CHP. 10 - Language Flashcards
Speech segmentation
“slicing” of a continous speech stream into appropriate segments
* 1st step toward phoneme ID
Phonemic restoration effect
perception of language relies on prior knowledge & expectations to supplement input
* top-down processes
ex. you know what curse word someone used on TV even when it’s bleeped
Coarticulation
attributes of successive speech units overlap in articulatory or acoustic patterns
* planning ahead
ex. “brain moving faster than mouth can speak it”
Categorical perception
certain stimuli (especially in speech) are perceived categorically rather than continously despite continous variation in their form
ex. “bah v. fah”, “Yanny vs. Laurel”
Combining phonemes
Hint: think sequence
phoneme -> morpheme -> word
Only some combos of phonemes are acceptable within a language.
Orthography
a set of conventions for writing a language
* norms of spelling, punctuation, capitalization, hyphenation, etc.
Semantics
branch of linguistics and logic concerned with meaning
Syntax
rules that govern the structure of a phrase or sentence
Generativity
the capacity to create an endless series of new combos (words) from a small set of fundamental units
ex. dog using buttons to communicate (animals can’t generate new words)
Prescriptive rules
rules describing how something is “supposed to be” in the language
how it “ought” to be
Descriptive rules
rules describing the language as it’s “actually” used by fluent speakers/listeners
e.g. phrase-structure rules
Parsing
the process of determing each word’s syntactic role in a sentence
* people parse sentences as they hear them
usually effective, but can lead to misinterpretations
Garden-path sentences
suggest an interpretation that turns out to be incorrect
ex. “the old man the boat”
Extralinguistic context
the physical & social setting in which we encounter sentences
Prosody
patterns of pauses & pitch changes that chararcterize speech production
reveals speaker’s mood, intended meaning, etc.
