PSYC*2650 Chapter 10: Language

Question 1

What is a sentence?

Answer 1

A sequence of words that conforms to the rules of syntax

Question 2

What is a morpheme?

Answer 2

The smallest unit of language that carries meaning

Question 3

What is the difference between free/content morphemes and bound/function morphemes?

Answer 3

• Free/content morphemes: Able to stand on their own and usually refer to particular objects, ideas, or actions (ex. tree)
• Bound/function morphemes: Unable to stand on their own and usually specify relations among words by adding information crucial for interpretation (ex. -ed)

Question 4

What are phonemes?

Answer 4

The smallest unit of sound that distinguish one word/morpheme from another

Question 5

What are the three features that define a sound’s identity?

Answer 5

• Manner of production
• Voicing
• Place of articulation

Question 6

What is the manner of production?

Answer 6

The way in which a speaker momentarily obstructs the flow of air out of the lungs to produce a speech sound

Question 7

What is the difference between voiced sounds and unvoiced sounds?

Answer 7

• Voiced sounds: Cause vocal cords to vibrate while the sound is produced
• Unvoiced sounds: Cause vocal cords to start vibrating sometime after the sound begins

Question 8

What is the place of articulation?

Answer 8

The position at which a speaker momentarily obstructs the flow of air out of the lungs to produce a speech sound

Question 9

What is speech segmentation?

Answer 9

The process through which a stream of speech is “sliced” into its constituent words, followed by its morphemes, followed by phonemes

Question 10

What is coarticulation?

Answer 10

A trait of speech production in which the way a sound is produced is altered slightly by the immediately preceding and following sounds

Question 11

Does coarticulation help make speech more or less fluent?

Answer 11

More fluent

Question 12

What is the phonemic restoration effect?

Answer 12

A pattern in which people “hear” phonemes that aren’t actually presented but are highly likely in that context

Question 13

What is categorical perception?

Answer 13

The pattern in which speech sounds are heard merely as members of a category

Question 14

Which pattern in the perception of speech allows people to be better at hearing differences between categories of sounds than they are at hearing variation within a category?

Answer 14

Categorical perception

Question 15

T or F: If individual phonemes are changed gradually from one extreme to another, people will notice an abrupt shift, rather than hearing the gradations inside each category.

Answer 15

True

Question 16

What two types of word representation do people have?

Answer 16

• Semantic representation (what the word means)
• Phonological representation (what the word sounds like)

Question 17

What is generativity?

Answer 17

The trait that enables someone to combine and recombine basic units to generate more complex entries

Question 18

T or F: Linguistic rules are generative

Answer 18

True

Question 19

T or F: Knowledge of language generativity is conscious.

Answer 19

False. It’s unconscious.

Question 20

What is syntax?

Answer 20

The rules governing the sequences and combinations of words in the formation of phrases and sentences

Question 21

T or F: Syntax definitions allow for recursion.

Answer 21

True

Question 22

What is a recursion?

Answer 22

A rule that references itself

Question 23

T or F: Many principles of syntax are related to semantics and sensibility.

Answer 23

False. They are separate.

Question 24

What is the difference between prescriptive and descriptive rules?

Answer 24

• Prescriptive: Rules describing how things are supposed to be
• Descriptive: Rules describing the regularities in a pattern of observation (how things actually are)

Question 25

What are phrase structure rules?

Answer 25

Constraints that govern what elements must be contained within a phrase and the sequence they must go in

Question 26

Are phrase structure rules prescriptive or descriptive?

Answer 26

Descriptive

Question 27

In the study of language, what are tree structures used to depict?

Answer 27

The relationships among the words in a phrase and relationships between phrases in a sentence

Question 28

What does parsing involve?

Answer 28

Dividing an input into its appropriate elements

Question 29

Do people parse sentences as they perceive them, or after the entire thing has been presented?

Answer 29

As they are perceived

Question 30

What are garden path sentences?

Answer 30

A sentence that initially leads the reader to one interpretation but then requires a change in the initial interpretation to understand the full sentence

Question 31

T or F: People tend to seek the simplest phrase structure that will accommodate the words they have heard so far.

Answer 31

True

Question 32

Do people typically assume that they will be hearing/reading active-voice sentences or passive-voice sentences?

Answer 32

Active-voice sentences

Question 33

What is the N400 brain wave?

Answer 33

The action potential generated when expectations during semantic processing are violated

Question 34

What is the N175 brain wave?

Answer 34

The action potential generated when expectations of phrase structure/syntax are violated

Question 35

When perceiving a sentence, do people notice syntactic or semantic anomalies first?

Answer 35

Syntactic

Question 36

What is extralinguistic context?

Answer 36

The social and physical setting in which an utterance is encountered

Question 37

What is prosody?

Answer 37

The pattern of pauses and pitch changes that characterize speech production

Question 38

What are three ways prosody can be used to guide interpretation?

Answer 38

- Provide emphasis to certain elements - Highlight a sentence's intended structure - Signal the difference between a question and an assertion

Question 39

What are pragmatic rules?

Answer 39

Principles describing how language is ordinarily used that allow for language to be used effectively

Question 40

What are three things that might affect pragmatics?

Answer 40

- Body language - Context - Inferences

Question 41

What term did the philosopher, Paul Grice, use to describe pragmatic rules?

Answer 41

Maxims

Question 42

What is the maxim of relation?

Answer 42

States that speakers should say things that are relevant to the conversation

Question 43

What is the maxim of quantity?

Answer 43

States that speakers shouldn't give more information than is necessary

Question 44

During a conversation, what is common in the absence of common ground?

Answer 44

Miscommunication

Question 45

Language learning depends on what two factors?

Answer 45

- A human genome - A human environment

Question 46

What is aphasia?

Answer 46

A disruption of language caused by brain damage

Question 47

What are the two main types of aphasia?

Answer 47

- Fluent aphasia - Nonfluent aphasia

Question 48

What is the difference between fluent and nonfluent aphasia?

Answer 48

- Fluent aphasia: Patient is able to produce speech, but it isn't meaningful, and they are unable to understand any spoken or written language - Nonfluent aphasia: Patient is able to understand spoken and written language, but can't speak or write with any fluency

Question 49

Fluent aphasia is typically caused by damage to which brain region?

Answer 49

Wernicke's area

Question 50

Nonfluent aphasia is typically caused by damage to which brain region?

Answer 50

Broca's area

Question 51

What is a specific-language impairment?

Answer 51

A disorder in which individuals seems to have normal intelligence, but experience problems in learning the rules of language

Question 52

What is an overregularization error?

Answer 52

An error in which a person produces a word form that is consistent with a broad pattern, even though it doesn't apply to the current utterance

Question 53

T or F: Overregularization errors are very common for people learning a new language.

Answer 53

True

Question 54

What does the linguistic relativity proposal suggest?

Answer 54

The language people speak shapes their thought

Question 55

What is the alternative proposal to linguistic relativity?

Answer 55

The language a person hears guides what they pay attention to, and what a person pays attention to shapes their thinking

Question 56

T or F: Bilingual children tend to have smaller vocabularies than monolingual children, but bilingual children soon catch up.

Answer 56

True

Question 57

What are the two opposing views of language acquisition?

Answer 57

- Linguistic nativism - Linguistic empiricism

Question 58

What is linguistic nativism?

Answer 58

The idea that humans are born with an innate understanding of grammar and language

Question 59

What is linguistic empiricism?

Answer 59

The proposal that humans are born as a "blank slate" and language and grammar are only acquired using learning mechanisms following exposure to language (ex. conditioning)