Deck 6: Sentence Comprehension and Memory

Question 1

The effect of an utterance on a listener is its _____ effect.

A) locutionary
B) illocutionary
C) perlocutionary
D) indirect

Answer 1

perlocutionary

Question 2

We apply the immediacy principle to:

A) postpone interpreting a word or phrase until the sentence meaning is clear
B) compute the literal meaning of a sentence before rejecting it
C) maintain the exact wording of a sentence in memory
D) reduce memory load when processing a sentence

Answer 2

reduce memory load when processing a sentence

Question 3

For a speech act to have effect, _________ must be present.

A) tenor and ground
B) illocutionary force
C) felicity conditions
D) relation and manner

Answer 3

felicity conditions

Question 4

A ________ is a structural representation of the linguistic relationships within a sentence.

A) minimal attachment
B) class inclusion
C) convention
D) phrase marker

Question 5

Modular views of parsing claim that:

A) syntax is processed before semantics and pragmatics
B) semantics and pragmatics are processed before syntax
C) syntax, semantics, and pragmatics are processed simultaneously
D) all of the above

Question 6

Frazier and Rayner (1982) found evidence for the _______ strategy, showing that we prefer attaching new items into the phrase marker being constructed using the fewest syntactic nodes possible.

A) lexical preference
B) minimal attachment
C) immediacy
D) late closure

Question 7

In the metaphor Billboards are warts on the landscape, the vehicle is:

A) billboards
B) warts
C) landscape
D) ugly protrusions on some surface

Question 8

In Austin's (1962) terminology, the act of saying something represents the:

A) perlocutionary effect
B) felicity condition
C) locutionary act
D) illocutionary force

Question 9

Christianson and colleagues (2001) presented participants with sentences such as While Anna dressed the baby played in the crib and found that many participants:

A) misinterpreted the sentences initially then corrected themselves
B) never actually comprehended the sentences accurately
C) used a variety of parsing strategies
D) tended to err when the sentences were long or used infrequent words

Question 10

The late closure strategy of parsing states that:

A) we prefer to attach new items to the current constituent
B) we prefer to make decisions about each word immediately, as we encounter it
C) we prefer to use the fewest syntactic nodes possible
D) we prefer to postpone interpretations of words until the sentence meaning is clear

Question 11

In the metaphor Billboards are warts on the landscape, the tenor is:

A) billboards
B) warts
C) landscape
D) ugly protrusions on some surface

Question 12

The view that we use all available information--syntactic, lexical, discourse, and so on--in our initial parsing of a sentence defines the ________ model of parsing.

A) modular
B) minimal attachment
C) constraint-based
D) lexical

Question 13

The sentence, The florist who sent the flowers was very pleased is grammatical because it contains a(n):

A) embedded relative clause
B) proposition
C) conceptual metaphor
D) late closure

Question 14

A speech act serves

A) to communicate information
B) to serve as an action
C) to determine the literal meaning of a sentence
D) to guide conversation

Question 15

Studies of the comprehension of indirect speech acts have led to the conclusion that:

A) indirect speech acts are easier to comprehend than direct speech acts
B) indirect speech acts are harder to comprehend than direct speech acts
C) indirect speech acts are no easier or harder to comprehend than direct speech acts when presented in an appropriate context
D) indirect speech acts do not always initiate a response

Question 16

___________ means one thing literally but is taken to mean something different.

A) felicity
B) pragmatic theory
C) relation
D) figurative language

Question 17

Just and Carpenter (1992) found evidence that:

A) individual differences in working memory capacity affect language processing abilities
B) working memory size is the same for all individuals and cannot account for differences in language abilities
C) working memory size varies across individuals but does not affect language comprehension
D) individuals with smaller working memories are paradoxically able to process language more efficiently

Question 18

The process of assigning elements of the surface structure to linguistic categories is referred to as:

A) parsing
B) sentence interpretation
C) the immediacy principle
D) the late closure strategy

Question 19

In the sentence, Tom said that Bill had taken the cleaning out yesterday, we tend to attach the adverb yesterday to Bill had taken, rather than Tom said . This is an example of the:

A) late closure strategy
B) immediacy principle
C) minimal attachment strategy
D) lexical preference strategy

Question 20

Which of the following are thematic roles in a sentence?

A) tenor and ground
B) agent and recipient
C) locutionary act and illocutionary force
D) relation and manner

Question 21

The convention of _____ states that we should make our contribution as informative as is required, but not more informative than is required.

A) quality
B) quantity
C) relation
D) manner

Question 22

__________ is the process of relating incoming information to information already stored in permanent memory.

A) Instantiation
B) Inferencing
C) Elaboration
D) Retention

Question 23

A criticism of the pragmatic theory of figurative language comprehension is that:

A) literal meanings always precede figurative meanings
B) figurative meanings are slower to comprehend than literal meanings
C) people can comprehend a figurative meaning even if the literal meaning is acceptable
D) literal meanings violate communicative convention

Question 24

Ortony (1975) suggested that we use ________ to communicate experiential information that is otherwise difficult to express

A) convention
B) metaphor
C) felicity
D) relation

Question 25

Which of the following results did Sachs (1967) obtain regarding the retention of sentence meaning and form?

A) over time form deteriorated; meaning remained stable
B) over time both form and meaning deteriorated
C) over time both form and meaning remained stable
D) over time meaning deteriorated; form remained stable

Question 26

Studies of metaphor comprehension converge on the conclusion that comprehension of metaphorical sentences is _____ comprehension of literal sentences.

A) harder than
B) fundamentally similar to
C) easier than
D) dependent on an initial literal interpretation of

Question 27

The convention of _____ states that we should aim to make our contributions relevant to the ongoing conversation.

A) relation
B) manner
C) quality
D) quantity

Question 28

A proposition is:

A) a unit of meaning containing a predicate and one or more arguments
B) a structural representation of a sentence
C) a guiding principle in conversation
D) the outcome of identifying a general term with a specific meaning

Question 29

Although we generally forget the exact form of a sentence shortly after we have heard or seen it, we tend to retain the exact wording when:

A) it is repeated more than once
B) it is pragmatically significant
C) it is presented in an excessively polite way
D) we know we will be tested on it

Question 30

Which of the following is a conceptual metaphor?

A) LOVE IS A JOURNEY
B) OUR LOVE IS A BUMPY ROLLERCOASTER RIDE
C) OUR LOVE IS FULL OF UPS AND DOWNS
D) all of the above

Question 31

The view that we comprehend figurative language by first identifying the literal meaning and then inferring the intended meaning is found in the _____ theory.

A) conceptual metaphor
B) class-inclusion
C) pragmatic
D) instantiation