Chapter 2: The Language User

Question 1

Linguistic performance

Answer 1

A speakers use of language in real situations.

Question 2

Communicative competence

Answer 2

The knowledge of how to use your language in different situations.

Question 3

Mental lexicon

Answer 3

The vocabulary of a language user; their knowledge of words.

Question 4

Activation spreading

Answer 4

When activation fans out to surrounding word forms that are closely connected.

Question 5

Priming effect

Answer 5

When latter words in a sentence can be easily recognized due to activation and activation spreading.

Question 6

Cognitive system

Answer 6

Our various types of knowledge and abilities to speak and understand language.

Question 7

Aphasia

Answer 7

Language dysfunctions that are caused by damage to the brain.

Question 8

Aphasia to Broca’s area

Answer 8

Processing and understanding of syntactic information is affected. Speaking is difficult, few grammatical words are used.
(Broken speech)

Question 9

Aphasia to Wernicke’s area

Answer 9

Phonology and semantics are affected. Comprehension is difficult, speech is fluent but hard to understand.
(Word Salad)

Question 10

Aphasia to supramarginal gyrus

Answer 10

Word retrieval difficulties.

Question 11

Co-articulation

Answer 11

When the pronunciation of a sound is influenced by sounds that both precede and follow it, and it therefore sounds different in different contexts.

Question 12

Variable

Answer 12

A different way of pronouncing a sound due to co-articulation.

Question 13

Bottom-up processing

Answer 13

When each individual speech sound within the sound signal is identified and then combined into a word.

Question 14

Top-down processing

Answer 14

When speech recognition is influenced by our knowledge, expectations and higher levels of processing, such as constructing an interpretation that makes sense.

Question 15

Cohort

Answer 15

A set of words that is activated at a certain stage in the process of word recognition.

Question 16

Cohort model

Answer 16

The model of word recognition that uses a cohort.

Question 17

Context effect

Answer 17

When the context helps to build up an expectation in the listener which may lead to faster recognition.

Question 18

Parsing

Answer 18

To analyze a sentence in terms of grammatical constitutes, identifying parts of speech, syntactic relations etc.

Question 19

Syntactic strategy

Answer 19

To use analytic techniques to understand the structure of sentences; hearers anticipate on frequent patterns.

Question 20

Semantic strategy

Answer 20

To identify the content words in a sentence and instruct an interpretation that makes sense on hat basis; hearers anticipate on the most likely meaning.

Question 21

Conceptualizing

Answer 21

Thinking out and planning an utterance.

Question 22

Preverbal message

Answer 22

When the message is thought out and the planning stage is completed, but the utterance does not yet have a linguistic shape.

Question 23

Grammatical encoding

Answer 23

The formulation of an utterance.

Question 24

Slip of the tongue

Answer 24

When the right words for an utterance are chosen, but something goes wrong in the word form.

Question 25

Slip of the hand

Answer 25

Mispronunciations in sign languages.

Question 26

Phonetic plan

Answer 26

A plan that contains all the information needed to actually produce an utterance, like the phonological encoding of words and their grammatical properties.

Question 27

Articulation phase

Answer 27

When the abstract word forms that have been activated in the brain are turned into speech movements.

Question 28

Incremental process

Answer 28

A process that happens in a series of amounts

Question 29

Linguistic competence

Answer 29

The unconscious knowledge of grammar that allows a speaker to use a language.

Question 30

Activation

Answer 30

When a word from the lexicon is used it is activated and this activation spreads to other words that are somehow related to the activated word.