Language Flashcards
Exam 3
What is language?
System of communication using sounds or symbols
What is the hierarchical system of language?
Components that can be combined to form larger units
Are there specific ways that components should be arranged in language?
YES
Deaf children were able to invent sign language to talk to one another. This exemplifies the
universality of languages
Languages are “_________but ___________”
unique but the same
What differ about languages?
Words, sounds, and rules
What did B.F. Skinner believe in with language?
Verbal reinforcement
Language is learned through reinforcement (operant conditioning)
What did Noam Chomsky believe in with language?
Syntactic Structures
Human language is coded in the genes
Psycholinguistics
Discover psychological process by which humans acquire and process language
How do we make sense of language?
Comprehension
How do we actually make the sounds of language?
Speech production
How is language represented in the mind?
Representation
How do you acquire/develop language?
Acquisition
Lexicon
all words a person understands (my language dictionary)
Phoneme
Shortest segment of speech that, if changed, changes the MEANING of the words
Morphemes
Smallest unit of language that has meaning or grammatical function
Lexical semantics
Studying the meaning of words
Bat –> Bet proves that changing just a small segment of a word can still change the overall connotation. What is this called?
Phoneme
Do children use the same part of the brain as the adults when learning language?
NO
The lower larynx is the _______ ___
voice box
Do children have to be taught how to use a mirror? What does she lack?
Yes; self-awareness
What makes the terrible twos?
The combination of now learning language and knowing self-necessities
What is the lexical decision task?
Participants are shown a string of letters and are asked if it is a word or not
What is the phonemic restoration effect?
“Fill in” missing phonemes based on the context of the sentence and portion of the word presented (Very top down-based)
What is the word frequency effect?
We respond faster to high-frequency words
Which property below is NOT one of the characteristics that makes human language unique?
a. Hierarchical structure
b. Communication
c. Governed by rules
d. all of these make human language unique
B. Communication
What did Rayner and Duffy’s fixation and gaze time experiment solve?
People spend more time reading low-frequency words than high-frequency words
What is variable word pronunciation?
Use context to understand words with unfamiliar pronunciations
What is the age of acquisition?
Words learned earlier in life are processed faster than those learned later
Word length effect
Shorter words are processed faster than long words
Contextual consent
Words in highly constrained (predictable) sentences are processed faster and more likely to be skipped
Easier to predict= processed (slower or faster)
Faster
Speech segmentation
The perception of when a word ends and another starts without silence
What is context?
Knowing what might be said based on the environment you are in
Lexical ambiguity
Words have more than one meaning
In lexical ambiguity, how do we know someone means one version of “cast” (like the show crew) and not “Cast” (like the fishing pole)?
Context
Meaning dominance
Some meanings of words are used more frequently than others
Biased dominance
When words have two or more meanings with different dominance (Tin [the can] vs. Tin [the ore])
Balanced Dominance
When words have two or more meanings with about the same dominance (Cast [the crew] vs. cast [the fish])
Dominance is determined by ______________ of use in written language
frequency
What is syntax?
Rules for combining words into sentences
Do syntax and semantics use the same mechanisms?
No
What is parsing?
Mental grouping of words in a sentence into phrases
What do event-related potential and fMRI prove about the brain mechanisms?
Syntax and semantics use two separate types of mechanisms
“The cats won’t eating” sentence activates what? (syntax or semantics)
Syntax; word is wrong grammar
“The cat won’t bake” sentence activates what?
(syntax or semantics)
Semantics; the word doesn’t naturally fit because cats cannot bake
Syntactic ambiguity
More than one possible structure, more than one possible meaning
What is a garden path sentence?
Sentences that begin by appearing to mean one thing, but then end up meaning something else
Garden path sentences illustrate _________________
Temporary ambiguity
“Because he always jogs a mile seems a short distance to him” is an example of a
garden path sentence
What is the syntax-first approach to parsing?
Listeners use heuristics (rules) to group words into phrases
What is late closure?
Parser assumes that new word is a part of the current phrase
Are the garden-path model and the syntax-first approach the same or different?
Same
What is the Interactionist (constraint-based) approach to parsing?
Semantics influence processing as one reads a sentence, along with syntax
What is more common in English; subject-relative construction or object-relative construction
65% of sentences in English are subject-relative construction
Which approach does Tannenhouse and coworkers support? (Garden-path or interactionist) **
Interactionist approach; syntax and semantic info are used simultaneously
What is coherence?**
Representation of a text in one’s mind so that information from one part of the text can be related to information in another part of the text
Is there coherence between local parts of a story or the overall topic?
BOTH
What is an inference?
Readers create information during reading not explicitly stated in the text
What is an anaphoric inference? **
Connecting people/objects
What is instrumental inferences? **
Tools or methods
What are causal inferences? **
Events in one clause caused by events in a previous sentence
“Rififi, the famous poodle, won the dog show. She has now won the last three shows she has enterered.”
She is referring to Rififi. What type of inference is this?
Anaphoric because it deals with a person
“William Shakespeare wrote Hamlet while he was sitting at his desk.”
Shakespeare most likely used a pen, not a computer
What type of inference is this?
Instrumental inference
“Sharon took an aspirin. Her headache went away.”
The aspirin made the headache go away
What type of inference is this?
Causal inference
What is the situational model?
Mental representation of what a text is about (represent events as if EXPERIENCING THE SITUATION)
According to Zwaan, the more a picture matching the story,
The quicker response time is
