L9 - meaning Flashcards
Computational view on extracting meaning from language
Computational view on cognition;
Understanding words and their relations by semantic networks
Embodied/situated view on language
Words gets meaningful by grounding them to the outside world (e.g.: chair is a chair because you can sit on it). We perceptually simulate words to understand them.
Chinese room argument (Searl)
English-speaking person receives Chinese characters – he uses rule book to link Chinese characters to output. Humans don’t translate arbitrary symbols into other arbitrary symbols. The Chinese room argument therefore challenges the symbolic use of language.
Examples for embodied view on language
faster processing by up-down processing, motor simulations of words, metaphors in our language, eye movements respond to read text, fast processing when being in same modality
Arbitrary words
Word does not say anything about its meaning
Amodal words
Words are not associated with specific modality
Abstract word
Word is not concrete and there is no reference to a specific object
Embodied cognition theory
Without symbol grounding, language is not meaningful since symbol use is abstract, amodal and arbitrary and not meaningful in itself. Images on the other hand are concrete, multimodal and non-arbitrary and are hence meaningful in itself since they are grounded.
icon
there is a direct relationship between a sign, the outside world and its meaning (e.g.: portrait, image)
index
Sign has a indirect relationship with its meaning (e.g.: smoke – fire)
symbol
Relation between sign and its meaning is conventional (e.g.: wedding ring – marriage)
Icon vs. symbol - groundedness
Icons: most grounded, least arbitrary
Symbols: least grounded, most arbitrary
Theories on language acquisition (4)
Environment: language depends on environment and training (pos. reinforcement)
Brain: we have an innate language acquisition device
Computations: brain is like artificial neural network
Memory: grounding perspective – acquiring language by linking words to environment
Cognitive laziness of humans
Humans are cognitively lazy (e.g.: we are fooled by illusions, are bad at simple memory tasks,…)
sound and meaning
There is an arbitrary relationship between a sign and its meaning (in Chinese vs. Dutch nasals at first position have different valence)
