Exam 7: Language

The smallest meaningful unit in a language is referred as a _____.

Discuss the research done on primate language learning. What general conclusions can we draw from this research?

The importance of using our hands as we talk to others suggests that language is an extension of the _____ seen in a variety of species.

Damage to the brain that results in the patient having difficulty in producing speech but not in understanding it is called _____ aphasia.

Language is _____; that is to say, there is an almost infinite number of combinations of words that can be used to express thoughts.

Dunbar suggested that language is to humans what _____ is to other primates.

Chomsky saw language facility as an inborn ability and referred to the mechanism that guided language learning as the _____.

A variety of species, including parrots, have the ability to imitate speech sounds, but primates

Damage to the brain that results in the patient producing incoherent speech and in not being able to understand the speech of others is known as _____ aphasia.

The rules governing the way that sounds can be combined in a particular language is called its _____.

Most nonhuman primates have the _____ higher in the throat than do humans. This enables them to breathe and drink at the same time, but not to make speech sounds.

Current research suggests that there are a number of parallels between language learning in humans and song learning in birds. In both cases, learning results from a(n)

When children say "he runned" or "she goed," this is clear evidence that they

Languages are _____ in that there is no clear relationship between the form of a word and what it represents.

One distinctive feature of language is that it is regular and has rules, which we call a _____.

One hypothesis suggests that a common origin for vocalization evolved more than 400 million years ago in _____.

Discuss the relationship between genetics, the brain, and language processing. Include a discussion of the FoxP2 genes and the various kinds of aphasia.

_____ is the study of meaning and how words relate to the things they refer to.

Describe some examples of animal communication systems. In what way is human language unlike any of these systems?

In an amazing manner, a human infant can acquire any of the more than _____ existing languages on earth.