Language

Question 1

Define:

phonemes

Answer 1

basic speech sounds with no meaning

ex. sh, ph, ee

Question 2

Define:

morphemes

Answer 2

the smallest carrier of meaning, phonemes combined to create meaning

Question 3

Define:

phrase

Answer 3

words grouped together to create a single unit of syntax in a sentence

Question 4

Define:

syntax

Answer 4

an element of grammar that dictates the rules for phrase/sentence construction

Question 5

Define:

grammar

Answer 5

rules for using a given language, interrelating morphemes and syntax

Question 6

Define:

morphology

Answer 6

grammar rules, the understanding of how to group morphemes

Question 7

Define:

prosody

Answer 7

the perception of tone inflections, accents, and emotional aspects of language that carry meaning

Question 8

Who is considered the most important person in psycholinguistics?

Answer 8

Noam Chomsky

Question 9

What did Chomsky’s transformational grammar differentiate?

Answer 9

surface structure and deep structure of language

Question 10

You can change the ______ structure of a sentence without altering the _____ structure, or the meaning.

Answer 10

surface; deep

Question 11

Why would Chomsky say it is easier for children to learn a foreign language than adults?

Answer 11

Because children have an inborn “language acquisition device,” they are able to adapt to and incorporate new grammar rules into their own speech production.

Question 12

What is occurring when a child says “I hided the toy from Bobby”?

Answer 12

overgeneralization or overregularization

Children often use previously learned grammar rules for all situations, even if they are incorrect. Improper conjugation of verb tenses is a common example of this.

Question 13

A child who calls every fuzzy, four-legged object a kitty is exhibiting what?

Answer 13

overextension

Children frequently associate words with characteristics of an object without logically understanding the finer distinctions, for example the ones between kitties and doggies.

Question 14

“Me want cookie” is an example of what type of speech?

Answer 14

telegraphic speech

A way to remember this is that the speech lacks the flourish of a written letter, but is instead barebones and only conveys necessity, like a telegraph.

Question 15

This type of speech is comprised of one word that conveys the meaning of an entire sentence.

Answer 15

holophrastic speech

The one-word sentences are called holophrases.

Question 16

Do boys or girls acquire language more quickly and accurately?

Answer 16

girls

Question 17

Are children raised in bilingual environments faster or slower to learn language?

Answer 17

slower

Question 18

What parts of speech do children produce first?

Answer 18

nouns first, then verbs

Telegraphic speech usually contains one of both, like “mama go.”

Question 19

Describe language in children by year from one to four.

Answer 19

1. first spoken word/words
2. 50+ word vocabulary, typically telegraphic phrases
3. larger vocabulary (roughly 1000 words), but frequent grammatical errors
4. grammar mistakes like overregularization are uncommon

Question 20

What was suggested by Benjamin Whorf’s research on the Hopi language?

Answer 20

Perspectives among a given culture are informed by language itself. This is also known as the Whorfian hypothesis (or the linguistic relativity hypothesis).

Simply put, this hypothesis states that language determines thought.

Question 21

What did Roger Brown find regarding children’s language acquisition?

Answer 21

He found that children improve their understanding of language and grammar as they hypothesize about syntax and synthesize those hypotheses with their real-world language experience.

Question 22

What did Katherine Nelson find regarding children’s language acquisition?

Answer 22

Children learn language more rapidly after the onset of speech production (active speech) than they do while simply hearing it.

Question 23

Whose research on Ebonics found that it was not incorrect English, but rather a dialect with its own complex internal structure?

Answer 23

William Labov

Question 24

According to Vygotsky and Luria, do words mean the same thing to all people?

Answer 24

No. They found that word meanings are different for different people, affected by life experience.

Question 25

How did Charles Osgood’s semantic differential charts support Vygotsky and Luria’s theory?

Answer 25

They showed that people with related interests and backgrounds defined words similarly.

As Vygotsky and Luria posited, different groups of people have different understandings of word connotations.

Question 26

Where language acquisition was concerned, Chomsky is a _______.

Answer 26

nativist

He argued that the capacity to acquire language was innate, rather than learned.

Question 27

What is the learning theory of language?

Answer 27

Learning theory proposes that we learn language through conditioning and modeling. B.F. Skinner was a learning theorist.

Question 28

What is the cognitive developmental theory of language?

Answer 28

This is the belief that toward the end of the sensorimotor stage of development, children develop a capacity for symbolic thinking, which allows language acquisition as the child’s cognitive capacities increase. Jean Piaget was a proponent of this theory.

Question 29

How does being raised bilingual (native bilingual) impact executive functioning?

Answer 29

People who are native bilingual have to learn to inhibit responses in whichever language they are not using at any given time. Resarch indicates that being native bilingual confers the benefit of developing better executive functioning than monolinguals have.