Chapter 11; Language Flashcards
Semanticity
Language signals ”mean” something
Duality of Patterning
words are made of smaller meaningless units that are put together to mean something
Displacement
Language can be used to talk about things that aren’t
present (in space and/or time)
Productivity
Can be used to say something that has never been said before.
Cultural Transmission
Language is taught
Phoneme
The smallest unit of distinct sound in a
language
Perceptual Tuning
Some pairs of sounds get “lumped” together in one language but treated as different phonemes in another.
Sound Symbolism
Agreement that some sounds are better fits for certain meanings
What is one explanation for sound symbolism
an evolved association between high pitches and small things
Mental lexicon
our internal storehouse of the words in our vocabulary
Word Frequency Effect
Faster to process high-frequency words
Concreteness Effect:
Faster to process concrete vs. abstract words
Embodied Effects
Faster to process words that involve the human body
Challenges in word processing
-Variable pronunciation
-Finding word boundaries in constant speech stream
-Word forms can have multiple meanings
Variable Pronunciation
Words can be pronounced differently based on the words around them
Speech Segmentation
Spoken language doesn’t have breaks between words
Transitional Probabilities
The statistical patterns of how often a pair of syllables go together within a word vs. between a pair of words, in a language
Lexical Ambiguity
Words can have more than one meaning.
Balanced Dominance
Different meanings are equally frequent
Biased Dominance
One meaning is more frequent than the others
Syntax
The structure of sentences convey meaning.
Parsing
grouping words into phrases
Garden path sentences
lead the reader into an interpretation that ends up being incorrect. They have to then go back and correct their interpretation.
heuristics
rules of thumb; mental shortcuts that let us make
decisions quickly; not always correct
Principle of late closure
when encountering a new
word, a person assumes it is added to the current phrase
Constraint-Based Approach to Parsing
Various other factors play a role in how a sentence is
parsed, providing “constraints” on possible
interpretations.
-word meaning and context can influence parsing
situation model
a simulation of the perceptual and motor features of the story
Motion
Passage describes object moving
towards or away from character.
Participants then see object moving
towards or away from them. Again,
have to verify if it matches the story
Faster to respond if the stimulus
movement matched the one
described in the passage
Clarity
Describe character viewing
object clearly (e.g., clear
goggles), or through something
unclear (e.g., foggy goggles)
Faster to verify clear picture
after clear situation; degraded
picture after unclear situation
Given-New Contract
Speakers should construct sentences so that they include given
information (information a person already knows) and new
information (information the listener is hearing for the first time
Common Ground
Taking the knowledge and beliefs among conversational
partners into account
Entrainment
Synchronization between speaker
Multimodal
Language use in the real world involves a variety of cues
beyond words themselves that help with acquisition,
processing and production.
Gestures
Co-speech gestures can help process language
Prosody
Acoustic features that accompany speech
(e.g., intonation, rhythm).
These can also be used to convey meaning
