Linguistics and Speech Sound Fundamentals: Definitions, Syntax, Semantics, and Articulatory Features

Language is best defined as:

An ever changing set of rules agreed upon by a community of speakers

What does it mean to say that Language is Generative?

Language users create and understand entirely new sentences no one has ever said before

We learn the syntax rules of our First Language because we have grammar classes in school.

False

Which area of language involves sentence meaning?

Semantics

Which area of language involves sentence structure?

Syntax

Which area of language involves knowledge of words?

Vocabulary

Kinesics in pragmatics refers to:

Gestures and body language

Which of the following is an example of a pragmatic artifact?

Wearing a ponytail

A native Spanish speaker who learned English as a teenager drops subjects (e.g. "Go now" for "I go now") due to a Spanish grammar rule. Should an SLP diagnose this as a Language Disorder?

False

An adult native English speaker regularly drops subjects (e.g. "Go now" for "I go now"). Is this a Syntactic error that should be diagnosed as a Language Disorder?

True

Which piece of anatomy controls whether a consonant is nasal or oral?

Velum

Which of the following is an alveolar consonant?

n

Which of the following is a labial consonant?

m

Place of articulation describes:

Where airflow is most constricted

Which of the following is a Manner of Articulation?

Nasal

Vowels are characterized by:

Minimal constriction

Who diagnoses communication disorders?

Speech-Language Pathologists

The vowel in "seat" is made by closing the mouth really tight (for a vowel).

True

Speech sounds are radically different from each other, requiring large movements of the vocal tract to transition from one sound to another.

False

Which speech sound is depicted in the picture (tongue at alveolar ridge, velum lowered for nasal airflow)?

/n/

Which of the following is sound?

Cycles of compression and rarefaction in the air

Amplitude is perceived as:

Loudness

Which of the following is Brownian Movement?

The state of undisturbed air when all of the molecules collide at random.

Amplitude is most typically measured in:

Decibels

Frequency refers to:

How fast molecules vibrate

Frequency is measured in:

Hertz

On a waveform graph, the x-axis represents

Time

A simple harmonic motion produces a sound that is perceived as:

A pure tone

Increasing the mass of an object will generally cause its preferred frequency of vibration to:

Decrease

Humans can hear up to 20,000 dB.

False

Speech is always a complex signal made up of many simple signals.

True

In a spectrogram darker shading indicates:

Greater amplitude

Human hearing typically ranges from approximately:

20-20,000 Hz

Which type of speech sound contains very loud frequencies between 0 and 1000 Hz?

Vowels

Which speech sounds are characterized by silence followed by high-frequency noise (>3000 Hz)?

Oral Stops

Nasal sounds are primarily low frequency energy around 250 Hz.

True

The following spectrogram depicts a vowel. true or false

False

The following spectrogram depicts a vowel. true or false

True

What frequency is the signal below?

22 Hz