Visual Word Recognition
Sentence processing
Social side of Language
Language, Culture, and Thought
Challenge? (Random)
100

Principal & principle are examples of:

A. Homonyms
B. Homophones
C. Homographs
D. Polysems 

B. Homophones

100

True or False:

The following sentence is in the passive voice.

The squirrel was eating my sandwich.

False, this is an active voice sentence!

100

Which Maxim is flouted in the following example if the implicature is a request for someone opening the window?

Alex: Can you close the window?


A. Relevance/Relation

B. Quantity

C. Quality

D. Manner

A. Relevance/Relation

100

What is the basic principle underlying the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis?

Language determines (strong) or influences (weak) the way we perceive the world and conceptualize.

100

Consider the sentence below. Which of the following statements is true?

Our fish wears a shirt.

A. shirt would have a high cloze probability in this sentence

B. People may have a P600 response when reading the sentence

C. shirt would have a high surprisal in this sentence

D. People may have a N400 response when reading the sentence

E. All of the above

C. shirt would have a high surprisal in this sentence (and thus low cloze probability)

D. People may have a N400 response when reading the sentence

200

In _________ languages, graphemes correspond to the meaning of a word, and don’t indicate how to pronounce them. 

A. Alphabetic
B. Syllabic
C. Logographic
D. Abjadic 

C. Logographic

200

What kind of verb complement does the verb, accept, have in the following example?

The avengers accepted that ironman is dead 

A. Noun phrase

B. Sentence/Clausal

B. Sentence/Clausal; the complement is a complete sentence, that ironman is dead

200

Which Maxim is flouted in the following conversation if the implicature is that the student missed some important things?

Student: I was absent - did I miss anything important?

Teacher: Oh no, of course not, we never do anything important in class. 


A. Relevance/Relation
B. Quantity
C. Quality
D. Manner

C. Quality

200

Spanish is language that has linguistic gender. When Spanish speakers are asked to decide
whether two object pictures belong to the same category that have mismatched gender, they will:

A. categorize them equally fast as those who have the same gender
B. categorize them faster than objects who have the same gender
C. categorize them faster if they are semantically related
D. categorize them slower than objects who have the same gender

D. categorize them slower than objects who have the same gender

200

True or False

The garden path theory cannot account for the processing of sentences with global ambiguity.

False, the garden path theory CAN account for both global ambiguity and temporary ambiguity.

300

What is a saccade?

A. A stable eye position
B. A ballistic eye movement
C. A vein located in the eye
D. An infection of the eye 

B. A ballistic eye movement

300

Consider the sentence below. What kind of ambiguity does this sentence represent? Explain why.


British Left Waffles on Falklands.


Global ambiguity (unclear if the British left waffles [noun] on the Falklands or if the British Left [noun] waffles [verb] on the Falklands)

300

Consider the following conversation. Identify the scale of the implicature and the resulting implicature.


Alice: Do you think the Red Wings will win?    

Zac: It’s possible.

Scale: <possible, probable, certain>

Implicature: It is not probable and definitely not certain that the Red Wings will win.

300

True or False:

A speaker of a language who does not distinguish between green and blue will have higher accuracy in discriminating shades of blue than a speaker of a language that distinguishes between green and blue.

False

300

Consider the following conversation. What Maxim(s) is being flouted? What is the resulting implicature?


Francis: How long have you two been married?

Anna: Four years, 45 days, and 17 hours.

Quantity; Implicature: Anna is very devoted to her spouse

400

What is the Connectionist Model of word recognition?

There is no clear cut distinction between Orthographic (grapheme) Route vs Phonological Route. It is an interactive process. 

The connectionist model takes a look at which links are strong or weak. Within irregular cases, it is still possible to find ortho-phonological patterns (e.g. sign, benign, align)

400

Which of the following statement can best describe the constraint-based model?

A. It is mostly based on heuristics.
B. It predicts that all the garden path sentences would be difficult to process.
C. The process of meaning selection is an interaction among different variables.
D. Only one meaning is available for initial activation in the processing.



C. The process of meaning selection is an interaction among different variables.

400

Which Maxim is flouted in the following example if the implicature is that Max doesn't love syntax?

Betty: Max likes syntax OK.


A. Relevance/Relation
B. Quantity
C. Quality
D. Manner

B. Quantity (this is a scalar implicature!)

400

Mandarin speakers who have lived in America (an English speaking country) will talk about time..

A. always according to their native language (in Mandarin; vertical timelines)
B. always according to English (horizontal timelines)
C. differently according to the cultural context (vertical vs. horizontal)

C. differently according to the cultural context (vertical vs. horizontal)

400

Consider the headline below. Identify (a) the kind of ambiguity for the headline and (b) explain why

Is Fish Heart Healthy Food? It Depends.

Temporary ambiguity (garden path sentence); Instead of grouping fish heart as a unit, it is whether fish a food that is healthy for heart

500

According to the Dual Route Model, the __________ route usually wins for high-frequency words, while the __________ route is used for low-frequency words.

Direct; Assembled Phonology

500

Fill in the blanks


When reading a sentence like, “The athlete pulled a muscle in his leg during the competition,” we wouldn’t expect a N400 effect when participants read muscle because it has __________ cloze probability and  _________ surprisal. 

When reading a sentence like, “The athlete pulled a muscle in his leg during the competition,” we wouldn’t expect a N400 effect when participants read muscle because it has ___high__ cloze probability and  __low_____ surprisal.

500

Consider the following notice. What Maxim(s) is being flouted? What is the resulting implicature? 

Notice:

We are presently not open because we are closed.


Manner; implicature: probably being humorous

500

Experiments showing that Whorfian effects are diminished or eliminated when the linguistic
system is inhibited provide:

A. strong and conclusive evidence that speakers of different languages perceive the world differently.

B. some evidence for the causal role of language on perception, but perceptual differences between speakers of different languages seem limited.

C. strong evidence that language is shaped by perception rather than the other way around. 

D. no evidence one way or another regarding the relationship between language and
perception.

B. some evidence for the causal role of language on perception, but perceptual differences between speakers of different languages seem limited.

500

Consider the following pair of sentence. What would be the most possible variable that may influence the processing difficulty?


(a) The window broke his hand because he slammed it shut too fast.

(b) Her husband broke his hand because he slammed it down too hard on the table.


1. Verb frame frequency

2. Argument structure

3. Verb voice frequency

4. Thematic relations

4. Thematic relations

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