Language and Thought - Warren (Chap 1-2)

Question 1

1. Mental lexicon

Answer 1

Dictionary in our head. Consisting of representations for the forms and contents of words. Ex. When you hear the word “cat,” your mental lexicon retrieves the information that it’s a small, furry animal often kept as a pet.

Question 2

Word stress

Answer 2

Emphasis placed on a specific syllable within a word when speaking. More clearer, higher pitch and longer duration. This can affect the orally meaning and pronunciation of the word. Ex. “BaNAna”.

Question 3

Appropriate meaningful content

Answer 3

Make sense in specific situations. Ex. If someone asks you about the weather, an appropriate response would be talking about the current conditions outside.

Question 4

Appropriate lexical items

Answer 4

Words and vocabulary in language. For instance, when talking about fruits, appropriate lexical items would include “apple,” “banana,” “orange,” etc.

Question 5

Appropriate grammatical structures

Answer 5

Organized and formed sentences. Ex. Saying “I am going to the store” instead of “I going store.”

Question 6

Appropriate pronunciation

Answer 6

Intonation and phrasing. For instance, pronouncing “banana” as “buh-NAH-nuh” instead of “buh-NAY-nuh.”

Question 7

Pronunciation

Answer 7

Saying words in a way you understand the sound clearly.

Question 8

Intonation

Answer 8

Changing pitch / melody of voice when talking. Ex. Questions or statements differ.

Question 9

Agreement errors

Answer 9

Agreement errors occur when there is inconsistency or mismatch between different elements in a sentence, such as subject-verb agreement or noun-adjective agreement. For example, saying “The dogs is barking” instead of “The dogs are barking” is a subject-verb agreement error.

Question 10

Phrasing

Answer 10

How you put words together when speaking. In the right order. Ex. In the sentence “I ate an apple,” the phrasing is important for understanding that the action of eating (ate) is performed on the object (an apple).

Question 11

Sound errors

Answer 11

Sound errors refer to mistakes or inaccuracies in the pronunciation of sounds or words. For instance, mispronouncing “squirrel” as “squirel” or “library” as “libary” would be examples of sound errors.

Question 12

Word errors

Answer 12

Word errors involve using incorrect or inappropriate words in speech or writing. For example, saying “I have a lot of paint in my knee” instead of “I have a lot of pain in my knee” is a word error.

Question 13

Psycholinguistics

Answer 13

Study of the mental representations and processes involved in language use. Including the production, comprehension. And storage of spoken and written language.

Question 14

Representations (mental)

Answer 14

Stored or constructed mental form of a linguistic unit. For example, the mental representation of the word “dog” includes its meaning, pronunciation, and grammatical properties.

Question 15

Process

Answer 15

Operation that is part of the production or comprehension of language. Psycholinguistics can be defined as the study of the representations and processes involved in language use.

Question 16

Bottom-up

Answer 16

Processing based on the sensory input (ex. the speech signal) rather than on higher level (ex. contextual) information. An example would be decoding individual letters to understand a word.

Question 17

Top-down

Answer 17

Process guided by contextual or utterance/sentence factors rather than by lower level input. For example, using context clues to infer the meaning of a word in a sentence.

Question 18

Interaction

Answer 18

Influence on one another of different processes in different parts of the cognitive and/or language processing systems. For example, the process of conceptual preparation (preparing to speak based on intentions) may interact with word retrieval (finding the appropriate words) during language production.

Question 19

Production processes

Answer 19

These are the cognitive processes involved in generating language, such as conceptual preparation, word retrieval, and phonological encoding. For instance, when preparing to speak, a speaker generates a pre-verbal message based on their intentions (conceptual preparation).

Question 20

Comprehension processes

Answer 20

Comprehension processes involve understanding language, including parsing sentences, interpreting meaning, and integrating information. For example, when listening to speech, a listener must parse the spoken words into meaningful units and interpret their meaning.

Question 21

Click location

Answer 21

Task used to support claims of clausal processing. Participants had to mark on transcripts where they heard a non-speech signal, and this “migrated” to boundaries between clauses.

Question 22

Conceptual preparation

Answer 22

Initial stage of language production, where a pre-verbal message is generated based on the speaker’s or writer’s intentions.

Question 23

Dichotic switch monitoring

Answer 23

Task where participants listen to speech that is louder in one headphone channel than the other and while they listen to this imbalance switched channels. The participants task is to indicate when this happens, and their response can be affected by the processing load at the time of the switch.

Question 24

Picture naming

Answer 24

Picture naming is a task where participants name objects or scenes depicted in pictures, providing insights into lexical retrieval and phonological encoding processes. For example, participants may name a picture of a cat, retrieving the word “cat” from their mental lexicon and phonologically encoding it for production.

Question 25

Word retrieval

Answer 25

Word retrieval is the process of accessing and retrieving words from the mental lexicon during language production. For example, when asked to describe a picture of a dog, a speaker retrieves the word “dog” from their mental lexicon to use in their response.

Question 26

Phonological code retrieval

Answer 26

This process involves retrieving the phonological form of words, including their sounds and syllable structure, during language production. For example, when speaking, a speaker retrieves the phonological form of words from memory to produce speech sounds accurately.

Question 27

Neurophysiology

Answer 27

Study of brain structures, often to discover which parts of the brain are responsible for particular tasks. Ex. Language processing.

Question 27

Syllabification

Answer 27

Syllabification is the division of words into syllables, which is important for pronunciation and phonological encoding. For example, the word “elephant” is syllabified as “el-e-phant” with three syllables.

Question 28

fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging)

Answer 28

Technique that measures brain activity by measuring changes in blood flow in the brain.

Question 29

PET scans (positron emission tomography)

Answer 29

Means of measuring brain activity by tracking emissions from radioactive substances injected into the bloodstream.

Question 30

CAT scans

Answer 30

Computed axial tomography, imaging of the structures of the brain. Based on a series of X-rays taken from different angles.

Question 31

MEG (magnetoencephalography)

Answer 31

Technique for determining brain activity by measuring the magnetic fields created by naturally occurring electrical activity in the brain.

Question 32

EEG (electroencephalography)

Answer 32

Technique for measuring brain activity that measures electrical activity (event-related potential) on the scalp.

Question 32

ERP (event-related potential)

Answer 32

Electrical activity of currents passing through the fluid surrounding the brain’s neurons as they respond to an event. Measured using electroencephalography.

Question 33

ERF (event-related magnetic field)

Answer 33

Currents flowing over larger neuronal structures in the brain than those showing up as event-related potentials. Usually measured using magnetoencephalography.

Question 34

2. Pauses

Answer 34

Type of hesitation. Can either be silent or filled (um, er). Studied as a measure of planning load.

Question 35

Hesitation

Answer 35

Interruption to fluent speech, which may reveal aspects of the planning process.

Question 36

Filled pauses

Answer 36

A hesitation which is a break in the flow of speech, usings sounds such as “ um”, “em”, or “er”. Often when searching for words.

Question 37

Filler

Question 38

Verbal fillers

Question 39

Conceptualisation

Answer 39

Initial state of language production, where a pre-verbal message is generated based on the speaker’s or writer’s intentions.

Question 40

Formulation (grammatical and phonological encoding)

Answer 40

Part of the language production process that imposes linguistic form on the abstract pre-verbal message.

Question 41

Articulation

Answer 41

Final stage of the speech production process, when the sounds of words are pronounced, as the speaker implements a phonetic plan.

Question 41

Pre-verbal message

Question 42

Mentalese

Question 43

Thematic role

Question 44

Agent

Question 45

Articulatory pause

Question 46

Delimitative pauses

Question 47

Physiological pauses

Question 48

Prosody

Question 49

Intonation

Question 50

Microplanning

Question 51

Macroplanning

Question 52

Speech acts

Answer 52

Performance of some action through saying something. What the speakers want to achieve or communicate by what they say. Indirect/direct and explicit/implicit.

Question 53

Locutionary Acts

Answer 53

These are the basic acts of producing sounds, words, and sentences that have linguistic meaning. In other words, locutionary acts refer to the literal meaning of the words spoken. For example, saying “It’s raining” to convey the information that precipitation is falling from the sky.

Question 54

Illocutionary Acts

Question 55

Perlocutionary Acts

Question 56

Linearisation