Module 36 AP Psych

Language

spoken, written, or signed words, and the ways we combine them to communicate meaning.

Phonemes

the smallest distinctive sound units in a language

Morphemes

the smallest language units that carry meaning; may be a word or a part of a word (such as a prefix)

Grammar

a language's set of rules that enable people to communicate

Steven Pinker

Cognitive scientist who noted that people listen to "squeaks and sounds" to retrieve information derived in them

Noam Chomsky

Linguist that theorized that a built-in predisposition to learn grammar rules helps explain why preschoolers pick up language so readily and use grammar so well.

Are phonemes the same as letters?

No, if so, then "that" would have 4 phonemes to match up with its 4 letters. That is not the case. "That" actually has 3 phonemes: th, a, and t. That is because phonemes refer to sound units.

Universal grammar

innate understanding of grammar

Language acquisition is nature or nurture? Or both?

A. Nature

B. Nurture

C. Mixture of both

C, nature and nurture work together to perfect one's use of language

Receptive Language

the ability to understand what is said to and about us

Productive Language

the ability to produce words

Babbling stage

beginning around 4 months, the stage of speech development in which an infant spontaneously utters various sounds at first unrelated to the household language

One-Word Stage

The stage in speech development, from about age 1 to 2, during which a child speaks mostly in single words.

Two-Word Stage

Beginning about age 2, the stage in speech development during which a child speaks mostly in two-word statements

Telegraphic Speech

Early speech stage in which a child speaks like a telegram - "go car" - using mostly nouns and verbs

Aphasia

Impairment of language, usually caused by left hemisphere damage either to Broca's area (impairing speaking) or to Wernicke's area (impairing understanding).

Broca's area

Helps control language expression-an area of the frontal lobe, usually in the left hemisphere, that directs the muscle movements involved in speech.

Wernicke's area

A brain area involved in language comprehension and expression; usually in the left temporal lobe.

Paul Broca

French physician confirmed the identification of the area of the left hemisphere that controlled speech, later dubbed "broca's area."

Carl Wernicke

German investigator that discovered the area of the brain that controls the understanding of language.

Linguistic Determinism

the strong form of Whorf's hypothesis-that language controls the way we think and interpret the world around us

linguistic influence

the weaker form of "linguistic relativity" - the idea that language affects thought (thus our thinking and world view is "relative to" our cultural language)

Benjamin Lee Whorf

he contended that "language itself shapes a [person's] basic ideas." This idea is basically linguistic determinism.

In the word "prepare," each "r" can be considered a

A. Babble.

B. Morpheme.

C. Semantic.

D. Phoneme.

E. Thought.

D. Phoneme

Eighteen-month-old Becca is in the telegraphic speech phase. Which of the following best represents something she might say?

A. "Mama"

B. "Yogurt please"

c. "Katie fall"

D. "The dog is fuzzy"

E. "I love you mommy"

C. "Katie fall"

The prefix "pre" in "preview" or the suffix "ed" in "adapted" are examples of

A. Phonemes

B. Morphemes

C. Babbling

D. Language development

E. Grammar

B. Morphemes

The idea that language develops because of an inborn tendency to learn the grammar rules of language was proposed by

A. Wernicke

B. Broca

C. Skinner

D. Chomsky

E. Sternberg

D. Chomsky