Lang & Comm 4 Flashcards
Who was influential in early psycholinguistics
Noam Chomsky
Which aspects of language did Chomsky distinguish between?
competence and performance
competence + who it interests
abstract knowledge of language: interest of linguists
includes grammaticality judgments from implicit syntactic knowledge
performance
use of language in concrete situations: interest of psycholinguists
why is performance unreflective of competence (HMED)
Hesitations
Memory limitations
Errors
Distractions
What’s an important component of Chomsky’s model?
grammar is generative - finite number of rules to create infinite number of sentences
what property of language makes grammar generative?
recursion
if grammar is generative, what does it indicate about creativity
we have rules-governed creativity
whose rules are these and what are they
Chomsky’s rules: must have a noun and verb phrase in a sentence
can also have optional determinative, adjective and preposition
what do phrase structure tress or tree diagrams show
that every sentence can be seen in terms of hierarchal groupings of its constituent words labelled for syntactic category
on-line incremental parsing
constructing a syntactic structure on the basis of words they arrive, based on our syntactic knowledge
what is a main difference between parsing models
encapsulation: usually syntax comes in first alone, then semantics etc is processed (serial processing)
give an example of a garden path sentence
the girl hit the man with the umbrella
what do garden path sentences show
your syntactic biases: you take longer to re-read something to ‘recover’ from your initial comprehension
who created the Garden Path model and what type of account is it
Frazier (1987) - modular account
what is the first stage of the garden path model (2 principles)
parsing done solely on basis of syntactic preferences:
minimalist attachment: go for simplest structure with fewest nodes
late closure: incorporate words in currently open phrase or clause if possible (link incoming material with most recent material)
what is the second stage of the garden path model
if phrase is incompatible with new information (syntactically or semantically), reanalysis occurs
how do we interpret this according to late closure
Sue left yesterday, rather than the man saying this yesterday
who created constraint-based models and what type of account are they
McDonald et al 1994, Trueswell et al 1994 and McRae et al 1998 - interactive accounts
what do constraint-based models state
all potentially relevant information is used immediately in parsing (syntax, semantics etc)
all possible syntactic analyses done in parallel dependent on available support
according to constraint-based models, describe choosing one analysis
if one analysis is strongly preferred, it is easily chosen
if several analyses get comparable support, it becomes harder as they compete to be chosen.
homonym
word with 2 unrelated interpretations
what do homonyms cause
lexical ambiguity
what models explain how we select meaning (SOP)
Selective access
Ordered access
Parallel access
selected access
context restricts access to the contextually appropriate meaning
ordered access
the more frequent meaning gets more activation, then tested for context
parallel access
all meanings activated and all tested the same for contextual appropriateness
what is cross-modal priming
priming that involves two modalities: auditory and visual
who conducted experiments in cross-modal priming?
Swinney (1979)
describe procedure of cross-modal priming study:
had target words ANT, SPY and control SEW, whilst reading a passage involving animals and listening device ‘bugs’.
describe findings of cross-modal priming study:
time point 1: facilitation for both
time point 2: only ANT
activate all meanings, use context to select appropriate one
what type of experiments can explore homonyms/lexical ambiguity?
eye tracking experiments
who spearheaded eye tracking experiments?
Rayner and Duffy (1986)
what is a biased homonym
biased: meanings unequal in frequency
explain these conditions and findings
neutral preceding context:
‘had…flavour’ took longer as we have to recover and change ‘port’ to less frequent meaning
disambiguating preceding context:
‘port’ took longer to read and we had to recover and change to less frequent version
control = soup
explain these conditions and findings
‘coach’ activates both equally frequent meanings
what is a balanced homonym
neutral preceding context:
both meanings are equally as frequent - competition to select one and takes longer to read ‘coach’
disambiguating preceding context:
‘coach’ was read normally as there was no competition of analysis, it clearly was one meaning.
control = cabin
what model stems from newer eye tracking research
Reordered Access Model
who invented the Reordered access Model
Duffy et al 1988
Reordered Access Model
hybrid of exhaustive and selective access models - context increases activation level of one meaning
what effect does the Reordered Access Model identify?
subordinate bias meaning
BIASED HOMONYMS: explain why subordinate bias effect slows you down for prior and post disambiguating context for
prior - you need subordinate meaning and this takes time to activate because of selective access
post - activated wrong meaning of homonym and need to recover
BALANCED HOMONYMS: explain why subordinate bias effect speeds you up for prior disambiguating context
resting level of activation for equally frequent words means there will be a ‘context boost’ for one - no competition
lexical polysemy
multiple senses - one word related to many interpretations or senses
give examples of lexical polysemy
Vietnam - war/country itself
school - you can talk to it/walk to it
book - the book is dirty/it is scary
metonymy
one part of an entity used to refer to entity as a whole
give examples of metonymy
wings took off (part-for-whole = synecdoche)
Belgium won the match (whole-for-part)
I talked to the school (place-for-institution)
they protested during Vietnam (place-for-event)
I read Dickens (producer-for-product)
which three models show how poeple chose metonyms
literal-first
figurative-first
parallel models
explain this for choosing metonyms:
literal meaning of school is chosen first until analysed in context
explain this for choosing metonyms:
figurative meaning of school is chosen first until analysed in context
what do parallel models of choosing metonyms suggest?
all senses/meanings of a word activated at once
explain this for choosing metonyms:
unranked parallel - there is no dominant sense of the word to you
explain this for choosing metonyms:
ranked parallel - dominant sense of word activated due to frequency/salience.
how do reading times of metonyms and homonyms differ in terms of effect of frequency
there is no effect of sense frequency for metonyms, but there is for homonyms (hence biased homonyms)
compare speeds at which we process literal and figurative senses of one metonym
same speed eg we process ‘he walked to the school’ as fast as ‘he talked to the school’
if unranked parallel is the most accurate theory of choosing correct senses/meanings, why don’t we have a ‘semantic overload’?
we activate an abstract UNDERspecified meaning, the same for ALL semantically related senses. You then use context to find the right interpretation.
how does Atkinson et al 1988 define pragmatics
“Distinction between what a speaker’s words literally mean and what the speaker might mean by his words”
what are the two assumptions we make for inferences for reading
text is coherent (sentences belong together)
text is cohesive (repeated reference to a thing is the same thing)
inference
process of developing information that goes beyond the literal meaning of the text.
list 3 types of inferences (BEL)
bridging
elaborative
logical
logical inferencing
based on word meaning
bridging inferencing
Backward inferences: relate new to old information to maintain coherence.
elaborative inferencing
Forward inference: information from text + world knowledge = inference.
approaches on inferences
minimalist
constructionist
hybrid
minimalist approach for inferences
only two kinds of automatic inferences:
local coherence
inferences you can access very quickly with ease (log. and bridg.)
constructionist approach for inferences
draw as many elab. inferences in time available
hybrid approach for inferences
search-after-meaning: the approach we adopt depends on our goals
give 2 things elaborative inferences are important for
eyewitness testimony (Loftus 1975 - did you see THE/A broken headlight?)
advertising tricks (Searleman and Carter 1988 - piecemeal survey results, hedge words, rhetorical questions)
2 general characteristics of language processing?
shallow and incomplete
Ferreira and Patson 2007 on language processing
(“f___ + f_____“…“g____ e_____”)
we use “fast and frugal” heuristics to arrive at “good enough” interpretations
explain this in terms of suppression and skilled/non-skilled comprehenders:
more skilled comprehenders = able to suppress more predictable meaning of the homonym and understand pun
essentialism of natural kinds
there is some innate underlying quality that establishes something’s identity (zebra can’t be a donkey)
why can’t artefacts be essentialist
identity established through perceptual and superficial features (plate can be a clock)
can we attribute essentialism from birth?
no: 0-3 years we cannot tell (donkey IS a zebra)
describe essentialism’s effects on comprehension
transformed referent: read slower for natural/faster for artefacts
non-transformed referent: read faster for natural/slower for artefacts
