Chapter 9 Flashcards
Psycholinguistics
an interdisciplinary field that examines how people use language to communicate ideas
Phoneme
basic unit of spoken language
Morpheme
basic unit of meaning
Morphology
the study of morphemes; examines how we create words by combining morphemes
Syntax
the grammatical rules that govern how we organize words into sentences
Grammar
encompases both morphology and syntax; it therefore examines both word structure and sentence structure
Semantics
the area of psycholinguistics that examines the meanings of words and sentences
Semantic memory
our organized knowledge about the world
Pragmatics
our knowledge of the social rules that underlie language use; pragmatics takes into account the listener’s perspective
Modular
people have a set of specific linguistic abilities that is separated from other cognitive processes, such as memory and decision making
Surface structure
represented by the words that are actually spoken and written
Deep structure
the underlying, more abstract meaning of a sentence
Transformational rules
convert deep structure into a surface structure that they can speak or write
Ambiguous sentences
when two sentences have identical surface structures, but very different deep structures; context usually helps us resolve these ambiguities
Cognitive functional approach
emphasizes that the function of human language in everyday life is to communicate meaning to other individuals
Nested structure
one phrase is embedded within another phrase (often leads to memory overload)
Good-enough approach to language comprehension
we frequently process only part of a sentence and this strategy usually works well for us
Neurolinguistics
the discipline that examines how the brain processes language
Aphasia
difficulty communicating, caused by damage to speech areas of the brain
Broca’s aphasia
primarily characterized by an expressive-language-deficit— or trouble producing language and may have some trouble with language comprehension
Wernike’s area
typically produces serious difficulties understanding language
Wernike’s aphasia
severe problems with language comprehension that they cannot understand basic instructions such as “point to the telephone”
Lateralization
each hemisphere of the brain has somewhat different functions
Language-localizer task
a new technique that compensates for the problem of individual differences
Mirror system
a network of neurons in the brain’s motor cortex; these neurons are activated when you watch someone perform an action
Dual-rout approach to reading
specifies that skilled readers employ both (1) a direct-access route and (2) and indirect-access route
Direct-access route
you recognize this word directly through vision, without “sounding out” the words
Indirect-access route
as soon as you see a word, you translate the ink marks on the page into some form of sound, before you can access a words and its meaning
Whole word approach
argues that readers can directly connect the written word–as an entire unit– with the meaning that this word represents
Phonics approach
states that readers recognize words by trying to pronounce the individual letters in the word. (sound-it-out)
Whole language approach
reading instruction should emphasize meaning, and it should be enjoyable, to increase children’s enthusiasm about learning to read
Discourse
interrelated units of language that are larger than a sentence
Inferences
conclusions that go beyond the isolated phrase or sentence
Theory of mind
in everyday life, we try to figure out the mental state of other people in our lives
Metacognition
your knowledge about your cognitive processes, as well as your control of these cognitive processes
Metacomprehension
refers to your thoughts about comprehension
Latent semantic analysis (LSA)
an artificial intelligence program that can perform many fairly sophisticated language tasks
