Thought and Language

Question 1

what is the hierarchical nature of language?

Answer 1

phonemes, morphemes, semantics, syntax

Question 2

what is a phoneme?

Answer 2

a single unit of sound that can change meaning, small units that make up words and represent sounds

Question 3

how many phonemes does the English language have?

Answer 3

upwards of 40 (and not all languages have the same phonemes)

Question 4

what is phonology?

Answer 4

phonemes combined together in larger units to create a set of phonological rules

Question 5

what is a morpheme?

Answer 5

the smallest language units that carry meaning (eg. words, suffixes and prefixes)

Question 6

what is morphology?

Answer 6

rules that determine how morphemes can be combined to make words

Question 7

what is syntax?

Answer 7

the grammatical set of word and phrase combinations in sentences (rules)

Question 8

what are semantics?

Answer 8

the meaning of a word, representing specific objects, events, ideas, feelings and actions

Question 9

what does semantic processing rely on?

Answer 9

content words

Question 10

what are content words?

Answer 10

words that carry meaning but doesn’t have any direct relation to the concept it stands for (eg. dog)

map onto concepts

Question 11

what is a concept?

Answer 11

a unit of semantic memory

concepts then form categories

Question 12

what are function words?

Answer 12

words that specify the meaning relationships between other words and play a functional role in understanding tense and possession (eg. he, she, it, and, or)

Question 13

what does syntactic processing rely on?

Answer 13

function words

Question 14

what is a thematic role?

Answer 14

the way in which words are combined into phrases and sentences, and their meanings combine in a rule-governed way

Question 15

what are an example of content words?

Answer 15

nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs

Question 16

what are an example of function words?

Answer 16

pronouns, prepositions, conjunctives

Question 17

what are pragmatics?

Answer 17

the study of how language meaning is influenced by social context

Question 18

what is a sentence made up of?

Answer 18

phrases that are combined together

Question 19

How does Broca’s Aphasia impact of language & speaking ability

Answer 19

results on the overuse of content words and inability to form sentences combining phonemes and morphemes

difficulty in understanding language that is being spoken to them

Question 20

Where is Broca’s Area located?

Answer 20

near areas that control speech muscles

Question 21

Which areas of the brain play a large role in the production and comprehension of language

Answer 21

Broca’s and Wernicke’s Area

Question 22

What does syntax refer to?

Answer 22

the structure of language - who is doing what, where and when

Question 23

How are the rules for ordering words learned?

Answer 23

learned implicitly and can differ depending on the language

Question 24

How does word order cue syntax?

Answer 24

it determines who is doing what to whom (eg. subject - verb - object, Jane ate the apple)

Question 25

How does word class cue syntax?

Answer 25

word class refers to adjectives, nouns or verbs whereby the word order helps us to identify the word class and thus understand what a sentence is about

Question 26

How does Wernicke's Aphasia impact on language & speaking ability

Answer 26

inability to produce and/or understand language issues with phonological sequences, overuse of function words but struggle with content words

Question 27

Where is Wernicke's Area located in the brain?

Answer 27

in the left temporal lobe, next to primary auditory cortex which translates sounds into meaning

Question 28

What is a proposition?

Answer 28

a statement that expresses an idea

Question 29

What are propositions represented through?

Answer 29

Semantics (meaning)

Question 30

What is Surface Structure?

Answer 30

organisation of words at a surface level

Question 31

What is Deep Structure?

Answer 31

the meaning of sentences

Question 32

What can a change in the order of words result in?

Answer 32

changes the way in which the sentence is interpreted

Question 33

What does one deep structure but two surface structures entail?

Answer 33

two sentences with different word order, but both have the same underlying meaning

Question 34

What can a single surface structure entail?

Answer 34

can result in two very different deep structures, whereby the words are organised the same but the meaning of the sentence is ambiguous

Question 35

What kind of speech can newborns perceive?

Answer 35

they are able to perceive many basic phoneme contrasts (hearing the differences between sounds)

Question 36

What kind of predispositions do newborns come into the world with?

Answer 36

a preference for a human voice over a fake voice - as they get older a preference for human sounds over animal sounds

Question 37

What does a HAS show?

Answer 37

High Amplitude Sucking - enables detection of phonemic change through the sucking of a dummy Used as a technique to analyse whether babies can detect different sounds and whether they are interested in different sounds

Question 38

What is categorical speech perception?

Answer 38

whereby the perception of consonant sounds becomes categorical (ba vs pa)

Question 39

At what age do babies learn Categorical Speech Perception?

Answer 39

around the age of 9 months

Question 40

What is a VOT?

Answer 40

the time interval between release of consonant and the onset of voicing (for ba and pa there is a 25msec difference in VOT)

Question 41

What is perception of sound categories defined by?

Answer 41

dependant on the language that you are raised in

Question 42

At what age to children fine tune their perception of language to the environment they are growing up in?

Answer 42

around 9 months old

Question 43

How is detection of phonemic change modified?

Answer 43

through experience

Question 44

How does older infant speech perception differ to younger infant speech perception

Answer 44

older infants are less likely to discriminate sounds and language that they aren't used to hearing compared to younger infants