(Cognitive) Language Flashcards
week 9
What is the study of language structure and change called?
Linguistics
What is the study of the relationships among the brain, cognition, and language?
Neurolinguistics
What is Sociolinguistics?
The study of language between social behavious and language.
Computational linguistics is
The study of language via computational methods.
What is Psycholinguistics
a field bridging research in cognitive psychology, neuroscience, and linguistics. Focus on the cognitive and neural processes involved in learning, understanding (comprehending), and using (producing) a language.
What are the 6 things that all human languages have in common?
- Communicative; allow communication between all people who share the language.
- Arbitrarily symbolic; in all languages there is an arbitrary relationship between a symbol (e.g. word sound) and what it represents (e.g., object, idea, action…)
- Regularly structured;particular patterns of sounds/letters/symbols form meaningful words.
- Structured at multiple levels; any meaningful utterance can be analysed at multiple levels. i.e., sentences, words, sounds.
- Productive, generative; language users can produce limitless novel utterances.
- Dynamic; languages constantly evolve. i.e., new words include vlog, selfie, to google, antivaxxer.
Language domains (from the smallest circle/level to the largest)
Phonetics > Phonology > Morphology > Syntax > Semantics > Pragmatics
Phonetics
The smallest unit of speech sound (phoneme). For example, consonants and vowels: /u/, /p/, /t/.
Phonology
Perception and production of the sounds that are used in language (sequences of sounds). How do we compose and combine speech sounds in language? Clop, vs lpco. Some combinations of phonetics are unlikely to ever be included in our vocabulary due to our biology and ability/ease to produce different sound combinations.
Morphology
Examines components of words, and how they map onto meaning. Morpheme: smallest unit of meaning in a language, e.g., unbreakable -> un BREAK able.
Syntax
Combining words in appropriate ways to express meaning or describe events etc.
Rules for combining words into sentences to form meaning. Noun phrase: the cow, the horse, the big cow. Verb phrase: kicked, was kicked.
Semantics
Word meaning and relations between them.
Pragmatics
The cognitive and social skills that allow us to communicate. Practical language use. Taking intended, rather than literal meaning.
Taking in the whole social situation, and how we adapt, or not. i.e. using different vocabulary with people you know/don’t know, or using a different tone/volume in a lecture for example to convey respect.
Psycholinguistic methods:
Behaviour - experiments, e.g. lexical decisions (is it a word or not?). Observations of language use, e.g. speech errors.
Brain - cognitive neuropsycholoogy, analysis of language impairment following localised brain damage. Cognitive neuroscience; fMRI, EEG/ERP, MEG, TMS.
**Mathematical models **- computerised simulation of cognitive and/or neural processes. For example, chatgpt.
What is the McGurk effect
Very simply, what we see overrides what we hear. Acoustic and visual information is integrated during speech perception. For example, the sound ‘ba’ can sound like ‘fa’ if you are presented with the visual of someone’s mouth pronouncing ‘fa’. Interestingly, this effect holds true no matter how much you know about the effect.
