Language

Question 0

What are morphemes?

Answer 0

The smallest units of meaning in language. Words or parts of words that have meaning are morphemes. The word “boy” and suffix “-ing” are examples.

Question 1

What is a phoneme?

Answer 1

Discrete sounds that make up words but carry no meaning, such as “ee,” and “sh.” Infants first make these sounds when learning language. All words in a language are created from basic phonological rules of sound combination.

Question 2

What is the definition of a phrase?

Answer 2

A group of words, that when put together, function as a single syntactic part of a sentence. For example, “walking the dog” is a noun phrase.

Question 3

What is the arrangement of words into sentences as prescribed by a particular language?

Answer 3

Syntax

Question 4

What is the definition of grammar?

Answer 4

The overall rules of the interrelationship between morphemes and syntax that make up a certain language.

Question 5

What is morphology?

Answer 5

Grammar rules or how to group morphemes.

Question 6

What is prosody?

Answer 6

Tone inflections, accents, and other aspects of pronunciation that carry meaning. Prosody is the icing on the cake of grammar and meaning.

Question 7

Who is the most important figure in the field of psycholinguistics?

Answer 7

Norm Chomsky

Question 8

What are the 2 types of sentence structures differentiated by Norm Chomsky’s transformational grammar?

Answer 8

Surface structure and deep structure

Question 9

What is surface structure of a sentence?

Answer 9

The way the words are organized.

Question 10

What is the deeps structure of a sentence?

Answer 10

The underlying meaning of a sentence.

Question 11

What is the Language Acquisition Device (LAD)?

Answer 11

Norm Chomsky’s idea that humans have an innate ability to adopt generative grammar rules of the language that they hear. He posits that children don’t just imitate an learn through reinforcement, he thinks that children only need to be exposed to a language to apply the LAD.

Question 12

What is the overapplication of grammar rules called?

Answer 12

Overregularization.

For example, children know that a verb in the past tense is often indicated by the suffix “-ed.” Children may overregularize a word and say, for example, “I founded the toy.”

Question 13

What is telegraphic speech?

Answer 13

Speech without articles or extras, similar to how it would appear on a telegram.

Ex./ “Me go.”

Question 14

What is holophrastic speech?

Answer 14

When a young child uses one word (holiphrases) to convey a whole sentence.

Ex./ “Me” may mean “Give that to me.”

Question 15

True or False:

When it comes to learning language, there is no difference between genders.

Answer 15

False.

Girls are faster and more accurate with language learning than boys are.

Question 16

True or False:

Bilingual children are faster at learning language.

Answer 16

False.

Bilingual children are slower at language learning.

Question 17

By what age do children generally have a 1,000 word vocabulary?

Answer 17

By age 3, but their use has many grammatical errors.

Question 18

True or False:

By 1 year of age, children usually speak their first words.

Answer 18

True.

Question 19

By 2 years of age, roughly how many words can a child speak? and how do they construct sentences?

Answer 19

They know more than 50 words. They usually speak in two or three word phrases.

Question 20

When children first learn to use phrases, what do they sound like?

Answer 20

Children usually use nouns first, then verbs. The first phrase children speak usually consist of one noun and one verb (“me want”) or two nouns (“mommy shirt”).

Question 21

Who posited that language, or how a culture says things, influences that culture’s perspective? What is this hypothesis called?

Answer 21

Benjamin Whorf. It is called the Whorfian hypothesis and has been used as an argument for the importance of nonsexist language.

Question 22

What did Katherine Nelson discover about language development?

Answer 22

She found that language really begins to develop with the onset of active speech rather than during the first year of listening.

Question 23

Who studied “Black” English (or Ebonics) and what did he/she find?

Answer 23

William Labov studied Ebonics and found that it is not simply incorrect English; it has it’s own complex internal structure.

Question 24

What 2 Russian psychologists studied the development of word meanings and found them to be complex and altered by interpersonal experience.

Answer 24

Lev Vygoysky and Alexander Luria.

They also claimed that language is a tool involved in (not just a byproduct of) the development of abstract thinking.

Question 25

Who created semantic differential charts? What are they and what is their purpose?

Answer 25

Charles Osgood created these and they allowed people to plot the meaning of words on graphs (like near “good,” but far from “relaxed”). The results were that people with similar backgrounds and interests plotted words similarly. This indicates that words have similar connotations for cultures or subcultures.