Chapter 12: Language Structure Flashcards
Which side of the brain is most active during language tasks?
The left side
Define Broca’s Aphasia
deficits in speech production; speech content makes sense
Define Wernicke’s Aphasia
Deficits in speech comprehension; no problem producing speech, but it usually does not make semantic or syntactic sense
Exceptions to left-brain language dominance?
Lefties (50% of lefties house language in right hemisphere)/ Bilingual speakers (native language is left hemisphere, secondary language is bilateral
Cognitive psychology’s rise is in part due to what?
behaviorism’s failure to account for linguistics
What does all language have?
some form of grammar (syntax, semantics, phonology)
What is the Field of Linguistic’s goal?
understand the set of rules that captures the structural regularities of all languages/the individual differences of other languages
What would Chomsky (1965) say about competence and performance?
They are distinct. (While behaviorists would say they are equal)
What do errors involving words and sounds suggest?
words are selected at the clause level/sounds are inserted at a lower phrase level
What do errors of anticipation suggest?
An early phoneme is changed to a later phoneme
What do errors of exchange suggest?
Two phonemes are switches
What are the 3 main differences in humans and nonhumans?
Semanticity and the arbitrariness of units; displacement in time and space; discreteness and productivity
Define the semanticity and arbitrariness difference
relationship between language and its meaning is arbitrary (nothing inherently “chairy” about a chair)
Define the displacement in time and space difference
Language can be used to communicate over time and distance (ie animal danger alerts only occur in presence of danger)
Define the discreteness and productivity difference
Human language contains discrete units (elements of our language are combined into vast number of phrase structures
Who sponsored the Nim Chimpsky ASL work?
Herb Terrace
At what age did Nim Chimpsky stop acquisition?
adolescence
What is the Whorf hypothesis?
language influences the way we think/see the world; different language= different kinds of thoughts
How to test the Whorf hypothesis
test obscure language culture’s ability to perceive shapes, colors etc
How does the Dani tribe of New Guinea define colors?
Dark/cold= Mili; Bright/warm= Mola
How did the Dani tribe do at perceiving colors?
Could distinguish blue from red; not red from pink
What is the conclusion of the Dani tribe studies?
Language shapes how we classify/perceive color boundaries, but doesn’t allow us to perceive wholly different colors
What is language able to strongly impact?
Memory (ie “how fast is car going” example)
What do a minority of researchers believe about language?
it’s independent from thought; ie Williams syndrome/developmental deficits don’t impair language and expressive/fluent aphasia/language deficits don’t impair development
When does language education start?
Before birth; prenatal infants can hear mother speak
What can newborn infants discriminate?
native language v. foreign dialect
When does speech generation occur?
One word: around 1 yr; two words: around 18 months
Define parsing sounds
learning what sounds are likely to follow other sounds/ which are unlikely in order to filter out irrelevant acoustic cues
what does sound parsing help us understand?
where one word ends and the next begins
Who first demonstrated sound parsing?
Saffran, Aslin, and Newport (1996)
Describe the Saffran, Aslin, & Newport (1996) experiment
Infants listen to artificial language for 2 mins; afterwords were able to detect syllable pairings that broke the artificial grammar
Define the critical period
window when language is best learned (2-12 years)
Evidence for critical period
feral children never truly become fluent in a language after this period
Counterevidence for critical period
adults may learn just as quickly if given total immersion
After age 10, what is different about languge acquisition
semantics are fine but syntax shows impairment and phonology shows lots of impairment
