Question 1
0.5/ 0.5pts
From the perspective of the listener, as a person speaks, each sentence often is characterized by ________
until the sentence is completed.
entrainment
heuristics
ambiguity
tonics
Question 2
0.5/ 0.5pts
When two people engage in a conversation, if one person produces a specific grammatical construction in
his or her speech and then the other person does the same, this phenomenon is referred to as
syntactic priming.
garden pathing.
anaphoric inferencing.
phonemic restoration.
Question 3
0.5/ 0.5pts
Which of the following terms best describes the concept of entrainment?
Similarity
Cooperation
Isolation
Understanding
Question 4
0.5/ 0.5pts
Dictionaries commonly list the multiple definitions of a particular word in a numbered list, with the first
definition as #1, the next definition as #2, and so on. Which concept does this reflect?
Meaning dominance
Positional inference
Lexical priming
Object-relative construction
Question 5
0.5/ 0.5pts
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
the&____________________&property of language.
parallel
relational
propositional
hierarchical
Question 6
0.5/ 0.5pts
Within the realm of conversational speech, knowledge refers to the
tendency to see relationships between spoken concepts even when those
relationships do not exist.
meaning of a conversation.
rules for combining spoken words into sentences.
previously understood information that we bring into the conversation.
Question 7
0.5/ 0.5pts
Evidence that language is a social process that must be learned comes from the fact that when deaf
children find themselves in an environment where there are no people who speak or use sign language,
they
demonstrate compensatory regeneration of lost auditory neural pathways.
invent a sign language themselves.
start speaking out loud even though they cannot hear themselves.
lose the ability to communicate in any way.
Question 8
0.5/ 0.5pts
Which property below is NOT one of the characteristics that makes human language unique?
Hierarchical structure
It involves arrangement of a sequence of symbols
Governed by rules
Communication
Question 9
0.5/ 0.5pts
Ron is an avid reader. He has a large vocabulary because every time he comes across a word he doesn’t
know, he looks it up in the dictionary. Ron encounters “wanderlust” in a novel, reaches for the dictionary,
and finds out this word means “desire to travel.” The process of looking up unfamiliar words increases
Ron’s
syntactical capacity.
lexicon.
parser.
mental set.
Question 10
0.5/ 0.5pts
One of Chomsky’s most persuasive arguments for refuting Skinner’s theory of language acquisition was
his observation that children
produce sentences they have never heard.
are rewarded for using correct language.
learn to follow complex language rules, even though they are not aware of
doing so.
show similar language development across cultures.
I Question 11
0/ 0.5pts
Lexical ambiguity studies show that people access ambiguous words based on
the word that comes immediately before and the word that comes
immediately after the ambiguous word in the sentence.
the meaning dominance of each definition of the word.
the identification of a single meaning for that word.
a bottom-up progression of meaning comprehension.
I Question 12
0/ 0.5pts
Consider the following sentences: “Captain Ahab wanted to kill the whale. He cursed at it.” These two
sentences taken together provide an example of a(n)
anaphoric inference.
instrument inference.
global connection.
garden path sequence.
I Question 13
0/ 0.5pts
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 the&____________________&approach to parsing.
garden path
temporary ambiguity
interactionist
semantic
Question 14
0.5/ 0.5pts
In the lexical decision task, participants are asked to
decide which meaning of an ambiguous sentence is correct in a specific
situation.
separate a sentence into individual words.
decide whether a string of letters is a word or a nonword.
identify words that are contained in sentences.
I Question 15
0/ 0.5pts
In the context of language, another term for “heuristics” is ________.
phrases
rules
meanings
turns
Question 16
0.5/ 0.5pts
Coherence refers to the
principle that we process information in isolation before we link it to its
context.
representation of the text in a reader’s mind so that information in one part
of the text is related to information in another part of the text.
mental process whereby ambiguity is resolved online during sentence
reading.
mental process by which readers create information during reading that is
not explicitly stated in the text.
Question 17
0.5/ 0.5pts
Tanenhaus and coworkers’ eye movement study presented participants with different pictures for
interpreting the sentence, “Put the apple on the towel in the box.” Their results showed the importance
of&____________________&in how we understand sentences in real-life situations.
instrumental inferences
the cooperative principle
environmental context
local connections
Question 18
0.5/ 0.5pts
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.
It adds flavors to the taffy.
It puts the taffy in packages.
It mixes the taffy ingredients.
Question 19
0.5/ 0.5pts
The concept of language can best be thought of as a ________.
process
system
cognition
dialogue
Question 20
0.5/ 0.5pts
Most of the coherence in text is created by
syntax.
parsing.
inference.
phoneme restoration.
f
