Language Flashcards
This section comprises 3–4% of the Psychology GRE subject test. When finished with this deck, you should have a better understanding of the following: Units, Syntax, Meaning, Speech Perception and Processing, Verbal and Nonverbal Communication, Theories, Applications and Issues.
Define:
phonemes
These are basic speech sounds with no meaning.
ex. sh, ph, ee
Define:
morphemes
These are the smallest carrier of meaning, phonemes combined to create meaning.
Define:
phrase
These are words grouped together to create a single unit of syntax in a sentence.
Define:
syntax
An element of grammar that dictates the rules for phrase/sentence construction.
Define:
grammar
These are rules for using a given language, interrelating morphemes and syntax.
Define:
morphology
These are grammar rules, understanding of how to group morphemes.
Define:
prosody
The perception of tone inflections, accents, and emotional aspects of language that carry meaning.
Who is considered the most important person in psycholinguistics?
Noam Chomsky
What did Chomsky’s transformational grammar differentiate?
The surface structure and the deep structure of language.
Fill in the blank.
You can change the ________ structure of a sentence without altering the _____ structure, or the meaning.
surface; deep
Why would Chomsky say it is easier for children to learn a foreign language than adults?
Because children have an inborn “language acquisition device,” they are able to adapt to and incorporate new grammar rules into their own speech production.
What is occurring when a child says “I hided the toy from Bobby”?
overgeneralization or overregularization
Children often use previously learned grammar rules for all situations, even if they are incorrect. Improper conjugation of verb tenses is a common example of this.
A child who calls every fuzzy, four-legged object a kitty is exhibiting what?
overextension
Children frequently associate words with characteristics of an object without logically understanding the finer distinctions, for example the ones between kitties and doggies.
“Me want cookie” is an example of what type of speech?
telegraphic speech
A way to remember this is that the speech lacks the flourish of a written letter, but is instead barebones and only conveys necessity, like a telegraph.
This type of speech is comprised of one word that conveys the meaning of an entire sentence.
holophrastic speech
The one-word sentences are called holophrases.
Who acquires language more quickly and accurately, boys or girls?
girls
Are children raised in bilingual environments faster or slower to learn language?
slower
What parts of speech do children produce first?
Nouns first, then verbs.
Telegraphic speech usually contains one of both, like “mama go.”
Describe language in children by year from one to four.
- first spoken word/words
- 50+ word vocabulary, typically telegraphic phrases
- larger vocabulary (roughly 1000 words), but frequent grammatical errors
- grammar mistakes like overregularization are uncommon
What was suggested by Benjamin Whorf’s research on the Hopi language?
Perspectives among a given culture are informed by language itself. This is also known as the Whorfian hypothesis (or the linguistic relativity hypothesis).
Simply put, this hypothesis states that language determines thought.
What did Roger Brown find regarding children’s language acquisition?
He found that children improve their understanding of language and grammar as they hypothesize about syntax and synthesize those hypotheses with their real-world language experience.
What did Katherine Nelson find regarding children’s language acquisition?
Children learn language more rapidly after the onset of speech production (active speech) than they do while simply hearing it.
Whose research on Ebonics found that it was not incorrect English, but rather a dialect with its own complex internal structure?
William Labov
According to Vygotsky and Luria, do words mean the same thing to all people?
No. They found that word meanings are different for different people, affected by life experience.
How did Charles Osgood’s semantic differential charts support Vygotsky and Luria’s theory?
They showed that people with related interests and backgrounds defined words similarly.
As Vygotsky and Luria posited, different groups of people have different understandings of word connotations.
Fill in the blank.
Where language acquisition was concerned, Chomsky is a _______.
nativist
He argued that the capacity to acquire language was innate, rather than learned.
What is the learning theory of language?
Learning theory proposes that we learn language through conditioning and modeling. B.F. Skinner was a learning theorist.
What is the cognitive developmental theory of language?
This is the belief that toward the end of the sensorimotor stage of development, children develop a capacity for symbolic thinking, which allows language acquisition as the child’s cognitive capacities increase. Jean Piaget was a proponent of this theory.
How does being raised bilingual (native bilingual) impact executive functioning?
People who are native bilingual have to learn to inhibit responses in whichever language they are not using at any given time. Resarch indicates that being native bilingual confers the benefit of developing better executive functioning than monolinguals have.
