Ch. 11: Language Flashcards
Language
Symbolic, shared system for purposeful communication.
Includes units, shared among communities, communicates thoughts.
Language globally
Language must correspond to needs of a community, so language will differ based on region/climate. More commonly spoken languages are less complex. Languages requiring tones are spoken in warm areas, where voice control is easier
Broca’s (expressive) aphasia
Can comprehend language, but issues with producing/articulating words. Ranges from only certain words to all forms of language including writing. Damage in left inferior frontal gyrus (LIFG)
Patient Tan
First discovered case of Broca’s aphasia, could only say tan, but could articulate with tone and gestures
Wernicke’s aphasia
Damage to (usually left) superior temporal lobe causing fluent, incomprehensible speech. Paraphasias and neologisms
Verbal paraphasia
Swapping a word with related things (brother/sister)
Phonemic paraphasia
Swapping/adding speech sounds (jungle/gunjle)
Neologisms
Invented words
Conduction aphasia
Damage to arcuate fasciculus (neural pathway between Broca & Wernicke areas). Can read, write, speak. Cannot find synonyms or repeat phrases.
Brain lateralization
Language is mostly in left hemisphere (sometimes not for left-handed people). Aphasia happens here. Pitch and accents (prosody), mood and attitude, often in right hemisphere. Damage here causes lack of creation/understanding of tones/prosody.
Nuturist view (linguistics)
Language is acquired through same mechanisms as skill (associative) learning. Trial and error reinforcement
Naturist view
We are born with innate capacity to learn language
Chomsky
Mortal enemy of nuturist views. Language is not stimulus-dependent, and is too complex/acquired too quickly to be skill learning. We understand phrases we never hear before.
Convergence
concept supporting naturist views. We are able to learn grammar rules though we encounter different centence structures.
Uniformity
Support for naturist view. All children learn language at the same rate.
Poverty of stimulus argument/rebuttal
Children cannot learn from imitation alone, they don’t encounter enough vocabulary/ This isn’t fully true because parents will correct children when they make a mistake (I want butter mine)
Phonemes
smallest linguistic unit
Morphemes
Smallest meaningful units (dog)
Syntax
Rules governing how words are arranged in a sentence
Semantics
meaning of words
Phonological ambiguity
We use context and visual environment in order to figure out what people are saying (comprehension is not only based on sensory input)
Lexical ambiguity
More than 80% of english words have more than one dictionary definition. Words can mean different htings
Cross-modal priming task
Given text including homophone. Context for situation briefly introduced. Two words flashed on screen, both related to homophone, but only one to context. People answer less accurately when given little time. Both words were primed, one was then inhibited.
Garden path sentence
When parsing a sentence with multiple syntax structures, one interpretation can lead awry (complex houses married and single soldiers and their families)
Two theories of sentence parsing
Syntax fist - we use grammatical rules to interpret a sentence when we read it
Constraint based model - we use non grammatical info to interpret sentences
Dyslexia types
Phonological - cannot read words letter by letter
Surface - cannot read words holistically???
New attitudes on bilingualism
Lens for examining neurocognitive processes. Alters structure and function of mind. Tool to study structures in the brain
How much of the world is bilingual
60%
Language coactivation
Both languages are often active in bilingual brains when listening/talking
Proof of coactivation
If cognates are more quickly recognized in a lexical task experiment, evidence for coactivation. (Hoshino & Knoll, 2008)
Interlingual homographs
Words that are spelled the same in two languages but have different meanings. These create interference in the bilingual brain, especially in late comprehension stages (after first glance) - Libben & Titone (2009)
1st vs 2nd language
When speaking L1, speakers can control coactivation, experience less interference. L2 is more prone to mistakes and has less conceptual links.
Statistics in late bilinguals
No coactivation seen in brain initially, but ERP reveals use of inhibition against second language, proportional to the level of coactivation (Inhibitory control model)
Asymmetrical switching cost
We experience more difficulty switching from non-dominant languages to dominant languages because more inhibition has been activated previously in the brain
Bilinguals with domain-general tasks
Bilinguals (especially native bilinguals) do better on cognitive tasks involving interference such as the flanker task, especially after multiple tries
Bilingualism in older people
Posterior regions stay more intact as bilinguals get old, delaying memory loss and dementia
Adaptive inhibition hypothesis
Because many people are only bilingual in certain parts of their lives, making bilingualism schematic for certain people (only reverting to french at home and english at school e.g.)
Entropy
Based on Shannon’s Entropy in Information Theory. Reflects linguistic composition/overall balance of language use across many contexts. High entropy: bilingualism in many contexts.
Entropy is reflective of all statistics attributed to bilingualism in bilingual studies
Lingusitic universalist view
Languages share a common underlying structure, linguistic principles are innate to the human brain
Linguistic relativity view
(Coined by Whorf) Language and thought are interconnected. Language influences worldview or cognition
