Wednesday 23 April 2008

Language (Level 3)


Pink Floyd | Keep Talking | " For millions of years mankind lived just like animals. Then something happened which unleashed the power of our imagination. We learned to talk" Ah, what an opening. The question is: how did we 'learn' to talk and what cognitive tricks let us do it?

GENERAL

Sorry, can't find my general ones.

SPECIFIC

Language and Thought

Are there universal effects of language on thought?

To what extent is linguistic relativity a reality?

A journalist states, "Languages do not determine thought but they can bias it." To what extent is she correct in saying this?

"Perception of colour, sound, and space are free from influence by language" (Anabosultist, 2008). Discuss.

Spoken word recognition


Discuss the problems afforded by the nature of natural speech that must be overcome in order to establish an accurate model of speech perception?

With reference to empirical data, discuss competing theories of how an individual segments speech.

How can humans understand speech with such ease when this ability has never been replicated by computer scientists?

Is speech perception strictly a ‘bottom-up’ process?

How might humans go about understanding spoken utterances? Try to provide evidence from a wide range of methodologies.

Speech is sequential, variable and continuous. How does the language system overcome this?

Sentence and discourse processing

Discuss the evidence relating to garden path- and constraint-based models of sentence processing in terms modularity.

Is sentence processing modular?

How has eye tracking procedures helped researchers build a model of how sentences are processed?

Interactive models of speech processing explains the majority of empirical evidence and as such should lead researchers to abandon modular theories. Discuss.

Bilingualism

Do bilinguals have a separate system governing their second language?

Why might connectionist models be useful to understanding bilingual lexical memory?

How is a bilingual’s lexical memory organised?

How does late bilingualism speak to the issue of critical periods?

Speech production

What can speech errors tell us about speech production?

Speech production according to Garrett (e.g. 1992) is serial and sequential. Assess this claim drawing on speech error analysis.

What have speech errors done for our understanding of speech production?

Which are more instructive: analysis of speech errors or experimental evidence? Illustrate your answer with example from speech production research.

Are semantic and phonological stages separate in speech production?

Discuss how the human cognitive system might achieve speech production.

Neuropsychology

Critically evaluate 19th century neurolinguistic models in the light of more recent evidence.

Discuss the history of neuolinguisitcs. What has changed since the 19th century?

What has neuroimaging contributed to our understanding of language processing in the brain?

Critically discuss to what extent recent developments in neuroimaging have advanced our understanding of psycholinguistic functions.

Evolutionary

Is language innate?

What can non-human language studies tell us about human language?

Is language 'special' or just a biproduct of having a big brain?

Put Jackendoff’s theory of the development of language into a broader evolutionary and linguistic context.

Critically evaluate the debate between nature and nurture in early language acquisition.

Humans are born with a predisposition to acquire language. Discuss.

Language is learnt. Discuss.

Evaluate the evidence for the domain specificity of language.

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