Concepts Flashcards
Phoneme
differences in sound that contribute to meaning
Morpheme
smaller units charged with meaning
Words
smallest element that can be uttered in isolation with objective or practical meaning
(content vs function)
Sentences (syntax)
rules of word combination to produce well-formed sentences
Discourse
Speech, or text in written language, is the highest level of language organisation
Pragmatics
social rules involved in language
Broca’s aphasia
Non-fluent speech, poor articulation and agrammatism. Intact comprehension and naming
- Lesion: Frontal lobe adjacent to primary motor cortex
Wernicke’s aphasia
Impaired comprehension. Fluent and articulated speech and grammatical structure
- Lesion: Posterior portion of first temporal gyrus
Conduction aphasia
Disturbance of repetition and spontaneous speech. Intact auditory comprehension and fluent speech production.
- Lesion: arcuate fasciculus (connections between parietal and temporal lobes
Transcortical sensory aphasia
Disturbance of single word comprehension with relatively intact repetition
- Lesion: Connections between parietal and temporal lobes
Transcortical motor aphasia
Disturbance of spontaneous speech, with sparing of naming
- Lesion: subcortical lesions in areas underlying the motor cortex
Anomic aphasia
Disturbance of the production of single words (trouble retrieving specific words)
- Lesion: Various parts of parietal and temporal lobes
Global aphasia
Major disturbance of all language functions
- Lesion: Large portions of association cortex
Allophones
two or more similar sounds that are variants of the same phoneme; often identified with brackets
Phonemic distinction
when a sound distinction has the potential to actually cause a change in meaning
Minimal pair
pair of words that have different meanings but the same sounds, with the exception of one phoneme
Coarticulation effect (phonetic context)
one phoneme may differ acoustically due to the preceding and following phonemes
Perceptual invariance
Perceiving sounds with highly variable acoustic manifestations as instances of the same sound
Word primitives
smallest form in which a word is stored in the mental lexicon
Morphemes
smallest meaningful unit of language
Can be:
-Free morphemes (stand by themselves as words)
-Bound morphemes (require attachment to other units)
-Derivational morphemes (significantly alter the root morphemes to which they are added)
-Inflectional morphemes (don’t significantly alter the root morphemes)
Social convention
arbitrary relationship between words and the concepts to which they refer
Homophones
they have separate, non-overlapping meanings but sound exactly the same
Homographs
words that are spelled the same but have separate, non-overlapping meanings
Polysemous words
have several related, but different meanings