Chapter 11

Consider the sentence "Gloria, the glorious poodle, won the dog show. She has won this award for the second time." A correct anaphoric reference from this sentence would be ___.

"She" refers to Gloria the poodle.

What conclusion can we draw from instances where different scenes cause different processing of the same sentence?

Content of a scene can affect sentence processing

In the sentence "Ed was given a watch for his birthday," what is the new information?

Ed got a watch

What is a conclusion of creating situation models?

Readers create perceptions that match the situations described in sentences

Suppose we read that "Shakespeare wrote Hamlet while he was sitting at his desk." Which of the following would NOT indicate instrument inference from this sentence?

The type of chair that Shakespeare sat in was a stool

A situation model is similar to which of the following?

a film

A person who inherited difficulty in perceiving music would be diagnosed with congenital ________.

amusia

The word "cast"—when used to refer to a member of a play or a plaster cast—suggests

balanced dominance since both meanings are equally likely.

which of the following words has the lowest frequency?

call

For thousands of years, telling stories has been an important method of sharing news and information across generations. To ensure that stories are accurately shared, a good storyteller needs to provide ________.

coherence

Which of the following is a parsing tool in written language?

comma

"Yeah" is a good example of ___ in conversations

common ground

No offense to his old high school buddies, but after a visit back to his hometown, Reggie is always happy to get back to grad school where he can talk to people using words that have more than two syllables. Which term best reflects Reggie's experience?

common ground

Sandra worked hard to improve her diction and accent so she could be a successful stage actress in theaters around the world. But whenever she went home to visit her family, after a couple days she could hear her old New Jersey accent loud and clear. What is Sandra experiencing on these visits to her hometown?

entertainment

Cassie thought that Rhonda, the new girl at school, was long-winded and spoke in never-ending, circular sentences. Cassie had to pay close attention to each word Rhonda said and decide where a logical phrase ended based on the next word that was spoken. Cassie is engaging in a very deliberate act of ________

late closure

Check My Work The phrases "First National Bank" and "river bank" illustrate ___.

lexical ambiguity

Which of the following can be considered the most "personal" concept?

lexicon

What is the foundation of lexical priming

meaning

Which of the following is NOT a key concern of psycholinguists regarding language?

meaning

Semantics is to syntax as _____ is to _____.

meaning; rule

Which of the following terms is correctly paired with its core concept?

parsing - grouping

Which of the following is NOT key to understanding the meaning of an ambiguous word?

pronunciation

Whenever Vera is with Parker she ends up feeling depressed. When Parker talks, every sentence starts out sounding normal but then seems to get low and soft at the end. The ________ of Parker's speech is bringing Vera down.

prosody

At its foundation, language enables people to communicate because it is based on ________.

rules and structure

Which of the following words and definitions are an example of dominant bias in meaning?

season: one of four periods in a calendar year

While traveling in Mexico, Ken overheard a shopkeeper say, "Encuentra la camisa verde y dársela a ese chico." Although the woman's speech sounded like a fast jumble of sounds, his one year of high school Spanish enabled him to pick out the words "verde" and "chico"—for "green" and "boy." Which term best describes Ken's experience at the shop?

speech segmentation

Henry's first date with Malcolm was not going well. Malcolm had a habit of interrupting him by saying "Yeah, yeah, yeah" whenever he understood or agreed with something Henry said. It was very annoying. Yet after an hour, as their conversation became more animated, Henry found himself saying "Yeah, yeah, yeah" whenever he grasped what Malcolm was saying. Which term best describes what is occurring in this conversation?

syntactical priming

Which of the following is exemplified by garden path sentences?

temporary ambiguity

After Ahmad finished complaining about the stress of having a new baby in the house, Peter responded, "I have three kids, my friend. I know where you're coming from." What is Peter exhibiting in this conversation?

theory of mind

A fairly common way to test for the word frequency effect is to ___.

utilize the lexical decision task