentences so they include

• given information
• new information
• new can then become given information