language

Question 1

What are some of the things that make it difficult to calculate how many words there are in a language?

Answer 1

• Variability in word forms (e.g., inflections, derivations)
• Dialectal differences and regional variations
• Inclusion of loanwords and technical terms
• Differentiating between compound words and phrases
• Evolving nature of language with new words constantly being coined

Question 2

After hitting his head against a rock when he fell off his bike, Conrad stopped speaking. A few months later, Conrad began to speak again, although his speech was slow and laborious. He could, however, understand people almost as well as he could before the accident. This suggests that rather than speech being a single cognitive process, it is likely to be done in a number of stages. The stage likely to have been damaged is:

Answer 2

Speech motor plans

Question 3

double dissociation

Answer 3

After brain injury, one person is good at task X but not task Y, and another person is good at task Y but not task X

Question 4

Spoonerism occur when we switch parts of two different words – for example, instead of saying the fat cat, we might say the cat fat. However, we rarely produce spoonerisms that generate nonsense words like blit hock for hit block. One likely reason for this is:

Answer 4

We monitor our inner speech before we say it out aloud

Question 5

The phonemes in a language (i.e., the small sounds in a word, e.g. s-m-ur-f for “smurf”) tend to:

Answer 5

have a constrained distribution within syllables

Question 6

The speech which 3 year old children use:

Answer 6

Tends to have more words directly related to the immediate environment than adult speech

Question 7

Conrad had trouble with language learning when he was 2.5 years old, so his parents took him to a speech and hearing therapist. They examined a number of properties of his speech and hearing. Which of the following would suggest he had a problem?

Answer 7

His perception of ‘b’ and ‘p’ across stimuli manipulated along a continuum was very similar to the actual physical differences caused by the manipulation

Question 8

What did we learn about language acquisition from congenitally deaf children?

Answer 8

There are important aspects of language that are not tied to any modality (e.g., sound, vision) and you can only learn them early in life

Question 9

Which of the following aspects of learning are thought to be important in language?

• We make surprisingly few errors despite getting little explicit feedback about the errors we make
• All of the above
• We learn language from a very early age
• We seem to learn language easily despite very complex input

Answer 9

All of the above

Question 10

What is one reason why it is not simple to define what a word is?

Answer 10

Words are associated with many different forms of information

Question 11

Rules of grammar abound in all languages, but there are some aspects of language that don’t seem to follow rules very strictly (and hence are probably not rule based). Which one of these is the least rule based

Answer 11

Our interpretation of prosodic contours

Question 12

Understand some of the basic structures of language.

Answer 12

• Phonetics
• Phonology
• Morphology
• Syntax
• Semantics
• Pragmatics
• Lexicon
• Discourse

Question 13

Phonetics

Answer 13

Description: Phonetics is the study of the physical sounds of human speech.

Psychological Relevance: Understanding how sounds are produced and perceived helps in studying speech perception and language development. For example, distinguishing between different phonemes is crucial in early language acquisition.

Example: Infants learn to recognize and produce the distinct sounds of their native language through exposure and practice.

Question 14

Phonology

Answer 14

VARIATIONS OF THE SAME WORD

Description: Phonology deals with the abstract, cognitive aspects of sounds.

Psychological Relevance: It involves understanding how sounds are organized in the mind and how this organization affects language processing and production.

Example: Phonological rules explain why certain sounds change in different linguistic contexts, such as plural formation in English (e.g., “cats” vs. “dogs”).

Question 15

Morphology

Answer 15

Description: Morphology is the study of the structure of words and how they are formed from morphemes, the smallest units of meaning.

Psychological Relevance: Morphological knowledge helps in understanding how words are stored in the mental lexicon and retrieved during speech and writing.

Example: Recognizing that “unhappiness” is composed of “un-“, “happy”, and “-ness” helps in understanding its meaning and usage.

Question 16

Syntax

Answer 16

Description: Syntax involves the rules that govern the structure of sentences.

Psychological Relevance: Syntax is essential for understanding how sentences are constructed and comprehended, which is crucial for effective communication and language processing.

Example: The sentence “The cat chased the dog” follows syntactic rules that dictate the proper order of subject, verb, and object.

Question 17

Semantics

Answer 17

Description: Semantics is the study of meaning in language.

Psychological Relevance: It involves understanding how words and sentences convey meaning, which is vital for language comprehension and production.

Example: Knowing that “bank” can mean the side of a river or a financial institution requires semantic knowledge to interpret the word correctly based on context.

Question 18

Pragmatics

Answer 18

Description: Pragmatics deals with how context influences the interpretation of meaning.

Psychological Relevance: It examines how speakers use language in social contexts, considering factors like intention, tone, and situational context.

Example: Interpreting the statement “Can you pass the salt?” as a request rather than a question about ability involves pragmatic understand

Question 19

Lexicon

Answer 19

Description: The lexicon is the mental dictionary of words and their meanings.

Psychological Relevance: It includes information about word pronunciation, meaning, grammatical properties, and usage. Studying the lexicon helps in understanding language acquisition and disorders.

Example: Knowing the word “apple” includes its pronunciation, meaning, and how it can be used in different contexts.

Question 20

Discourse

Answer 20

Description: Discourse analysis studies larger units of language, such as conversations and texts.

Psychological Relevance: It focuses on how sentences are connected to form coherent communication, which is important for understanding narrative structure and social interactions.

Example: Analyzing a conversation to see how speakers take turns and build on each other’s statements helps in understanding the dynamics of communication.

Question 21

Language Acquisition

Answer 21

Overview: Explore how children acquire the different components of language, focusing on stages of development and cognitive mechanisms.

Application: Study how phonetic discrimination evolves in infants and how syntactic structures are learned over time.

Question 22

Identify reasons we think human language is special and the extent to which it overlaps with other aspects of cognition.

Question 23

Identify some of the earliest and most important aspects of language acquisition. Understand the more general concepts of top-down perception, statistical and rule-based learning.

Question 24

Explore cognitive models of speech production, perception and language more generally.

Question 25

Explain how we might use neuropsychological data to help us understand how language works.

Question 26

Develop an understanding of what a word might be and how difficult they are to define despite how easy they are to write.

Question 27

Grow your awareness of how the number of sounds we use to construct words is very limited, as is the way they can be put together.

Question 28

Identify some of the classic problems in meaning and what we can learn from them.

Question 29

Consider ways that words can be put together and factors that affect this.

Question 30

Understand the type of evidence we need to determine if language is culturally universal.

Question 31

Learn to evaluate what aspects of language are language-specific and what aspects use more general cognitive processes.

Question 32

Understand that we learn aspects of speech even before we are born.

Question 33

Explore a classic case of how early language learning constrains our perception of phonemes for the rest of our lives.

Question 34

Identify how statistical learning is used to help us learn words.

Question 35

Identify how statistical learning is used to help us learn words.

Question 36

How early do we learn the rules of language?

Question 37

Identify the different stages of speech production and evidence in favour of their existence.

Question 38

Investigate the different processes involved in speech perception.

Question 39

Understand some of the additional aspects of language use in the real world.

Question 40

Explain the underlying methodology used for inferring how language works.

Question 41

Identify the different types of aphasia and its early explanatory model.

Question 42

Explore the different types of language types and how they activate different areas of the brain in different ways.

Question 43

Give an example of a sentence or phrase that demonstrates that meaning in language is compositional.
How does it demonstrate that?

Answer 43

Example: “The cat sat on the mat.”

It demonstrates compositionality as the meaning of the whole sentence is created from the meanings of individual words and the rules used to combine them.

Each word contributes to the overall meaning in a predictable way.

Question 44

Why do linguists believe that grammars are not chains of words, but rather have hierarchical phrase structure?

Answer 44

Sentences can be parsed into nested structures, revealing dependencies between non-adjacent words (e.g., “The cat that chased the mouse was tired”).

Syntactic trees show hierarchical relationships, providing explanations for phenomena like subject-verb agreement and subordination.

Question 45

Give some reasons for thinking that neither the nature or the nurture extreme is completely correct. For an extra challenge, try to think of reasons that weren’t discussed in the lecture.

Answer 45

Evidence from critical periods for language acquisition suggests a biological basis.

Variation in language proficiency due to environmental factors (e.g., exposure, social interaction) indicates a role for nurture.

Wild children (e.g., Genie) show that extreme deprivation affects language learning, highlighting the need for both innate mechanisms and environmental input.

Question 46

What does categorical perception of phonemes mean?

Question 47

Consider the difference between the phonemes /b/ and /p/. Is this the same as the difference between phonemes /d/ and /t/ or /g/ and /k/? Why or why not?

Question 48

Give an example of some of the long-distance dependencies found in language. (For an extra challenge, try
to come up with an example different from those given in lecture). Why are long distance dependencies
interesting?

Answer 48

Example: “The book that the teacher read was interesting.”

Long-distance dependencies are interesting because they challenge linear models of sentence processing and highlight the complexity of syntactic structures.

Question 49

How is the language-specific vs. general-cognition issue different from the nature/nurture debate?

Answer 49

The language-specific vs. general-cognition debate focuses on whether language abilities are a specialised module in the brain or a byproduct of general cognitive processes.

The nature/nurture debate concerns the origins of language abilities, whether they are innate or acquired through experience.

Question 50

How is MLU calculated, and what does it indicate? If a child said the following three sentences, what
would its MLU be? “No, “baby happy” and “birdie go fly”

Answer 50

MLU (Mean Length of Utterance) is calculated by dividing the total number of morphemes by the number of utterances. For the given sentences:

“No” = 1 morpheme
“baby happy” = 2 morphemes
“birdie go fly” = 3 morphemes

Total morphemes = 6,
Total utterances = 3
MLU = 6/3 = 2

MLU indicates the linguistic maturity of a child’s speech.

Question 51

Consider the sentence b a c o b a d u c o. What are the probable words in this sentence, according to transition probabilities?

Answer 51

Probable words might be “baco,” “badu,” and “co,” based on the likelihood of certain transitions occurring more frequently.

Question 52

Why is the fact that language is generative and infinite interesting from the point of view of how we learn
it?

Answer 52

it suggests that we must learn underlying rules and structures rather than memorising all possible sentences. T

his requires an understanding of syntax and grammar that allows us to produce and comprehend novel utterances.

Question 53

Why is it interesting that children don’t get their grammar corrected (usually)?

Answer 53

It implies that children acquire grammar through exposure and internalization of language patterns rather than explicit instruction, supporting theories of innate language acquisition mechanisms.

Question 54

Name a few language universals. If any of you speak multiple languages, think a bit about the languages you speak. What commonalities have you noticed between them? What differences can you point out?

Answer 54

Universals: All languages have nouns and verbs, basic word order patterns, and mechanisms for negation and questioning.

Commonalities might include similar syntactic structures or phonetic inventories. Differences could be in word order, morphological complexity, or phoneme inventories.

Question 55

What do you think, if anything, wild children like Genie tell us about the innateness of language?

Answer 55

They suggest that there is a critical period for language acquisition, indicating an innate predisposition for language that requires environmental input during a specific timeframe to develop fully.

Question 56

Why do you think there is so much individual variation in vocabulary acquisition? What aspects of
vocabulary learning is there variation in?

Answer 56

Factors include differences in exposure to language, socio-economic background, individual cognitive abilities, and the amount and type of linguistic interaction.

Question 57

What does the arbitrariness of sign mean? Why is this interesting from the point of view of how we learn
new words?

Answer 57

It means that there is no inherent connection between the sounds of words and their meanings.
This arbitrariness highlights the need for learning associations between words and their meanings through exposure and social interaction.

Question 58

What is the importance of the sentence “colourless green ideas sleep furiously”?

Answer 58

it demonstrates that grammatical sentences can be semantically nonsensical, illustrating the distinction between syntax and semantics.

Question 59

What does the study of pragmatics focus on?

Answer 59

Pragmatics studies how context influences the interpretation of meaning in communication, including aspects like implicature, speech acts, and conversational maxims.

Question 60

Name one kind of mistake children almost never make. Why is this interesting?

Answer 60

Children almost never make errors in the basic word order of their native language (e.g., subject-verb-object). This suggests that certain syntactic rules are internalized early and robustly.

Question 61

What other factors besides transitional probabilities (if any) do you think might help with word segmentation?

Answer 61

Prosodic cues (stress patterns, intonation)

Phonotactic constraints (allowable sound sequences)

Statistical learning of sound patterns

Social and contextual cues during language exposure