Read the following passages and answer the following questions for each one:

1. What is the phenomenon being explained?

2. What theories are advanced to explain the phenomenon?

3. Which theory seems the most plausible and why? (Use the criteria of ad-equacy.)

4. Regarding the most credible theory, is there a test implication men-tioned? If so, what is it? If not, what would be a good test implication for the theory?

5. What test results would convince you to change your mind about your preferred theory?

PASSAGE 1

"In the past several years, a researcher named David Oates has been advocating his discovery of a most interesting phenomenon. Oates claims that backward messages are hidden unintentionally in all human speech. The messages can be understood by recording normal speech and playing it in reverse.... [According to Oates] 'Any thought, any emotion, any motive that any person has can appear backwards in human speech. The implications are mind boggling because reverse speech opens up the Truth'... To our knowledge there is not one empirical investigation of reverse speech in any peer-reviewed journal. If reverse speech did exist it would be, at the very least, a noteworthy scientific discovery. However, there are no data to support the existence of reverse speech or Oates's theories about its implications."

What is the primary mission of the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League of the World?

What does this organization seek to do? Underline your response.

Who is the Universal Negro Improvement Association a champion for? Why? Support your response with evidence.

According to Garvey, what has been the great problem of the Negro for the last 500 years? Using evidence from the text, discuss why this has been a challenge to address.

Reread the underlined word, “stateworthy.” Based on the context of the speech and the surrounding sentences, what do you think “stateworthy” means?

Where would African unification take place? What would they do there? Use evidence from the text to support your response.

Explain the argument Garvey make at the conclusion of this speech. What is his rationale? Use evidence from the text to support your response.

Linguistic

You will conduct a linguistic analysis of two aphasic patients. While we do not have direct access to patients, there are several examples on YouTube that we can utilize. You will require to phonetically/phonologically and syntactically analyze the speech of these patients.

Kent

Kent has been diagnosed with an aphasia. Before proceeding, read the following article that provides a solid overview of the articulatory and perceptual deficits observed in aphasic patients. You will need to specifically reference this article in your responses regarding Kent:

Article: Phonological Aspects of Aphasia 

1. Provide two methods that the interviewer used to confirm that Kent could understand what he was being asked. 
2. Given our discussion in class, from which type of aphasia might Kent suffer? Provide three reasons why you have arrived upon this conclusion, supported by examples from his speech. 

Considering the Dronkers & Baldo (2009) and your observations in response to Q2, where might you expect Kent's lesion to be located in the brain? Reference the reading and provide motivation for your answer. 

1. Identify six mispronunciations in his speech (some of these can be within the same word).
   1. Provide the phonetic transcription of how these six words would standardly be produced by a neurologically healthy individual. 
   2. Provide a fine phonetic transcription for how Kent produced these words. Include timestamps for each error so that they can be verified. At least two of these errors should be substitution errors and two should be simplification errors.
2. Blumstein identifies four major types of speech production errors in aphasic patients. For your feature substitution errors, provide the features that are being substituted. Blumstein makes a prediction for the number of features that are typically substituted in patients. Using your examples from Kent’s speech, can you verify or disconfirm this prediction? 
3. For your simplification errors, Blumstein also makes predictions about what is likely to occur.
   1. Describe Blumstein’s observations about simplification errors. Which segments are deleted and why according to Blumstein? 
   2. Do the substitution errors that you identified in Kent’s speech conform to Blumstein’s observation? Be sure to specifically reference your examples and provide a detailed phonological description (e.g., specify the features, classes of segments, syllabic structure) in your response.

Charles

Charles was also diagnosed with an aphasia, though at the time of his stroke, his exact type of aphasia was not known. Take a look at the clipped video below and consider the nature of Charles' deficit.

1. Provide the syntactic structure of the first question he was posed and the final question he was unable to answer. You can either use bracket notation or a tree structure to illustrate the structure of the first question. Moreover, identify the thematic roles in the sentence. 
2. What are the key differences between the two sentence types? Be specific and relate to the examples. 
3. (1) what type of aphasia might Charles suffer from and (2) with which aspects of syntax might he actually difficulty considering your response to Q2 just above?