Psycholinguistics Take-Home Midterm Exam							Fall 2007
Due 2:10 pm, Thursday, November 15, 2007

Use your own paper for your answers, which you should write in English.
If you cite Chinese examples, please follow standard linguistic format 
(i.e., Chinese sentence + word-by-word translation + English sentence). 
Keep your answers as BRIEF as possible: a maximum of 4 pages (single-spaced typed) 
for the whole test!! You can check the textbook, notes, class papers, dictionaries, 
other books or papers, the Web, etc, but you can't discuss the test with any 
other person, in this class or not. If you don't understand a question, contact me 
(Lngmyers@ccu.edu.tw), and then I'll give my reply to all of the students by email. 
NOTE: Most questions are open-ended; many answers can be "right". 
Also, some questions are meant as challenges: be creative within the 
limits of what you've learned.

2. Illustrate each of the following concepts with a specific example relating to 
language or language processing.

2.1 [2%] derivational theory of complexity
2.2 [2%] memory span test
2.3 [2%] story grammar
2.4 [2%] minimal attachment strategy
2.5 [2%] morphological priming
2.6 [2%] dual-route model of reading
2.7 [2%] accommodation in speech errors

3. [9%] Carroll (2008) seems to prefer the class-inclusion theory of metaphor 
comprehension, rather than the pragmatic theory or conceptual metaphor theory. 
Give your own opinion and support it with a brief empirical argument.

4. [9%] Liu et al. (2007) discuss sentence frames and Chen & Chen (2006) 
discuss morphological frames. How are they similar (besides both being called 
"frames")? How are they different (besides one being syntactic and the other 
morphological)?
 
5.1 [8%] Dr. Stupid ran a lexical decision experiment to test whether the 
difference between nouns and verbs is "psychologically real" in Chinese. 
What is wrong with this goal? (Hint: Remember Myers, 2007: "Generative morphology 
as psycholinguistics.")

5.2 [8%] Here are all the noun targets in Dr. Stupid's experiment: 
研究、葡萄、字詞、阿諾史瓦辛格. Here are all the verb targets: 
看、來、吃、認、站、開、死. Here are all the nonword foils: 
美們、☆、阿諾瓦史辛格. Explain all of the problems with these materials, 
including the risks they pose for confounding and task-specific effects.

6. [9%] Myers et al. (2007) claim that their experiment shows that Chinese 
compounds are initially accessed left to right. Do you agree that their 
experiment shows this? Support your position (pro or con) by explaining 
which aspects of their methods and/or results that do (or do not) convince you.

7. [7%] English readers know that the following sentence means (a), not (b).
What does this pattern imply about how filler/gap processing relates to working memory?

What was the kid given __ to __ ?

(a)	What2 was the kid1 given __1 to __2?	{Possible answer: The orphanage.}
(b)	*What1 was the kid2 given __1 to __2?	{Possible answer: Some candy.}

8. [9%] Categorical perception of speech is sometimes taken to demonstrate the 
role of linguistic competence in language processing. Why? Does linguistic 
competence also predict "categorical production" in speech? Do serial 
(e.g., Levelt) and parallel (e.g., Dell) models make different predictions here? 
(Hint: I'm not sure of the answer. Just sound smart!)

9. Please read the following story (from a storybook for foreign learners of Chinese).

父親教兒子認字。父親用筆在紙上寫了個「一」字讓兒子認，兒子馬上記住了。
第二天吃飯的時候，父親想考考兒子，用手指頭蘸了酒，在桌子上寫了個「一」字讓兒子認。
兒子看了一會兒，說『不認得』。父親很生氣，說：『小傻瓜！這不是昨天教你的「一」字嗎！
怎麼就不認得了？』兒子驚奇地睜大眼睛，說：『沒想到過了一夜，它就長得怎麼大了！』

9.1 [8%] Describe two devices used to create local coherence in this story. 
One of the devices may cause a problem for the hypothesis that readers must 
first identify given and new information in the currently processed sentence. 
Explain the problem, referring to a grammatical device found in Chinese but 
not in English. (Hint: By "sentence" I mean clauses separated by punctuation, 
including 「，」.)

9.2 [9%] The story itself can be seen as an allegory about language perception 
(including speech perception). Explain, using concepts from the perception 
chapter and notes.