Deck 14: Language, Culture, and Cognition

Question 1

Research on cross-cultural color naming __________ the _______ version of the Whorfian hypothesis.

A) supports; weak
B) supports; strong
C) refutes; weak
D) refutes; strong

Answer 1

supports; weak

Question 2

Comparing ___________ would provide evidence to test Whorf's hypothesis.

A) how many words a language has for a given concept
B) whether languages mark words for gender
C) how different languages mark words for number
D) whether pronouns are obligatory across languages

Answer 2

how different languages mark words for number

Question 3

Berlin and Kay (1969) referred to the most representative basic colors (such as blue) as:

A) referential
B) primary
C) absolute
D) focal

Answer 3

focal

Question 4

An example of an English construction that does not obey the S-V-O order is:

A) the question form
B) the declarative sentence
C) the negative sentence
D) all of the above

Question 5

Current research into Eskimo words for snow suggests that:

A) Eskimos have many more words for snow that English speakers
B) the number of Eskimo words for snow may have been somewhat exaggerated, but it is still greater than the number of English words for snow
C) it is not clear that Eskimos have more words for snow than English speakers
D) English speakers have more words for snow than Eskimo speakers

Question 6

Which of the following is not a mass noun?

A) air
B) water
C) rain
D) solid

Question 7

The notion that a language determines certain nonlinguistic cognitive processes is referred to as:

A) linguistic relativity
B) linguistic determinism
C) linguistic differentiation
D) linguistic convention

Question 8

Whorf used the term "regular" analogy to emphasize:

A) our normal, habitual way of interpreting everyday experience
B) the analogy we draw from one language's expressions to another language's
C) the similarity between adult and child language usage
D) the basic-level terms we first learn as children

Question 9

_______ states that the more frequent a word's usage, the shorter the word's length.

A) The relativity hypothesis
B) Sapir's theory
C) Whorf's hypothesis
D) Zipf's law

Question 10

Whorf was chiefly concerned with:

A) cross-cultural weather terms
B) how individuals thought and spoke about dangerous situations
C) grammatical differences among languages
D) language and intelligence

Question 11

When we say that languages differ in their degree of differentiation of semantic domains, we mean that:

A) speakers of different languages think about words in different ways
B) speakers of different languages use different words to express themselves, but think in similar ways
C) there are more words in a given domain in some languages than in others
D) it is fundamentally impossible to translate certain words and expressions from one language to another

Question 12

The strong form of the Whorf hypothesis holds that:

A) languages differ in the ease with which certain ideas can be expressed
B) the presence of linguistic categories creates cognitive categories
C) language influences specialized modes of thought
D) ultimately, all languages express reality in the same way

Question 13

Whorf and Sapir concluded that:

A) the way people use language changes the way we think
B) thoughts about objects guide how individuals in cultures name them
C) the relationship between thought and language was too abstract for empirical study
D) Eskimo was a more "natural" language than English

Question 14

The names for numbers 11 and 12 are dissimilar to the names for the numbers 1 and 2 in:

A) all languages
B) English
C) Chinese
D) Eskimo

Question 15

Rosch's research with the Dani found that:

A) the Dani learned the names for color categories best when focal colors were at the center of the categories
B) the Dani preferred nonfocal colors to focal colors
C) focal colors influenced the performance of English speakers but not Dani subjects
D) nonfocal colors are more perceptually salient than focal colors

Question 16

Berlin and Kay (1969) found that _____ color terms appear in all languages:

A) over 1100
B) over 100
C) 11
D) 3

Question 17

Codability is defined as:

A) the time take to name a color
B) the frequency of usage of a word in a language
C) the length of a verbal expression
D) the similarity of labels given by different individuals to the same object

Question 18

Studies of counting have found that Chinese preschoolers are superior to American preschoolers in counting:

A) from 1 to 10
B) from 11 to 99
C) from 99 up
D) in all numbers

Question 19

English sentences typically obey the _____ order.

A) subject-object-verb
B) verb-object-subject
C) object-verb-subject
D) subject-verb-object

Question 20

Cross-linguistic studies of the color domain suggest that:

A) different languages are remarkably similar in the color words they use
B) languages differ randomly in the color words they use
C) there is a hierarchy of color terms
D) cultures determine whether color is perceived categorically or discretely

Question 21

The superiority of Asian children in acquiring early counting skills can be attributed to:

A) more rigorous teaching standards
B) genetic factors
C) strategies for teaching place value
D) a higher cultural regard for mathematics

Question 22

Whereas English makes a distinction between putting things in and putting things on, Korean makes a distinction between:

A) putting large versus small objects into containers
B) putting things in tight versus loose containers
C) putting things temporarily versus permanently into containers
D) putting things into round versus rectangular containers

Question 23

In Yucatec, the plural morpheme:

A) is used obligatorily with animate and discrete referents
B) is used optionally with animate and discrete referents
C) is used optionally with animate but not discrete referents
D) is used obligatorily with animate but not discrete referents

Question 24

_____ terms indicate the relationship between an object in space and a person.

A) Absolute
B) Conditional
C) Relative
D) Intrinsic

Question 25

Carroll and Casagrande (1958) examined form perception in Navaho-speaking children and English-speaking children. They found that:

A) Navaho-speaking children focused more on form than color than the English-speaking children did
B) English-speaking children focused more on form than color than the Navaho-speaking children
C) Navaho-speaking children on a reservation focused more on form than color than English-speaking children on the reservation, but not more so than the English-speaking suburban children
D) there were no differences in form perception between English-speaking and Navaho-speaking children

Question 26

In sum, the research on cross-linguistic color, number, object, and spatial naming:

A) provides no support for Whorf's hypothesis
B) fully supports Whorf's hypothesis
C) provides some support for Whorf's hypothesis
D) should not be evaluated relative to a Whorfian framework

Question 27

Studies of counterfactual reasoning in English- and Chinese-speaking individuals have demonstrated that:

A) Chinese speakers cannot solve counterfactual reasoning problems
B) English speakers make more errors on counterfactual reasoning problems than Chinese speakers
C) even though the English and Chinese languages are so different, speakers of both languages reasoned in precisely the same way.
D) variations in materials and subjects in these studies have made it difficult to interpret the results

Question 28

Lucy's studies of the object-substance distinction in English and Yucatec speakers found that:

A) Yucatec speakers specified the number of inanimate objects more than English speakers
B) Yucatec speakers grouped objects on the basis of material
C) English speakers grouped objects on the basis of material
D) Despite differences in their languages, English and Yucatec speakers grouped objects in an almost identical fashion.

Question 29

In a study of the effects of grammatical gender on cognition, Boroditsky, Schmidt, and Phillips (2003) found that when Spanish speakers were asked to describe objects that were masculine in their language they:

A) used fewer inanimate words
B) used words such as big, dangerous, strong, and sturdy
C) used fewer gestures
D) used longer and less-frequent words

Question 30

In Sera et al.'s (2002) study of gender marking, ________ children were more likely to assign a voice to an object based on the grammatical gender of the object:

A) English
B) German
C) French
D) Mayan

Question 31

Phrases that reference object coordinates, as in front of the post or to the left of her are examples of _____ spatial terms.

A) absolute
B) conditional
C) relative
D) intrinsic