Exam #3 Review Game

The process of “slicing” the stream of speech into successive syllables or words is called

• sound segregation.

• categorical perception.

• speech segmentation.

• articulation.

The study of the sounds used in language is usually referred to as

• phonology.

• morphology.

• semantics.

• acoustics.

In ordinary speech production, the boundaries between syllables or between words are usually

• marked by momentary pauses.

• marked by slight loudness changes.

• marked by slight changes in pitch.

• not marked, so they must be determined by the perceiver.

You are flipping through channels on TV when you come upon a French-speaking station. You do not speak French, and you are amazed at how quickly it is spoken. Which of the following factors is most relevant for explaining this reaction?

• You are not able to segment the speech sounds into phonemes, making it sound faster.

• You are not able to produce the speech, therefore you cannot perceive it correctly.

• You do not know the appropriate pronunciation or syntax rules in French.

• French phonemes overlap more than English phonemes, making it sound faster.

“Coarticulation” refers to the fact that in producing speech

• the movement of the tongue and lips must be carefully coordinated with the output of air from the lungs.

• phonemes overlap, both in their production and in their sound pattern.

• a single position of the tongue is used for several different speech sounds.

• the tongue must be moved into its appropriate position simultaneously with the positioning of the teeth and lips.

The term “categorical perception” refers to the fact that we are

• better at hearing some categories of sounds than we are at hearing other categories.

• skillful both in identifying categories of sounds and in categorizing the physical characteristics of those sounds.

• better at hearing the difference between sounds from different categories than we are at distinguishing sounds from the same category.

• highly sensitive to variations within a category but less sensitive to the contrast between categories.

In the word “cats” the “s” is

• a morpheme.

• a morpheme and a phoneme.

• a phoneme.

• neither a morpheme nor a phoneme.

Descriptive rules

• allow us to decide if a particular utterance is “proper” or “good.”

• have the same function as prescriptive rules.

• are mostly used by new speakers who do not yet understand slang or common expressions.

• describe how English is structured.

Which of the following claims about phrase structure rules is FALSE?

• The rules govern the pattern of branching that is possible in a phrase structure tree.

• The rules determine whether the sentence is true or false.

• Word sequences that break the rules are likely to be judged as ungrammatical.

• The rules identify natural groupings of words within a sentence.

Which of the following is NOT a principle that guides sentence parsing?

• Decisions about the parsing of individual words are not made until the entire sentence has been heard.

• In general, we assume that the sentences we hear will be in the active, not passive, voice.

• Parsing makes use of the small function words (e.g., “that” and “which”) to identify the sentence’s phrase structure.

• The semantics of the sentence are used as an aid in determining the source of the action and the recipient.