GRE Subject Test: Psychology : Phonemes, Morphemes, & Phrases
Study concepts, example questions & explanations for GRE Subject Test: Psychology
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Example Questions
Example Question #11 : Language
Telegraphic speech, where morphemic usage is limited to very short usage, is commonly seen in adults as a symptom of which of the following?
Word salad
Dysarthria
All of these
Nominal aphasia
Non-fluent aphasia
Non-fluent aphasia
Non-fluent aphasia, such as Broca's aphasia, is often triggered by damage due to stroke or other cardiovascular problem, and often produces the short, morpheme-absent language typical of telegraphic speech.
Example Question #11 : Language
Which of the following correctly mirrors the types of inflectional morphemes below:
Possessive. . . Superlative. . . Past Tense. . . Past Participle
None of these
Cars. . . Grandest. . . Ran. . . Jumps
Zach's. . . Strongest. . . Proven. . . Joined
Its. . . Highest. . . Waited. . . Waited
Mine. . . Greater. . . Held. . . Swinging
Its. . . Highest. . . Waited. . . Waited
The answer makes more sense when you realize that the past tense and past participle of the verb wait are both waited. Consider the sentences "I waited for John for half an hour" and "I had waited for John for half an hour" -- both grammatically correct, but implying different things about the present.
Example Question #12 : Language
One generally agreed-upon difference between phonemes and morphemes is best described by which of the following?
Phonemes are more limited in number than morphemes
Everyone across the world uses the same set of phonemes, but morphemes vary wildly
Morphemes are generally necessary to express complex ideas, whereas phonemes are sufficient for simplistic communication
None of these
Morphemes cannot be learned until phonemes are mastered
Phonemes are more limited in number than morphemes
Phonemes are the basic units of sound that distinguish one word from another in a particular language. The number of phonemes the human mouth and vocal cords can produce is limited by physiology. Within this limit, an extremely high number of morphemes can be produced.
Example Question #13 : Language
One known phoneme-based difficulty in learning English is best identified by which of the following?
The very large amount of consonant phonemes compared to other languages
The fact that English phonemes rarely correspond to the alphabet that produces them
The relative lack of vowel phonemes compared to other languages
All of these
The fact that there are many phonemes to learn for only a few morphemes
The fact that English phonemes rarely correspond to the alphabet that produces them
Some languages, such as Arabic, benefit from having their phonemes developed at nearly the same time as their alphabet, so that each letter directly or almost directly corresponds to the sound it makes in the language. English uses a slightly modified form of the Latin alphabet, originally designed with Latin phonemes in mind, and thus poorly represents its 26 letters phonemically. This causes great difficulty for speakers of more phonetically aligned languages.
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