Exam 3 Ch 11 Flashcards
Language major features [placeholder]
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Symbolic
Words are symbols that represent other things
- even things that are abstract and/or not immediately present
Nested/hierachial
Small units can be combined into bigger ones endlessly
Rule-based
govern the nested combinations
Generative
Allows us to express and compregend a LIMITLESS variety of things, including totally new things noone has ever said or heard before
Modality independent
Words across auditory (speech), visual (written, sign), tactile (braille)
Spoken vs Written Language [placeholder]
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Spoken language
- a natural ability that evolved
- when?
- 50,000 years ago?
- 1.8 million years ago? (homo erectus)
- brain areas
- we automatically learn spoken language when raised around it
Written Language
- An invention
- 5,000 years ago (Mesopotamia cuneiform tablets)
- rides on top of spoken language processes
- must be explicity taight and learned
Differences between animal commumication and human language
Humans: complex combination of symbols
Animals: Seems more association of stimulus with response. Their “language”is not generative (they dont come up with unique sentences and do not use language to represent their feelings, thoughts, ideas, and experiences)
Psycholinguistics: understand the difference between comprehension and production [placeholder]
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Comprehension
How we understand language
Production
How we create and speak language
Structure of Language (linguistics [placeholde]
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Phonemes
- The smallest unit of sound that can distinguish words in a language
- ex: call, car
ex: pit, spit, happen
- ex: bat, cat differ by 1 phoneme
- Could be 1 letter (b) or more than 1 letter (th, sh, ch)
- 1 letter may correspond to >1 phoneme (cAt vs. cAke) but they do not correspond directly to letters
- Not all languages use phonemes
- Babies can perceive and produce all of them as they are learned in the first year of life
Morphemes
- The smallest unit of MEANING
- Can be equivalent to one word
- Can be less than one word
–UNhappy
–walkING, walkER, walkED, walkS
- Each word could be made of several morphemes
Ex: bedroom, broomstick, bookbags
- Changing a morpheme changes the meaning
Ex: REspect, DISrespect, respectFUL, respectABLE
Words [placeholder]
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Phonology
The sequence of phonemes that make up the word
Orthography
How the word is spelled (if the speaker is literate)
Semantics
What the word means
Lexical Ambiguity What are homonyms? What are the two types?
Lexical Ambiguity
Homonyms - Words that have the same spelling but different meaning [homograph] or pronunciation but different meaning [homophone]
Homographs - date, bug, present, left, right, count
Homophones - read & reed, there and their, where and wear
Are there obvious boundaries between word sounds in spoken speech?
No
Bottom up Processing
Features of stimulus are assembled into an understanding
- Isolation of phonemes, word boundaries, etc
Top Down Processing
- Knowledge of context surrounding phonemes and morphemes influences interpretation of meaning
knowledge, context, and expectationns influence understandig of input
Word Frequency
- The most frequent words are REALLY frequent
Prosody
- Speech patterns that help comprehension
- ex: which words or morphemes get STRESSED
I didn’t steal your wallet.
I DIDN’T steal your wallet.
I didn’t STEAL your wallet.
I didn’t steal YOUR wallet.
I didn’t steal your WALLET.
- tone of voice
ex: sarcasm, upward inflection (end of sentence sounds like a question?)
Categorical Perception
stimuli that fall on a continuum are perceived as categories because of our experience/knowledge
Contextual Knowledge
Overall, context ehlps us fill in gaps or ambiguities in the incoming sensory info (e.g., missing phonemes) AND helps us resolve lexical ambiguity helps
Phonemic Restoration Effect Warren (1970)
“The state governors met with their respective legi*latures convening in the capital city”
- 20/20 subjects reported that all speech sounds were present.
- 0/20 could identify the exact location of the cough sound.
- 10/20 incorrectly identified the cough as elsewhere in the sentence, not even in the right word
Showed Phonemic Restoration: using adjacent sounds to help recognize missing phonemes
Phonemic Restoration Warren and Warren (1970)
Subjects hear sentences with a cough (*) spliced in to replace a phoneme.
- The *eel was on the axle.
- The *eel was on the shoe.
- The *eel was on the orange.
- The *eal was on the table.
- Subjects reported hearing different phonemes depending on the context.
Example: “…wheel was on the axle.”
Retrospective phonemic restoration
Showed Phonemic Restoration: using adjacent sounds to help recognize missing phonemes
Meaning Dominance
Some meanings are more frequent than others. We default to the more frequent (dominant) meaning
- Biased dominance: ball
- Balanced dominance (both meanings equally frequent): pitcher
Lexical Priming Data - People briefly access all meanings of a word before relying on context to determine accurate meaning.
Vision: McGurk Effect
visual information is so powerful that it can sometimes overrule the auditory information-as in the McGurk effect, in which you are hearing one syllable while seeing another.
Syntax
Rules for combining words into phrases, sentences
Prescriptive vs Descriptive
Prescriptive - A way to say how things should be in terms of speaking and writing a language
Descriptive - How speakers and writers actually use language
The most basic structure of sentences
Sentences are made of phrases which are made of words
Common structure:
Noun-phrase, verb-phrase
– subject, verb-object
– common structures help us parse sentences
Why is Parsing Sentences hard?
- Figuring out the meaning [semantics] of a sentence guided by syntax
- We hear words one at a time… How do we group them into phrases?
Answer: We do not wait until we have heard or read the whole sentence because of working mememory limitations. Working Memory is the major bottleneck of human cognition
– Do we process the meaning? Heuristics - fast general strategies, so not 100% correct
Strategies that we use to parse sentences [placeholder]
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Late Closure
(A heuristic): attach each new word to current phrase, for as long as possible
Ex: The quick brown fox | jumps over the lazy dog
Garden Path Sentences
- Temporary syntactic ambiguity makes us go back and re-parse the sentence
Ex: After the musician played the piano | was wheeled off the stage … doesn’t make sense…
Ex: After the musician played | the piano was wheeled off the stage … Good
Context: in regular language,a good speaker would pause after played or a writer would write a comma after played. This suggests humans used the late closure strategy
Extralinguistic Context: scene: story
- Scene context: “Put the apple on the towel into the box”
- Garden path sentence unless uttered with the appropriate visual response (scene)
- Story context “Two horses were raced along different paths: one path went past the river, and the other path went past the bar, The horse raced past the river won. Why? The horse raced past the barn fell”.
Pragmatics: what is this?
Knowledge of social context in which language is used
- You need to know the social context to know what the language means at the time
- ex: “ Is he okay?
This could mean
– Is he well after he tripped and fell
– Is he well after he was sick?
– Is he sober enough to drive?
Surface Structure (Syntax)
- What is straight up said
- The structure
- Rules for combining parts
Deep Structure (Semantics)
The actual meaning of what was said
Understand the difference between sentences that have problems with syntax, semantics, or both
“All your base are belong to us”
Answer: Syntax error, ok Semantics
‘Twas brillig and the slithy tovesDid gyre and gimble in the wabeAll mimsy were the borogrovesAnd the mome raths outgrabe
Answer: Syntax is fine, Semantics is trash
Semantic Coordination
Ensuring agreement about meaning
Given-New context: forms links across sentences
ex: St. Louis has an enormous park called Forest Park. In Forest Park, there’s a world-renowned zoo. The zoo is free to all visitors. It’s free because it’s paid for by taxes. The taxes only come from residents of the city, not the outlying county. The county outside the city has lots of people who enjoy the zoo without paying any taxes to fund it. Some argue that this is unfair
Common Ground - take into account the knowledge of the other person
ex: only use technical jargon with a few experts
Syntactic Coordination
Use similar syntax as the other person
ex if not knowlegeable: “I’m going to Florida this summer”
Ex if knowlegeabl: “I’m going to Disney World this summer” [Implies to the knowlegeable person that Florida is where you are going]
Aphasia: language deficit
Broca’s Aphasia (aka expressive aphasia)
- difficulty producing speech
- but pick the right words
Wernicke’s aphasia (aka Receptive aphasia, fluent aphasia)
- difficulty comprehending speech
- produce speech at regular pace, but makes little sense
Language and Thought: What does the study about colors in different languages tell us?
People that use certain languages are less able to distinguish color differences within the same linguistic category
Ex: “Wor” is used to mean yellow, orange, green, & brown
Is Body Language a language?
No but supports language
Is Sign Language a language
Yes it has structure, grammar, symbols, and has productivity/generativity
