Final Exam (Quiz 11)

If someone comes across an unfamiliar word when reading a new book and then looks it up in the dictionary, which is increased?

lexicon

Language consists of smaller components, like words, that can be combined to form larger ones, like phrases, to create sentences, which themselves can be components of a larger story. This demonstrates which property of language?

hierarchical

Syntax is the

rules for combining words into sentences

Someone interested in learning about Broca’s area would be MOST concerned with which element of psycholinguistics?

speech production

B.F. Skinner, the modern champion of behaviorism, proposed that language is learned through

reinforcement

In the lexical decision task, participants are asked to

decide whether a string of letters is a word or a nonword

From the perspective of a listener, as a person speaks, each sentence often is characterized by which until the sentence is completed?

ambiguity

Noam Chomsky proposed that

Humans are genetically programmed to acquire and use language

When describing language as universal, what is captured?

Language exists in every culture

Which is an example of lexical priming

The word “chair” followed by “committee”

A statement such as this one from Yoda, “Afraid you will be,” violates which property of the English language?

Language has a structure that governed by rules

If human speech is represented as a string of taffy on a candy-making assembly line, then what function does speech segmentation serve at the candy factory?

It cuts the taffy into pieces

The idea that the rules governing the grouping of words in a sentence is the primary determinant of the way a sentence is parsed is part of which approach to parsing?

garden path

Which refers to the idea that words often have more than one meaning?

Lexical ambiguity

How should someone respond to an unfamiliar word when reading compared to a familiar word?

They should take longer to process the unfamiliar word

Lexical ambiguity studies show that people access ambiguous words based on

The meaning dominance of each definition of the word