Chapter 10- Language Flashcards
Morphemes:
• Smallest language units that carry meaning
• Free morphemes- stand alone units (talk, apple)
Bound morphemes- attached to free morphemes (-ed, -s)
Phonemes:
Smallest unit of sound that can serve to distinguish words in language
Voicing
Vocal folds (2 flaps of muscular tissue) in larnyx rapidly opening and closing
Produced when you make “z” sound, but not “s” sound
Manner of Production
○ Distinguish sounds based on how airflow is restricted
○ i.e. creating “s”, “sh”, “f” sound narrows airway
○ i.e. creating “p”,”b” sound stops air flow completely for a brief period of time
Place of Articulation:
Place of Articulation:
Bilabial Sounds
□ Lips closed
i.e. “p”,”b”
Labiodental sounds
□ Top teeth to bottom lip
i.e. “f”, “v”
Alveolar sounds
□ Tongue behind upper teeth
i.e “t”,”d”
Speech Segmentation:
“Slicing” stream of speech into appropriate segments (no gaps to indicate where one phoneme ends and the next one begins)
Coarticulation:
• Production of phonemes overlap
• i.e. While saying the word “soup” when you produce the “s” sound, mouth is already moving into position to produce vowel sound
• Makes speech production faster and more fluent
“s” sound when you say soup is different from “s” sound preceding other vowels
Phonemic Restoration Effect:
• Supplement input from phonemes with other knowledge
i.e. Researchers replaced “s” in “legislature” with noise, but when presented in a sentence like “The state governors met with their respective legi*latures”, participants swore they heard the whole word
Categorical Perception:
• People are better at hearing differences between categories of sounds than they are at hearing differences within category of sounds
• i.e. Very sensitive to difference between “g” and “k”, not so sensitive to differences between 2 “p” sounds
• Ignored subphonemic variations
i.e. Want to know if sound is “pa” (path) or “ba” (bath), but don’t care exactly how it is pronounced, so variations of each sound is ignored
Orthography:
Sequence of letters that spell a word
Generativity of Language:
• Capacity to create an endless series of new combinations, all built from the same set of fundamental units
Combine morphemes to create new words, adjust phonemes when words put together in new combinations…etc
Syntax:
• Rules governing sequence of words in a phrase or sentence
Doesn’t depend on meaning
Phrase Structure Rules:
• List of elements that must appear in a phrase, and specify the sequence of those elements
Determines overall organization of sentence
Prescriptive Rules:
• Rules describing how language is “supposed to be”
• i.e. “aint” is not a proper word
Always changing
Descriptive Rules:
• Rules characterizing language as it is ordinarily used
• Phrase structure rules
• Regularities in phrase structure
i.e. noun phrase (the boy) followed by verb phrase (loves his dog)
Sentence Parsing:
• Figure out each word’s syntactic role in a sentence
Occurs as soon as each word is heard, as opposed to waiting to hear the entire sentence
Garden Path Sentences:
• Sentences in which you are initially led to one interpretation, but that interpretation is wrong
• Problem with sentence parsing as each word appears
i.e. “the secretary applauded for his efforts was soon promoted”, initially “applauded” is thought to be the main verb
Active/Passive Sentences:
Most sentences are active as opposed to passive, so people tend to assume they’ll be hearing active voice sentences (initial noun phrase is the doer of the action)
i.e. Assume “the secretary applauded” as the secretary performing the action of applauding
Extralinguistic Context:
- Physical and social setting in which you encounter sentences
- i.e. See 2 apples on a table, one on a towel, one not. “put the apple on the towel in the box”.
Context prevents confusion
Prosody:
• Rhythm and pitch cues in speech
Can prevent ambiguity such as garden path phrases
Pragmatics:
How language is ordinarily used
Aphasia:
Damage to specific parts of brain that results in disruption of language
Nonfluent Aphasia:
• Result of damage to Broca’s area in left frontal lobe
Verbal comprehension abilities intact, but can’t produce language
Fluent Aphasia:
• Result of damage to Wernicke’s area
Patients able to talk freely, but speech doesn’t make sense (comprehension affected)
Specific Language Impairment (SLI):
Normal intelligence and no problems with muscle movements required to produce language
Slow to learn language, have difficulties understanding and producing many sentences
Overregularization Errors:
• Over reliance on speech patterns results in errors
i.e “yesterday we goed”, “I have 2 foots”, “I willn’t”
Semantic Bootstrapping:
Children rely on knowledge of semantic relationships as a basis for figuring out syntax
Wolf Children:
• Discovered wold mother in den with 2 human children
Had animal like qualities, couldn’t be rehabilitated to use language normally
Linguistic Relativity:
• View that language you speak forces you into certain modes of thought
• i.e. Languages with richer colour vocabulary result in perceiving colours differently
• Language has unique effect on cognition (categories used in language are the categories used in your thoughts)- irreversible
Language guides what you pay attention to, and attention effects shape cognition- reversible
