Final Study Guide

Language and Modules

• Characteristics of human language
• Modular Theory of Language vs. Single Processor Theory of Language
• Examples of other possible modules and evidence for them
• Criteria for determining modules
• Universal human cultural traits
• What is innate in language and what is not
• Evidence for innateness
• False implications of innateness
• Big Bang theory of biological oddities vs. Darwinian evolution
• Way that language probably evolved
• Language vs. communication
• Stages of acquisition and ages / Critical periods
• Pigins vs. Creoles

Animal Communication

• What have we said is different?
• Know the apes by name and their successes / failures

Impaired Language

• Autism: characteristics, recent stats, the FC controversy
• William's Syndrome: characteristics
• Aphasia: general properties, causes, location in the brain
• Wernicke's vs. Broca's Aphasia: characteristics, location in the brain
• SLI: characteristics
• Language Isolation: who and in what way isolated, characteristics

Deaf Language

• Acquistion in deaf vs. hearing children
• Characteristics of ASL (quite specific)

Language and the Brain

• Lateralization
• Tests for lateralization (including the Wada test)
• Statistics about handedness and lateralization

Structure and Syntax

• Why is X-bar syntax important in linguistics?
• Lexical vs. Functional categories
• Question movement: WH-questions and Y/N questions in English (what moves, from and to where?)
• Deep structure vs. Surface structure

Computers and Language

• Sound: properties and representations
• Structural Ambiguity: what is it? Implications
• Technologies for a translating telephone and approaches to these technologies
• Translation: Issues
• Sine Wave Speech: what is it's point?

Language Variation and History

• Types of language universals (Absolute, Implicational, and Statistical) and examples
• Ways language can vary:
  Word Structure: Isolating, Inflecting, Agglutinating (ex. of each)
  Sentence Structure: Word Order and relationship of fixed vs. free word order with Word Structure
  Prominence: Topic vs. Object (examples)
• Reasons why language changes: Regional isolation, new words and semantic change, reanalysis by children
• Facts about Proto-Indo-European
• Similarities / Differences between English and Germanic