Deck 10: Language

Question 1

Bird songs and bee dances are not considered to be languages because they ______.

A)do not use words
B)do not have a formal grammar
C)cannot express infinite combinations of ideas
D)do not have a permanent (written)form

Answer 1

cannot express infinite combinations of ideas

Question 2

"George is not tall enough to ride the roller coaster." "George is too short to ride the roller coaster." These sentences are related through ______.

A)ambiguity
B)entailment
C)synonymy
D)anomaly

Answer 2

synonymy

Question 3

Infinite combinations of ideas can be expressed in language.In other words,language is ______.

A)regular
B)interpersonal
C)productive
D)referential

Answer 3

productive

Question 4

Which of the following is NOT a kind of syntactic rule proposed by Chomsky?

A)lexical insertion rule
B)phrase structure rule
C)illegal contraction rule
D)rewrite rule

Question 5

Which of the following is generally agreed upon as necessary criteria/criterion for claiming that a communication system is a language?

A)regularity
B)profitability
C)referentiality
D)interpersonal

Question 6

The smallest unit of language that carries a consistent meaning is called a ______.

A)feature
B)phoneme
C)phonetic
D)morpheme

Question 7

Which of these is an example of self-contradiction?

A)Chocolate cake can drive a car.
B)I'll meet you by the bank.
C)Reindeer can fly.
D)My parrot is not a bird.

Question 8

The branch of linguistics devoted to the study of meaning is called ______.

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

Question 9

Which of the following is an example of a phoneme?

A)These books need to be rewritten.
B)books
C)z
D)re-

Question 10

The underlying knowledge that allows people to produce and comprehend their language is called ______.

A)linguistic performance
B)linguistic competence
C)linguistic production
D)grammatical behavior

Question 11

"Terry is a bachelor" implies that Terry is male,according to the principle of ______.

A)self-contradiction
B)ambiguity
C)anomaly
D)entailment

Question 12

Preposing (moving a certain part of a sentence to the beginning of the sentence)is syntactically "legal" when the moved segment ______.

A)begins with a noun
B)contains a subject and a predicate
C)begins with a verb
D)constitutes a complete constituent of a certain type

Question 13

The sentence "A turkey sandwich can read a book" is an example of ______.

A)a self-contradiction
B)ambiguity
C)an anomaly
D)synonymy

Question 14

Which of the following is an example of an anomaly?

A)"Chocolate frosting can ice skate."
B)"My cat is not an animal."
C)"I found a bat in the attic."
D)"Lydia is my aunt" implies that Lydia is female.

Question 15

Which of the following is an example of a morpheme?

A)This book needs to be rewritten.
B)book
C)tests
D)k

Question 16

Some African languages allow two consonants to appear together at the beginning of a word (as in "Nkomo");English does not allow this to occur unless the first consonant is an "S" (as in "skull").This example illustrates a difference in the ______ of the two languages.

A)phonetics
B)phonology
C)semantics
D)syntax

Question 17

English speakers hear a distinction between "l" and "r" sounds;speakers of some Chinese dialects do not hear this distinction.This example illustrates a difference in the ______ aspects of the two languages.

A)phonetic
B)phonological
C)semantic
D)syntactic

Question 18

A statement like "This apple is not a fruit" is an example of ______.

A)a self-contradiction
B)ambiguity
C)anomaly
D)synonymy

Question 19

According to the study of semantics,understanding the meaning of a sentence requires understanding of the ______.

A)meaning of each word in the sentence
B)syntax of the sentence
C)truth conditions of the sentence
D)all of these

Question 20

The study of the ways in which sounds can be combined in any given language is called ______.

A)phonology
B)morphology
C)syntax
D)grammar

Question 21

"Have the missionaries eaten?" Is this a question spoken by the bishop,or an order given by the cannibal chief? This type of ambiguity is referred to as ______.

A)phonetic
B)syntactic
C)lexical
D)anomalous

Question 22

A fundamental problem of speech perception,according to Miller,is that ______.

A)speech is discrete rather than continuous
B)a single phoneme sounds different depending on its context
C)hearing is a less accurate sense than vision
D)missing phonemes can render words incomprehensible

Question 23

Swinney's research suggests that when we encounter a lexically ambiguous word,we process ______.

A)only the most common meaning
B)the meaning that is primed by the context
C)first the most common meaning,and then (if necessary)the one that fits the context
D)both meanings at first,then suppress the inappropriate meaning

Question 24

According to Miller,a fundamental problem of speech perception is ______.

A)speech is continuous rather than discrete
B)perception of speech is non-categorical
C)we pay attention to certain acoustic properties of speech but ignore others
D)hearing is a less accurate sense than vision

Question 25

Did she say "many" or "men knee"? This type of ambiguity is referred to as ______.

A)phonetic
B)lexical
C)syntactic
D)semantic

Question 26

Speech acts in which the utterance itself is the action-such as "You're fired!"-are considered to be which type of speech act?

A)assertive
B)declaration
C)commissive
D)expressive

Question 27

Studies of speech errors suggest that ______.

A)native speakers of a language rarely make speech errors
B)most speech errors are caused by fatigue
C)word substitutions typically show both meaning and form relations
D)choosing a word's meaning and a word's form appear to be separate processes that operate at different times in speech production

Question 28

A speech act such as "I promise to study my psychology textbook tonight" is called a(n)______.

A)assertive
B)directive
C)commissive
D)expressive

Question 29

The average eye fixation lasts about ______.

A)20 milliseconds
B)100 milliseconds
C)250 milliseconds
D)1 second

Question 30

Which of the following is an example of a directive speech act?

A)Open the door.
B)I thank you for helping me.
C)Harry is Catholic.
D)I now pronounce you man and wife.

Question 31

Studies of context and speech perception have shown all of the following phenomena EXCEPT ______.

A)subjects use context to mentally restore missing phonemes
B)subjects use context to understand mispronounced words
C)subjects use visual context to discriminate similar phonemes such as "ba" and "da" when the physical sound is ambiguous
D)subjects notice a discrepancy when they hear the sound "ba" pronounced but the visual cue is consistent with a different phoneme ("da")

Question 32

We notice ambiguities in sentences ______.

A)all the time
B)in "garden path" sentences
C)when they are humorous
D)when they make no sense at all

Question 33

Which of the following is an example of an assertive speech act?

A)Close the window.
B)I apologize for saying that.
C)I'm a Democrat.
D)You're fired.

Question 34

Which of the following does NOT make a passage of text easier to comprehend,according to research?

A)avoidance of syntactically anomalous words
B)less propositional complexity
C)a match between antecedent information and the "given" information
D)providing a relevant context after the passage has been read

Question 35

Studies of sentence comprehension have shown all of the following EXCEPT ______.

A)exact wording of a clause is preserved in memory while that clause is actively being processed
B)after a sentence has been processed,exact wording is discarded and only the general meaning is preserved in memory
C)we typically do not consciously notice ambiguities in sentences
D)we do not process exact wording in memory;we only process meaning

Question 36

Which of these speech errors is LEAST likely to occur in actual conversation?

A)saying "finger" instead of "toe"
B)saying "lobster" instead of "oyster"
C)saying "coat" instead of "goat"
D)saying "aunt" instead of "uncle"

Question 37

You are reading the sentence "Flywheels are one of the oldest mechanical devices known to man." On which of the following words are you likely to spend the LEAST time fixating?

A)flywheels
B)oldest
C)devices
D)to

Question 38

Warren and Warren showed that when presented with a sentence where a sound was replaced by a cough (represented by * here),such as "It was found that the *eel was on the axle," people ______.

A)could not interpret the sentence
B)said that they understood the word to be "wheel," but they were aware that they did not actually hear the "w" sound
C)said that they heard the entire word "wheel" without being aware of anything odd in the sentence
D)erroneously heard the word "meal" at first,but then realized by the end of the sentence that the word must be "wheel"

Question 39

"I saw a bat in the corner." Does bat refer to a baseball bat,or a flying mammal? This confusion illustrates a problem of ______.

A)ambiguity
B)anomaly
C)synonymy
D)self-contradiction

Question 40

"I'm going to meet him at the bank." At the First National Bank,or at the river bank? This type of ambiguity is referred to as ______.

A)phonetic
B)grammatical
C)lexical
D)syntactic

Question 41

Pragmatic rules of conversation lead us to expect our conversational partners to conform to all of the following EXCEPT ______.

A)truthfulness
B)relevance
C)grammatical correctness
D)brevity

Question 42

Under Whorf's linguistic relativity hypothesis,you would expect language without certain color names would ______.

A)have difficulty perceiving those colors
B)do well at identifying all colors
C)do well at identifying those colors
D)have difficulty perceiving all colors

Question 43

Damage to Broca's area often leads to ______.

A)expressive aphasia
B)receptive aphasia
C)inability to comprehend written language
D)both expressive aphasia and inability to comprehend written language

Question 44

Kintsch and Keenan found that we spend more time reading sentences that have ______.

A)more words
B)more function words
C)more content words
D)more propositions

Question 45

"What's for dinner?" "Food." The second speaker is breaking Grice's maxim of ______.

A)quantity
B)quality
C)relation
D)manner

Question 46

From the standpoint of memory and attention,what is a possible concern with acquiring multiple languages instead of a single language?

A)Languages are a protected cognitive process and can only be acquired one at a time.
B)Attentional and processing capacities are limited and may affect performance when processing multiple languages.
C)We easily forget language stimuli making it especially difficult to acquire more than one language except over a long period of time.
D)Language requires even more cognitive resources to process than other stimuli so acquiring two languages at once will delay other cognitive processes.

Question 47

Fodor's modularity hypothesis proposes that ______.

A)language processing actually encompasses several subskills (modules)
B)in understanding language,we separate sentences and phrases into individual units known as modules
C)certain language processes operate independently of other cognitive processes such as memory and attention
D)thought processes are dependent upon the language we use to think

Question 48

Language is governed by a set of rules-many of which are even shared across languages-that we use to limit the ways in which all of the units of language may be combined.This demonstrates that language is ______.

A)regular
B)interpersonal
C)productive
D)referential

Question 49

Whorf's linguistic relativity hypothesis ______.

A)asserts that thought is dependent upon language
B)is supported by studies of color perception
C)asserts that thought is dependent upon language,and is not supported by studies of color perception
D)asserts that thought is dependent upon language,and is supported by studies of color perception

Question 50

Which of the following is NOT a Gricean maxim covering the ways in which we expect conversation partners to speak and provide information?

A)quantity
B)quality
C)meaning
D)relation

Question 51

Of the following pairs of phonemes,which would be least likely to begin a word in English?

A)"st"
B)"tr"
C)"mp"
D)"ba"

Question 52

Which of the following is NOT true of story grammars?

A)They have variables that are filled in differently for different stories.
B)They help identify units of a story.
C)They specify how one unit of a story relates to other units.
D)We typically have better recall of stories that do not conform to expected story grammars,because they warrant more attention.

Question 53

"Have you seen my cell phone?" "I watched a great movie tonight." The second speaker is violating Grice's maxim of ______.

A)quantity
B)quality
C)relation
D)manner

Question 54

Syntax refers to rules that we have which specify the ways in which ______ are structured.

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

Question 55

According to research,which of the following sets of sentences would take the longest amount of time to read and comprehend?

A)We took the dog to the vet.The dog was nervous.
B)Sara drove the car to the market.The car ran out of gas.
C)She wrapped the Christmas presents.The sweater needed a larger box.
D)We got some beer out of the car.The beer was warm.

Question 56

A headline like "Juvenile court to try shooting defendant" is an example of what type of ambiguity?

A)lexical
B)syntactic
C)phonemic
D)morphemic

Question 57

In Bransford and Johnson's experiment,people could recall an average of 8.0 out of 14 possible ideas when given a proper context before the passage.However,when the context was provided after the passage,people could recall an average of ______ out of 14 ideas.

A)3.6
B)10.3
C)8.1
D)6.1

Question 58

Across the globe,approximately ______ percent of people speak more than one language.

A)20
B)50
C)80
D)100

Question 59

How many morphemes are there in the word "untied"?

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

Question 60

Peal and Lambert's (1962)study of children in Montreal showed that after controlling for other lifestyle factors,children who were ______ outperformed children who were ______ on intellectual tests.

A)bilingual;monolingual
B)bilingual;trilingual
C)monolingual;bilingual
D)monolingual;trilingual

Question 61

According to Fodor,in order for a process to be considered modular it must be ______.

A)dependent
B)domain-specific
C)conscious and controlled
D)integrated into other cognitive systems

Question 62

A patient is able to fluently produce language.However,that language is incomprehensible to listeners.The patient is most likely suffering from ______.

A)Broca's aphasia
B)expressive aphasia
C)prosopagnosia
D)Wernicke's aphasia

Question 63

Bee dances allow bees to communicate about the direction of pollen sources in the environment.Although this does not rise to the level of language,which of the following properties of language does it contain?

A)symbols
B)arbitrariness
C)regularity
D)discreteness

Question 64

A sentence containing ______ propositional complexity relays a(n)______ number of ideas.

A)greater;greater
B)greater;fewer
C)less;greater
D)less;infinite

Question 65

A patient is able to understand his or her native language but is suddenly unable to produce language.This patient is most likely suffering from ______.

A)Broca's aphasia
B)prosopagnosia
C)Wernicke's aphasia
D)Stroop aphasia

Question 66

What is one advantage that monolingual speakers appear to have over bilingual speakers?

A)Monolinguals are more easily able to interact with social peers than bilinguals.
B)Monolinguals excel in math ability compared to bilingual speakers.
C)Monolinguals are able to understand a larger number of words in their language than bilinguals
D)Monolinguals tend to have higher job performance ratings than bilinguals in adulthood.

Question 67

Which of the following evidence contradicts Whorf's linguistic relativity hypothesis?

A)Individuals without color terms in their language could still discriminate between focal colors
B)Chinese participants are able to reason counterfactually even though the language does not mark clauses as inherently false.
C)Although all language do not contain multiple color terms,when they do,they are added in a very formulaic manner suggesting universal color concepts.
D)all of these

Question 68

Sign languages have which of the following properties of spoken language?

A)regularity
B)symbols
C)arbitrariness
D)all of these

Question 69

Untrained speakers of a language lack ______,while trained speakers committing many speech errors lack ______.

A)linguistic competence;linguistic performance
B)linguistic competence;linguistic relativity
C)linguistic performance;linguistic competence
D)linguistic performance;linguistic relativity

Question 70

When asked to produce as many words as possible in a short period of time ______ outperform ______.

A)bilinguals;trilinguals
B)bilinguals;monolinguals
C)trilinguals;monolinguals
D)monolinguals;bilinguals

Question 71

Which of the following is NOT a form of ambiguity that you might encounter in everyday language?

A)phonetic
B)aphasic
C)lexical
D)syntactic

Question 72

You are less likely to have language lateralized to the left hemisphere of the brain if you are ______.

A)a split-brained patient
B)right-handed
C)left-handed
D)a male

Question 73

Due to lateralization of the brain,you are most likely to find that someone with Broca's aphasia has had some sort of damage to the ______.

A)right hemisphere
B)left hemisphere
C)occipital lobe
D)corpus colosseum

Question 74

A speaker's ______ can be measured by the ability of a listener to recognize the speaker's intended speech and meaning.

A)linguistic relativity
B)linguistic competence
C)linguistic recognition
D)linguistic performance

Question 75

The study of speech sounds is called ______ while the study of how those speech sounds are put together is called ______.

A)phonology;phonetics
B)phonetics;phonology
C)phrenology;phonology
D)phrenology;phonetics

Question 76

Speech errors are a lapse in ______.

A)linguistic relativity
B)linguistic competence
C)linguistic performance
D)linguistic recognition

Question 77

A type of language disorder in which the pathway between thought and speech is disrupted in some way is referred to as a(n)______.

A)agnosia
B)atrasia
C)aphasia
D)amnesia

Question 78

Which of the following most accurately describes the logic of speech error studies like those examining unintended word substitutions?

A)Errors require pieces of information to be active and thus show which processes occur simultaneously.
B)Speech errors show cognitive deficits in speakers because they are so rare.
C)Only complicated words exhibit speech errors so they reveal the most difficult to produce language.
D)Speech errors only occur due to a lack of attention so observing them can indicate cognitive stress.

Question 79

Of the following,which is NOT an overarching component to the structure of language?

A)phonology
B)imagery
C)syntax
D)semantics

Question 80

Experiments like those conducted by Warren and Warren (1970),in which words are distorted but are still recognizable based on other words in the sentence demonstrates ______.

A)although speakers may make mistakes,listeners have perfect accuracy
B)words will always convey their intended meaning
C)the importance of context on speech perception
D)the arbitrariness of language