Deck 8: Language

Question 1

16 A sentence can serve several functions including a request for information, a command, a description, and so forth.The study of these social functions refers to

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

Answer 1

pragmatics

Question 2

Fodor and Bever found that subjects misplace their perception of auditory clicks, hearing them between a noun phrase and a verb phrase.They used this result to argue for the
Psychological reality of

A)transformation rules
B)phrase structure
C)deep structure
D)echoic structure

Answer 2

phrase structure

Question 3

Which of the following supports Chomsky's argument that humans are born with a specia language acquisition device?

A)Piaget's evident that sensorimotor comes before language
B)evidence of a critical period in language learning
C)evidence that other species also possess language systems
D)evidence that a concept learning mechanism can accept language as input

Answer 3

evidence of a critical period in language learning

Question 4

The smallest unit of speech that has meaning is called a

A)morpheme
B)deep structure
C)phoneme
D)surface structure

Question 5

The eye-mind assumption is most directly related to

A)information processing during reading fixations
B)bridging inferences
C)dyslexia
D)idiographic writing

Question 6

The given-new strategy helps readers to

A)understand novel words
B)make bridging inferences
C)deny false inferences
D)ignore prepositions

Question 7

Which of the following is true of speed-reading (relative to slow, natural reading)?

A)It works equally well for every type of text.
B)It is best viewed as trained skimming.
C)It allows immediate comprehension of a full paragraph.
D)It produces superior comprehension as measured by recall tests.

Question 8

The psychologist slept fitfully, dreaming new ideas.This sentence is

A)grammatical but semantically meaningless
B)ungrammatical but pragmatically useful
C)semantically meaningful but pragmatically useless
D)none of the above

Question 9

A rapid eye movement during reading is called a

A)fixation
B)N400
C)saccade
D)P300

Question 10

Reading research shows that top-down processing

A)is inhibited in favor of bottom-up processing
B)is relied on along with bottom-up processing
C)is used instead of bottom-up processing
D)is only used in knowledge-telling situations

Question 11

When the words and phrases of one sentence in a paragraph refer to those of the other sentences in the paragraph, the sentences possess

A)syntactical coherence
B)lexical coherence
C)referential coherence
D)local coherence

Question 12

In Kintsch's model of text comprehension, the gist of a story corresponds to

A)the micropropositions
B)the macropropositions
C)the text base
D)the referential coherence

Question 13

Readers sometimes need to use this when the link between one part of a sentence and another is not clear.

A)knowledge-telling
B)knowledge-transforming
C)translating
D)bridging inference

Question 14

Which of the following represents the main ideas or gist of a text?

A)micropropositions
B)macropropositions
C)given information
D)new information

Question 15

Just and Carpenter have found that the more difficult the section of a text, the longer readers fixate on the words and sentences.This result is consistent with

A)immediacy assumption
B)the given-new strategy
C)eye-mind assumption
D)cognitive economy assumption

Question 16

Speakers often restate an idea they have already mentioned, then introduce a novel idea.This is called

A)a given-new strategy
B)a leading-edge strategy
C)a review-new strategy
D)knowledge telling

Question 17

The property of language in which a single word has multiple meanings is called

A)polysemy
B)polygamy
C)productivity
D)anaphora

Question 18

The units that make up the meaning of a sentence are sometimes called

A)micropropositions
B)graphemes
C)macropropositions
D)phonemes

Question 19

Mary studies well.She gets good grades.The use of the pronoun to establish textual coherence is called pronominal __________.

A)anaphora
B)metaphor
C)consequence
D)semantics

Question 20

According to the Kintsch and Van Dijk model of comprehension, the propositions we remember from a text are

A)primarily due to idiosyncratic preferences
B)not influenced by the structure of the text
C)influenced by how long they are held in working memory
D)influenced by how long they are held in iconic memory

Question 21

Why is the chemical communication exhibited in ants not considered to be language by
Psycholinguists?

A)it lacks productivity
B)only visual/mechanical communication is considered language
C)it is too prone to error
D)it shows syntax and semantics but lacks pragmatics

Question 22

Language is known for certain to have developed from gestures.

Question 23

The field buys a tiny rain.The rain hops.It burns the noisy sky in some throbbing belt.These sentences taken together lack

A)syntactic structure
B)referential coherence
C)micropropositions
D)local cohesion

Question 24

Which of these language centers in the brain is closest to the frontal lobe?

A)Broca's area
B)Wernicke's area
C)Chomsky's area
D)Whorf's area

Question 25

Deaf users of American Sign Language (ASL)show brain activation in the _______hemisphere when observing signs and hearing users of spoken English show activation in the __________hemisphere when reading.

A)right...right
B)right...left
C)left...right
D)left...left

Question 26

The least common syntax in natural languages is

A)SOV
B)SVO
C)VSO
D)OSV

Question 27

Critics of teaching sign language to apes claim the uses of sign language

A)are gestures the apes use in the natural environment
B)are promoted by rewards and cues from humans
C)are more often in error than correct
D)reflect more right brain processes than true left brain language

Question 28

The discovery of Genie and other "wild children" prompted extensive research on language
Acquisition.The findings seemed to conclude that

A)there is not a language acquisition device
B)there is a critical period for learning language
C)these children could not think until they learned to speak
D)abuse causes children to lose their ability to speak

Question 29

Reading speed is normally about 250-300 words per minute.

Question 30

In the end, Genie and other "wild children"

A)learned to speak
B)learned to speak but could not comprehend
C)could comprehend but not speak
D)learned words but not grammar

Question 31

When Paula talks to her co-worker, Doug, at lunch, or her friend Diane, at the gym, she raises topics that are appropriate to the conversation.This illustrates

A)conversational implicatures
B)turn-taking
C)the cooperative principle
D)the coarticulation principle

Question 32

A PET study showed that regions in the __________hemisphere respond to words and ___________ in similar ways.

A)right...non-word letter strings
B)left...letter strings
C)right...pseudowords
D)left...pseudowords

Question 33

Words compose our ________, the dictionary of long-term memory.

A)episodic memory
B)procedural memory
C)mental lexicon
D)syntactic memory

Question 34

A symptom of someone with aphasia is

A)the inability to speak
B)the inability to comprehend
C)lesion or damage to the left hemisphere
D)all of the above

Question 35

Speaking and language comprehension are at least partly controlled by the left hemisphere in right-handed individuals.

Question 36

Taking into account the time needed to fixate on letters, recognize words, and build local and global structures in working memory, the average reading time is about

A)100-150 words per minute
B)250-300 words per minute
C)400-450 words per minute
D)500-550 words per minute

Question 37

All of the following are symptoms of someone who had damage to the Wernike area except

A)the inability to speak
B)the inability to comprehend
C)utter neologisms (novel words)
D)lesion or damage in an area of the left hemisphere

Question 38

When speakers make accurate judgments on how well their listeners are understanding, and adjust their speeches accordingly, they are showing sensitivity to

A)speech acts
B)propositional content
C)thematic structure
D)morphemic structure

Question 39

Which of the following might play a role in the human ability to rapidly learn a native language?

A)A gene called FOXP2
B)an innate Language Acquisition Device (LAD)
C)social learning abilities that are not limited to language
D)all of the above

Question 40

Which of these language centers in the brain is closest to the occipital lobe?

A)Broca's area
B)Wernicke's area
C)Chomsky's area
D)Whorf's area

Question 41

Explain the concept of a universal grammar and discuss two types of evidence of its existence.

Question 42

Describe the evidence both for an against the hypothesis that chimpanzees can learn human language.

Question 43

Language exists only as an external representation.

Question 44

Graphemes are used to visually represent the phonemes of a language

Question 45

According to the eye-mind hypothesis, readers assign an interpretation to each word as soon as it is fixated.