Lesson 9 Concepts

Question 1

Psycholinguistics

Answer 1

is an interdisciplinary field that examines how people use language to communicate ideas

Question 2

Phoneme

Answer 2

is the basic unit of spoken language, such as the sounds, a,k,th. The English language has about 40 phonemes. If you change just one phoneme ina word, you change the meaning of that word. For example, kiss has a very different meaning from hiss.

Question 3

Morpheme

Answer 3

is the basic unit of meaning. For example, the word reactivated actually contains four morphemes: re,active,ate,ed. Each of those segments conveys meaming.

Question 4

Morphology

Answer 4

refers to the study of the morphemes; morphology therefore examines how we create words by combining morphemes

Question 5

Syntax

Answer 5

refers to the grammatical rules that govern how we orhanize words into sentences

Question 6

Grammar

Answer 6

encompasses both morphology and syntax. It therefore examines both word structure and sentence structure

Question 7

Semantics

Answer 7

is the area of psycholinguistics that examines the meanings of words and sentences

Question 8

Semantic memory

Answer 8

refers to our organized knowledge about the worldld

Question 9

Pragmatics

Answer 9

refers to our knowldge of the social rules that underlie language use; pragmatics takes into account the listener’s perspective. For example: think about how you would define the word syntax to a 12 year old child as opposed to a college classmate. Pragmatics is the discipline within linguistics that focuses most on social interactions.