Chapter 9 Flashcards
how can ideas become sounds and then back to ideas
consistent well defined patterns
What are morphemes (free vs bound)
smallest language unit that carries meaning
free- can stand alone ‘cat’
bound - must be attached to another morpheme -s, -ed
What are phonemes
smallest unit of sound that can serve to distinguish words
what are vocal folds?
two flaps of muscular tissue within the larynx
What is voiceing? how is it produced
a buzzing sort of vibration produced by rapid opening and closing of vocal folds
- sounds can be voiced or voiceless
What is manner of production?
How the airflow is restricted (allows us to distinguish sounds)
- complete stop or continuous airflow?
what is place of articulation
Where the airflow is restricted
- labiodental, alveolar
labiodental sounds
front teeth close to bottom lip /f/ and /v/
alveolar
tongue behind teeth /t/ and /d/
what are the 3 production features we use to categorize speech sounds
- manner of production
- voicing
- place of articulation
- sounds that only differ by one sound similar while those differing by multiple features sound more distinct
how many different phonemes
40
misperceptions in speech are usually off by
one production feature
normal speaking rate = ___ phonemes per second, ___ per minute
15, 180
people can follow speech that is ____ words per minute.
250,
define speech segmentation
slice stream of sound into appropriate segments
What evidence proves the illusion of hearing spaces b/w words is in fact an illusion?
- people hear pauses in the wrong place when they don’t understand what someones saying
- When we physically measure speech stream there are no pauses
- foreign languages sound uninterupted and fast because we don’t have the skills to segment
What is coarticulation
We don’t produce phonemes one at a time, instead they overlap
How do we use our knowledge about vocabulary when perceiving speech
when you hear the first syllable all words starting with that sound get activated
- with the second syllable tthe cohort narrows
- and so on till you find a match
The importance of context was shown using the phonemic restoration effect. what is it, and how was it shown?
researchers modify tape-recorded sentences, take out a single syllable from one of the words and replace it with a burst of noise
- participants generate the missing sound on their own because of the context and claim to have heard it along with the burst of noise
- in addition they can’t tell where the noise appeared in the word
How did Pollack and Pickett demonstrate the benefits of context? (sentence splicing)
Recorded conversations and then spliced out individual words and presented them to new subjects
- they were only able to identify half without context
- with context they were easy to understand
define categorical perception
People are much better at distinguishing sounds across categories and are surprisingly insensitive to differences within a category
- beneficial because it allows you to hear differences that matter while ignoring variation within a category
How is categorical perception demonstrated in the data?
Computer generates stimuli longer the /ba/ –> /pa/ continuum.
- we expect there to be a graded- membership pattern, however there is an abrupt shift at the phonemic boundary so that half the stimuli is identified as /pa/ and the other half at /ba/ with no fine degradation within either category
what determines whether a plural is pronounced as /s/ or /z/
how the base noun ends
- ends with voiced sound = /z/
- ends with voiceless sound = /s/
can these phoneme combination principles be observed for novel or made up cases ?
yes - wugs
- even in young children
define referent
what a word refers to
- if you know a word’s referent you know what it means
why does a words meaning involve more than it’s referent?
- because some words don’t have referents (unicorn)
- some referents are temporary ( president)
so what does it mean to know a word?
knowing the relevant concept
define generativity
capacity to create an endless series of new combinations with a set of fundamental units
what does it mean to know a language? is this knowledge conscious?
To know how to create new forms by combining morphemes and how to adjust phonemes based on their combinations
no people can’t explain why or how they do this
why is semantic meaning not sufficient for determining if a sentence is gramatical?
some sentences have no meaning but are still gramatical
what are phrase structure rules?
stipulations that list the elements that must appear in a phrase as well as the sequence for those elements
what must a sentence consist of?
an NP and a VP
what are prescriptive vs. descriptive rules
perscriptive: how language is suppose to be used according to grammer books. Proper language - defined by the most prestigious social group
descriptive: characterizing the language as it is used by fluent speakers/listeners
ex. phrase structure rules
what study showed that phrase structure improves memory?
listeners memorize a string of words with either no structure or with function words included. Although function words were longer, this sentence was much easier to recall
how does phrase structure help you understand a sentence
it indicates the relationships between the words
what are linguistic universals? examples
principals applicable to all human languages
- all languages have nouns and verbs and pronouns
- in 98% subject preceeds verb
what is the rationale for how children learn language so quickly
- All children are born with a biological heritage that stipulates the broad outline of human language
- children are born knowing the universal principals and it is just a matter of adjusting the parameters to fit their language community
define parse? how do people parse sentences
= indentifying each words syntactic role
- happens as we go, which is more efficient but can lead to errors
what is garden path. what does it show
sentences with temporary ambiguity are interpreted incorrectly and must be rejected to seak an alternate construction
- highlights the risk of interpreting a sentence as it arrives
what is parsing guided by?
Minimal attachment: the listener preceeds through the sentence seeking the simplest phrase structure that will accomodate the words heard so far
Background knowledge: WHat is most likely to happen is the real world
-relience on function words
- tendency to interpret sentences as active
- context within the sentence or conversation and extralingual context
- intonation
what causes garden path?
- minimal attachment
- tendency to interpret sentences as active (the initial noun is the doer)
- relience on function words ( signal grammatical relationship) and background knowledge
How were real world knowledge effects on parsing documented?
using eye-tracking it has been found that
- when the initial noun phrase is an object that can’t perform the following action people realize the sentence will be passive
- people tend to interpret an ambiguous word as it’s most common meaning (statistical strategy)
what is extralingual context? provide example (apple)
physical and social settings in which you encounter sentences
‘ put the apple on the towel into the box’, if there are two apples to choose from on the towel will be interpreted as the specifier and not the destination
what is prosody
rhythm and pitch of speech - rise and fall of speech sounds
- reveals mood
- can disambiguate sentences by directing listeners attention to the theme
what are pragmatics?
how language is normally used
what is Broca’s aphaisa
- caused by damage to the left frontal lobe (broca’s area - speech prodcution)
- produces nonfluent aphasia
- speech is limited and effortful
What is wernicke’s aphasia
- caused by damage to wernicke’s area (left temporal lobe - language comprehension)
- produces fluent aphasia
- produces meaningless speech freely
- sentences full of filler words
can language loss in aphasias be specific?
yes, sometimes imparment is just to a particular procesing step
at what age is a child able to converse
3 or 4
what shows that children can learn language with adult communication that is totally non linguistic
children born deaf who aren’t taught sign will develop their own gestural language (home sign)
- thier invented language has the same formal structures and emergence patterns as ordinary language
what does specfic language impairment tell us about specific neural mechanisms for language
these individuals have normal intellegence but are impaired in linguistic tasks showing that if specialized language mechanisms are distrupted other areas remain in tact
What do over regularization errors tell us about how children learn language
it rules out the direct influence of imitations because adults never produce these forms
is learning a language explicit instruction?
no studies have shown that parents rarely correct their childrens grammar/syntax. they are more concerned with content
what experiment shows that babies/children are extremely sensitive to patterns and regularities
8 month old infant shown 2min recording of made up language in which certain syllables were statistically more likely to follow each-other (forming ‘words)
in test were suprised when the syllables were combined in novel ways - meaing they had learned the vocab of the made up language
what is semantic bootsrapping
children rely on their knowledge of semanitc relationships to figure out syntax
how can language effect decsions
patients are more likely to choose a treatment if told it is 50% succes rate rather than 50% failure rate
what is linguistic relativity
the language you speak leads to certain modes of thought
what evidence suggests language can impact perception
lanaguages with richer color vocab may percieve colors differently , making finer and more sharply defined distinctions
how can language change how we remember and perceive spatial position
- some languages emphasize absolute direction (independent of viewpoint - north/west)
- others emphasize relative direction (relies on viewpoint - right or left)
- others emphasize intrinsic direction (relative to an object)
how can language change memory of events?
in english we emphasize active sentences while Japanese and Spanish omit the agent
- when remembering events they are less likely to remember who triggered the accident
how should we think about these results according to Whorf’s original hypothesis?
language has a direct impact on congnition
- categories in your language = categories in you thoughts
- the effect is irreversible
- there is no pervasive evidence for this theory
What is a more modest interpretation of these results?
language influences cognition by shaping what we pay attention to, and these effects can be offset by other attention factors
What differences do bilingual children show from monolingual children?
- they learn both languages as quickly and as well as monolinguals but tend to have smaller vocab
- they have better executive control ( avoid distractions, switching tasks, holding info in mind while doing something else)
- language effects cognition
During the course of this day, you might say about ______
These will be chosen from a vocabulary of approximately ______
20 000 words , 80 000 words
What are the 3 levels of language?
- Conceptual level - category
- Word level (grammatical info) – that applys to the concept
- Sound level (phonological info)
→ Speech oscillogram shows ______
→ Speech Spectogram shows _______
amplitude, Frequency kHz
define VOT: Voice Onset Time
- VOT for /b/ and /p/
Time it takes between release of air and start of vocal fold vibration
-b/ less than 20 ms /p/ greater than 40 ms
What does the McGurk effect tell us about how we perceive speech?
- Understanding speech is multimodal.
- Visual information can dominate auditory information
Define phonotactics
Rules for combining phonemes
what does tip of the tongue effect demonstrate?
demonstrates the different stages of saying a word
- you have the lexical level, including grammatical information, and you might have the visual image as well, but you are missing some or all of the sound level
what did TOT research, Dr. Karin Humphreys, McMaster find?
The longer you struggle to find a word the more likely they are to forget that word the next day
- We easily add new _______
2. We don’t add new _______
- CONTENT words – Nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs
- FUNCTION words – Prepositions (of/with/to), determiners (the/a), pronouns (he/she/it), grammatical morphemes (ed/ing)
what evidence is there against children learning and applying rules to learn language?
– Network models produce rule‐like behaviour without rules. We don’t yet know how the brain does it.
Why are new words added to our vocabs?
due to changes in technology and other ways our experiences change, or as catch‐words in industry/marketing/entertainment
- also new meanings for old words
what is the cohort model of words recognition?
Marslen‐Wilson model
– Activate everything compatible (the cohort), and whittle it down in real time as we hear the word.
– VERY fast process
• Not like you are stuck with the set of words you end up with – you can recover if there is an error
how was the cohort model tested?
Lexical decision task (e.g. while hearing the word “captain”)
– Partway through hearing the word “captain” (at “cap…”), present “ship”
– Faster to respond to “ship” because “captain” is already activated
• Crucial: also faster to “prisoner” because “captive” or “capture” is also activated by “cap…”
– If wait until the end of the word “captain”, no longer primed for “prisoner”, only “ship”
what is competence vs. performance
We may have an internalized system of rules that constitutes a basic linguistic competence, but this competence may not always be reflected in our actual use of the language (performance).
surface vs deep structure
→Surface structure: syntactic, not necessarily meaning
→Deep structure: underlying meaning of a sentence
what are Error Constraints
Speech errors may be disordered speech, but they are remarkable in their orderliness.
– Word errors follow word constraints
• grammatical category (nouns to nouns, verbs to verbs); outcomes are grammatically legal
– Phonological errors follow phonological constraints
• syllable position (onsets to onsets); outcomes are phonotactically legal
- anticipation error
- perseveration error
- exchange error
- “lust and lime”
- “rust and rhyme”
- “lust and rhyme”
What is the lexical bias for word errors?
– Error outcome consists of real words.
• Phonological errors are more likely to occur when the error outcomes are real words than when they are nonsense words.
What is the feedback account of lexical bias?
- Partially activated phonemes feed back to the connected words.
- These then feed forward to other connected phonemes – a resonance of activation.
- Nonwords have no word node to support the accumulation of activation, making them less likely.
when comparing ability of Dani and americans to remember and percieve color, what happened
although Dani (Indonesian New Guinea) Only has two words for colour they have the same memory and perception as American subjects (( did have different results from brits though)
what are function words
words that have little lexical meaning or have ambiguous meaning, but instead serve to express grammatical relationships with other words
