Week 12 Flashcards
(22 cards)
What are the two theories/approaches of language?
Continuity - Language evolved gradually from a system of calls and gestures of ancestors.
Discontinuity - Language is late developing and different from gestures and calls.
What are the universal characteristics of language?
Semanticity; arbitrariness; discreteness; the duality of patterning; productivity; displacement.
What is semanticity?
Language signals convey meaning.
What is arbitrariness?
There is no resemblance between a symbol and the things it represents.
What is discreteness?
Language symbols are discrete; they do not vary continuously.
What is the duality of patterning?
Patterns in language signals occur at multiple levels. Phonemes, morphemes, words etc.
What is productivity?
Language signals can be combined creatively into many novel expressions - never before said.
What is displacement?
Language can communicate about things that are temporally and physically displaced - not in the current vicinity.
What characteristics of language do bees show?
Semanticity, productivity and displacement but not arbitrariness, discreteness or duality of patterning.
What is a morpheme?
The smallest units of language that carry meaning, e.g. un-
What are free and bound morphemes?
Free - Morphemes that stand alone as words, e.g. help.
Bound - Morphemes must be combined with another morpheme; e.g. help-ful
What are inflection rules?
Rules for changing the form of a word to fit its role in a sentence, e.g. -ed
What are derivational rules?
Rules for changing the meaning of a word; e.g. help-er
What is syntax?
The way we form words together.
What is a proposition?
An expression that can be true or false within possible worlds.
What are the three theories of semantics (meaning) and what is different about them all?
Truth-conditional semantics - meaning resides in propositions (an expression that can be true of false within possible words).
Conceptual semantics - meaning is the relationship between language symbols and mental concepts.
Cognitive grammar - language is the process of building mental models using basic-level concepts and image schema.
Declarative memory can invoke either __ or __ memory?
Semantic; episodic.
What role do schemes play in memory?
A reconstructive role.
Ralph is suffering from progressive Alzheimer’s disease. He recently spent time in hospital to treat a fractured leg, injured in a fall in his bathroom. He has no memory of his hospital stay, which suggests he has developed which kind of amnesia?
Anterograde
You are comparing what you’ve read about the latest action movie with images you can recall from its advertising promo, and trying to decide whether to go see the movie. This is an example of how you might use your __ component of working memory.
Central executive.
Children make errors like “mouses” and “goed” versus ‘mice’ and ‘went’ because they __ the rules of grammar.
Overgeneralise.
When a child makes an error like saying “I like to run, yesterday I ranned to the park”. This is an error in what
Application of inflectional rules of the lexicon.
