Q&A Hero

Q: How can linguists determine the age of a language?

Q: What is chronemics?

Q: Generally, Buss's cross-cultural data show that a. only females value traits in a mate that facilitate a long-term relationship. b. males and females do not differ from each other in ways consistent with evolutionary theory. c. males value female promiscuity more than females value male promiscuity. d. cultural differences and gender differences both contribute to mate preferences.

Q: In Buss's cross-cultural survey, which of the following traits did males value more than females?a. Ambition and industriousness b. Good looks c. Virginityd. Sexual experience

Q: In Buss's cross-cultural survey, which of the following traits did females value more than males?a. Ambition and industriousness b. Good looks c. Virginityd. Youth

Q: The study of the cultural use of interpersonal space is called _________.

Q: What arguments are there against the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis? Why is this approach not accepted by every linguist today?

Q: In Buss's cross-cultural survey of mate preferences, he found that males and females cared most abouta. chastity. b. good health. c. mutual attraction and love.d. good sex.

Q: Why is the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis significant to linguistic studies?

Q: Which of the following statements is true? a. There are no gender differences related to preferred age of mates and preferred number of partners. b. Men tend to marry younger women, but this difference decreases as men age; in comparison, there is a greater age difference between women and their husbands. c. In regard to new relationships, it seems that men tend to underestimate women's sexual interest, while women tend to overestimate men's interest in commitment. d. With regard to new relationships, it seems that men tend to overestimate women's sexual interest, while women tend to underestimate men's interest in commitment.

Q: What is code switching?

Q: Evolutionary theory predicts that human males should choose females whoa. are older than they are. b. have high reproductive value. c. have had many sexual partners.d. are not symmetrical.

Q: What is AAVE, and how is it related to social stratification?

Q: Define sociolinguistics and give an example of it.

Q: Evolutionary theory predicts that human females should choose males whoa. can provide the most resources. b. are younger than they are. c. have had many sexual partners.d. are not symmetrical.

Q: According to Keith Basso, why do Apache Indians find white speech so offensive?

Q: Imagine you are a cultural anthropologist and you have traveled to Papua New Guinea to study a remote tribe of humans. What is the likelihood that this tribe allows marriage between brothers and sisters? a. Very likely. b. Very unlikely. c. They only allow it for royalty. d. It cannot be assumed based on the information at hand.

Q: The advantage of outbreeding over inbreeding, and why inbreeding is avoided in humans and other primates, is that a. it reduces the risk of the expression of deleterious alleles. b. it reduces the risk of heterozygosity. c. it increases the likelihood of the expression of deleterious alleles. d. it increases the likelihood of homozygosity.

Q: Taiwanese minor marriages a. produce about 80% fewer children than other arranged marriages. b. are much less likely to end in separation or divorce. c. rarely result in infidelity. d. were possible when parents had greater control over their children's actions.

Q: What did anthropologists Horst and Miller find to be the primary uses of cell phones among Jamaicans?

Q: How does Ferdinand de Saussure distinguish between language and speech, and why is this important for anthropologists?

Q: Which of the following is evidence that psychological mechanisms reduce the chance of close inbreeding? a. Taiwanese minor marriages b. First-party attitudes toward incest c. People who move to a kibbutz in their teens d. Domestic situations where the wife moves to the husband's group after marriage

Q: When a sister mates with her brother, there is a ________ chance that he will carry the same lethal recessive gene that she does.a. 50% b. 25% c. 100%d. 75%

Q: How do linguists define a "word"?

Q: Taboos about who is an eligible marriage partner are a. influenced by inbreeding avoidance mechanisms. b. influenced by culturally transmitted rules. c. not common cross-culturally. d. both a and b.

Q: Incest prohibitions a. exist in 50% of societies for brothers and sisters. b. do not exist for distant kin. c. conform to genetic categories. d. do not always conform to genetic categories.

Q: What are the four components of any language?

Q: What is an allophone?

Q: What success did Dr. Sue Savage-Rumbaugh have in teaching sign language to the bonobo chimpanzee Kanzi?

Q: Humans rarely mate with close relatives because a. culture stops us from doing what we really desire. b. childhood propinquity stifles desire. c. natural selection cannot stop the power of culture. d. Both a and c.

Q: What is the importance of a speech community for a human child?

Q: Aversions to inbreeding extend beyond our attitudes toward our own mating behavior to include strong beliefs about appropriate mating behavior by other individuals. This describes a. third-party attitudes toward incest. b. situations such as in kibbutzim, where the incest taboo is extended to agemates. c. cultures where couples are betrothed as children and raised together like brothers and sisters. d. both b and c.

Q: If the coefficient of relatedness between mates is 50%, and both are heterozygous for a lethal recessive, Mendel's laws predict that ________ of their offspring will be homozygous recessive and die.a. 25% b. 50% c. 75%d. 100%

Q: What is the "language instinct"?

Q: What are the three things that make human language unique?

Q: If you have one deleterious recessive that causes early death in its homozygous state, what is the probability that an offspring by you and your full sibling would acquire the lethal disease?a. 1:1 b. 1:2 c. 1:4d. 1:8

Q: When a language is lost, so also are many important cultural elements.

Q: Nonhuman primates avoid close inbreeding a. by actively avoiding matings with offspring. b. by the transfer of one sex at sexual maturity to distant groups. c. only in times of famine. d. Both a and b.

Q: Natural selection should favor behaviors that a. reduce mating with relatives. b. increase mating with relatives. c. increase mating with siblings but not parents. d. decrease the chances of outbred matings.

Q: In more than one half of the states of the U.S., English has been designated as the official state language.

Q: Among nonhuman primates, inbreedinga. is common. b. is rare. c. occurs when animals are bored.d. is avoided only with siblings.

Q: There is one language spoken by the majority of the world's people.

Q: The core vocabulary is a list of words which designate things, actions, and activities likely to be named in all the world's languages.

Q: Inbreeding a. increases the chances of deleterious recessives coming together in one individual. b. is bad because individuals with families have more defects than individuals without families. c. decreases the chances of deleterious recessives coming together in one individual. d. is bad because individuals with families have fewer defects than individuals without families.

Q: Offspring of outbred matings have ________ offspring of inbred matings.a. lower fitness than b. the same fitness as c. higher fitness thand. more variable fitness than

Q: The study of the social use of space is called kinesics.

Q: Evolutionary psychologists believe the human mind evolved to solve the challenges that confront food foragers because a. foraging is more time-consuming than agriculture. b. humans have practiced foraging for most of our evolutionary history. c. sexual division of labor is clearly evident in the fossil record. d. foraging requires greater skill compared with agriculture.

Q: Wearing clothes with designer labels on them can be considered a form of nonverbal communication.

Q: The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis argues that because the human brain is similar regardless of cultures, then all language is similar as well.

Q: If a person speaks a more "proper" form of English (such as SSAE instead of AAVE), then their thought process will become more complex and rational.

Q: Evolutionary psychologists argue specifically that human brains are designed to solve problems involvinga. living things. b. reciprocal altruism between people. c. selective arguments.d. science and technology.

Q: Most of the Jamaican cell phone users studied by Horst and Miller only gave gifts to return earlier favors.

Q: One problem with the concept of the environment of evolutionary adaptedness is that a. there is little fossil evidence from 240"40 kya. b. some scientists believe that small-scale agricultural communities would make a better model. c. our ancestors did not practice inbreeding avoidance. d. modern hunter-gatherers are different from our ancestors in many ways.

Q: In some cultures, the speech form used depends on the relative social status of the individuals speaking.

Q: Evolutionary psychologists believe that the human mind evolved to a. deal with the pressures of living in densely populated urban areas. b. allow humans to create more and more complicated technology. c. solve the challenges of a foraging lifestyle. d. avoid predators.

Q: The actual performance of a language by an individual speaker (parole) is arbitrary and abstract.

Q: It is generally agreed that complex adaptationsa. evolve slowly.b. can evolve in short amounts of time.c. do not evolve by natural selection.d. arise in ways we cannot understand.

Q: The vocabulary of a language reflects the culture of the people who speak it.

Q: According to evolutionary psychologists, the environment of evolutionary adaptednessa. is long gone. b. has not yet arrived. c. is here now.d. never existed.

Q: Some languages do not have syntactic structure.

Q: The logic of evolutionary psychology begins with the precept that a. people are adapted to modern ways of life. b. complex adaptations evolve quickly. c. natural selection creates psychologies in animals in such a way as to solve specific adaptive problems. d. humans evolved in stratified societies and high population density.

Q: The logic of evolutionary psychology is based on which of the following precepts? a. Brains are made up of many special-purpose subcomponents designed to solve specific adaptive problems. b. Brains are general-purpose machines designed to solve many adaptive problems. c. Brains evolved through drift-like processes. d. Brains of humans are capable of solving problems faced by all species of animal.

Q: The way genes are expressedphenotypesis influenced by which of the following?a. The genes of the parents b. The local environment c. The age of the organismd. The culture

Q: Each language has its own set of phonemes.

Q: All the sounds used in the different languages of the world can be represented in the International Phonetic Alphabet.

Q: Which of the following statements is true? a. Phenotypic traits result from either an individual's genes or from the impact of the environment, but not from both factors. b. Bill Lambeer is tall because his genes specified that he"d be tall. c. The expression of any genotype depends on the environment. d. Genes are like blueprints specifying an individual's phenotype.

Q: Flexible behavioral traits a. cannot be shaped by natural selection because they are too sensitive to environmental conditions. b. can be shaped by natural selection because they are sensitive to environmental conditions. c. can be shaped by natural selection only if they are canalized. d. both a and c.

Q: Even a child brought up in isolation will automatically be able to speak the language of his or her parents.

Q: Behavioral traits are a. less genetic than morphological traits. b. more canalized than morphological traits. c. less canalized than morphological traits. d. both a and c.

Q: Even though biologically capable of capable of making the sounds of human language, no chimp has ever produced voluntary speech-like verbalization.

Q: The ability of humans to use language depends partially on the linkage between the visual and auditory areas of the brain.

Q: All children, regardless of culture, go through the same stages and sequence for language learning.

Q: The expression of ________ traits is most sensitive to environmental conditions.a. hormonal b. behavioral c. morphologicald. physiological

Q: Communication among nonhuman animals can be as complex as human language.

Q: The nature"nurture debate proposes that a. people vary simply because they have different genes and live in different environments. b. there is a clear distinction between the effects of genes (nature) and the effects of the environment (nurture). c. the expression of genes is dependent upon the local environment. d. all of human behavior is determined by the genes.

Q: Which of the following statements about language and culture in the United States is incorrect? a. Simply sharing the same language is not sufficient for effective communication. b. As of 2011, 31 states have enacted legislation to make English their state's official language. c. English is the national language of the United States. d. In 2007, it was calculated that about 1 in every 8 U.S. residents was an immigrant. e. The U.S. has increasingly become a multilingual society.

Q: Which of the following statements is true? a. Genes are like blueprints that specify phenotypes. b. The expression of any genotype always depends on the environment. c. There is a clear distinction between the effects of genes and the effects of the environment. d. People vary only because their genes carry different specifications.

Q: All of the following are reasons why language is being lost today in such great numbers except: a. Nation-states often try to suppress linguistic diversity. b. Global trade favors more populous languages from more wealthy nations. c. Linguistic minorities are increasingly working to teach their languages to their children. d. It is more profitable and advantageous to speak languages that are numerically superior. e. A vast majority of media is conducted in a few languages.

Q: Phenotypic traits result a. from learning. b. from genes. c. from an interaction of genes and environment. d. either from learning or from genetic programs.

Q: Opposition to the use of evolutionary theory is most intense when it is applied toa. nonhuman primates. b. early hominins. c. the physiology of modern humans.d. the behavior of modern humans.