Lecture 1 + Harley Chapter 1

Question 1

What are semantics??

Answer 1

SEMANTICS are the study of Meaning

Question 2

What is syntax??

Answer 2

Syntax:

This is the rules of word ORDER of a language

Question 3

What is morphology??

Answer 3

Morphology:

the study of how words are bulit from morphemes

Question 4

Psycholinguistics is …??

Answer 4

the study of the psychological processes involved in language
Psycholinguists study - understanding/ producing/ remembering language, + thus are concerned with listening, speaking, reading, writing, memory for language and acquisition of language.
Term introducted in 1950s, interdisciplinary, part of cognitive science

Question 5

What are pragmatics??

Answer 5

Aspects of meaning that do not affect the literal truth of what is being said; involved things such as choice from words with same meaning, implications in conversation.

Question 6

What are phonetics?

Answer 6

the acoustic detail of speech sounds and how they are articulated

Question 7

What is phonology??

Answer 7

The study of sounds and how they relate to languages; phonology describes the sound categories each language uses to divide up the space of possible sounds

Question 8

Morphemes are … (Hint: bare)

Answer 8

the smallest unit of meaning (e.g., “dogs” contains two, dog + plural s).
They are the smallest meaningful element into which words can be analysed

Question 9

What is Inflectional morphology? (Clue: the more things change the more they …)

Answer 9

Inflectional Morphology
this is concerned with changes to a word that does not alter its meaning or syntactic category (e.g., pluralisation, such as ‘house’ becoming ‘houses’, mouse - mice, + verb tense changes, kiss - kissed, run - ran.

Question 10

what is derivational morphology concerned with…? (Key: alterations)

Answer 10

Derivational morphology
Is concerned with changes that alter its underlying meaning or syntactic category, e.g., ‘develop’ = redevelop; development; developmental.

Question 11

can you define something as simple as a word?

Answer 11

A word is the smallest unit of grammar which is able to stand alone

Question 12

How does Harley define language??

Answer 12

“It’s a system of symbols and rules that enable us to communicate”

• symbols - stand for other things
• Rules - specify how words are ordered to form sentences

Question 13

Modern psycholinguistics is …

Answer 13

closely related to other areas of cognitive psychology & uses mainly the same experimental methods

Question 14

Why is accurately defining language unclear and problematic??

Answer 14

1. There are other SYSTEMS of communication which people think are similar to human communication (signing; ‘waggle dance’).
2. Because of these complications many think providing a formal definition is a waste of time

Question 15

According to Crystal (1997) what are the 8 functions of Language?

Answer 15

1. Communication 2. Expressing emotion
2. Social interaction 4. Make use of sounds
3. Trying to control environment
4. Recording facts 7. To think
5. expression identity

Question 16

Linguistics is … ??

Answer 16

The scientific study of language (Lyons, 1970)

Question 17

Language is said to be a form of joint … where people … to achieve a common aim.

Answer 17

action; collaborate

Question 18

What else might language have played a role in?

Answer 18

It may have played a role in other non-linguistic cognitive processes

• Extreme view of this, language comes to shape our perception & cognition, is termed the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis
• A hypothesis holding that the structure of a language affects the perceptions of reality of its speakers and thus influences their thought patterns and worldviews.

Question 19

Linguists main concern is with the … of language??

Answer 19

Structure (rules);

*linguistics attempt to develop models to explain language use

Question 20

Linguistics is not about what??

Answer 20

Correcting grammar (i.e. it is not prescriptive)

Question 21

What is descriptive grammar??

what is prescriptive grammar??

Answer 21

Descriptive grammar: the systematic study and description of a language. Descriptive grammar refers to the structure of a language as it is actually used by speakers and writers.

Prescriptive grammar: a set of rules and examples dealing with the syntax and word structures of a language, usually intended as an aid to the learning of that language. Prescriptive grammar refers to the structure of a language as certain people think it should be used.(tends to impose rules of language e.g. never ending with preposition)

Question 22

What is meant by the term lexicon?

Answer 22

Lexicon: our mental dictionary. This incredible reserve contains all we know about a word, including its sounds, meanings, written appearance, and the syntactic roles the word can adopt.
**
A lexicon is the knowledge that a native speaker has about a language. This includes information about
* the form and meanings of words and phrases
*lexical categorization
*the appropriate usage of words and phrases
*relationships between words and phrases,
*categories of words and phrases.
Phonological and grammatical rules are not considered part of the lexicon.

Question 23

a morpheme is the smallest … element into which words can be …

Answer 23

meaningful; analysed (‘2 words, im-possible!’ is actually two morphemes.
Definition: a morpheme is the smallest distinctive unit of language having a definite grammatical function

Question 24

How many morphemes are in the words(s)

(1) Unhappiness
(2) Tina’s sister is crying?

Answer 24

(1) : Three: un (morphine for negation); happi (happy) + ness (a state)
(2) : Six: Tina + ‘s (possessive) + Brother + is + cry + ing

Question 25

What does agglutination mean?

Answer 25

(Linguistics) The formation of words from morphemes (smallest unit of meaning) that retain their original forms and meanings with little change during the combination process.
Turkish and Latin are said to be agglutinating languages

Question 26

How many languages are there in the world?

Answer 26

Around 6,000

Question 27

Give three examples of how languages change over short time-spans?

Answer 27

(1) coinage of new words or uses of old ones ‘internet’; ‘rap’
(2) Whole words drop out ‘Thee’ + we lose the meaning of some words
(3) borrow words from other languages ‘Cafe’ French

Question 28

What was the title of Skinner’s book which Chomsky slated?

Answer 28

Verbal Behavior (review: 1959)

Question 29

What did Chomnsky’s review of Skinner propose?

Answer 29

That behaviorism was unable to cope with natural language

Question 30

What did Chomsky propose in his savage attack on Skinner’s Verbal Behaviour?

Answer 30

He argued for a new kind of linguistic thoery, titled ‘transformational gramar’, claiming it could account for the underlying structure of language & of people’s knowledge of their language.

Question 31

Modern linguistics (data):

Answer 31

primary data used are INTUITIONS about what is an acceptable sentence (Idea: how do we know intuitively that one sentence is correct,another incorrect?? Can we formulate rules to account for these intuitions??)

Question 32

Most languages from west Asia + Europe developed from a common source called?? (Hint: Mmmmmm, nice P.I.E)

Answer 32

Proto-Indo-European

Question 33

Indo-European languages have …

Answer 33

3 main branches: Romance (Fra; Ira; Esp) Germanic (Ger; Eng; Dutch) and Indian (Hindi; Urdu; Punjabi)

Question 34

The Cognitive science approach involves… ?

Answer 34

(1) Multidisciplinary approach to the mind
(2) AI - computer modelling
(3) Connectionism: computer simulations with many simple processing units
(4) Activation - the amount of energy posessed by something … the more highly activated, more likely it is to be output.

Question 35

Information theory (hist of linguistics) … ??

Answer 35

emphasised the role of probability and redundancy in language.

Question 36

What does Psychology of Language consider overall (3 things?

Answer 36

1. Comprehension - how ppl understand lang.
2. Production - how ppl produce language
3. Acquisition of language - L1 or bilingualism, L2.

Question 37

What are some of the methods of studying language??

Answer 37

Exp + observation
reading: tachistoscope, Eye-Voice span, Saccadic eye movements, reaction times.
Lang processing (esp. in bilinguals) - ERP, EEG, CAT, PET

Question 38

Most results from modern psycholinguistic methods involve … … deriving from traditional psychology experiments.

Answer 38

Reaction times

Question 39

One of the most popular experimental techniques is called …

Answer 39

Priming - if two things are similar + involved in processing with one another it will assist or interfere with one another; no relation leads to no effect.

Question 40

What is facilitation in relation to priming?

Answer 40

Priming causes processing to speed up

Question 41

What is inhibition in relation to priming?

Answer 41

priming causes processing to slow down

Question 42

Lesion studies are used to

Answer 42

examine the effects of brain damage on performance

Question 43

What type of studies have an enormous contribution to understanding how psychological processes are related to the brain?

Answer 43

Lesion studies

Question 44

What is a module?

Answer 44

A module is a self-contained unit that does something specific

Question 45

What was the Title of Fodor’s 1983 book?

Answer 45

The Modularity of Mind

Question 46

What is the difference between a modular language system or an interactive language system?/

Answer 46

A modular system posits that lots of simple modules carry individual tasks in isolation

A interactive language system sees different sorts of processes interacting/ interfering with one another

Question 47

What is a crucial question in the study of language?

Answer 47

Whether language is innate