LECTURE 8

Question 1

What is orthography?

Answer 1

The study of word letters and spelling.

Question 2

What is phonology?

Answer 2

The study of word sounds and parts of words.

Question 3

What is semantics?

Answer 3

The meaning conveyed by words, phrases, and sentences.

Question 4

What is the lexicon?

Answer 4

The vocabulary and knowledge of a language.

Question 5

What is prosody?

Answer 5

The rhythm, stress, and intonation of speech, providing information beyond literal word meaning.

Question 6

What is syntax?

Answer 6

The arrangement of words and phrases to create well-formed sentences.

Question 7

What is morphology?

Answer 7

The study of the internal structure of words.

Question 8

What is discourse?

Answer 8

Areas of written, spoken, or signed communication, whether formal (debates) or informal (conversations).

Question 9

What are the six types of grammar?

Answer 9

Descriptive, pedagogical, reference, traditional, theoretical, and prescriptive grammar.

Question 10

What is descriptive grammar?

Answer 10

Describes how language is used without judgment.

Question 11

What is prescriptive grammar?

Answer 11

Lays down rules for socially correct use of grammar.

Question 12

What is the Subject-Verb-Object (SVO) structure?

Answer 12

The typical word order in English sentences (e.g., “I give a lecture”).

Question 13

What is semantics in language?

Answer 13

The study of meaning in language, including words, concepts, and sentences.

Question 14

How can the meaning of “mean” vary?

Answer 14

It can indicate purpose, importance, reference, or convey symbolic relationships.

Question 15

What is categorical perception in speech?

Answer 15

Sounds are classified as distinct phonemes, even when intermediate sounds exist.

Question 16

What is the McGurk effect?

Answer 16

A phenomenon where visual cues (e.g., lip movements) alter speech perception.

Question 17

What is the phonemic restoration effect?

Answer 17

The brain fills in missing phonemes masked by noise, based on context.

Question 18

What is the Ganong effect?

Answer 18

Ambiguous sounds are biased toward forming real words instead of non-words.

Question 19

What is orthographic transparency?

Answer 19

The consistency of spelling-to-sound relationships in a language.

Question 20

How does English compare to German in transparency?\

Answer 20

English is less transparent, with inconsistent spelling and pronunciation rules.

Question 21

What is the word superiority effect (WSE)?

Answer 21

People recognize letters more easily when they are part of real words than when isolated or in non-words.

Question 22

What did McClelland & Rumelhart propose about word recognition?

Answer 22

An interactive model where top-down and bottom-up processes combine to recognize words.

Question 23

What is coarticulation in speech perception?

Answer 23

Phonemes’ pronunciations depend on preceding and following phonemes.

Question 24

What is energetic masking?

Answer 24

Difficulty perceiving speech due to background noise.

Question 25

What is prosody’s role in speech perception?

Answer 25

It helps understand sentence meaning and speaker emotion through rhythm and stress.

Question 26

How do listeners use speaker variability?

Answer 26

They adapt to accents or speech patterns to interpret the speech signal.

Question 27

What is the hierarchical approach to segmentation?

Answer 27

Listeners use lexical, syntax, and word knowledge cues, followed by segmental and prosodic cues.

Question 28

What are saccades in reading?

Answer 28

Rapid eye movements between fixations during reading.

Question 29

What did Rayner et al. (2006) find about letter order in reading?

Answer 29

Readers could process jumbled words as long as initial and final letters were intact.

Question 30

How does context influence reading?

Answer 30

Context provides strong priors for word identity, reducing reliance on individual letters.

Question 31

What did Cattell (1886) discover about reading?

Answer 31

Reading connected words is faster than reading isolated letters.

Question 32

What are graphemes and phonemes?

Answer 32

Graphemes represent written symbols, while phonemes represent sounds.

Question 33

How do we read non-transparent languages?

Answer 33

By fixating toward the center of words to maximize information intake.

Question 34

What is Rumelhart’s interactive activation model?

Answer 34

A model that combines top-down and bottom-up processes to explain letter and word recognition.

Question 35

What is the main limitation of Rumelhart’s model?

Answer 35

It focuses on four-letter words and ignores meaning and phonological processing.

Question 36

How does orthography affect phonology? I

Answer 36

In transparent languages, orthography closely corresponds to phonology, unlike in English.

Question 37

How does eye-tracking reveal reading strategies?

Answer 37

It shows initial fixations are closer to the word center rather than sequentially targeting letters.

Question 38

How does context aid the brain’s "hypothesis testing"?

Answer 38

Readers predict words based on syntactic/semantic context and confirm through visual input.