Chapter 1: Language

Question 1

Which of the following is FALSE about speech?

1. A verbal means of communicating
2. A process that requires very precise neuromuscular coordination
3. Involves components such as voice quality, intonation, and rate
4. Is the only means of face-to-face human communication

Answer 1

4. is FALSE

Question 2

TRUE or FALSE

• Languages change and evolve, contain dialects, and interactions between languages naturally occur in bilingual communities.

Answer 2

TRUE

• Dialects are subcategories of the parent language that use similar but not identical rules
• Languages that don’t evolve, grow, and change become obsolete

Question 3

TRUE or FALSE

• Out of the 154 Native American languages now in use, nearly 120 are each spoken by less than a thousand individuals.

Answer 3

TRUE

• The worldwide loss of languages is the result of:
  
  • government policy
  • dwindling indigenous populations
  • the movements of populations to cities
  • mass media
  • lack of education of the young
  • the Internet and its need to converse in only one language, English

Question 4

Which of the following is TRUE about ASHA’s definition of language (Committee on Language, 1983.)

1. is a complex and dynamic system of conventional symbols that is used in various modes for thought and communication.
2. evolves within specific historical, social, and cultural contexts
3. described by 5 parameters; phonology, syntax, morphology, semantics, pragmatics
4. learning and use (of language) are determined by intervention of biological, cognitive, psychosocial, and environmental factors

Answer 4

All are TRUE

Question 5

Which of the following is FALSE about communication?

1. Is the exchange of information and ideas, needs, and desires between 2 or more individuals
2. An active process that involves encoding, transmitting, and decoding an intended message
3. Does not require a sender and a receiver
4. Each participant must be alert to the informational needs of the other to ensure messages are conveyed effectively and preserved

Answer 5

3. is FALSE
   * Communication requires an active sender and receiver

Question 6

TRUE or FALSE

• The degree to which a speaker is successful in communicating, measured by the appropriateness and effectiveness of this message is called communicative competence

Answer 6

TRUE

• The competent communicator is able to conceive, formulate, modulate, and issue messages and to perceive the degree to which intended meanings are succesfully conveyed
• Human communication is a complex, systematic, collaborative, context-bound tool for social action
• Aspects of complexity include memory and planning, cultural beliefs, situational variables, and social conventions of the individual participants

Question 7

TRUE or FALSE

• Paralinguistic codes, including intonation, stress/emphasis, speed/rate of delivery, and pause/hestitation are superimposed on speech to signal attitude or emotion

Answer 7

TRUE

• All components of the signal are integrated to produce the meaning; these mechanisms are called suprasegmental devices (can change form and meaning of a sentence)
• Intonation (the use of pitch) is the most complex of all paralinguistic codes and is used to signal the mood of an utterance
• Stress is employed for emphasis
• Pauses may be used to emphasize a portion of the message or to replace it
• Pitch, rhythmn, and pauses may be used to mark divisions btw phrases and clauses

Question 8

Which of the following ARE NOT nonlinguistic cues?

1. Gestures
2. Body posture
3. Facial expression
4. Eye contact
5. Finger movements
6. Proximity

Answer 8

5 is NOT a nonlinguistic cue

• 5. head and body movements
• nonlinguistic cues within culture vary

Question 9

TRUE or FALSE

• Metalinguistics is the ability to talk and make-fun about oneself with others

Answer 9

FALSE

• Metalinguistics is the ability to talk about language, analyze it, think about it, judge it, and see it as an entity separate from its content or out of context
• used to judge the correctnes or appropriateness of the language we produce, receive, thus signaling the status of the transmission or the success of communication
• also helps learn to read

Question 10

Which of the following is not a property of language?

1. Language is a social tool
2. Language is a rule-governed system
3. Language is innate

Answer 10

3. is not a component of language

• Language is generative system, meaning it is a productive or creative tool
• A knowledge of the rules permits speakers to generate meaningful utterances
• Linguistic competence is a language user’s underlying knowledge abou the system of rules
• Linguistic performance is linguistic knowledge in actual usage; a user’s LC must be deduced from their LP

Question 11

TRUE or FALSE

• World knowledge contains word and symbol definitions and is primarily verbal

Answer 11

FALSE

• World knowledge refers to an individual’s autobiographical and experiential understanding and memory of particular events
• Word knowledge contains word and symbol definitions and is primarily verbal
  
  • this type of knowledge froms each person’s mental dictionary/thesaurus called a lexicon

Question 12

TRUE or FALSE

• Each word meaning contains two elements, semantic features and selection restrictions

Answer 12

TRUE

• Semantic features are aspects of the meaning that characterize the word
  
  • The semantic features of “mother” include parent and female
• Selection restrictions are based on the specific features and prohibit certain word combinations because they are meaningless or redundant
  
  • ex: male mother

Question 13

TRUE or FALSE

• Pragmatics consists of the following:

1. Communication intentions and recognized ways of carrying them out
2. Conversational principles or rules
3. Types of discourse, such as narratives, jokes, and their construction

Answer 13

TRUE

• More than in the other components of language, successful pragmatics requires understanding of the culture and of individuals; in order to be valid, speech must do 3 things
  
  • Involve the appropriate persons and circumstances
  • Be complete and correctly executed by all participants
  • Contain the appropriate intentions of all participants

Question 14

TRUE or FALSE

• Currently, the 1.2 million Native Americans who are affiliated with some native community are divided among approx 450 nations varying in size from the Cherokee Nation of over 300,000 to groups of just a few individuals

Answer 14

TRUE

• Native Americans speak over 200 different languages
• Some 78% of Native Americans live in urban areas, leading those in the majority culture to perceive them as of little consequence

Question 15

TRUE or FALSE

• There are 3 ways of classifying dialects
  
  • deficit approach
  • sociolinguistic approach
  • educational approach

Answer 15

FALSE

• There are only 2 ways of classifying dialects
  
  • deficit approach: each dialect has a different relative status; those closer to the idealized standard are considered to be better
  • sociolinguistic approach: views each dialect as an equally valid rule system; each dialect is related to the others and to the ideal standard
  • some dialects include, Southern American English, Creole English, Latino English, and African American English

Question 16

Which of the following is not a related factor to dialectal differences?

1. Geography
2. Socioeconomic status
3. Racial and ethnic differences
4. Situationa/contextual
5. Peer group
6. Body size

Answer 16

6. is FALSE
7. Geography: members of various ethnic groups chose to settle in specific geographic areas, others remained isolated (choice, force, or natural boundaries)
8. Socioeconomic Status: relates to social class, educational/occupational lvl, home environment, and family interactional styles (maternal teaching and child-rearing patterns)
9. Race and Ethnicity: as a result of de facto segregation, r/e minorities can become isolated creating a dialectal variation
   
   • ex: AAE is more common in Low-SES African Americans
10. Situational: all speakers alter their language in response to situational variables
    
    • registers: situationally influenced language variations
    • vernacular: a casual, informal or intimate register
    • style shifting: the variation from formal-informal styles or the reverse
11. Peer group: In the U.S., groups like teens, LGBT have their own lexicons; especially important during adolescence
12. Primary/secondary language learning: speakers with a different native language often retain vestiges of that language; they typically code switch from one language to the other