Deck 9: Language

Question 1

Which of the following is a way that humans use morphemes?

A) to change to the past tense
B) to switch to a different language
C) to change storage from short-term to long-term memory
D) to emphasize the importance of something

Answer 1

to change to the past tense

Question 2

What are the smallest representations that convey meaning and grammatical properties?

A) phonemes
B) morphemes
C) orthographs
D) words

Answer 2

morphemes

Question 3

The subfield of linguistics that examines the use of language within particular contexts is called ______.

A) semantics
B) syntax
C) orthography
D) pragmatics

Answer 3

pragmatics

Question 4

Meaning is to ______ as grammar is to ______.

A) semantics; pragmatics
B) phonology; syntax
C) syntax; semantics
D) semantics; syntax

Question 5

Sierra's psychology professor asks her to demonstrate categorical perception for the class. This would involve listening to ______.

A) random sounds and perceiving them along a continuum
B) random sounds and recognizing them as separate categories
C) spoken words and recognizing them as separate categories
D) spoken words and perceiving them along a continuum

Question 6

You hear your classmate say, "I'm just going to hang around until class starts." Which aspect of language structure helps you understand that your classmate means "waiting" and not actually hanging from a doorway?

A) pragmatics
B) syntax
C) morphology
D) semantics

Question 7

How many phonemes are in the word "hill"?

A) one
B) two
C) three
D) four

Question 8

You are reading a story, and you notice the sentence, "The fly birds home." What type of problem does this sentence have?

A) orthographic
B) morpheme-related
C) phoneme-related
D) syntax-related

Question 9

Jonathan attends a psychology lecture. He spends 98% of class time listening to his professor and classmates and 2% of class time asking questions. Jonathan's primary role in this situation is ______.

A) language comprehender
B) language reproducer
C) semantic structurer
D) lateral thinker

Question 10

How many morphemes are in the word "pans"?

A) one
B) two
C) three
D) four

Question 11

Morphemes that can stand alone are ______, whereas ______ morphemes must be attached to other morphemes.

A) singular; plural
B) free; bound
C) plural; singular
D) free; plural

Question 12

According to psycholinguistics, was Shakespeare correct when he wrote "a rose by any other name would smell as sweet"?

A) Most psycholinguistic theories disagree with Shakespeare on this point.
B) Most psycholinguistic theories agree with Shakespeare on this point.
C) It depends on if the speaker or reader is multilingual and has multiple conceptions of what a rose is.
D) It depends on whether the term "rose" is being used as a noun or a verb.

Question 13

Why is it important that language elements are related to each other hierarchically?

A) Having a leveled structure makes it easier to encode and comprehend a variety of phonemes.
B) A strictly hierarchical structure helps us to differentiate between spoken and written messages.
C) A leveled structure allows us to invent new phrases, sentences, and paragraphs that others can understand and respond to.
D) Hierarchical structure allows infants to acquire language systematically--first nouns, then verbs, then modifiers, and so on.

Question 14

According to most experts in the field, what is the primary purpose of language?

A) control
B) communication
C) identification
D) isolation

Question 15

Which of these is a type of linguistic domain?

A) psycholinguistics
B) production
C) pragmatics
D) lexical recognition

Question 16

Problems with language comprehension are to ______ aphasia as problems with language production are to ______ aphasia.

A) Broca's; Wernicke's
B) Wernicke's; Broca's
C) Chomsky's; Skinner's
D) Skinner's; Chomsky's

Question 17

The sentence "The man gave a cloud to his friend" has questionable ______.

A) syntax
B) morphemes
C) semantics
D) orthography

Question 18

Choose the correct hierarchy of language processing.

A) sounds or letters > words > phrases > sentences
B) words > sounds or letters > phrases > sentences
C) sentences > phrases > sounds or letters > words
D) phrases > sentences > words > sounds or letters

Question 19

Broca's aphasia is associated with damage to the left ______, whereas Wernicke's aphasia is associated with damage to the ______.

A) superior frontal cortex; posterior part of the temporal lobe
B) posterior part of the temporal lobe; inferior frontal cortex
C) inferior frontal cortex; posterior part of the temporal lobe
D) posterior part of the temporal lobe; superior frontal cortex

Question 20

When you are having a conversation with someone, you often do not stop between words to emphasize that you are saying distinct words. This is known as ______.

A) specialization
B) coarticulation
C) functionalism
D) lateralization

Question 21

With which of these statements would most psychology researchers agree?

A) Other animals communicate, but humans are the only animals that truly understand and use language.
B) Other animals understand and use language, but humans are the only animals that truly communicate.
C) Humans and other primates can understand and use full-fledged language, but other species cannot.
D) We now understand that many types of animals use language, including bees, chimpanzees, songbirds, African grey parrots, and others.

Question 22

You are talking to your mother, telling her that you have been working hard and that you need to e-mail a completed assignment to your professor. You accidentally say, "I have to e-mail my professor to my assignment." This is an error of ______.

A) anticipation
B) exchange
C) shift
D) perseveration

Question 23

Your friend is telling you a story about Tom. She says, "Tom proposed to his girlfriend last night. She said yes!" You assume that "she" refers to Tom's girlfriend because of ______ inference.

A) semantic
B) anaphoric
C) syntactic
D) morphemic

Question 24

In language development, language ______ typically lags behind language ______.

A) comprehension; production
B) production; comprehension
C) recognition; acquisition
D) acquisition; production

Question 25

While sitting in class listening to your professor's lecture, a student sneezes. Miraculously, you still understand the point the professor was attempting to make. This illustrates ______.

A) the phoneme restoration effect
B) coarticulation application
C) speech invariance
D) the morphological inviolability effect

Question 26

Your textbook states that Sarah the chimpanzee "had a 'reading' and 'writing' vocabulary of nearly 130 words." Why are the words "reading" and "writing" in quotation marks?

A) Although Sarah could read well, her written messages tended to be disjointed.
B) Sarah could follow and create simple written instructions, but it is unlikely that she could understand written messages in the way that humans do.
C) Sarah pretended to read and write to please the humans around her, but she had no understanding of words or sentences.
D) To gain attention and funding, Sarah's trainers taught her to imitate reading and writing even though she had no understanding of the messages.

Question 27

In trying to say the tongue twister "She sells sea shells by the seashore", you accidentally say, "She shells she shells by the seashore." This is an error of ______.

A) addition
B) anticipation
C) shift
D) deletion

Question 28

You are watching the news, and you recognize a famous politician from several other newscasts. You insist that you know her name, but you just cannot remember it. This is known as the ______ state.

A) slip-of-the-tongue
B) Freudian-slip
C) tip-of-the-tongue
D) access inaccessible

Question 29

DeCasper et al. (1994) found that fetuses could distinguish between old and new stories in the womb. The researchers measured this through ______.

A) amniotic fluid
B) heart rate
C) blood work
D) neurotransmitter levels

Question 30

What do dogs' communication methods and songbirds' communication methods have in common?

A) Both can make sounds that indicate danger.
B) In both cases, the males make sounds that attract females.
C) Dogs and songbirds both communicate in structurally complex ways.
D) Neither can use sounds to indicate different behaviors.

Question 31

Which of these feats was Alex the African grey parrot capable of?

A) He could map words onto referent objects.
B) Alex had a vocabulary of nearly 1,000 words.
C) He could distinguish between objects of different colors.
D) Alex could refer to future events rather than always speaking in the present tense.

Question 32

What was especially unusual about Loulis the chimpanzee's communication abilities?

A) Loulis used an artificial language based on plastic symbols.
B) He was the first chimp who could follow simple written instructions.
C) Loulis was the first chimpanzee to understand and use sign language.
D) He learned sign language from other chimpanzees.

Question 33

According to Hockett, what do bee dances and human speech have in common?

A) Neither features a direct connection between sound and meaning.
B) Both produce signals that soon vanish.
C) Both can use one-of-a-kind combinations.
D) Neither can communicate about things that are in the past or future.

Question 34

Chomsky contended that there is a difference between ______ structure, which comes from phrase structure rules, and ______ structure, the linear order that we produce

A) deep; surface
B) surface; deep
C) lexical; deep
D) surface; phoneme

Question 35

An issue in language comprehension due to variation in how phonemes are produced is known as ______.

A) functionalism
B) coarticulation
C) specialization
D) invariance problem

Question 36

A dictionary is arranged in alphabetical order. It seems as though our mental lexicon is organized primarily according to ______.

A) when we learned each word
B) alphabetical order
C) frequency of use
D) difficulty of comprehension

Question 37

According to the ______ approach, we construct one syntactic structure based on a set of parsing principles that focus on syntactic information alone.

A) syntax-second
B) syntax-first
C) semantic-first
D) semantic-second

Question 38

Which animal demonstrates a "language" that may be closest to that of humans?

A) domesticated dogs
B) domesticated cats
C) songbirds
D) mice

Question 39

According to Garrod and Pickering (2004), the mechanism through which alignment of the phonological, syntactic, semantic, and situational models occurs is ______.

A) perseveration
B) anticipation
C) coarticulation
D) priming

Question 40

According to Garrett et al. (1975, 1988, 1989), language production proceeds through a series of processes: ______, ______, and ______.

A) formulation; syntax; articulation
B) articulation; conceptualization; functionalization
C) conceptualization; formulation; articulation
D) conceptualization; formulation; speech segmentation

Question 41

Your professor has asked you to give a three-minute talk to a group of first-year psychology students. Your topic is "The Organization of the Mental Lexicon." Explain what you would include in your talk and what practical suggestions you would give students to make the most of their mental lexicons.

Question 42

Scientists' views of whether human language acquisition comes from nature or nurture have changed over time. Explain how thinking on this issue has developed. Cite the theories of Skinner, Chomsky, and the interactionists in your answer.

Question 43

People who cannot comprehend language as a result of a brain injury are likely to have damage to the left inferior frontal lobe.

Question 44

All phonemes are letters of the alphabet.

Question 45

The Swedish, English, Chinese, and Zulu languages all use the same phonemes.

Question 46

Bound morphemes must be attached to other morphemes.

Question 47

Wernicke's aphasia is diagnosed when patients can produce language but have great difficulty understanding language that is directed at them.

Question 48

Syntax is the level of representation at which there are rules that specify the ordering of words.

Question 49

Morphemes are the smallest representations that convey meaning and grammatical properties.

Question 50

Describe researchers' attempts to teach human language to African grey parrots, dogs, and chimpanzees. Explain in what ways those animals' communication differs from human language. If you could study animal communication in any type of animal, which would you choose? Explain how your answer relates to what you have learned in this chapter.

Question 51

We are able to produce and understand a potentially infinite number of sentences.

Question 52

The most famous and intensive attempts to teach language to animals have involved African grey parrots.

Question 53

The subfield of linguistics that examines the use of language within particular contexts is called pragmatics.

Question 54

Compare and contrast Broca's aphasia and Wernicke's aphasia. Specifically, indicate the brain areas involved in each and explain how these conditions affect language abilities.

Question 55

You have been invited to be a research assistant for a study that will attempt to improve infants' language acquisition. Based on what you have read in this chapter, explain what behaviors you would want parents and infants to engage in and why those behaviors would speed language acquisition.