Lecture 15: Language

Question 1

Phonemes

Answer 1

distinctive subset of all possible phones in a language

/t/ + /å/ + /k/ + /s/…

Question 2

Morphemes

Answer 2

from the distinctive lexicon of morphemes

…take (content morpheme) + s (plural function morpheme)…

Question 3

Words

Answer 3

From the distinctive vocabulary of words (It + takes + a + heap + of + sense + to + write +…)

Question 4

Phrase

Answer 4

Noun phrase + verb phrase

Question 5

Sentences

Answer 5

based on the language’s syntax - syntactical structure

Question 6

Communicative

Answer 6

language permits us to communicate with one or more people who share our language

Question 7

arbitrarily symbolic

Answer 7

language creates an arbitrary relationship between a symbol and what it represents: an idea, a thing, a process, a relationship, or a description

Question 8

regularly structured

Answer 8

language has a structure; only particularly patterned arrangements of symbols have meaning, and different arrangements yield different meanings

Question 9

generative, productive

Answer 9

within the limits of a linguistic structure, language users can produce novel utterances

Question 10

dynamic

Answer 10

languages constantly evolve

Question 11

The hierarchy of language (from top to bottom)

Answer 11

sentence, phrase, word, morpheme, phoneme

Question 12

How many phonemes are there in English?

Answer 12

about 40

Question 13

What is the smallest unit of sound that signals meaning?

Answer 13

morpheme (prefixes, suffixes, roots, or stems)

Question 14

Adults know about ______ morphemes

Answer 14

50-80,000

Question 15

Syntax

Answer 15

rules that determine word order

Question 16

How can phonological inflections help?

Answer 16

they can distinguish meanings from phrases of which words can convey different messages

Question 17

Ambiguity

Answer 17

results when the same wording corresponds to more than one meaning

Question 18

Lexical ambiguity

Answer 18

word has 2 different meanings

Question 19

Syntactic ambiguity

Answer 19

words can be grouped together into more than one phrase structure
(they are (cooking apples))

Question 20

How we process language

Answer 20

hear sounds, identify phonemes, morphemes, and words and figure out the sentence context

Question 21

McGurk effect

Answer 21

something can sound like another word when you don’t see the person saying it. (think of the youtube video of ba ba ba/da da da)

Question 22

Language processing is P_____

Answer 22

predictive

Question 23

Predictability affects ______ time in reading

Answer 23

fixation

Question 24

What can you see on an EEG with word predictability?

Answer 24

you can see the extra processing (for words you didn’t expect to be there)

Question 25

______ is an ERP response to unexpected words

Answer 25

N400

Question 26

Lexical access

Answer 26

accessing word meaning

Question 27

lexicon

Answer 27

mental dictionary

Question 28

What are the 2 hypotheses for "When does context have its effects"?

Answer 28

1. Get ALL word meanings from lexicon, context operates later 2. Context allows you to get only the CORRECT word meaning from the lexicon

Question 29

What was Swinney's evidence?

Answer 29

all word meanings are accessed initially

Question 30

What was Swinney's experiment?

Answer 30

Subjects heard a sentence, and were shown words or non-words on a screen and had to do a lexical decision task; faster to decide if something is a word

Question 31

What happens to priming after time passes

Answer 31

only a relevant meaning is primed

Question 32

Reading

Answer 32

involves perception, language, memory, thinking, and intelligence

Question 33

Orthography

Answer 33

sounds are mapped onto a set of written symbols

Question 34

ideographic languages

Answer 34

words/morphemes are mapped with a pictorial symbol (Chinese)

Question 35

syllabic

Answer 35

syllables are associated with visual representation (Japanese syllabic symbols)

Question 36

alphabetic

Answer 36

each letter (grapheme) is supposed to represent a phoneme

Question 37

consonantal scripts

Answer 37

not all sounds are represented, vowels aren't written down at all (Hebrew)

Question 38

What is the ratio of grapheme-phoneme in transparent languages?

Answer 38

there's a 1:1 ratio (Italian)

Question 39

What is the ratio of grapheme-phoneme in opaque languages?

Answer 39

1:many directions (english) | Sometimes it's hard to plough through the tough dough ...

Question 40

What is alphabetic reading?

Answer 40

mapping from graphemes to phonemes (the sounds in words)

Question 41

Regular spelling-to-sounds correspondence:

Answer 41

graphemes map onto phonemes in a regular way; no special knowledge about the word needed to pronounce it

Question 42

Regular words

Answer 42

all the graphemes have the standard pronunciation

Question 43

pseudowords

Answer 43

pronounceable strings of letters that have never been seen before

Question 44

irregular spelling to sound

Answer 44

graphemes don't map onto phonemes in a regular way

Question 45

Developmental dyslexia

Answer 45

difficulty in learning and reading, poor phonological awareness, short term memory impairments

Question 46

Phonological awareness

Answer 46

phonological awareness increases as one learns to read; a central concept in reading