Chapter 9: Language Flashcards
Language
Structure: has structural principles such as a grammar or a system of rules and principles that specifies the properties of expression
Localization: various physical mechanisms…specific language centers in the brain
Use: used for expression of thought, establishing social relationships, communication of ideas, clarifying ideas
Necessary Characteristics of Language
Regular: governed by a system of rules, called grammar
Productive: infinite combinations of things can be expressed in it
Additional Characteristics of Language
Arbitrariness: lack of a necessary resemblance between a word or sentence and what it refers to
Discreteness: system can be subdivided into recognizable parts (e.g. sentences into words, words into sounds)
What Is Not Language
Bird song is not a language because songs and calls communicate only about certain topics (no productivity)
Bees do not have a language because physical motions of the dance carry info about nectar sources (lack of arbitrariness)
Structure Components of Language
Phonology
Morphology
Syntax
Semantics
Pragmatics
Grammar
Linguistic competence
Linguistic performance
Phonology
Study of systematic ways in which speech sounds are combined and altered in language
Phonetics
Study of speech sounds and how they are produced
Phonology: Consonants & Vowels
Vowels work without obstructing airflow, depending on shape and position of the tongue and lips
Consonants in general are made by closing or almost closing part of the mouth
Differ in place of articulation: where the obstruction of the airflow occurs
Differ in manner of articulation: mechanics of how the airflow is restricted
Voicing is different based on if the vocal cords must be vibrated or not (e.g. s vs z)
Phoneme Combination
Features of phonemes are involved in phonological rules that govern how they can be combined
E.g. if two true consonants (all consonants except h, w, y, r, l, and some other sounds like th, ch) are at beginning of english word, first must be an s
This rule prevents word strings such as dtop or mkeech from being legal words in english, whereas stop and speech are words
Syntax
Arrangement of words within sentences
More broadly is the structure of sentences (parts and the way parts are put together)
Syntactic Rules
Govern ways in which different words or larger phrases can be combined to form legal sentences
Two requirements;
Should be able to describe every legal sentence
Should never be able to describe an illegal sentence
Syntax: Sentence Structure
Constituents: dividing words of sentence into groups
Various levels of grouping
Use tree diagram
-Nodes depict various constituents of the sentence
-E.g. ball is part of four constituents: [ball], [the red ball], [chase the red ball], [the poodle will chase the red ball]
Generally speaking, can replace a noun with another noun and will still have a syntactically grammatical sentence
Syntax: Phrase Structure Rules
Functions to generate the structures depicted in tree diagrams
AKA rewrite rules
Phrase structure rules allow certain symbols to be rewritten as other symbols
Lexical insertion rule: allows insertion of words (lexical items) into the structure generated by the phrase structure rules
Transformational Rule
Turn structures into other structures
Preposing phrasal constituents could be allowed through this rule
Semantics
Study of meaning
For listeners to figure out the meaning of a sentence, they need to pay attention to more than just the meanings of individual words
Syntax gives clues as to what a sentence means
Semantics Must Explain
Anomaly (Why can’t one say things like “Coffee ice cream can take dictation”?)
Self-contradiction (Why is it contradictory to say, “My dog is not an animal”?)
Ambiguity (Why isn’t it clear where I intend to go in “I need to go to the bank”—to a nan-cial institution or to the side of a river?)
Synonymy (Why does “e rabbit is not old enough” mean the same thing as “e rabbit is too young”?)
Entailment (Why does “Pat is my uncle” mean that Pat is male?)
Pragmatics
Social rules of language
Include certain etiquette (e.g. not interrupting others)
Pragmatics: Utterances
Assertives
Directives
Commissives
Expressives
Declarations
Assertives
Speaker asserts belief in a proposition (e.g. its hot in here)
Require little overt response from listener, who is assumed to add the info asserted by the speaker into their own model of the world
Directives
Instructions from speaker to listener (e.g. close the door)
Commissives
Utterances that commit the speaker to some later action (e.g. I promise to clean my room)
Expressives
Describe psychological states of speaker (e.g. I apologize for eating the last piece of pie)
Declarations
Speech acts in which the utterance is itself the action (e.g. you’re fired)
Speech Act Theory
Part of job of listeners is to figure out which of the five types of a particular utterance is and to respond appropriately
Fundamental Problems In Speech Perception
Speech is continuous: rarely pauses around each sound, sounds blend into each other (pauses we perceive are illusory)
Single phoneme sounds different depending on context (e.g. gender of speaker affects pitch, speaker’s accent)
Speech Perception
Involves top down processes
Explanation that we perceive speech in the way we perceive written text is not correct
Understanding speech is usually easy unless it is a foreign language or if speaker has a speech impediment
McGurk Effect
Visual cues affect how sounds are perceived
If lips do something different than what they’re saying, you hear what their lips do
If are hearing Ba, if video person looks they they’re saying Fa we hear that
Phoneme Restoration Effect
Listeners restore missing phonemes predicted by other linguistic info during the course of perception
Neighboring stimuli have a great impact upon how speech sounds are perceived
Participants shadowing speech were more likely to restore distortion of word if the word was highly predictable from the context
Speech Errors
Instances in which what the speaker intended to say is quite clear, but speaker makes some substitution or reorders the elements
Much of data from speech error studies is observational
Classes of Speech Errors
Meaning relations: using finger in place of toe, or walk instead of run
-Rarely involve similarities of form
Form relations: guest instead of goat, or mushroom for mustache
-Rarely involve similarities of meaning
Relative infrequency of word substitution errors showing both meaning and form similarities indicates the language production system processes info about meaning and info about form at different points in sentence construction
Lexical Decision Task
Observers presented with target letter strings and asked to decide if it is properly spelled word
Observers are faster and more accurate when target word is preceded by another word, called a prime, that is associated in meaning
Semantic priming effect
Processes Responsible for Semantic Priming
Fast acting automatic spread of activation
Slow expectancy driven process
Switch Instruction Experiment
Switch instructions: when participants saw prime word building, they should expect it to be followed by a target word that named part of the body (and vice versa, part of body = part of building)
When target word was presented shortly after prime word, instructions to participant did not matter
No priming was observed for pairs like body-window, even though they were consistent with switch expectation
Evidence for automatic spreading activation
Switch Instruction Experiment With More Time
When increased amount of time separating presentation of prime and target
Participants were slower to respond to items that were really related (e.g. body-nose) than they were to respond to items that were completely unrelated (e.g. bird-arm)
Evidence for operation of a slow acting expectancy process
Modularity Hypothesis
Argues that certain perceptual and language processes are modules
Processes are thought to be set apart from other cognitive processes (e.g. memory, thinking, problem solving are non modular)
Operate automatically and independently of other cognitive processes like thought
Domain specific
Module Processes
Domain Specific: operates specifically with certain kinds of input and not others
E.g sentence parsing involves processes that are specific to division of phrases and words into constituents
Informationally Encapsulated Process: operates independently of the beliefs and the other info available to the processor
Evidence For Modularity Hypothesis
When people are presented with an ambiguous word all possible meanings are triggered for a fraction of a second
Triggering appears to be automatic and reflexive, and completely independent of other cognitive processes
Whorfian Hypothesis of Linguistic Relativity
Strong relations exist between language and other cognitive processes
Language both directs and constrains thought and perception
The language you grow up learning and speaking determines the way one perceives, thinks, and organizes information about the world
Evidence For Whorfian Hypothesis
Dani culture only has words for dark and light, not colour
Dani should have great difficulty perceiving or remembering colours not named in their language compared to english speakers
Focal colours: best examples of basic colours (e.g. green green instead of blue green)
Dani speakers performed better if initial clip showed a focal over a nonfocal colour
Aphasia
Collective deficits in language comprehension & production that result from brain damage
Broca’s Aphasia
Expressive aphasia
Halting, agrammatic speech
Nouns and verbs okay, function words impaired
Difficulty comprehending reversed sentences
Damage to frontal areas of brain
Wernicke’s Aphasia
Receptive aphasia
Fluent speech without content
Cannot comprehend and execute simple commands like ‘touch your knee’
Not aware that their speech makes no sense
Damage to temporal lobe of left hemisphere
Lateralization
Term for specialization of function between two hemispheres
Aphasic patients usually have damage on left hemisphere
Slowly Progressive Aphasia
Normal or mild atrophy of left language regions
And hypometabolism by the left hemispheres
Localization of Language
Not all patients with lesions in Broca’s area develop aphasia, not all patients with Broca’s aphasia have damage in that area
Language processes do not necessarily have a specific location, but are distributed across a region of the brain in a neural network configuration
Other Aphasias
Anomia: naming deficit
Alexia: visual language impairment
Agraphia: inability to write
Alexia without agraphia: can write, but cannot read what they have written
