Final: Language Flashcards
fuck
Referential Ambiguity
When same word can refer to two different things within a sentence
=Susan told Eliza that she had to write a paper
Lexical Ambiguity
When a word has 2 different meanings
= Boy was bothered by the cold - cold can be two things
Ambiguity
Examples of language
Syntactic Ambiguity
When same words can be grouped together into more than one phrase structure
=They ARE COOKING apples
=THE CHICKEN is ready to eat
=I saw the man WITH THE BINOCULARS
Lexical but not Syntactic Ambiguity
1 phrase structure; 2 word meanings
=She noticed the PORT
1 phrase structure, 2 word meanings - for port
Syntactic but not lexical ambiguity
2 phrase structures; 1 word meaning
=I saw the man WITH THE BINOCULARS
Syntactic and Lexical
2 Phrase structures; 2 word meanings
We saw her duck
Surface vs Deep Structure
=The shooting of the hunters was terrible
One surface structure; Two Deep Structures
Surface vs Deep Structure
=The boy hit the ball
=The ball was hit by the boy
Two surface structure, one deep structure
Deep Structure
The underlying message of a sentence
=boy hit the ball
=Ball was hit by the boy
= both say that a boy hit a ball
Look at your notebook at phrase structures
I know it sucks, just do it man
Surface Structure
Phrase structure applies to order in which words are actually spoken
Transformational Grammar
Rules that transform among surface structures having same deep structure
Syntax
Rules for language structure + combination of words and phrases
E.g. “happy child” in English
Happy comes before child
Semantics
How meaning is derived from morphemes
Generative grammar
Rules specify what orders + combinations roles (Noun Phase / Verb Phase) can occur in
Phonemes
Smallest unit of perceived speech
(the way you pronounce a word) = to = tuw
Morphemes
Smallest units that signal meaning
-can be prefixes, suffixes, roots, or words
-combination of phonemes
=The; Strange; er; Talk; ed; to; the; play; er; s
Words
Smallest stand alone units of meaning
combinations of one or more morphemes
language
The; strangers; talked; to; the; players
Phrases
Organized grouping of one or word
- play a role in grammatical structure of a sentence
- The strangers ; Talked to the players
Sentences
A set of words/phrases that tell a complete thought
-The strangers talked to the players
Smallest unit of perceived speech
Phonemes
Phonemes can be different in different languages:
/l/ versus /r/ in English but not Japanese
Tonal differences, e.g. Chinese
Click sounds, e.g. Xhosa in South Africa
There are _____ to _____ phonemes in a language.
English has around _____ phonemes.
10 to 150
30 for english
Phonology
language specific rules for combining phonemes
-E.g., “pritos” okay, “fpitos” not okay (Although pritos is not a word, we could believe it to be. but fpitos we would know it is not a word.)
Morphemes are combinations of _____
Phonemes
Morphology
Like Plural in English, e.g. cat cats
Rules for language structure, including: morphology and syntax
Grammar
One phrase structure, two meanings:
The shooting of the hunters was terrible.
This is an ambiguous sentence:
- Could mean that the hunters were bad at shooting
- Could mean that someone shot the hunters
Two phrase structures, one meaning:
- The boy hit the ball
- The ball was hit by the boy.
Surface structure
Phrase structure that applies to order in which words are actually spoken
Deep structure
Fundamental, underlying phrase structure that conveys meaning
What type of ambiguity does this example show?
The girl in the car that needed water is waiting.
Syntactic - words can be grouped together into more than one phrase structure
Critical period
Refers to the fact that after a certain age, it becomes nearly impossible to learn a language and speak it as fluent as a native speaker.
Phones
The Actual Sounds that you hear
Phonemes
The perceived sounds that you hear
Categorical speech perception
Multiple phones are heard as same phoneme
Perceptual magnet” effect
the American children will recognize many similar phones as the same phoneme, but the Swedish children will not. The same is true for the Swedish phoneme - the American children will not be able to recognize the Swedish one while the Swedish children will.
= Recognize what we understand
Challenges in learning words
- Detecting words in stream of speech
- Figuring out rules for combining morphemes to make words
- Figuring out what words mean
Words are not separate in speech:
Even though if spoken with pauses between words, brain clumps words together “what….. do you mean”
Past tense acquisition: Stage 1:
Small number of mostly irregular verbs: came, got, gave, looked, needed, took, went
Past tense acquisition: Stage 2:
- Learns “-ed” rule: roll – rolled, smile – smiled
- Regularization: rop – ropped
- Overregularization: give –gived
Problem in past tense acquisition: Stage 2:
Overregulation of past tense: give -> gived / not gave
Past tense acquisition: Stage 3:
Corrects overregularization: give – gave
Mental lexicon
Refers to the associations and co-occurence of objects.
E.g., if you are given the word “chair”, you will likely associate with table, seat, sit, etc.
Acquisition of language depends on (2):
Universal Grammar
Statistical pattern recognition
Universal grammar (Lingo)
- “Poverty of the stimulus”: children are not exposed to enough examples to learn grammar without a “head start”
- We have a hard-wired “language acquisition device”
- All languages follow same general rules, with different parameter settings
- Learning a language requires learning parameter settings (e.g. SOV versus SVO order in sentences)
Statistical pattern recognition (lingo)
- In fact, children are able to learn grammar solely from examples
- General machinery in brain for detecting patterns is sufficient to learn rules of language as we actually practice them
Broca’s area is in the _____ hemisphere only (in most individuals)
Left
Broca’s Area Fuction
Speech production and Language Processing
People with Broca’s aphasia exhibit
- Speech is labored, slow & non-fluent with awkward articulation - but still meaningful
- Phonemic errors, e.g. pelsil for pencil
Does the written output of Broca’s aphasia patients resemble their speech?
Yes - this indicates problems with their language generation at a more abstract level
Broca’s aphasia patients have (better or worse) fluency for memorized phrases - as well as for singing.
Better
Broca’s aphasia: it is not a motor problem, it is a problem with:
language planning and production
Which parts of speech do Broca’s aphasia patients have the most trouble with?
Verbs, articles, and pronouns
Do people with Broca’s aphasia possess verb inflection?
No
Broca’s aphasia patients’ speech makes sense but is ungrammatical. The opposite is true for _____ aphasia patients.
Wernicke’s
_____ aphasia patients will have difficulty reading and producing function words (e.g., a, and, for, …)
Broca’s
_____ aphasia patients have difficulty with understanding and using syntax.
Broca’s
Speech comprehension depends on the _____ stream.
Ventral “what”
Wernicke’s area location:
In the left hemisphere (in most individuals) - anterior
Wernicke’s aphasia characteristics
- Speech is phonetically & grammatically normal but meaningless
- Generally fluent, unlabored, well articulated
- Normal intonation (prosody)
- Words used inappropriately, nonsense words, “word salad”
- Meaning expressed in roundabout way (circumlocution)
- Comprehension is severely impaired
Wernicke’s aphasia patients have difficulty with language comprehension and problems with understanding and using semantics.
Fact
The following speech is ______ aphasia
Boy, I’m sweating, I’m awful nervous, you know, once in a while I get caught up, I can’t get caught up, I can’t mention the tarripoi, a month ago, quite a little, I’ve done a lot well, I impose a lot, while, on the other hand, you know, what I mean,
Wernicke’s aphasia
Word Salad is generally associated with _____ Aphasia
Wernickes
Which pair of Broadmann Areas form Broca’s area
44&45
Which Broadmann Area includes Wernickes Area
22
Which Broadmann Area Includes the Angular Gyrus
39
What type of information is leading people to interpret the word “flies” differently in “fruit flies like a banana”
environmental context
What source of non-auditory information is most directly responsible for altering what you hear in these examples of the McGurk effect?
environmental context
Based on the McGurk effect, what would we predict about comprehension of speech in a telephone call (audio only) versus a silent video call (video only) versus a multimedia call (audio plus video)?
Multimedia will be better than audio or video
N400 (semantics)
N400 spike occurs when the word SHOES is shown instead of shoes (aka caps vs non-caps) - this is the right word, but it is a weird presentation.
P600 (syntax)
P600 spike occurs when a syntactic violation occurs (e.g., a spelling mistake) - we know that the word is spelled wrong and it causes a spike.
N400 (semantics) is more _____
Posterior - closer to Wernicki’s area
LAN (syntax) is more _____
Anterior - closer to Broca’s area
Split brain: _____ hemisphere can name objects, but _____ hemisphere can not
Left can
Right can not
If a split brain patient is shown a picture of a dog in the left visual field, and a picture of a cat in the right visual field, and asked to draw what they see with their right hand, what would they draw?
A cat
-> because, cat is on right will = left hemisphere, dogs = onto right hemisphere, put pencil into right hand which is controlled by left hemisphere therefore they draw cat
Language Lateralization and Handedness
● Right-handed:
● 95% left-hemisphere dominant, 5% right-hemisphere dominant
● Left-handed:
● 70% left-hemisphere dominant, 15% right-hemisphere dominant,
15% bilateral
Prosody
- Intonation, tone, stress, and rhythm
- Used for emotional state, form (statement, question, or command), irony or sarcasm, emphasis, contrast, and focus
Aprosodia
Difficulty processing prosody
Productive aprosodia
- Monotonic, “robotic” speech lacking emotional tone
- Associated with damage to right hemisphere – Broca’s equivalent
Receptive aprosodia
- Difficulty detecting and understanding emotional tone in speech
- Associated with damage to right hemisphere – Wernicke’s equivalent
Interactive language network: Broca’s area
Syntax & planning for production
Interactive language network: Wernicke’s area
Word perception & semantics
Interactive language network: Sensory cortices
e.g. auditory cortices for speech
Interactive language network: Motor cortices
motor cortex for speech
Interactive language network: Association cortices
Semantics
Sources of information (5)
Genes Past experiences Internal state Environmental context Proximal stimulus
Interactive Language Network Processing?
● Bottom-up & top-down influences
● Recurrent & interactive processing
Sources of Information: Genes
Information learned on timescale of evolution
Sources of Information: Past experience
Information learned on timescale of a human life
Sources of Information: Internal state
Information learned on timescale of current episode
Sources of Information: Environmental context
Information learned now
Sources of Information: Proximal stimulus
The stimulus itself
Interactive activation theory
Could explain the effects of context and past experience.
McGurk effect
Misinterpretation due to conflicting stimuli
Garden path sentences
The first part of a sentence experts contextual influence on the second half.
E.g.,
Fruit flies like a banana. (fruit flies. like. bananas)
But if you read this first:
Time flies like an arrow.
Then it becomes (fruit. flies. like a banana)
fMRI measures:
Changes in magnetization, using electromagnetic radiation and nuclear magnetic resonance
How fMRI can measure neural activity - increased _____ _____ causes a change in _____ _____ in the brain - which can indicate the neural change.
blood flow
magnetic field
fMRI has very high _____ resolution, and decent _____ resolution
high spatial, decent temporal
fMRI
functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging
Meaning in the Brain
● Concepts are represented by highly distributed patterns
of activation across the brain
● Perceptual and motor brain areas involved in
representing meaning
● The association between concepts (as measured by cooccurrence
of words) can be used to predict brain
activation for those concepts
