Chapter 10: Language

Question 1

Sentence

Answer 1

Sequence of words that conforms to syntax rules

Question 2

Morpheme

Answer 2

Smallest unit of meaning
(E.g. “Eating” has 2 morphemes: “Eat” and “ing”)

Question 3

Phoneme

Answer 3

Smallest unit of sound
(E.g. [P] is a phoneme in the word “peg”)

Question 4

Voicing

Answer 4

One of the properties that distinguishes different categories of speech sounds

A sound is “voiced” if the vocal folds vibrate while the sound is produced

“Unvoiced” if the vibrating starts after the sound begins

Question 5

Manner of production

Answer 5

The way in which a speaker momentarily obstructs the flow of air out of the lungs to produce a speech sound

Question 6

Place of articulation

Answer 6

Speaker’s position at which air flow is momentarily obstructed from the lungs to produce a speech sound

Question 7

Speech segmentation

Answer 7

Process through which a stream of speech is “sliced” into words and phonemes within words

Question 8

Coarticulation

Answer 8

Trait of speech production in which the way a sound is produced is slightly altered by the immediately preceding and following sounds

“Overlap” varies the acoustic properties of each speech sound

Question 9

Phonemic restoration effect

Answer 9

Pattern in which people “hear” phonemes that actually are not presented but are highly likely in that context

Question 10

Categorical perception

Answer 10

Pattern in which speech sounds are heard merely as members of a category

Perceivers are less sensitive to acoustic contrasts distinguishing sounds within a category

Question 11

Generativity

Answer 11

Trait enabling someone to combine and recombine basic units to create (generate) new and complex entities

Linguistic rules are generative - limited set of words produce a vast # of sentences

Question 12

Syntax

Answer 12

Rules governing the sequences and combinations of words in the formation of phrases and sentences

Question 13

Phrase-structure rules

Answer 13

Constraints that govern what elements must be contained within a phrase and, in many languages, what the sequence of those elements must be

Question 14

Tree structure

Answer 14

Style of depiction often used to indicate hierarchical relationships

Such as that of words in a phrase/sentence

Question 15

Prescriptive rules

Answer 15

Describe how things are supposed to be and not how they are

“Normative” rules

Question 16

Descriptive rules

Answer 16

Descrbie the regularities in a pattern of observations with no commentary on whether the pattern is “proper,” “correct,” or
desirable”

Question 17

Parse

Answer 17

To divide input into its appropriate elements

(E.g. dividing the stream of incoming speech into its constituent words)

Can involve determining each element’s role within the sequence

Question 18

Garden-path sentence

Answer 18

Sentence that initially leads the reader to one understanding of how the sentence’s words are related but then requires a change in this understanding to comprehend the full sentence

Question 19

Extralinguistic context

Answer 19

Social and physical setting in which an utterance is encountered; usually, cues within this setting guide the interpretation of the utterance

Question 20

Prosody

Answer 20

Pattern of pauses/pitch change that characterize speech production, many uses

Question 21

Pragmatic rules

Answer 21

Principles describing how language is ordinarily used

Listeners rely on these to guide interpretation of what they hear

Question 22

Common ground

Answer 22

Set of (unspoken) beliefs and assumptions shared by conversational partners

Speakers and listeners count on this as a basis for making inferences about points not explicitly mentioned in conversation

Basis for interpreting elements of the conversation that would otherwise be unclear/ambiguous

Question 23

Broca’s Area

Answer 23

In the left frontal lobe

Damage typically causes nonfluent aphasia

Question 24

Nonfluent aphasia

Answer 24

Disruption of language caused by brain damage (Broca) in which person loses ability to speak/write fluently

Question 25

Wernicke’s area

Answer 25

In temporal lobe, where it meets the parietal lobes

Damage causes fluent aphasia (typically)

Question 26

Fluent aphasia

Answer 26

Disruption of language caused by brain damage (Wernicke) in which individuals can produce speech but it is not meaningful and in which individuals cannot understand what is said to them

Question 27

Specific-language impairment SLI

Answer 27

Disorder in which individuals have normal intelligence but have trouble learning language rules

Question 28

Overregularization error

Answer 28

Error in which a person produces a form consistent with a broad pattern that does not apply to the current utterance

(E.g. “foots” instead of “feet”)

Question 29

Linguistic relativity

Answer 29

Proposal that the language people speak shapes their thought, because languages vary in their structure/vocabulary