week 9- language

Question 1

what is language

Answer 1

-sets of sounds/symbols to express thoughts, feelings, etc

Question 2

what makes human language unique?

Answer 2

creativity

Question 3

what 2 things guide the creativity facet about how language is unique?

Answer 3

→Hierarchical- it’s organized in a hierarchical way, we have these building blocks where we can build upon what we have to make new words
→Rule-based- there are rules as to how we take these building blocks to form new forms of communication

Question 4

what are phonemes?

Answer 4

sounds

Question 5

how many phonemes are there in english? give an example

Answer 5

47
ex. “bit” = /b/ /i/ /t/ (this is 3 sounds)

Question 6

what does making phonemes depend on?

Answer 6

we can make 47 different sound because it depends on context

Question 7

why can we make 47 sound sin english? give an example

Answer 7

–sometimes letters make different sounds
ex. “e” in “we” and “wet”

Question 8

what are morphemes

Answer 8

smallest unit of sound with meaning or grammatical function

Question 9

give an example of one morpheme vs. two morphemes

Answer 9

-One morpheme: “truck” “table”
-Two morphemes: “bedroom” “trucks”, “breakable”

Question 10

does adding an s to the end of a word make another morpheme? why?

Answer 10

yes, because it changes meanings

Question 11

perception of language is affected by …..

Answer 11

context

Question 12

what is the phonemic restoration effect

Answer 12

your brain will fill in the missing part of a word when it is gone given the context (in class example – “legislatures” – the first s wasn’t there but your brain fills in the gap)

Question 13

what did pollack and pickett (1964) study in regards to the phonemic restoration effect? what were the results?

Answer 13

participants came in and were given short sentences, asked “can you tell me what that middle word of the statement was” OR when they cut out the middle word of the sentences and just played participants that middle word. Results- only 50% of participants could identify the middle word when they weren’t given context (the full sentence)

Question 14

what is the word superiority effect?

Answer 14

how well people are able to identify words when they see the context of the word
-when a subject has to identify a letter, he does better when the letter is embedded within a word than when it is embedded in a non- sense string of letters or presented alone

Question 15

describe the word superiority effect study.

Answer 15

studied by looking at a computer screen and and shown the first pic below, then it disappears and the second one pops up, OR shown “rfok” and then shown the second pic below, people are better at naming the last letter (k) when it spells fork rather than rfok
see image 1

Question 16

what does the word superiority effect show?

Answer 16

-when a subject has to identify a letter, he does better when the letter is embedded within a word than when it is embedded in a non- sense string of letters or presented alone

Question 17

what are low frequency vs. high frequency words?

Answer 17

Low frequency words- based on day to day experiences, you’re less likely to come across these words
High frequency words- you’re more likely to come across these words

Question 18

what is lexical ambiguity? give an example

Answer 18

when words have multiple meanings (ex. bug)

Question 19

what is meaning dominance? what are the two subtypes?

Answer 19

you have two meanings, one has “dominance” over the other – you are more likely to think of one meaning of a word than another one
→Biased meaning dominance- more likely to think of one meaning
→ Balanced meaning dominance- just as likely to think of two meanings

Question 20

what is an example of a word that has biased meaning dominance

Answer 20

Date - youre more likely to think of like day of the week than going on a date

Question 21

what is an example of a word that has balanced meaning dominance

Answer 21

Cast- has a balanced meaning dominance, you’re just as likely to think of cast on arm or cast the first stone

Question 22

how does one decide which meaning to go with when a word has two meanings

Answer 22

depending on sentence context

Question 23

does words that have more than one meaning slow down reading comprehension

Answer 23

yes

Question 24

what is syntax

Answer 24

the rules for producing sentences

Question 25

what are semantics

Answer 25

our ability to understand meaning

Question 26

what part of the brain is damaged if one has broca’s aphasia

Answer 26

frontal lobe

Question 27

what part of the brain is damaged if one has wernicke’s aphasia

Answer 27

lateral temporal lobe

Question 28

when one has broca’s aphasia, do they lose the ability of syntax or semantics?

Answer 28

syntax (can’t produce language effectively)

Question 29

when one has wernicke’s aphasia, do they lose the ability of syntax or semantics?

Answer 29

semantics (they can’t understand language)

Question 30

what is parsing

Answer 30

to divide a sentence into grammatical parts and identify the parts and their relations to each other

Question 31

what are garden path sentences? give an example

Answer 31

you start reading sentence, at some point the attention shifts to talking about something completely different – you have to change your parse halfway through to fit the changed context
(ex. reading “after the musician played the piano…..” one would have to change their parse if the second half of the sentence is “was wheeled off the stage”)

Question 32

what is the syntax first approach to parsing

Answer 32

we are presented with words one after another, we follow a rule that everything goes together

Question 33

what is the late closure principle

Answer 33

because we follow the syntax first approach to parsing, we then think everything goes together

Question 34

how do we use our knowledge of syntax to read/change this sentence: “ “[The bird saw the man] [with the binoculars].”

Answer 34

thats impossible, so we change it so that we read it as “[The bird saw] [the man with the binoculars].”

Question 35

regarding the changing of the sentence “The bird saw [the man with the binoculars].” – what type of parsing do we use? describe it

Answer 35

an interactionist approach to parsing- we usually adopt a SYNTAX FIRST APPROACH, but our general knowledge can come in and inform our perception as well

Question 36

describe Bransford and Johnson (1973)’s study on inferences

Answer 36

-presented participants with ”John was trying to fix the birdhouse. He was pounding the nail when his father came out to watch him do the work.” and then asked participants if they heard: “John was using a hammer to fix the birdhouse when his father came out to watch him and help him do the work.” – participants made the inference that that was the sentence that they heard and falsely said that that is the sentence they heard

Question 37

what are the 3 types of inferences?

Answer 37

→ Anaphoric inference
→ Instrument inference
→ Causal inference

Question 38

what is an anaphoric inference?

Answer 38

as we read part of a story and someone is introduced, we keep reading and we don’t have to keep referring to them by name, we can use “he” or “she” or “they” – because well infer that that is referring to the person even though we’re not referring to them by name

Question 39

what is an instrument inference?

Answer 39

if we were asked “imagine shakespeare writing his plays” we can infer that he’s using a pen in a dimly lit room (using olden times things) and nt a laptop

Question 40

what is a causal inference?

Answer 40

we assume that one thing caused another (ex. Sharon took an aspirin. Her headache went away. – we can infer that the aspirin took her headache away)

Question 41

what are situation models? give an example

Answer 41

-mental representations of text
-ex. When we read “He hammered the nail into the wall” we imagine an actual simulation of someone hammering a nail into a wall

Question 42

what is a given new contract?

Answer 42

Given-new contract- when we tell people something, how much work does the other person need to do to piece it all together

Question 43

what is an example of the given new contract

Answer 43

– ex. The sentence “We checked the picnic supplies. The beer was warm” requires more work for us to understand than “When we checked the picnic supplies and got some beer out of the trunk, the beer was warm”

Question 44

what is syntactic coordination

Answer 44

we coordinate the way we construct sentences with the way other people are

Question 45

describe the study on syntactic coordination

Answer 45

there’s two people. One is part of the experiment (confederate), one is a participant (this participant thinks the other is another participant), they give them a picture, and ask the confederate to describe the picture. The confederate describes the picture in one of two ways: “The girl gave the book to the boy” OR “The girl gave the boy the book”. Then, the participant is asked to describe another person and they found that if the confederate said the first sentence, the participant said “The father gave a present to his daughter” and if the confederate said the second sentence, the participant said “The father gave his daughter a present”

Question 46

what is the sapir whorf hypothesis

Answer 46

the language a person uses determines or influences their thinking or worldview

Question 47

what is an example of the sapir whorf hypothesis

Answer 47

Ex. in russian, there’s two words for blue – goluboy for light blue and siniy for dark blue

Question 48

describe the study on the sapir whorf hypothesis

Answer 48

Study- they two english speakers and russian speakers, there was one square on top and two on bottom, asked which bottom one was most like the top one – Results: its harder for russian speakers because they have two words for blue

Question 49

what are the cognitive benefits of bilingualism

Answer 49

they have more executive control (you can switch between modes of representation quicker)

Question 50

how does dementia onset relate to bilingualism

Answer 50

onset of dementia is delayed in individuals who speak more than one language

Question 51

what language is one who is bilingual more likely to think and dream in

Answer 51

their predominant one