Question 1
Which of the following is/are generally agreed upon as necessary criteria/criterion for claiming that a
communication system is a language?
A. regularity
B. productivity
C. referentiality
D. interpersonal
E. both regularity and productivity
Question 2
The study of the ways in which sounds can be combined in any given language is called:
A. phonology
B. morphology
C. syntax
D. grammar
E. pragmatics
Question 3
The branch of linguistics devoted to the study of meaning:
A. phonetics
B. semantics
C. morphology
D. pragmatics
E. syntax
Question 4
Which of the following is NOT a kind of syntactic rule proposed by Chomsky?
A. lexical insertion rule
B. phrase structure rule
C. illegal contraction rule
D. rewrite rule
E. transformational rule
Question 5
According to the study of semantics, understanding the meaning of a sentence requires which of the
following conditions?
A. understanding of the meaning of each word in the sentence
B. understanding of the syntax of the sentence
C. understanding of the truth conditions of the sentence
D. understanding of the syntax and the truth conditions of the sentence
E. understanding of the meaning of the words, the syntax of the sentence, and the truth
conditions of the sentence
Question 6
George is not tall enough to ride the roller coaster. George is too short to ride the roller coaster. These
sentences are related through:
A. ambiguity
B. entailment
C. synonymy
D. anomaly
E. self-contradictio
Question 7
According to Miller, a fundamental problem of speech perception is:
A. speech is continuous rather than discrete
B. perception of speech is noncategorical
C. we pay attention to certain acoustic properties of speech but ignore others
D. hearing is a less accurate sense than vision
E. missing phonemes can render words incomprehensible
Question 8
Warren and Warren showed that when presented with a sentence where a sound was replaced by a
cough (represented by * here), such as It was found that the *eel was on the axle,
A. people could not interpret the sentence
B. people said that they understood the word to be wheel, but they were aware that they did not actually hear the w sound
C. people said that they heard the entire word wheel without being aware of anything odd in the sentence
D. people erroneously heard the word meal at first, but then realized by the end of the sentence that the word must be wheel.
E. people erroneously heard the word heel and were confused when they heard the end of the sentence.
Question 9
Studies of context and speech perception have shown all of the following phenomena EXCEPT:
A. Subjects use context to mentally restore missing phonemes
B. Subjects use context to understand mispronounced words
C. Subjects use visual context to discriminate similar phonemes such as ba and da when the physical sound is ambiguous
D. Subjects notice a discrepancy when they hear the sound ba pronounced but the visual cue is
consistent with a different phoneme (da)
E. Listeners are often unaware of their use of context in perceiving speech
Question 10
Studies of speech errors suggest that:
A. native speakers of a language rarely make speech errors
B. most speech errors are caused by fatigue
C. word substitutions typically show both meaning and form relations
D. choosing a words meaning and a words form appear to be separate processes that operate at different
times in speech production
E. most speech errors show both meaning and form relations, and are caused by fatigue
Question 11
Studies of sentence comprehension have shown all of the following EXCEPT:
A. Exact wording of a clause is preserved in memory while that clause is actively being processed
B. After a sentence has been processed, exact wording is discarded and only the general meaning is preserved in
memory
C. We typically do not consciously notice ambiguities in sentences
D. We do not process exact wording in memory; we only process meaning
E. Both meanings of an ambiguous word can prime performance in a lexical decision task, even when the ambiguous
word is presented in a context that makes its meaning clear
11.
Im going to meet him at the bank. At the First National Bank, or at the river bank? This type of ambiguity is referred to as:
A. phonetic
B. grammatical
C. lexical
D. syntactic
E. anomalous
Question 13
Swinneys research suggests that when we encounter a lexically ambiguous word,
A. we process only the most common meaning
B. we process the meaning that is primed by the context
C. we first process the most common meaning, and then (if necessary) the one that fits the context
D. we process both meanings
E. we process both meanings at first, then suppress the inappropriate meaning
Question 14
Which of the following does NOT make a passage of text easier to comprehend, according to
research?
A. avoidance of syntactically anomalous words
B. less propositional complexity
C. a match between antecedent information and the given information
D. providing a relevant context after the passage has been read
E. all of these methods will aid a reader in comprehending a text passage
Question 15
The average eye fixation lasts about:
A. 20 milliseconds
B. 100 milliseconds
C. 250 milliseconds
D. 1 second
E. 2 seconds
Question 16
Kintsch and Keenan found that we spend more time reading sentences that have:
A. more words
B. more function words
C. more content words
D. more propositions
Question 17
Which of the following is NOT true of story grammars?
A. They have variables that are filled in differently for different stories
B. They help identify units of a story
C. They specify how one unit of a story relates to other units
D. We typically have better recall of stories that do not conform to expected story grammars, because they warrant more attention
E. They provide us with a framework with which we can predict certain sequences and elements
Question 18
Fodors modularity hypothesis proposes that:
A. language processing actually encompasses several subskills (modules)
B. in understanding language, we separate sentences and phrases into individual units known as modules
C. language is dependent upon other thought processes such as expectation
D. thought processes are dependent upon the language we use to think
E. certain language processes operate independently of other cognitive processes such as memory and attention
Question 19
Whorfs linguistic relativity hypothesis:
A. asserts that thought is dependent upon language
B. is supported by studies of color perception
C. is not supported by studies of color perception
D. asserts that thought is dependent upon language, and is supported by studies of color perception
E. asserts that thought is dependent upon language, and is not supported by studies of
color perception
Question 20
Damage to Brocas area often leads to:
A. expressive aphasia
B. receptive aphasia
C. inability to comprehend written language
D. both expressive aphasia and inability to comprehend written language
E. both receptive aphasia and inability to comprehend written language
Question 21
The smallest meaningful units of language are called phonemes.
A. True
B. False
Question 22
Semantics is the branch of linguistics that studies meaning.
A. True
B. False
Question 23
The word bat is considered to be lexically ambiguous because it has two possible meanings.
A. True
B. False
Question 24
A bridging inference is a system of rules that allows us to comprehend large, integrated pieces of text.
A. True
B. False
Question 26
Whorfs hypothesis has been strongly supported by cross-cultural studies of color perception.
A. True
B. False
Question 27
Turn in your exam is an example of a directive.
A. True
B. False
Question 28
Speech errors often involve swapping words with similar meaning, or words with similar sounds,
but rarely do they involve both meaning and sound.
A. True
B. False
Question 29
People tend to process both meanings of ambiguous words when they encounter them in
sentences.
A. True
B. False