week 9- language Flashcards
what is language
-sets of sounds/symbols to express thoughts, feelings, etc
what makes human language unique?
creativity
what 2 things guide the creativity facet about how language is unique?
→Hierarchical- it’s organized in a hierarchical way, we have these building blocks where we can build upon what we have to make new words
→Rule-based- there are rules as to how we take these building blocks to form new forms of communication
what are phonemes?
sounds
how many phonemes are there in english? give an example
47
ex. “bit” = /b/ /i/ /t/ (this is 3 sounds)
what does making phonemes depend on?
we can make 47 different sound because it depends on context
why can we make 47 sound sin english? give an example
–sometimes letters make different sounds
ex. “e” in “we” and “wet”
what are morphemes
smallest unit of sound with meaning or grammatical function
give an example of one morpheme vs. two morphemes
-One morpheme: “truck” “table”
-Two morphemes: “bedroom” “trucks”, “breakable”
does adding an s to the end of a word make another morpheme? why?
yes, because it changes meanings
perception of language is affected by …..
context
what is the phonemic restoration effect
your brain will fill in the missing part of a word when it is gone given the context (in class example – “legislatures” – the first s wasn’t there but your brain fills in the gap)
what did pollack and pickett (1964) study in regards to the phonemic restoration effect? what were the results?
participants came in and were given short sentences, asked “can you tell me what that middle word of the statement was” OR when they cut out the middle word of the sentences and just played participants that middle word. Results- only 50% of participants could identify the middle word when they weren’t given context (the full sentence)
what is the word superiority effect?
how well people are able to identify words when they see the context of the word
-when a subject has to identify a letter, he does better when the letter is embedded within a word than when it is embedded in a non- sense string of letters or presented alone
describe the word superiority effect study.
studied by looking at a computer screen and and shown the first pic below, then it disappears and the second one pops up, OR shown “rfok” and then shown the second pic below, people are better at naming the last letter (k) when it spells fork rather than rfok
see image 1
what does the word superiority effect show?
-when a subject has to identify a letter, he does better when the letter is embedded within a word than when it is embedded in a non- sense string of letters or presented alone
what are low frequency vs. high frequency words?
Low frequency words- based on day to day experiences, you’re less likely to come across these words
High frequency words- you’re more likely to come across these words
what is lexical ambiguity? give an example
when words have multiple meanings (ex. bug)
what is meaning dominance? what are the two subtypes?
you have two meanings, one has “dominance” over the other – you are more likely to think of one meaning of a word than another one
→Biased meaning dominance- more likely to think of one meaning
→ Balanced meaning dominance- just as likely to think of two meanings
what is an example of a word that has biased meaning dominance
Date - youre more likely to think of like day of the week than going on a date