Chapter 12: Language Structure

Question 1

Which side of the brain is most active during language tasks?

Answer 1

The left side

Question 2

Define Broca’s Aphasia

Answer 2

deficits in speech production; speech content makes sense

Question 3

Define Wernicke’s Aphasia

Answer 3

Deficits in speech comprehension; no problem producing speech, but it usually does not make semantic or syntactic sense

Question 4

Exceptions to left-brain language dominance?

Answer 4

Lefties (50% of lefties house language in right hemisphere)/ Bilingual speakers (native language is left hemisphere, secondary language is bilateral

Question 5

Cognitive psychology’s rise is in part due to what?

Answer 5

behaviorism’s failure to account for linguistics

Question 6

What does all language have?

Answer 6

some form of grammar (syntax, semantics, phonology)

Question 7

What is the Field of Linguistic’s goal?

Answer 7

understand the set of rules that captures the structural regularities of all languages/the individual differences of other languages

Question 8

What would Chomsky (1965) say about competence and performance?

Answer 8

They are distinct. (While behaviorists would say they are equal)

Question 9

What do errors involving words and sounds suggest?

Answer 9

words are selected at the clause level/sounds are inserted at a lower phrase level

Question 10

What do errors of anticipation suggest?

Answer 10

An early phoneme is changed to a later phoneme

Question 11

What do errors of exchange suggest?

Answer 11

Two phonemes are switches

Question 12

What are the 3 main differences in humans and nonhumans?

Answer 12

Semanticity and the arbitrariness of units; displacement in time and space; discreteness and productivity

Question 13

Define the semanticity and arbitrariness difference

Answer 13

relationship between language and its meaning is arbitrary (nothing inherently “chairy” about a chair)

Question 14

Define the displacement in time and space difference

Answer 14

Language can be used to communicate over time and distance (ie animal danger alerts only occur in presence of danger)

Question 15

Define the discreteness and productivity difference

Answer 15

Human language contains discrete units (elements of our language are combined into vast number of phrase structures

Question 16

Who sponsored the Nim Chimpsky ASL work?

Answer 16

Herb Terrace

Question 17

At what age did Nim Chimpsky stop acquisition?

Answer 17

adolescence

Question 18

What is the Whorf hypothesis?

Answer 18

language influences the way we think/see the world; different language= different kinds of thoughts

Question 19

How to test the Whorf hypothesis

Answer 19

test obscure language culture’s ability to perceive shapes, colors etc

Question 20

How does the Dani tribe of New Guinea define colors?

Answer 20

Dark/cold= Mili; Bright/warm= Mola

Question 21

How did the Dani tribe do at perceiving colors?

Answer 21

Could distinguish blue from red; not red from pink

Question 22

What is the conclusion of the Dani tribe studies?

Answer 22

Language shapes how we classify/perceive color boundaries, but doesn’t allow us to perceive wholly different colors

Question 23

What is language able to strongly impact?

Answer 23

Memory (ie “how fast is car going” example)

Question 24

What do a minority of researchers believe about language?

Answer 24

it’s independent from thought; ie Williams syndrome/developmental deficits don’t impair language and expressive/fluent aphasia/language deficits don’t impair development

Question 25

When does language education start?

Answer 25

Before birth; prenatal infants can hear mother speak

Question 26

What can newborn infants discriminate?

Answer 26

native language v. foreign dialect

Question 27

When does speech generation occur?

Answer 27

One word: around 1 yr; two words: around 18 months

Question 28

Define parsing sounds

Answer 28

learning what sounds are likely to follow other sounds/ which are unlikely in order to filter out irrelevant acoustic cues

Question 29

what does sound parsing help us understand?

Answer 29

where one word ends and the next begins

Question 30

Who first demonstrated sound parsing?

Answer 30

Saffran, Aslin, and Newport (1996)

Question 31

Describe the Saffran, Aslin, & Newport (1996) experiment

Answer 31

Infants listen to artificial language for 2 mins; afterwords were able to detect syllable pairings that broke the artificial grammar

Question 32

Define the critical period

Answer 32

window when language is best learned (2-12 years)

Question 33

Evidence for critical period

Answer 33

feral children never truly become fluent in a language after this period

Question 34

Counterevidence for critical period

Answer 34

adults may learn just as quickly if given total immersion

Question 35

After age 10, what is different about languge acquisition

Answer 35

semantics are fine but syntax shows impairment and phonology shows lots of impairment