Deck 1: Origins of Human Language

Question 1

The theoretical perspective that humans' ability to learn language is not the result of innate or genetically based predisposition that evolved specifically for language, but an aspect of our cognitive abilities, including general abilities of learning and memory is known as

A) anti-nativist theory.
B) linguistic theory.
C) psychodynamic theory.
D) evolutionary theory.

Answer 1

A

Question 2

Which language researcher attempted to define language with 16 characteristics, or design features, of spoken human language?

A) Chomsky
B) Hockett
C) Pinker
D) Darwin

Answer 2

B

Question 3

Bees introduced into a hive of bee species different from their own will likely "dance" according to

A) the new hive style.
B) their own unique style, unrelated to past experience.
C) the style of their own genetic ancestors.
D) a combination of old and new styles.

Answer 3

C

Question 4

Which of Hockett's design features of human language can also be attributed to honeybee communication?

A) Arbitrariness
B) Duality of patterning
C) Reflexiveness
D) Interchangeability

Question 5

Experiments in which apes are taught a language or symbolic system indicate that apes can

A) learn to use symbols to communicate, but only if they are not arbitrary.
B) learn to use words accurately, but only to refer to objects that are physically present.
C) use combinations of familiar symbols to express new concepts.
D) combine words into sentences as well as a human 3-year-old is able to.

Question 6

Even though vervet monkeys seem to be able to produce specific distress calls from birth without the benefit of experience, they acquire the ability to respond appropriately to those calls only after several months of life, presumably due to experience. This finding suggests that

A) human language and vervet calls arise from different cognitive mechanisms.
B) vervet calls are a direct evolutionary precursor of human language.
C) the ability to produce human language is innate but the ability to understand it is not.
D) human infants need a great deal of exposure to language before they can understand it, but less exposure is needed to produce it.

Question 7

An example of Hockett's productivity characteristic in non-human primate communication would be demonstrated by an ape making the sign for

A) banana in order to ask a researcher for a banana.
B) banana when the researcher points to a banana.
C) sweet sausage when asked to identify a banana before having learned the sign for banana.
D) door when asked to identify a banana.

Question 8

The awareness between two or more individuals that they are paying attention to the same thing is known as

A) homesign.
B) linguistic code.
C) universal grammar.
D) joint attention.

Question 9

Given a choice between two buckets in which only one bucket contains a treat, a chimpanzee will be _______ likely to choose a bucket that a human reached for _______ a bucket that a human pointed to.

A) less; than
B) more; than
C) equally; as
D) as un-; as

Question 10

Hare and Tomasello found that chimpanzees will reach for a bucket containing a treat if a human reaches for the same bucket-but not if the human points to the bucket to signal the presence of a treat in it. This suggests that chimpanzees do not understand the

A) intention of others to act in certain ways.
B) language of others.
C) intention of others to communicate with them.
D) sign language of others.

Question 11

Researchers have found that chimpanzees are not able to understand pointing cues but dogs are able to do so. This suggests that compared to chimpanzees, dogs

A) are more intelligent.
B) are better at picking up social cues.
C) have superior language skills.
D) are more motivated by food.

Question 12

A 30-month-old child, who at 6 months engaged relatively little with her parents in joint-attention activities, is expected to _________ than a 30-month-old who had at 6 months engaged more in joint-attention activities.

A) have a smaller vocabulary
B) demonstrate worse social skills
C) exhibit more imperative pointing
D) exhibit more declarative pointing

Question 13

Research suggests that human children produce more examples of _______ communication than apes, who produce primarily _______ messages.

A) imperative; declarative
B) declarative; imperative
C) altruistic; declarative
D) imperative, altruistic

Question 14

_______ is the set of rules that determines how linguistic elements, such as words, can be combined to convey meaning.

A) Evolutionary adaptation
B) Productivity
C) Recursion
D) Syntax

Question 15

The theory of universal grammar claims that

A) all human languages can be described by essentially the same rules of grammar.
B) all species of primates have the capacity to learn grammar.
C) humans are born with implicit knowledge of the rules of grammar of all human languages.
D) humans are born with a predisposition to learn certain kinds of structures more easily than other kinds of structures.

Question 16

Chomsky suggested that human knowledge must have a(n) _______ component, as evidenced by the slave boy/Pythagorean theorem dialogue demonstration.

A) learned
B) altruistic
C) memorized
D) innate

Question 17

The theory of universal grammar predicts that

A) a new language discovered in a remote region of South America would have structural patterns that children are innately predisposed to learn.
B) learning French will be easier for a child born to French-speaking parents than for a child born to Japanese-speaking parents who was adopted by French-speaking parents as an infant.
C) a child will be unable to learn a language with recursion.
D) all languages will be equally easy to learn at any time in one's life.

Question 18

Keith and Cathy Hayes (1951) were able to teach Viki, a young female chimpanzee, to

A) utter several dozen vocalized human words.
B) utter just four indistinct human words.
C) utter several words in French.
D) communicate using American Sign Language.

Question 19

Cross-fostering experiments suggest that the main reason primates do not produce human-like variety in their vocalizations is because apes

A) lack the motivation to speak.
B) are not raised in the same language-evoking way human infants are.
C) lack the physical apparatus and control over it to produce human-like speech.
D) cannot breathe and swallow simultaneously.

Question 20

A comparison of birdsong with human language suggests that

A) songbirds are pre-programmed to sing specific songs from birth, whereas children have to be exposed to speech sounds in order to be able to produce them.
B) songbirds can only produce memorized sequences of sounds, whereas children can produce novel combinations of words.
C) both human infants and young songbirds must practice their vocal skills in order to master them.
D) both children and songbirds show evidence of Hockett's feature of semanticity in their communication.

Question 21

Some researchers argue that the birds and aquatic mammals that produce complex arrays of linguistic sounds to communicate with their peers are using a(n)

A) affective pathway.
B) cognitive pathway.
C) larynx.
D) universal grammar.

Question 22

The difference between a monkey sounding an alarm call and a bird mimicking sounds from its environment is that the bird is using a(n)

A) in-born behavior.
B) affective pathway.
C) cognitive pathway.
D) social behavior.

Question 23

Which animal is able to gesture in a flexible way to indicate its intention?

A) Dog
B) Cat
C) Bee
D) Chimpanzee

Question 24

An infant born in the United States would demonstrate early attempts at language production through babbling. Her babbling would most likely

A) contain primarily the speech sounds made around her.
B) comprise random sounds, but be organized by a universal grammar.
C) contain some words she hears people speaking around her.
D) be unrelated to her parents' speech.

Question 25

Can a young deaf child, born into a hearing family, communicate with her parents?

A) No, deaf children cannot communicate with anyone until someone teaches them sign language.
B) No, all children know American Sign Language at birth, but their hearing parents will have forgotten their knowledge of sign language from disuse.
C) Yes, deaf children usually invent a gestural language to communicate with their parents.
D) Yes, but only if their parents know sign language.

Question 26

If a child is taught a foreign language during her sensitive period in language development, she will

A) most likely speak the language with her native accent and have difficulty mastering the language's nuances.
B) most likely master and speak the foreign language as well as a native speaker.
C) learn pronunciation easily, but struggle to learn its grammatical rules.
D) have difficulty with pronunciation of the foreign language, but easily learn its grammatical rules.

Question 27

A 2009 study by Feher et al. showed that, over the course of several generations, the songs of birds raised by isolates become remarkably similar to those of normal adult birds. These results support the

A) nativist view of bird song origins.
B) anti-nativist view of bird song origins.
C) cultural transmission view of language change.
D) universal grammar perspective.

Question 28

Which statement conveys the most accurate comparison of spoken English and American Sign Language (ASL)?

A) ASL is a way for individuals in the deaf community to communicate with one another but is not as structured and organized as spoken English.
B) ASL uses grammatical rules and structures that are very similar to those found in English.
C) ASL uses grammatical structures that are systematic, but very different from those found in English.
D) ASL is a system of pantomime invented by the deaf community whereas spoken English is a real language.

Question 29

The system of symbols, agreed upon by a community of language users, that conveys specific meaning is known as

A) a linguistic code.
B) a cognitive pathway.
C) homesign.
D) recursion.

Question 30

_______ is a genetic disorder in which some language functions seem relatively intact, while other complex cognitive abilities are markedly impaired.

A) Working memory deficit
B) Williams syndrome
C) Downs syndrome
D) Specific language impairment

Question 31

Mental age can be defined as a person's

A) measure of ability to carry out complex cognitive tasks.
B) overall level of social functioning as it relates to other individuals in his or her age group.
C) overall level of cognitive functioning as it relates to other individuals in his or her age group.
D) age at which he or she acquires most of the advanced problem-solving skills.

Question 32

Six-year old Olivia has trouble expressing herself verbally and seems to have an abnormally short working memory span. Doctors have not been able to find any specific neurological or physiological problems, but her twin sister, Jane, seems to have similar impairments. If you were her pediatrician, which of the following disorders of speech would you believe was affecting Olivia?

A) Downs syndrome
B) FOXP2 syndrome
C) Specific language impairment
D) Williams syndrome

Question 33

A researcher who believes the domain-specific perspective of specific language impairment (SLI) would argue that SLI occurs due to

A) an interaction of language-related cognitive impairments.
B) a complex interaction of linguistic and non-linguistic cognitive impairments.
C) innate and genetic factors affecting general cognition.
D) an abnormal home environment affecting language acquisition.

Question 34

The evolution of the Al-Sayyid Bedouin Sign Language (ABSL) occurred over generations, guided by

A) a small, isolated, and highly homogenous population.
B) a large geographical and social pool of individuals.
C) an existing spoken language from which the critical components of ABSL were developed.
D) only the deaf members of the community.

Question 35

The cultural transmission view of language change holds that

A) the brains of geographically isolated individuals develop differently than the brains of those individuals that can exchange ideas and learn each others' languages.
B) our brains adapt to the language we invent.
C) languages change over time, responding to pressures to be communicatively useful and easy to learn.
D) human language developed as a by-product of our physiology.

Question 36

Which scenario would most likely result in significant language change?

A) A community of deaf adults, who are native signers of American Sign Language, teaching American Sign Language to hearing children.
B) A community of hearing adults, who are native signers of American Sign Language, teaching American Sign Language to deaf children.
C) A community of native German-speaking adult immigrants to the United States speaking to their children in English from birth.
D) A community of native French speakers teaching English-speaking immigrant children to speak French in the first grade.

Question 37

What empirical evidence suggests that bees have an innate dance "dialect?"

Question 38

Viki, a chimpanzee, can produce only four indistinct words of spoken English, whereas Alex, a parrot, can clearly pronounce more than 100 words. Can we conclude from this that Alex's linguistic capabilities are superior to Viki's? Why or why not?

Question 39

In terms of social cognition and intention, how does human pointing behavior tend to differ from ape pointing behavior?

Question 40

Explain how comparative studies can help us understand various species' cognitive abilities, and give an example of a comparative study.

Question 41

What is duality of patterning, and how is this feature beneficial for a communication system?

Question 42

Do you agree with the nativist view of the evolution of language? Provide evidence to support your argument.

Question 43

Refer to the figure.
Discuss how the differences between chimpanzee and human vocal anatomy affect each species' ability to produce vocal language. What is the evolutionary significance of these differences?

Question 44

Compare the language learning outcomes of: 1) a human infant raised by adoptive parents who speak a language other than that of the infant's birth parents with 2) the sounds produced by rhesus macaque monkeys raised by Japanese macaques, instead of their biological parents.

Question 45

How does the use of gesture by apes in the wild differ from the use of alarm calls by vervet monkeys? Which more closely resembles the linguistic behavior of humans?

Question 46

Refer to the figure.
Figure A demonstrates how a hearing individual might use a gesture, along with speech, to describe rolling downhill. Figure B demonstrates how someone using sign language might gesture to convey the same action. What do the images tell us about how each individual uses gestures to convey information? Why is this an important distinction in linguistics, and how does it allow sign languages to resemble spoken languages in terms of their expressive power?

Question 47

Senghas et al. (2004) noticed that during the formation and evolution of Nicaraguan Sign Language, purely gestural signs tended to develop a more linguistic style as the sign language evolved from earlier to later "generations" of signers. How would a late-generation signer of NSL describe a bird flying up?

Question 48

Explain how Williams Syndrome (WMS) aids us in understanding how human language is organized in the brain.

Question 49

Jasmine is a 9-year-old whose IQ is lower than that of her peers. She also produces incoherent speech and demonstrates grammatical difficulties as well. In addition, she has trouble generating certain facial gestures and humming a jingle. Her younger sister is learning language normally and appears to have no other deficits. Identify the most likely explanation for Jasmine's condition and why you arrived at your answer.

Question 50

Refer to the figure shown here.
Consider the drawings and the words they represent from Theisen et al. (2010). Explain how the participants' synthetic language "evolved" over the course of the experiment and what these changes imply about how other languages have evolved over time.