1. Intro to Language and Speech

Question 1

How is language defined?

Answer 1

an exchange of info, that serves a purpose
- arbitrary set of symbols and rules for combining symbols to create an infinite variety of messages

Question 2

What is vocal-auditory channel?

Answer 2

• human languages are transmitted through here
• physically made to speak

Question 3

What is broadcast transmission and directional reception?

Answer 3

• sounds are produced in all directions but the perceiver can localise the source of the speech

Question 4

What is rapid-fading transitoriness?

Answer 4

• speech disappears when we stop talking
• language attributed to this sound therefore ceases to exist

Question 5

What is interchangeability?

Answer 5

• competent users of he language can repeat any message they hear
• can understand their own messages

Question 6

What is total feedback?

Answer 6

• speaker hears everything that they say

Question 7

What is specialisation?

Answer 7

• sounds we produce are designed to convey meaning
• they are not a biological outcome of another activity

Question 8

What is semanticity?

Answer 8

• ties between words and their meaning is definite
• sounds denote specific messages
  EXCEPTION: homophones

Question 9

What is arbitrariness?

Answer 9

• words are arbitrary and decided by agreement
• words themselves are not representative: e.g whales are huge but the word is small

Question 10

What is discreteness?

Answer 10

• linguistic representations can be broken down into small discrete units which combine with each other in rule-governed ways
• can add meaning to a word e.g adding ‘s’ to a word denotes plurality

Question 11

What is displacement?

Answer 11

• can talk about things that aren’t immediately in our vicinity e.g other countries, cities etc
• this is unique to humans

Question 12

What is productivity?

Answer 12

• language changes
• develop new and novel words with new meanings

Question 13

What is traditional transmission?

Answer 13

• language is acquired through social groups
• teaching through social interaction

Question 14

What is duality of patterning?

Answer 14

speech can be analysed on two levels:
1. made up of meaningless element: limited inventory of sounds/phonemes
2. made up of meaningful elements: virtually limitless inventory of words/morphemes

Question 15

How many design features of language did Hockett say there is?

Answer 15

initially 13, then added 3 more (all human languages have 16 features)
- animals may only present a few

Question 16

What are the human communication systems?

Answer 16

1. body language
2. verbal: unique to humans including:
   -spoken
   -written
   - sign

Question 17

What is syntax?

Answer 17

• grammar
• rules that subtly alter the meaning of a phrase
• e.g word order decides meaning/intent
• different in different languages
• limited number of rules, but infinite number of unique statements

Question 18

What is morphology?

Answer 18

• smallest meaningful unit of sound
• idea that specific combinations of sound carry meaning

Question 19

What is pragmatics?

Answer 19

• meaning within the meaning
• language in context
• use of language to convey meaning via the way we choose to speak

Question 20

What is the Sapir-Whorf theory?

Answer 20

• language frames our thinking
• allows us to grapple with difficult concepts, logical problems, philosophical debates
• language shapes the eay we think

Question 21

How is language based on mental representations?

Answer 21

• cognitive psychologists assume the world is represented by mental representations
• they are developed by experience with sensory input
• the store of mental representations for language are developed by experience with language
• we match mental representations to words we see or hear
• we activate our mental representations of words to speak/write

Question 22

What is the associative network model for semantic memory structure?

Answer 22

• how we organise memory
• one word can activate varying concepts

Question 23

What are semantics?

Answer 23

• meaning/concept
• allow us to communicate knowledge

Question 24

What is phonology?

Answer 24

• sound system that makes up our words
• roughly 40 in english

Question 25

What is orthography?

Answer 25

- written version of phoneme - grapheme = letters - can be made up of a number of letters

Question 26

How does competition spread activation in the mental lexicon?

Answer 26

more competition = more likely to make a mistake - in response to activation of a concept: related words are activated in the mental lexicon, activated words compete for selection

Question 27

What methods are used to test speech production?

Answer 27

- timing of speech onset, hesitations and pauses - speech errors - tip-of-the-tongue-state

Question 28

How is timing of speech onset, hesitations and pauses used to test speech production?

Answer 28

- a delay in initiating speech may be the result of processing problems - larger number of words in lexicon leads to more hesitations

Question 29

How are speech errors used to test speech production?

Answer 29

- know what you want to say but retrieve the wrong word

Question 30

What is the tip-of-the-tongue-state?

Answer 30

- where you know what you want to say but have issue retrieving the word to say it