An introduction to language and speaking Flashcards
What do definitions of language often reflect?
The differences between human language and non-human animal communication systems
What is language?
An exchange of information
What can language be described as?
An arbitrary set of symbols, and rules for combining symbols, which can be used to cerate an infinite variety of messages
Describe Hockett’s design features of language
16 features of language
Believed that these differentiated human language from non-human language systems
What do Hockett’s features allow us to do?
Differentiate human communication from animal communication
What is the vocal auditory channel? (1)
All human languages are usually transmitted through vocal auditory channel, frees up your hands, don’t have to be able to see people to communicate
What is Broadcast Transmission and Directional Reception? (2)
When I’m speaking, sounds are produced in all directions, but the perceiver can localise the source of the speech, attribute the sound to a being
What is rapid fading transitoriness? (3)
Speech disappears when I stop talking, the sounds cease to exist, therefore the language attributed to those sounds cease to exist, same for sign language
What is interchangeability?(4)
Competent users of the language can repeat any message that they hear - can understand their own messages
What is total feedback? (5)
The speaker hears everything that they say - online tracking of our messages
What is specialisation? (6)
Sounds we produce are designed to convey meaning, but they are not biological outcome of another activity.
E.G Dog after a run –> panting behaviour –> tired, hot, thirsty. BUT this is not the purpose of the behaviour - it is cooling
What is semanticity? (7)
The ties between the word and its meaning are definite. Sounds denote specific messages.
Exceptions are homophones - leak leek site sight sauce source
What is arbitrariness? (8)
Words are arbitrary and decided by agreement. Whales are huge but the world is relatively small. Microorganisms are tiny but the world is relatively large - the words themselves are not representative
What is discreteness? (9)
Linguistic representations can be broken down into small discrete units, which combine with each other in other rule-governed ways
Example - Dog - adding ‘s’ to the word denotes plurality. Perceived categorically, we can’t denote a greater quantity of dogs by how loudly or long we pronounce the S
What is displacement? (10)
Can talk about things that aren’t immediately in our vicinity - other countries, cities, times, places, things that don’t exsit or never existed, or never will exist, hopes, creams
What is productivity? (11)
Language is not stagnant - it changes
We develop new and novel words with new meaning
What is traditional transmission? (12)
Language is acquired through social group, teaching through social interaction - ongoing process
What is duality of patterning? (13)
Speech can be analysed on two levels
1) Made up of meaningless element - a limited inventory of sounds or phonemes
2) As made up of meaningful elements - virtually limitless inventory of words or morphemes
What does language enable us to do?
To communicate thoughts and concepts to other people
What does human language require a person to do?
- link words to meanings (form–> semantics)
-understand rules that subtly alter the meaning of a phrase (syntax) - be aware that specific combinations of sounds carry meaning (morphology)
- use language to convey meaning via the way we choose to speak (pragmatics)
What is the Sapir-Whorf theory?
Language helps us think
What did Winawaer et al 2007 find?
Colour perception affected by language - Russian and English speakers differing perception of colour
What is language based on?
Mental representations
What are mental representations developed via?
Experience with sensory input
How is the store of mental representations for language developed?
Experience with language
What do we match mental representations to?
To words we see or hear
Why do we activate our mental representations of words?
To speak or write
What is the mental representation for compehension?
Input (speech) –> Activate (existing mental representations of sound - link to meaning –> Output (comprehension)
What is the mental representation for production?
Input (Concept for communication) –> activate (meaning) - link to (existing representations of sound) –> output (Speech, writing, gesture)
What are the language functions as said by Lichteim 1885?
Speaking + writing = production
Reading + understanding = comprehension
What happened to Sarah Scott after her stroke?
Sarah can comprehend speech but not speak (as language production and comprehension are distinct processes)
Sarah knows what she wants but is struggling to say it
What are the building blocks of language?
Semantics
Syntax and morphology
Form - phonology
Speech
To express a concept, what does the semantic representation have to link with?
Form and syntax
What is phonology?
Sound system of english language
How many phonemes are there in English?
40
What is a grapheme?
A visual representation off phoneme
What is pragmatics?
The meaning within the meaning
What is the purpose of Grice’s maxims?
Understanding when a person has violated a maxim allows us to interpret the meaning within the meaning.
What are Grice’s maxims?
1) Quantity - don’t include more information
2) Quality - communication should be truthful
3) Relation - communication should be relevant to the topic of conversation
4) Manner - speaker avoids ambiguity
How fast do we communicate per second?
Speak at 2-3 words per second
How do we communicate per minute?
150-200 words per minute
CHECK THE SPREADING ACTIVATION SLIDES IDK ALAS YOU ARE CONFUSED
What are the three methods used to test speech production?
Timing of speech onset, hesitations and pauses
Speech errors
Tip-of-the-tongue state
Explain timing of speech onset, hesitations and pauses
A delay in initiating speech may be the result of processing problemsW
What did Schachter et al 1991 find?
Found more ah’s and uh’s in speech for humanities compared to natural science lectures. This is because the humanities lecturer has a wider range of lexicon compared to the natural science lecturer.
Explain timing of speech
Hesitations provide insight into menta processes
Larger number of words in the lexicon result in more hesitations
- concepts compete for articulation
Explain speech errors
You know what you want to say but retrieve the wrong word to say it
Vigliocco and Hartsuiker 2002 estimate an error occurs every 500 sentences
What is an example of a speech error?
Slip of the tongue - exchange usually come from the same category
When can switches occur?
At the end of a phrase. Syntactic and morphological elements left in place.
What is tip of the tongue state?
A state where you know what you want to say but have trouble retrieving the word to say it
Explain tip of the tongue state - competition?
Interference from confliction information results in hesitation or tip of the tongue state - Schachter 1999
Activation and competition between related items ‘blocks’ retrieval of the target word. - Smith and Tindell 1997
Explain tip of the tongue state - fragment completion task.
Target fragment - AN_TO_Y - anatomy
Related prime - anchovy
Target fragment - B_G_A_E
Unrelated prime - failure
–> Related items compete for activation/articulation
Activation of related information (EG anchovy interferes with access of target information EG ANATOMY
Activation of unrelated information EG failure does not interfere access if target information EG BAGGAGE
What is the evidence of language production being a series of processes?
Competitive processes underpin selection of concepts
–> hesitations in speech, blend errors, tip of the tongue state
Production requires concepts to be activated, morphological elements to be added and words to be articulated
–> speech errors respect syntactic, word and phonological categories, tip of the tongue state.
What did evidence from speech errors result in?
The development of computational models of speech production that conceptualise production as a series of processes with rules
