Chapter 13

Question 1

Phoneme

Answer 1

smallest unit of speech that changes the meaning of the word

Question 2

How many phonemes in English?

Answer 2

47, 13 vowels, 24 major consonant

Question 3

Variability problem

Answer 3

there is no simple correspondence between the acoustic signal and individual phonemes

Question 4

Coarticulation

Answer 4

overlap between articulation of neighboring phonemes also causes variation

Question 5

Variability from different speakers

Answer 5

speakers differ in pitch, accent, speed in speaking and pronunciation

Question 6

Perceptual constancy

Answer 6

ability to perceive speech easily in spite of the variability

Question 7

Phonemic restoration effect

Answer 7

brain fills in phonemes that are covered

Question 8

anomalous sentence

Answer 8

follows grammar rules but doesn’t make sense

Question 9

Segmentation Problem

Answer 9

there are no physical breaks in the continuous acoustic signal

Question 10

Segmentation is affected by…….

Answer 10

context, meaning and our knowledge of word structure

Question 11

Transitional probabilities

Answer 11

the chance that one sound will follow another in a language

Question 12

Statistical learning

Answer 12

the process of learning transitional probabilities and other language characteristics

Question 13

infants as young as _______________ show statistical learning

Answer 13

8months

Question 14

Indexical characteristics

Answer 14

Charateristics of speaker’s voice such as age, gender, emotional state, level of seriousness etc.

Question 15

Broca’s aphasia

Answer 15

damage to Broca’s area (frontal lobe)- laboured and stilted speech, but they understand others

Question 16

Wernicke’s aphasia

Answer 16

Damage to Wernicke’s area (temporal lobe) - speak fluently but the content is disorganised and not meaningful, they don’t understand people

Question 17

Habituation procedure

Answer 17

present a stimulus until they dishabituate to it and then present a new stimulus, if they can perceive a difference then they will pay more attention to it

Question 18

Three hardest languages to learn

Answer 18

English, French and Icelandic