Optional Problem Set
If (and only if) this problem
set is turned in before you begin midterm #2, we will drop your lowest problem
set score and replace it with a grade of 30/30. Please bring your answers to
this problem set to class on Friday June 6, 2008, and don’t forget to include
your name, your ID number, your TA’s name, and the day your section meets.
1. Is human
reasoning rational? Discuss decision
making, deductive reasoning, inductive reasoning, and/or analogical reasoning.
(Pick one and discuss in detail, or pick a few.)
2.
(a) What
conceptual metaphor is used in all 4 of the following sentences?
i. You’re wasting my time.
ii. I don’t have the time to
give you.
iii. How do you spend your
time these days?
iv. I’ve invested a lot of
time in this project?
For sentences i – iv, take the verb and describe
what it means first (b) in the
source domain, and (c) then in the
target domain.
3. According
to the motor theory of speech perception, the perception of speech is an
innate, species-specific (human) ability.
(a) What
aspect of the motor theory motivates the claim that speech perception is
uniquely human?
(b) Describe
an experiment that tested whether speech perception is innate. What did the
results suggest?
(c) Describe
an experiment that tested whether speech perception is species specific. What
did the results suggest?
4. Word
exchange errors typically involve two words from the same syntactic category,
and from different phrases in the same clause. While they sometimes sound
alike, they often do not.
(a) Give an
example of a characteristic word exchange error (put the target utterance
afterwards in parentheses).
(b) On
Garrett’s model, what level do word exchange levels occur at?
(c) Briefly
explain what kind of linguistic information is available at this level of
processing (the correct answer to b), and what information is not yet
available.
(d) How do
sound exchange errors differ from word exchange errors?
(e) How does
Dell’s model explain word exchange errors?
5. A woman
who had been blind since birth – and a proficient Braille reader -- suffered a
stroke that left her able to
understand and produce spoken language, but unable
to read Braille.
(a) What is
this deficit called?
(b) Damage
to which area(s) of the brain is typically associated with this deficit?
(c) As a
result of her stroke, this patient had bilateral damage to primary visual
cortex, but intact somatosensory cortex (and an
intact ability to make non-linguistic somatosensory
discriminations). Other research shows that, at least in some blind people,
reading Braille is associated with activation in visual cortex; and that
temporarily disabling primary visual cortex with repetitive trans-cranial
magnetic stimulation, impairs Braille reading. What do these data suggest about
the role of visual cortex in reading Braille in the blind?