Question 1

Six-year-old Rohan participated in a new study, designed to be similar to the Wonnacott 2011 study. An artificial grammar was invented in which roi and des were both particles that followed animal words. During the learning phase, only roi appeared after the word elephant in a sentence. What will Rohan likely conclude?
A) The word elephant should only ever be followed by roi.
B) Either roi or des can legally follow the word elephant.
C) Roi can also follow other animal words, such as cat, mouse, or pig.
D) Roi should follow the word elephant, but des should follow other animal words.

Accepted Answer

Rohan will likely conclude that the word elephant should only ever be followed by roi, as that is the pattern he observed during the learning phase.

Question 2

Imagine a 3-year-old is presented with a novel word in this passive sentence: The dog is being chased by the cat. If he were then asked what the cat is doing, he would be _______ when answering the question.
A) equally likely to use the passive voice as the active voice
B) more likely to use the wrong form of the verb
C) more likely to use the passive voice than the active
D) more likely to use the active voice than the passive

Accepted Answer

The answer of Imagine a 3-year-old is presented with a...

Question 3

What advice would you give parents who would like to help their young children learn how specific verbs can be used in sentences?
A) Speak to your children using sentence structures where individual verbs are embedded in very similar forms for each respective verb, so they learn to associate a specific verb form with a specific phrase.
B) Speak to your children using sentence structures where individual verbs are embedded in very different forms for each respective verb, so they learn to associate verb forms with diverse phrases and uses.
C) Present children with cue cards that represent various forms of the verbs, and recite those forms several times per day.
D) Parents do not need to make any special effort as it does not help children in their use of specific verb forms because those abilities are innate.

Accepted Answer

Option B is correct because exposing children to a variety of sentence structures with verbs used in different forms helps them understand the versatility and application of verbs in language. This approach encourages linguistic flexibility and a deeper understanding of how verbs function in various contexts.

Question 4

The concept of linguistic performance is exemplified by a child that
A) generates the correct form of fly, when asked to describe what a bird had done.
B) recognizes that flew fits better than flown into the sentence The bird ____ high.
C) looks longer in the direction of a sentence containing the wrong grammatical form of a verb than one that uses the correct form.
D) looks longer in the direction of fluent speech than disfluent speech that contains disruptions.

Accepted Answer

The concept of linguistic performance is exemplified by a child that generates the correct form of fly, when asked to describe what a bird had done.

Question 5

The term _______ is used to describe syntactic frames for verbs that specify whether and how they can occur with nouns and the role of those nouns when paired with specific verbs.
A) wh- island constraints
B) semantic bootstrapping
C) transitive verbs
D) verb islands

Accepted Answer

Verb islands refer to the syntactic frames that specify how verbs can occur with nouns and the roles those nouns play, focusing on the specific syntactic and semantic properties of individual verbs.

Question 6

Consider this sentence: The turtle that Tommy got from Hiroki for Christmas has a cold.
What information is conveyed by the relative clause?
A) The turtle has a cold.
B) Hiroki had a turtle.
C) Hiroki gave Tommy a sick turtle.
D) Tommy got a turtle from Hiroki.

Accepted Answer

The relative clause "that Tommy got from Hiroki for Christmas" specifies which turtle is being referred to, indicating that Tommy received the turtle from Hiroki as a Christmas gift.

Question 7

Consider this sentence: The turtle that Tommy got from Hiroki for Christmas has a cold. What information does the long-distance dependency convey?
A) The turtle has a cold.
B) Hiroki got a turtle from Tommy.
C) Hiroki had a turtle.
D) Tommy got a turtle.

Accepted Answer

The long-distance dependency in the sentence is "that Tommy got from Hiroki for Christmas." This phrase ultimately refers back to "the turtle," and tells us that this particular turtle has a cold. None of the other answer choices accurately represent the information conveyed by this dependency.

Question 8

Consider this sentence: The drink that is on the floor that is about to spill does contain coffee. What is the auxiliary verb this sentence?
A) to spill
B) is on
C) does
D) is about

Accepted Answer

The auxiliary verb in this sentence is "does," as it functions to add emphasis to the fact that the drink does contain coffee. The other phrases ("to spill," "is on," "is about") are prepositions or infinitive verbs, but they do not serve as auxiliary verbs in this sentence.

Question 9

Swahili and Spanish, in which syntactic information is expressed via multiple affixes bound to words, are _______ languages.
A) associationist
B) connectionist
C) agglutinative
D) transitive

Accepted Answer

Swahili and Spanish are agglutinative languages, where words are constructed from a sequence of morphemes that are each associated with a single meaning or grammatical feature, rather than a more fused approach where multiple meanings or features may be carried by a single morpheme. This is exemplified in Swahili where words can have multiple prefixes and suffixes attached to indicate tense, negation, mood, and various noun classes.

Question 10

Using the connectionist model would be least appropriate to account for
A) distributional evidence.
B) lexical co-occurrence patterns.
C) subcategorization information.
D) long-distance dependencies.

Accepted Answer

The connectionist model, which is based on neural networks and emphasizes learning from examples and patterns, is less suited for explaining long-distance dependencies. These dependencies involve relationships between elements in a sentence that are not adjacent to each other, a phenomenon that requires understanding of structure and rules beyond simple pattern recognition.

Question 11

_______ suggest(s) that language stimuli does not contain enough information for children to acquire certain language structures and that some innate capacities must exist to help children extract important statistical information from the ambient language.
A) Wh- island constraints
B) Associationist theories
C) Arguments from the poverty of the stimulus
D) Distributional evidence

Accepted Answer

Arguments from the poverty of the stimulus suggest that language stimuli alone is not enough for children to acquire certain language structures and that some innate capacities are necessary to help children extract important statistical information from the ambient language.

Question 12

If 9-month-old Hakim heard examples of fluent speech and disfluent speech, as in Soderstrom and Morgan's 2007 study, he would spend
A) equal time looking toward fluent speech and speech containing disfluencies.
B) more time looking toward fluent than non-fluent speech.
C) more time looking toward disfluent speech than fluent speech.
D) more time looking at a speaker where fluent speech is paired with a flashing light.

Accepted Answer

The answer of If 9-month-old Hakim heard examples of fluent...

Question 13

Define and relate semantics and syntax. Provide an example of how changing the syntax can change the meaning of a sentence.

Accepted Answer

The answer of Define and relate semantics and syntax. Provide...

Question 14

Providing relevant examples, outline at least one argument to support the claim that sentence structure is hierarchical, that is, it involves the grouping of words into constituents rather than simply representing sentences as linear strings of words.

Accepted Answer

The answer of Providing relevant examples, outline at least one...

Question 15

For the sentence below, propose a grammatical structure using bracket notation (or a tree) to represent the syntactic constituents and their parts. Be sure to show the hierarchical structure of the sentence and label the syntactic category of each word and constituent.
She bought a house with a yard.

Accepted Answer

The answer of For the sentence below, propose a grammatical...

Question 16

Explain how language is generative, and provide an example.

Accepted Answer

The answer of Explain how language is generative, and provide...

Question 17

What is a trigram? What did Mintz (2003) find about parents' use of the "frequent frames" contained in child-directed speech? How might these trigrams help children determine the categories to which words belong?

Accepted Answer

The answer of What is a trigram? What did Mintz...

Question 18

Refer to the figure.
  Describe the methods used by Mintz in his 2006 study. What did his findings demonstrate about the effects of distributional evidence on children's word category formation?

Accepted Answer

The answer of Refer to the figure.
  Describe the...

Question 19

Give an example of the kind of syntactic overgeneralization that might be produced by a 3- or 4-year-old child. What do such overgeneralizations suggest about children's learning of syntax?

Accepted Answer

The answer of Give an example of the kind of...

Question 20

Describe what Brauer and colleagues (2011) were able to conclude about the development of grammar processing from their study using fMRI and dMRI images of adult and 7-year-old brains.

Accepted Answer

The answer of Describe what Brauer and colleagues (2011) were...

Quiz 5: Learning the Structure of Sentences

Imagine a 3-year-old is presented with a novel word in this passive sentence: The dog is being chased by the cat. If he were then asked what the cat is doing, he would be _______ when answering the question.

What advice would you give parents who would like to help their young children learn how specific verbs can be used in sentences?

The concept of linguistic performance is exemplified by a child that

The term _______ is used to describe syntactic frames for verbs that specify whether and how they can occur with nouns and the role of those nouns when paired with specific verbs.

Consider this sentence: The turtle that Tommy got from Hiroki for Christmas has a cold. What information is conveyed by the relative clause?

Consider this sentence: The turtle that Tommy got from Hiroki for Christmas has a cold. What information does the long-distance dependency convey?

Consider this sentence: The drink that is on the floor that is about to spill does contain coffee. What is the auxiliary verb this sentence?

Swahili and Spanish, in which syntactic information is expressed via multiple affixes bound to words, are _______ languages.

Using the connectionist model would be least appropriate to account for

_______ suggest(s) that language stimuli does not contain enough information for children to acquire certain language structures and that some innate capacities must exist to help children extract important statistical information from the ambient language.

If 9-month-old Hakim heard examples of fluent speech and disfluent speech, as in Soderstrom and Morgan's 2007 study, he would spend