Keyboard shortcuts

Go home G then H
Browse sets G then B
Create set G then C
My library G then L
Show shortcuts ?
Go back Swipe from left edge
Library

Cognitive Science — Language and Thought

Linguistics, psycholinguistics, and the relationship between language and cognition

W
whorf_hypothesis 22 terms Sep 22, 2025
Flashcards
Learn
Written
Match
Test
Blitz

Terms 22

1
Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis
Language shapes thought; strong (linguistic determinism) and weak (linguistic relativity) versions
2
Linguistic Relativity
Language influences (but doesn't determine) nonlinguistic thought; e.g. color perception differs by language
3
Chomsky's Universal Grammar
Innate language faculty with universal principles; Language Acquisition Device (LAD)
4
Poverty of the Stimulus
Children acquire complex grammar despite insufficient input; suggests innate knowledge
5
Critical Period Hypothesis
Language acquisition most effective before puberty; Lenneberg; cases of Genie
6
Phoneme
Smallest unit of sound that distinguishes meaning; /p/ vs /b/ in English
7
Morpheme
Smallest unit of meaning; 'un-break-able' has 3 morphemes
8
Syntax
Rules governing sentence structure; hierarchical phrase structure; constituency tests
9
Semantics
Study of meaning in language; word meaning, compositional meaning, truth conditions
10
Pragmatics
How context affects meaning; speech acts, implicature, presupposition
11
Grice's Maxims
Cooperative principle: be truthful (quality), informative (quantity), relevant (relation), clear (manner)
12
Prototype Theory
Rosch: concepts organized around typical exemplars; graded membership; robin is more 'bird' than penguin
13
Embodied Cognition
Cognition shaped by body's physical experiences; metaphors grounded in bodily experience
14
Dual Coding Theory
Paivio: information encoded in verbal and imagistic systems; both together improve memory
15
Working Memory and Language
Phonological loop maintains verbal information; limited capacity constrains sentence processing
16
Garden Path Sentences
'The horse raced past the barn fell'; initial parsing fails; shows incremental syntactic processing
17
Left Hemisphere Dominance
Language largely lateralized to left hemisphere; Broca's area (production), Wernicke's area (comprehension)
18
Broca's Aphasia
Damage to left frontal; halting, effortful speech; telegraphic; comprehension relatively intact
19
Wernicke's Aphasia
Damage to left temporal; fluent but meaningless speech; poor comprehension
20
Linguistic Determinism
Strong Whorf: language fully determines thought; largely rejected; color without words still perceived
21
Frame Semantics
Fillmore: words evoke conceptual frames; 'buy' activates commercial transaction frame
22
Conceptual Metaphor Theory
Lakoff & Johnson: abstract thought structured by bodily metaphors; 'ARGUMENT IS WAR'