past 2 exams linguistic review

what is the tacit linguistic knowledge that is stored in people’s mind

linguistic competence

which of the following enables human brings to create an infinite number of linguistic expressions

recursion

why is it difficult to obtain decisive evidence in favor of or against innate linguistic knowledge in humans by comparing how LLMs learn language to how human learn language

because the learning environment of humans and LLMs differ not only in the amount of data presented but also in how the data is presented

what is a rule that can be applied to its own output called

recursive rule

what does empiricism predict

different children would do through different stages in the course of language acquisition

which type of rule does this example represent

A) cats greet trusted humans with an eye blink

B) it snows a lot in CT during the winter

descriptive rule

linguistic studies typically help erode common misconceptions about human language. What is an example of a language misconception?

the level of grammatical complexity of a language correlates with the technological development of the community who speaks it

which component is adopted in an empiricist account of language acquisition

general cognitive abilities

which of the following statements is true about the English nominal compound office coffee dripper

the fact that office coffee ripper is a noun can be determined by its distribution

plato argues that human learning consists of remembering things that are already present in our souls from a previous experience. Which category does this idea fall into?

nativism

which claim is a behaviorist explanation of language acquisition

children acquire language through reinforcement and imitation

what is the term for our innate language knowledge

universal grammar

what is likely the cause of specific language impairment (SLI)

a heritable genetic disorder

Willam’s syndrome and specific language impairment (SLI) form an important pair of disorders in the study of the biological basis of language. What do they demonstrate

there is a double dissociation between language and general intelligence

which of the following happens when a large language model (LLMS) are trained on a dataset equivalent to the amount of data required for infant to learn their first language?

** prediction accuracy decreases significantly

why does Chomsky call his linguistic theory “Cartesian Linguistics”

because Chomsky adopts the idea that language learning employs innate mechanisms, a position inspired by the 17th century philosopher Rene Descartes

which of the following views is an empiricist most likely to endorse

all knowledge is derived from sensory experience

why do people provide justifications like “the other way of saying it just does not make sense” “the other way of saying it is just wrong” etc for prescriptive rules

prescriptive rules are based on personal preference

linguists focus on “descriptive rules’ to understand the underlying knowledge of native speakers. Which of the following is an example of a rule that a linguist would investigate?

in English, a determiner like “the’ precedes the noun it modifies

how was the discovery of the languages spoken by the Highlanders of Papua New Guinea significant for linguistics?

they were found to have a level of grammatical complexity that is typical of other human languages

among the following statements, which is NOT an argument for nativism

**** children rely on general cognitive abilities to acquire language

Chomsky’s universal grammar is the theory of innate knowledge of langue specified in human biology. What does this theory imply?

universal grammar is genetically hardwired in humans

which of the following rules best characterizes nominal compounding in English

N > N N

why do we consider the history of the highlanders of Papua New Guinea an “experiment of nature”

the languages spoken by the Highlanders, as well as many aspects of their culture, were developed in isolation from features of Western Culture

which of the following best describes a “grammatical” sentence from a linguistic perspective

a sentence that expresses an idea in a natural, well formed way according to a native speaker

why do we call the 17th century philosopher John Locke an empiricist?

because he argued that the human mind at birth is a blank state (tabula rasa) on which experience writes

how can prescriptive grammar be useful?

provides standardization

what is the linguistic perspective on the claim that certain varieties of English are superior to others?

no variety of English is inherently superior to any other

what characterizes the symptoms of William’s syndrome

general intelligence is substantially impaired, but language is not

why can language be considered universal to all human groups

all human groups have a spoken or signed language

in Vietnamese the word for hospital is the compound nha throng which literally means “place wounded”. What does this suggest about the setting of the compound head parameter in Vietnamese

the head of a compound is the word on the left

which of the following pairs is a minimal pair in English

mat and meet

differ by one sound

when investigating yes/no question formation in English, we were interested specifically in sentences that embed other sentences (e.g. The player who can shoot best will score) Why?

considering structures of this kind allow us to tease apart the predictions of the structure dependent Subject Aux inversion rule from the predictions of non structure dependent move first auxiliary rules

in the sentences below, sentence (ii) “Bill did too” means Bill found a puppy” This is an application of the proform substitution test. Based on this evidence, which group of words forms a constituent

I) John found a puppy and II) Bill did too

found a puppy

which of the following tree structures best represents “untrappable” on the meaning “not being able to be wrapped”

separate un first

then wrap and able

if a child has acquired the rule for forming the regular past tense in English, what past tense form would they produce for rick, a novel verb

ricked

which of the following best describes a phoneme

is the smallest unit that one can change to differentiate between distinct words and a language

Crain and Nakayma (1987) studied the acquisition of yes/ no questions in English. They found that children never produce structures like Is the girl who skating is tall? (formed by moving the axially in the linear order) instead of the grammatical is the girl who is skating tall? Which of the following claims is supported by the finding

****children have an innate learning bias in favor of structure sensitive rules

what is the head of the noun phrase book about linguistics

books

which of these is an example of an NP forming according to the rule NP > D A N

this cute dog

at 6 months of age, children enter the stage of babbling; they produce sequences of simple syllables. Which of the following is true?

these sequence can include sound that are not used in the languages of their caregivers

which of the following is NOT true regarding bound morphemes

a bound morpheme can stand alone as a word

[I] is a front high unrounded vowel, [u] is a back, high rounded vowel. Which articulatory property do they share

the height of the tongue

at around 6-7 years, children have adult like production of both regular and irregular plural and past tense forms. Which learning mechanisms have they relied on

lexical and rule learning hw

which of the following is not true regarding categories

linguists identify the categories of words by their meanings

individual units contribute systemically to the meaning of complex words. What do we call the property of natural language that reflects this?

compositionality

the speech of two year5 old children contain past tense form of frequent irregular and regular verbs (e.g. plays, walked, went, ate) What happened around age 2.5

children undergo a phase of over regularization and produce forms like goed and eated

languages have specific rules that govern how sounds can be combined to form syllables and words (e.g. in English, blick is possible and bnick is not) what are those rules called

phonotactic rules

at what stage of children’s language development do they start producing first words

holophastric stage

how can we reconcile the idea of Universal grammar with the findings that languages differ

universal grammar has to include parameters in addition to princples

what do we call affixes that come before the stem

prefixes

which of the following reflects the reasoning behind a poverty of stimulus argument

the linguistic input children receive in combination with only general learning mechanisms is not sufficient to acquire the rules of a language; therefore they must rely on innate learning biases in addition

why do linguists use the IPA to represent speech sounds

has one to one mapping between symbols and speech sounds

why do we say that children are born universal listeners

can perceive the difference between any two phonemes in any of the world’s languages

how do linguists argue for a particular grouping of words in a sentence

by constituency test

which of the following statements about child acquisition is correct

children lose their universal listener capabilities at around 10 months of age

select the correct reading o the phase structure rule for a basic sentence in (i)

(i) S > NP VP

a sentence may consist of a noun phrase followed by a verb phrase

from roughly two year of age, children are often grouped by linguistics according to their mean length of utterance (MLU) why is this method chosen

from this age on, children proceed through the uniform sequence of stages of language acquisition at a more varied speed

Japanese is a head final language. Which of the following rules describes verb phrases in Japanese

VP > NP V

what does the Wug test suggest about the acquisition of English plurals

rule learning is involved in the acquisition of plural forms