PSY 420 Chp 2

Which scenario would most likely result in significant language change?

A community of native German-speaking adult immigrants to the United States speaking to their children in English from birth.

Which statement conveys the most accurate comparison of spoken English and American Sign Language (ASL)?

ASL uses grammatical structures that are systematic, but very different from those found in English.

Which animal is able to gesture in a flexible way to indicate its intention?

Chimpanzee

Which language researcher attempted to define language with 16 characteristics, or design features, of spoken human language?

Hockett

Which of Hockett's design features of human language can also be attributed to honeybee communication?

Interchangeability

Keith and Cathy Hayes (1951) succeeded in teaching Viki, a young female chimpanzee, to

utter four indistinct human words

Consider the normal case of language transmission, in which younger generations learn the language, beginning in infancy, from older generations. According to McWhorter (2002), which change would most likely occur over time?

There would be an increase in the number of grammatical markers used to encode information that is possible to infer from context.

Can a young deaf child, born into a hearing family, communicate with her parents?

Yes, deaf children usually invent a gestural language to communicate with their parents.

The system of symbols, agreed upon by a community of language users, that conveys specific meaning is known as

a linguistic code

The theory of universal grammar predicts that

a new language discovered in a remote region of South America would have structural patterns that children are innately predisposed to learn.

The evolution of the Al-Sayyid Bedouin Sign Language (ABSL) occurred over generations, guided by

a small, isolated, and highly homogenous population.

The theoretical perspective that humans' ability to learn language is not the result of innate or genetically based predisposition that evolved specifically for language, but an aspect of our cognitive abilities, including general abilities of learning and memory is known as

anti-nativist theory

Tomasello and other researchers have found that dogs tend to perform _______ chimps on tests of social cognition.

better than

A comparison of birdsong with human language suggests that

both human infants and young songbirds must practice their vocal skills in order to master them.

Some researchers argue that the birds and aquatic mammals that produce complex arrays of linguistic sounds to communicate with their peers are using a(n)

cognitive pathway

The difference between a monkey sounding an alarm call and a bird vocalizing its species' mating song is that the bird is using a(n)

cognitive pathway

An infant born in the United States would demonstrate early attempts at language production through babbling. Her babbling would most likely

contain primarily the speech sounds made around her.

Research suggests that human children produce more examples of _______ communication than apes, who produce primarily _______ messages.

declarative; imperative

The theory of universal grammar claims that

humans are born with a predisposition to learn certain kinds of structures more easily than other kinds of structures.

Chomsky suggested that human knowledge must have a(n) _______ component, as evidenced by the slave boy/Pythagorian theorem dialogue demonstration.

innate

The awareness between two or more individuals that they are paying attention to the same thing is known as

joint attention

Cross-fostering experiments suggest that the main reason primates do not produce human-like variety in their vocalizations is because apes

lack the physical apparatus and control over it to produce human-like speech.

The cultural transmission view of language change holds that

languages change over time, responding to pressures to be communicatively useful and easy to learn.

Given a choice between two buckets in which only one bucket contains a treat, a chimpanzee will be _______ likely to choose a bucket that a human reached for _______ a bucket that a human pointed to.

more; than

If a child is taught a foreign language during her sensitive period in language development, she will

most likely master and speak the foreign language as well as a native speaker.

A 2009 study by Feher et al. showed that, over the course of several generations, the songs of birds raised by isolates become remarkably similar to those of normal adult birds. These results support the

nativist view of bird song origins.

An example of Hockett's productivity characteristic in non-human primate communication would be demonstrated by an ape making the sign for

sweet sausage when asked to identify a banana before having learned the sign for banana.

_______ is the set of rules that determines how linguistic elements, such as words, can be combined to convey meaning.

syntax

Bees introduced into a hive of bee species different from their own will likely "dance" according to

the style of their own genetic ancestors.

Experiments in which apes are taught a language or symbolic system indicate that apes can

use combinations of familiar symbols to express new concepts.