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Quiz 5NAME:____________________________________ ID#:_________________
1. Describe the difference between "deep structure" and "surface structure" in Chomsky's generative grammar. Why do we need to assume the presence of these two linguistic representations?
Deep structure refers to the meaning that we wish to communicate. Surface structure refers to the structure of sentences that we use to express the meaning. There can be many surface structures for one deep structure (many ways to express the same idea). Furthermore the same surface structure can be associated with different meanings or deep structures ("John and Dave watched the mountains as they were riding horses in Montana").
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2. Describe Fillmore's Case grammar model. What is a semantic case? Which are the two assumptions of this model?
Fillmore pointed out the importance of semantic roles of content words in a sentence in linguistic comprehension.
Semantic case -> a word's semantic role (case role)
As people read a sentence they (1) immediately begin to analyze the sentence and (2) assign semantic roles to the words that they read; each time a word is assigned a semantic role, the sentence is further comprehended.
When people read a sentence they don't pay attention to the grammatical roles of words; rather, they attend to the meaning of the words in the sentence.
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3. What is syntax? Often we use syntactic transformation to convey a particular meaning in a sentence. Give some examples of "semantic" use of syntax.
Syntax: The rules of how we put together words to form sentences
Semantic use of syntax --> "focus of the utterance"
Examples:
(1) I'm going downtown with my sister at four o'clock.
(2) It's at
four o'clock that I'm going downtown with my sister.
(3) It's my
sister I'm going downtown with at four o'clock.
4. What is the meaning of "critical period"? Which aspects of language have a critical period? What do critical period studies suggest about language learning?
A critical period is a time when the brain has high levels of plasticity (for a certain function) and can only learn/acquire that function within this time period. Once the critical period has ended, a person cannot "learn" the particular function to the same competence level as if "learned" during the critical period.
In language, phonetics and syntax have critical periods. Studying critical periods suggest that language learning entails implicit learning that basically "shape" the brain to fit the function. For the most part, this cannot be reversed.
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5. What is a "garden-path" sentence? Give an example of this type of sentences. Describe an empirical study that investigates "garden-path" sentences and discuss its results.
A garden-path sentence is one that appears to have one meaning at the beginning, but as we read along we have to re-evaluate its meaning. For example: "As soon as the man had finished baking the pie was moved onto a window sill to cool".
One study compared eye fixation times between normal and garden-path sentences. It was found that when reading the garden-path sentence, the point of disambiguation was associated with longer fixation time. It appears that the more processing we have to do while reading, the longer the fixation time becomes.
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**Extra credit question**
6. What is displacement? Why is this property of language important?
Displacement is a characteristic common to all languages. It is the ability to express events other than the "here and now". This includes using past and future verb tenses. This characteristic of language demonstrates our ability to plan, remember, and integrate the past with our current state.
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