SLHS 227 Final Exam

Chapter 7 Language in Society

• Dialect: forms of language that differ systematic ways

  • When they become mutually unintelligible, they are separate languages

  • All follow a set of rules

  • American dialect came from British and Irish as well as Native American languages 

• Dialect map: plot dialect differences geographically

• Dialect areas: concentrations of linguistic differences; lines drawn called isoglosses

• Accents: regionally phonological/phonetic differences

  • Only pronunciation differences

• Dialect leveling: movement towards greater distinctions 

• Lexical differences: lift vs elevator

• Phonological differences: 

  • American: stress in first syllable

  • British: stress on second syllable

• Morphological/Syntax differences: plural “you”

  • South: y’all

  • Pittsburgh: yinz

• Social dialects: stem from social divisions 

  • Ex: different race, religion, socioeconomic status, etc

• Standard american english: dominant dialect in english

  • Often said to be the dialect of wealthy english speakers

• African american vernacular english

  • Social dialect

  • R deletion:

    • Ex: poor → poe

  • Consonant cluster reduction:

    • Ex: past & passed → pass

  • Neutralization of vowels before nasals:

    • Ex: bin and Ben sound the same

  • Loss of interdental fricatives

    • Ex: brother → brover

  • Allows multiple negatives:

    • Ex: he don’t know nothing

  • Deletion of be/is

    • Ex: he’s nice → he nice

  • “There” replacement

    • Ex: there's no one → ain’t no one 

  • “Habitual be”

    • Ex: He be working late → means he regularly works late

• Genderlects

  • Women use tag questions and politeness words more 

    • Ex: might, maybe, don’t you think, please, thank you, so, very

  • Japanese: use female and male words 

• Slang: new word that isn’t precisely defined 

• Jargon: specialized term used in various occupations 

  • Ex: phoneme, lexicon, etc

• Taboo: words retaining to sex, etc

• Euphemisms: word/phrase to replace taboo words

  • Ex: letting them go, passed away, adult video, etc

• Banned Languages: 

  • Native American languages banned in US

  • Children sent to Navajo Immersion Schools 

  • Impact on the language: few parents taught it to their children; became less popular 

  • Used during WWII as “code talkers” - impossible for enemy to break even if knew the Navajo language 

Chapter 10. Language Processing and the Human Brain

• Neurolinguistics: biological/neural foundation of language 

• Grey matter: neurons; outside

• White matter: axons; inside

• Frontal lobe: most language 

• Parietal lobe: sensory input 

• Temporal lobe: auditory input 

• Occipital Lobe: visional input 

• Corpus Callosum: communication between hemispheres 

• Broca’s area: frontal lobe 

• Wernicke’s area: temporal lobe 

• Contralateral Processing: left side of brain controls right side of body

• Localization theory: different human abilities traceable to certain areas of the brain

• Aphasia: result of brain damage to LH

  • Broca’s aphasia: aware of deficit; nonfluent; causes labored speech and word finding difficulty

  • Wernicke’s aphasia: unaware of deficit; fluent; causes substitutions and nonsense words 

• Anomia: word finding difficult trouble naming things

• Dyslexia: struggle to read; same telegraphic style speech

• Dysgraphia: struggle writing; mispronounced words also misspelled 

• Errors in signing: movement errors, hand position errors

• Treatment:

  • Melodic intonation therapy: hum/sing instead of speaking

  • Dichotic listening: different auditory signals are presented simultaneously thru earphones 

    • Right ear advantage: info goes directly to LH (language)

• Split brains: no communication between sides (cut corpus callosum) 

  • Used to treat severe epilepsy 

  • Touch: object on left hand recognized but not named 

  • Written: presented to left visual field but can’t be read

• Left hemi: language, rhythmic perception, temporal-order judgement, mathematical thinking

• Right hemisphere: pattern.matching tasks, recognizing faces, spatial organization 

• Hemiplegic children: children with one hemisphere removed

  • If early in childhood RH can develop language function 

    • Speech comprehension develops before speech production 

  • Surgery is risky but often last resort

  • 80% of children see seizure reduction

• Equipotentiality hypothesis: both hemispheres are capable of acquiring language

• Modularity hypothesis: brain is made of specialized parts that handle specific tasks