Exam 1

Question 1

About how many years ago did written language develop?

Answer 1

about 5,000 years ago

Question 2

What parts of the human vocal tract are in different positions compared to other primates? Describe two differences.

Answer 2

Larynx–otherwise known as the “voice box” is at a lower position than other primates.

The pharynx–or the cavity, which is located above the vocal folds, is longer due to the position of the Larynx

Question 3

Would onomatopoeia be a good illustration of arbitrariness in human language? Explain why or why not

Answer 3

No. arbitrariness=no natural connection between a linguistic form and its meaning, onomatopoeic=words that sound similar to their meaning

Question 4

What did Herbert Terrace argue chimpanzees were doing when they used signs?

Answer 4

Herbert Terrace argued that chimpanzees “simply produce signs in response to the demands of people” and that they “tend to repeat signs those people use”

Question 5

The text distinguishes communicative from informative signals. How would you characterize “body language” in regard to this distinction? Please explain

Answer 5

I think that body language is a communicative signal, because certain signs in body language are intentional and represent something: a person waves to say hi, a person puts a “thumbs up” to say good job, a person points to another person to show the person they were describing.

Question 6

What is reflexivity and why is it considered a special property of human language?

Answer 6

Reflexivity is the reflection on language and its uses. It’s considered a special property of human language because it means that language can be used to think or talk about language itself.

Question 7

How did the Gardners try to show that Washoe was not simply repeating signs made by interacting humans?

Answer 7

The gardeners tried to show that Washoe was not just repeating signs made by interacting with humans through the combination of words, and creations of words by Washoe. Washoe created a sign for “bib”, and combined “water” and “bird” to refer to a swan. This new sign, and the sign combination, were never used by the interacting humans, showing that Washoe was not just repeating signs made by the humans she was raised by.

Question 8

What were the names of the two scientists who attempted to teach Gua to speak?

Answer 8

Luella and Winthrop Kellogg were the two scientists who attempted to teach Gua to speak.

Question 9

If Sarah could use a gray plastic shape to convey the meaning of the word red, which property would her “language” seem to have?

Answer 9

Arbitrariness

Question 10

Consider this situation: a set of twins is born in Russia. One twin is adopted by American parents, raised in the United States, and speaks English. The other twin is adopted by French parents, raised in France, and speaks French. What property of human language does this situation demonstrate?

Answer 10

Cultural Transmission

Question 11

Psammetichus concluded that Phrygian must be the original language because the newborns he had isolated and raised by a mute shepherd eventually said something that sounded like “bekos,” the Phrygian word for bread. The book points out that this is a dubious conclusion because “bekos” sounds suspiciously like the sound a goat would make. Can you think of any other reasons why Psammetichus’ conclusion is questionable?

Answer 11

Psammetichus’ conclusion can also be questionable for the fact that the newborns could have heard a noise similar to the word “bekos”, maybe a door being locked (if a door makes two “click” sounds when being locked, it kind of sounds like “bekos”), or the sound of metal clinking together, etc. These newborns could have heard this noise and tried to mimic it.

Question 12

What is the space between the vocal folds called?

Answer 12

Glottis

Question 13

How many fricatives are there in the pronunciation of thimbles?

Answer 13

2

Question 14

Is the ‘th’ in that pronounced with a voiceless or a voiced fricative?

Answer 14

voiced

Question 15

How do we describe the vowel in the normal pronunciation of hot in terms of place of articulation?

Answer 15

voiced fricative, Low Back vowel

Question 16

Which of the following words contain affricates? There are multiple answers. Remember, we are concerned with the actual sounds of words, not the way words are spelled
(junk, cent, chin, gym, shun, gum)

Answer 16

junk, chin, gym

Question 17

In French, the words beau /bo/ meaning “handsome” and bon /bõ/ meaning “good” seem to have different vowels. Are these two vowels independent phonemes in French, or are they allophones of a single phoneme in French? Explain.

Answer 17

Beau and bon are independent phonemes in French. The French vowel produced “eau” and the French vowel produced “on” are two different sounding vowels, and when there switched out (in this case vowel 1 (eau) would be switched out with vowel 2 (on) in b-vowel 1) it produces a word with a different meaning. If they would have been allophones, switching the vowels would have kept the meaning behind the word, all that would have been changed is the pronunciation of the word

Question 18

Choose the group of words that represents a minimal set (sip ship shop, fear free reef, laugh life loaf, jam james jams)

Answer 18

laugh life loaf

Question 19

Which of the following words contain a consonant cluster? (path, steak, bomb, sheep)

Answer 19

steak

Question 20

How many morphemes are there in the word terrorists?

Answer 20

3

Question 21

What kind(s) of morpheme is the affix -ly in “We were eating dinner when the phone rang sudden-ly”? Pick two. (derivational, inflectional, free, bound

Answer 21

Bound, Derivational

Question 22

What kind(s) of morpheme is the stem eat- in “We were eat-ing dinner when the phone rang suddenly”? Pick two. (functional, lexical, free, bound)

Answer 22

lexical, free

Question 23

Which word(s) would you put in a closed class in the following sentence? “The man brought hot donuts to class.”

Answer 23

The, to

Question 24

Identify all the adverbs in the following sentence,

“Really large objects move very slowly.”

Answer 24

Really, very, slowly

Question 25

In your own words, describe the difference between natural gender and grammatical gender.

Answer 25

Natural gender is the biological difference between physical genders, while grammatical gender is used to distinguish different nouns (der-masc, die-fem, das-neuter)

Question 26

What is another name for the posterior speech cortex? (The Motor Cortex, Wernicke's Area, The Arcuate Fasciculus, Broca's Area)

Answer 26

Wernicke's Area

Question 27

Is saying "fire distinguisher" instead of "fire extinguisher" a spoonerism or a malapropism? Explain why.

Answer 27

Saying "fire distinguisher" instead of "fire extinguisher" is an example of malapropisms, defined as substituting a target word with another word that sounds similar, but has a different meaning. "Extinguisher" means "to take out/to remove", in this case "Extinguisher" means "to remove a fire". "Distinguisher" is the ability to differentiate between two different things. As you can see, these words may sound very similar but have completely different meanings.

Question 28

What is aphasia? What medical condition is often the cause of it?

Answer 28

In simpler terms, aphasia is an issue with speech and understanding related to certain parts of the brain due to brain damage.

Question 29

Which type of aphasia is characterized by speech like this: "speech...two times... read...wr...ripe, er, rike, er, write..."? (Wernicke's Aphasia, Conduction Aphasia, Broca's Aphasia

Answer 29

Broca's Aphasia

Question 30

Before brain imaging, how did scientists typically learn about the locations of language functions in the brain?

Answer 30

Autopsies on dead people, research on subjects who had injuries to a part/parts of the brain.

Question 31

What is the critical period for language acquisition?

Answer 31

The critical period for language acquisition is the time frame during which language acquisition takes place. It's unsure of when exactly this time frame is, but it's known that it occurs sometime during an individual's childhood. If a child does not learn language during this time, it will be almost impossible for them to learn language later on in their life.

Question 32

What did researchers discover from Genie’s dichotic listening tests? How is what they discovered important for understanding language and the brain in general, i.e. not just Genie's brain?

Answer 32

Through Genie's dichotic listening tests, researchers discovered that she had no left hemisphere language facility, and that she learned language through the right hemisphere of her brain. She also had a very strong left ear advantage for verbal and non-verbal signals. The discovery of her learning language through the right hemisphere of her brain had researchers realize that our capacity for language may not be just limited to specific areas of the brain but may be connected throughout the entire brain.

Question 33

What part of the brain is crucially involved in the generation of spoken language? (Wernicke's area, Broca's Area, the motor cortex, the arcuate fasciculus)

Answer 33

Broca's Area

Question 34

What type of aphasia is associated with an injury to the arcuate fasciculus? (Conduction aphasia, Broca's Aphasia, Wernicke's Aphasia, Primary Progressive Aphasia)

Answer 34

Conduction Aphasia

Question 35

At what age (in months) can infants hear the difference between [pa] and [ba]?

Answer 35

1 month

Question 36

Which of the following utterances illustrates inversion in question formation? (will you go?, owl eat a candy?, why you smiling?, where it goed?

Answer 36

will you go?

Question 37

Which of these phrases appears later than the others in a child's language developement? (no sleeping here, you didn't caught it, we can't do that, nobody don't like me)

Answer 37

you didn't caught it

Question 38

What features are typical of caregiver speech? Please state 2 features.

Answer 38

Features typical of caregiver speech are simple sentence structures and a lot of repetition and paraphrasing. Phrases and words are mainly spoken in present tense formatting.

Question 39

What is overgeneralization in child language acquisition? Give a specific example

Answer 39

Overgeneralization is when an inflectional morpheme is used in many words, including ones that shouldn't have an inflectional morpheme. An example would be using an inflectional morpheme for the word "woman" to make it plural, through saying "womans" instead of "women".

Question 40

Why do linguists maintain that it is inaccurate to say children are "taught" their native language language?

Answer 40

Linguists say that children are "actively constructing" possible ways of using language through what is said to them and around them, rather than being "taught" their native language. They attempt to produce different words, word construction, etc., testing whether those attempts work or not.

Question 41

Describe an affective factor that can create a barrier in classroom language learning. (Previous experience has taught the instructor that many students assume the word "affective" means "effective." It does not. Please check your answer before submiting.)

Answer 41

There are a few affective factors that can create a barrier in classroom language learning, especially when it comes to teenagers. Compared to younger age groups, teens are more self-conscious. So, if they are too unwilling or embarrassed to produce the sounds of a different language, they will have difficulty learning that language. Along with this, teens may have a lack of empathy (with the language's culture) paired with that self-consciousness, which can cause them to "not want to sound like a German/Russian/Brazilian/etc.)

Question 42

Both groups of students listed below are learning English. Which group is learning English in an EFL setting? (Chinese students in Beijing, Japanese students in London)

Answer 42

Chinese students in Beijing