Chapter 11: Language Flashcards
Language
a system of communication using sounds or symbols that enable us to express our feelings, thoughts, ideas, and experiences
Unique property of human language that makes it exclusive
creativity to create new and unique sentences due to its hierarchical and rule-based nature, unlike animals
Hierarchical nature of language
it consists of a series of small components that can be combined to form larger units
Basic components of language
phonemes, morphemes, prosody
Phonemes
smallest possible sound component
Morphemes
smallest possible meaningful component
Prosody
the pattern of intonation and rhythm in spoken language
Rule-based nature of language
components are arranged in certain ways and follow syntactic rules (grammatical and phonological)
Psycholinguistics
field concerned with the psychological study of how humans acquire and process language
4 major concerns of psycholinguistics
comprehension, representation in the mind, speech production, acquisition
Why are birds and chimpanzees considered to have no language?
chimpanzees can memorize a few hundred symbols but cannot perform syntax; birds vocalize more than humans but meaning is limited to specific calls
Lexicon
all of the words we know; “mental dictionary”
Semantics
the meaning of language
Lexical semantics
the meaning of words
Word frequency
the frequency with which a word appears in a language
Word frequency effect
we respond more rapidly to high-frequency words like home than low-frequency words like hike; our past experience with words influences our ability to access their meaning
Lexical decision task
decide as quickly as possible whether a string of words are words or nonwords
Speech segmentation
perception of individual words even though there are often no pauses between them
4 factors affecting our ability to hear and understand spoken words
(1) how frequently we have encountered a word, (2) the context in which words appear, (3) our knowledge of statistical regularities of language, (4) our knowledge of word meanings
Lexical ambiguity
words often have more than one meaning
Hypoglossal nerve
controls the tongue and exits the skull through the hypoglossal canal, which is the same size for pre-linguistic and modern humans
What is the earliest evidence of symbolic language?
ochre plaque made in South Africa ~75000 years ago; also earliest evidence of trade and flint mining
Tattersall’s theory on how humans acquired symbolic representation
acquired suddenly as a byproduct of another process or epiphenomenon (e.g. fine motor control, musical ability) rather than through incremental development
Support for musilanguage hypothesis
(1) syntax of music is simpler/it has less rules, (2) modern language itself is musical, has prosody and rhythm, (3) newborn infants respond to baby talk or prosody before syntax, prefer rhythm and tone of mother’s language
Gesture communication (McNeil)
suggests gesture is more primary than speaking as restricting hand movements reduced fluency of speech (more pauses)
Origin of language vs music
capacity for music predates language in historical/phylogenetic terms and developmental/ontogenetic terms; language began to be used 40-80k years ago but early evolution is still unknown
Left vs right hemisphere functions in language
left is involved with labels, abstraction, categories while right is involved with ambiguity, context, metaphor, humor; left talks over the meaning known by the right
Lexical priming
seeing a word makes it easier to respond to another word with a similar meaning that is presented after
Tanenhaus et al. findings on lexical priming
people briefly access all meanings of ambiguous words before context clarifies meaning; priming is suppressed after 200 ms delay
Meaning dominance
relative frequency of the meanings of ambiguous words
Biased dominance
one meaning of an ambiguous word occurs more than others
Balanced dominance
meanings of an ambiguous word are equally likely and compete for activation, resulting in longer fixation
Effect of prior context on a dominant meaning vs nondominant meaning
prior context facilitates activation of dominant meaning (less fixation and read quickly) but prolongs activation of nondominant meaning
How is lexical ambiguity resolved?
by context and meaning dominance
Syntax
the structure of a sentence; how words in a sentence relate to one another
Parsing
process of creating meaning by grouping of words into phrases and determining deep structure from surface structure
Garden path sentences
sentences that begin appearing to mean one thing but then end up meaning something else; illustrates temporary ambiguity before parsing is corrected
Surface structure vs deep structure of a sentence
the words we see and the underlying syntactic structure, linked by the application of transformation rules
Garden path model of parsing (Frazier)
as people read a sentence, their grouping of words into phrases is governed by a number of processing mechanisms called heuristics; syntactic rules are the ONLY thing influencing parsing
Heuristic
a rule that can be applied rapidly to make a decision; shortcut decision-making
What are the heuristics involved in parsing?
decisions about the structure of a sentence as it unfolds in time
Positive and negative of using heuristics
they are fast (200 words per minute) but can result in the wrong decision
Principle of late closure
when a person encounters a new word, a person’s parsing mechanism assumes it is part of the current phrase
Constraint-based approach to parsing
information other than syntax participates in processing as a person reads or hears a sentence
What are the constraints on parsing (apart from syntax)?
word meaning, story context, scene context
Visual world paradigm (Tanenhaus et al.)
determining how non-linguistic information in a scene can influence how a sentence is processed
Subject-relative construction
both the main clause (“the senator shouted”) and the embedded clause (“who spotted the reporter”) have the same subject
Object-relative construction
the subject in the main clause (“the senator shouted”) becomes the object of the embedded clause (“who the reporter spotted)
Why does object-relative construction result in slower processing?
it demands more of the reader’s memory and has more complex construction (pronoun “who” isn’t followed by a verb)
Inferences
determining what the text means by using our knowledge to go beyond information provided by the text
Situation model
imagined simulation of the perceptual and motor characteristics of objects and actions in a story; images are created while reading
What is an important property of any narrative?
coherence, the representation of text in a person’s mind that creates clear relations between parts of the text and the main topic of the story
Anaphoric inference
inferring that pronouns in following sentences refer to the same subject in the first sentence
Instrument inference
inferring what objects are used by subjects in a sentence through our knowledge of their functions
Causal inference
inferring that events described in one clause or sentence were caused by events that occurred in a previous sentence
N400 wave
an ERP component; a negative response in the central parietal lobe that occurs 400 ms after a word is heard or read; gets larger as word becomes more unrelated
Given-new contract
a speaker should construct sentences to include: (1) given information or information the listener knows and (2) new information
Common ground
the mental knowledge and beliefs shared among conversational parties; as a conversation continues, the amount of common ground increases
Referential communication task
two people (the director and the matcher) are exchanging information involving references in a conversation
Reference
identifying something by naming or describing it
Entertainment
process of creating common ground or synchronization between two partners through naming objects, similar gestures, speaking rate, body positions, pronunciation
Syntactic coordination
conversational partners can end up coordinating their grammatical constructions
Syntactic priming
hearing a statement with a particular syntactic construction increases the chances that a sentence will be produced with the same construction
Advantage of syntactic coordination
makes speaking easier as it frees up resources needed to deal with both understanding and producing messages
Theory of mind
the ability to understand what others feel, think, or believe, to interpret and react to others’ gestures, facial expressions, tone of voice, etc.
Turn taking
anticipating when it is appropriate to enter the conversation
Similarity between music and language
they both combine elements with syntax to create structured sequences; tones for music and words for language
Differences between music and language
(1) notes are combined based on sound while words are combined based on meaning, (2) music creates emotion through meaningless sounds while language creates emotion through meaningful words
Return to the tonic
a songs that begins with the tonic (the note associated with a composition’s key) will end on the tonic
P600 wave
an ERP component; a positive response that occurs 600 ms after the onset of a word; gets larger in response to violations of syntax (musical or language)
Congenital amusia
patients who are born with problems in music perception, have difficulty discriminating between melodies and recognizing common tunes but still have normal language abilities
Phonotactics
rules on phoneme combination
DeCasper and Fifer findings on newborn babies’ suckling behavior
babies could learn to produce different voices based on their interburst interval (IBI) and discriminate among them; they preferred their mother’s voice
DeCasper and Spence findings on babies during pregnancy
babies attend and listen to stories even before birth because, after birth, they preferred the story that was read by their mother
Babies ability for phonotactic contrast
in their first few months, infants can discriminate sounds that are not in their native language and dialects within the same language
Advantages of bilingualism
associated with the maintenance of broad phonotactic discrimination, improved memory and executive attention control
