Exam 5: Language

If an English speaker said to you, "Get out of my face!" you would probably back up and move away from the person speaking to you. From a linguistic point of view, "Get out of my face":

Attempts to change linguistic habits such as the adoption of more neutral terms like firefighter, police officer, and first-year student for gender-biased ones like fireman, policeman, and freshman are based on:

Does language influence social perceptions? In answering this question, examine conscious attempts to change what is perceived by many to be "gender-biased" language (terms such as fireman, policeman, Mrs., Miss, freshman, mankind). Also, do you think these attempts to change language will suc?ceed, or are English speakers too set in their ways to change?

The concept of arbitrariness is in reference to how abstract words are as symbols.

Glottochronology is:

What is displacement?

How do animal communication systems differ from human language and communication systems?

A unit of sound that distinguishes meaning in a particular language is a __________.

Nonverbal communication consisting of body motions and gestures is called kinesics.

Linguistic variations within a single language such as differences in pronunciation, vocabulary, or syntax are termed dialects.

There are four important features that appear to distinguish human communication from animal communication. Which of the following is not one of these features?

How many morphemes are there in the English word "antidisestablishmentarianism"?

The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is an example of linguistic relativism because it maintains that the world is experienced differently among different language communities.

The word "lower" contains:

At the Yerkes Regional Primate Research Center at Emory University a chimpanzee named Lana was taught to communicate through a color-coded computer keyboard.

Language is a system of symbols with standard meanings.

Scientific attempts to teach apes to speak human languages:

A German shepherd dog will not have any difficulty understanding the bark of a French poodle, while a speaker of English will have trouble understanding a Chinese speaker. Explain why this is so.

Noam Chomsky suggests humans are born with a brain prewired to enable us to acquire languages easily. This "prewiring" is referred to as __________.

Glottochronology is the study of the interrelationships among the vocal tract, glottis, larynx, and pharynx in the production of sound.