Lecture 1

Question 1

what is aphasia?

Answer 1

a disorder that effects how you communicate, it can impact your speech as well as the way you write and understand both spoken and written language

Question 2

what is generativity (in language)?

Answer 2

the ability to produce sentences never before said, and to understand sentences never before heard

Question 3

what is prevarication?

Answer 3

the deliberate act of deviating from the truth

Question 4

what is sound symbolism?

Answer 4

the partial representation of the sense of a word by its sound, as in bang, fizz, and slide

Question 5

what is syntax?

Answer 5

the arrangement of words and phrases to create well-formed sentences in a language

Question 6

what is broca’s area?

Answer 6

a region in the frontal lobe of the dominant hemisphere, usually the left, of the brain with functions linked to speech production

Question 7

what is a lexigram?

Answer 7

a single symbol that graphically represents a single word or concept

Question 8

what is linguistic determinism?

Answer 8

the concept that language and its structures limit and determine human knowledge or thought, as well as thought processes such as categorisation, memory, and perception

Question 9

what do I mean when I refer to something as egocentric?

Answer 9

someone’s inability to understand that another person’s view or opinion may be different than their own

Question 10

what do I mean when I refer to something as allocentric?

Answer 10

a collectivistic personality attribute whereby people centre their attention and actions on other people rather than themselves

Question 11

what is mentalese?

Answer 11

the language of thought; thoughts represented in the mind without words, especially complex thoughts built from simpler ones

Question 12

how do Beattie & Ellis define communication?

Answer 12

when one organism (the transmitter) encodes information into a signal which passes to another organism (the receiver) which decodes the signal and is capable of responding appropriately

Question 13

what is verbal communication?

Answer 13

spoken/written transmission of a message
= language, but also dialects, language of a group (e.g. AAVE)

Question 14

what is non-verbal communication?

Answer 14

non-linguistic aspects e.g. body language, gestures, emoticons
language also has non-verbal elements (e.g. tone, rhythm, stress)

Question 15

what is language?

Answer 15

a type of communication
a structure system of symbols (“words”) and the rules (“grammar”) by which they are combined

Question 16

what makes a language?

Answer 16

a system…
to communicate thoughts, feelings, info

of arbitrary signs (words) that refer to things in the world, have meaning; (e.g. not just onomatopoeia)

to combine these signs (syntax)

Question 17

what are Hockett’s 16 design features of language?

Answer 17

communication does NOT equal language

1. vocal-auditory channel
2. broadcast transmission and directional reception
3. rapid fading
4. interchangeability
5. total feedback
6. specialisation
7. semanticity
8. arbitrariness
9. discreteness
10. displacement
11. productivity
12. traditional transmission
13. duality of patterning

Question 18

define semanticity

Answer 18

words are symbols/signs that express meaning

Question 19

define arbitrariness

Answer 19

no intrinsic relation between (most!) words and their meaning (but onomatopoeia); “whale” “microorganism”

Question 20

define displacement

Answer 20

not tied to here & now, can talk about past, future, somewhere else; hypotheticals (if… then…)

Question 21

define productivity/generatively

Answer 21

new language can be generated

a finite collection of sounds and words allows an infinite number of messages

as long as we obey the rules of the language, any message can be understood by other language users

Question 22

define reflexiveness

Answer 22

we can use language to talk about language

Question 23

explain sound symbolism

Answer 23

when individual sounds or clusters of sound can convey meaning

Question 24

give an example of sound symbolism

Answer 24

“gl-“ words for shiny things
glisten, gleam, glint, glare, glam, glimmer, glaze, glass, glitz, gloss, glory, glow, and glitter

Question 25

what is the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis?

Answer 25

do people with a different language also think differently?

language shapes our thoughts

Question 26

what are some language affects encoding in space?

Answer 26

English
egocentric: left, right, in front/back, next to,: relative frame of reference

allocentric: north, south,: absolute frame of evidence

Question 27

what language affects did Boroditsky find with encoding in time?

Answer 27

english: think of time horizontally (the best is ahead/behind us)

mandarin: think of time vertically (next month = down)

Question 28

what are some critiques of linguistic determinism?

Answer 28

Pinker: problem is equating language with thought

thought precedes language
universal “language of thought” (mentalese)

the impossibility of translation