Chapter 11 Flashcards
language
a system of communication using sounds or symbols enables us to express our feelings, thoughts, ideas, and experiences
generative
many ways to construct sentences
hierarchal
- small components can be combined to form larger units
- e.g. words can be combined to create phrases, which in turn can create sentences
- language is hierarchal
rule-based structure
mental system of rules for producing correct words, phrases and sentences in a language
components of sentences
- semantics
- syntax
- morphemes
- lexicons
- phonemes
- lexical semantics
semantics
meaning of language
syntax
grammar/rules for sentence formation
morphemes
smallest unit of meaning in a language, stem-words, affixes
lexicons
words in memory (mental dictionary)
phonemes
speech sounds
lexical semantics
meaning of words
language is universal
- deaf children invent their own sign language
- all humans with normal capacities develop a language and learn to follow its rules
- language development is similar across cultures
- all have nouns, verbs, negatives, questions, past and present tense
behavioural approach to language
- B. F. Skinner proposed that language is learned through reinforcement
- children learn language by being rewarded for using correct language and punished (or not rewarded) for using incorrect language
chomsky’s approach to language
- proposed that human language is coded in the genes
- humans are genetically programmed to acquire and use language because the underlying basis of all language is similar
- saw studying language as a way to study the properties of the mind
psycholinguistics
- the psychological study of language
- the goal of psycholinguistics is to discover the psychological processes by which humans acquire and process language
areas of interest in psycholinguistics
- comprehension
- representation
- speech production
- acquisition
comprehension
understanding of spoken and written languages
representation
construction of language in the mind and integrating information from a story
speech production
mental processes involved with speech
acquisition
language learning
word frequency
frequency that a word is used in a language
word frequency effect
- faster to respond to high frequency words relative to low frequency words
- influences how we process the word
- e.g. home (high frequency) vs. hike (low frequency)
- suggestion that more time is required for processing low-frequency words
lexical decision task
- decide as quickly as possible whether strings of letters are words or nonwords
- illustrates the processing differences between high- and low-frequency words
- demonstrated slower responding to low-frequency words
speech segmentation
is the perception of words in speech
why we can segment speech?
- our ability to segment speech occurs because of:
1. word frequency
2. context words appear
3. knowledge of statistical regularity of language
4. knowledge pf word meaning
lexical ambiguity
- words with an ambiguous/more than one meaning
- e.g. rose: “she held a rose” is a noun and indicates a flower vs. “they all rose” is a verb and indicates standing up
- different meaning of an ambiguous word are activated upon its presentation
- selection of meaning is based on context
lexical priming
- occurs when a word is followed by another word with a similar meaning
- priming that involves the meaning of words
- e.g. rose would prime flower, because their meanings are related