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language Flashcards

1
Q

• Panbanisha (1985-2012) the bonobo great ape

A
  • A lifetime in captivity receiving language training
  • Taught to use a keypad of approx. 400 geometric pattern in order to communicate
  • Keypresses prompted a synthetic voice
  • 3,000 word vocabulary (when 14 years old)
  • Understood English at the level of 2.5 year old human child (Lyn, 2007)
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2
Q

bonobos aren’t as good at language than humans

A
  • Produce simple sentences
  • Lacking in correct grammar
  • Only sometimes able to refer to things outside of the present tense
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3
Q

skinner on language

A

language is learnt

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4
Q

chomsky on language

A

language is innate

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5
Q

universal grammar (chomsky)

A
  • Multiple linguistic universals that form a universal grammar:
  • Lexical categories (i.e., nouns, verbs, adjectives, etc.)
  • Word order (i.e., SOV: Subject Object Verb; or SVO: Subject Verb Object)
  • Recursion (embedding clauses within sentences)
  • i.e. “Phillip bought some bread from the shop” can be expanded….
  • “Phillip, who had just been paid, bought some bread from the shop, the building next to his place of work”
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6
Q

justification for the concept of innate universal grammar

A
  1. It offers an explanation as to why only humans develop language fully
  2. It offers an explanation for the broad similarities across the various human languages
  3. It offers an explanation for the rapid speed in which children learn to speak
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7
Q

criticisms of chomskys approach

A
  • There are not linguistic universals – languages across the world differ enormously
  • “Language has been shaped by the brain: language reflects pre-existing, and hence non-language-specific, human learning and processing mechanisms” (Christiansen & Chater, 2008, p. 491).
  • Children learn language quickly because language is invented by humans with the limitations of human performance in mind
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8
Q

Innate universal grammar - Findings and considerations

A

• Languages do not appear to share the same universals

  • Recursion may be lacking in some languages
  • Amazonian language Pirahã
  • Some lexical categories are missing in some languages
  • Word order appears to be (almost) universal
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9
Q

natural language

A

any language that has developed naturally through human interaction and use.
• Any human language
• Can take different forms (i.e., speech, signing, writing, etc.)

It is fundamental to human cognition and social integration.

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10
Q

characteristics of natural language

A

flexible, generative symbolic representation system for communicating meaning.
• Grammar and syntax are the key mechanisms
• but meaning is subject to inference and pragmatics.
• NL is complex and resource intensive.
• It’s also subject to interference and error.
• But we have a range of short cuts and context is very important.

appears to be unique to humans

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11
Q

natural language follows a developmental sequence

A

Simple -> complex

Babbling -> words -> sentences

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12
Q

why is natural language important?

A
  • As a social animal, language is necessary to convey simple and complex meaning and ideas
  • May have been a key factor human brain development (encephalization)
  • Human brain = 3 times bigger than it should be given body size
  • Increased brain size relative to body correlates with sociality
  • Only humans have the vocal equipment for spoken language and possibly unique brain areas
  • Non-humans able to convey complex messages BUT this is not the same as natural language
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13
Q

language skills

A
  • We possess four main language skills:
  • Speaking
  • Listening (to speech)
  • Writing (including typewriting and texting etc.)
  • Reading
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14
Q

processes involved in language production

A
  • conceptualisation
  • formulation
  • articulation
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15
Q

conceptualisation

A

Planning the message

• Desired concept to be communicated

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16
Q

formulation

A

Transforming the intended message into speech sounds and sentences
• Including grammatical encoding, morpho-phonological encoding, & phonetic encoding.

17
Q

articulation

A

Words are turned into speech

• Movements from the tongue, lips, jaw, lungs, larynx, glottis, etc.

18
Q

tip of the tongue phenomenon

A

a failure in retrieval
• Cannot recall the word, but can recall words of a similar form or meaning
• Brown & McNeil (1966) study
• Subjects given definitions to low-frequency words
• Attempt to recall word associated with definition
• Recall can be guided by partial word information

19
Q

semantics

A

meaning of encoded language

20
Q

grammar

A

rules of language

21
Q

pragmatics and inference

A

knowledge about how to use language appropriates

22
Q

phonology

A
  • Organised into phonemes
  • Constitute the spoken sounds of a sentence
  • Phonological structure also includes:

• Morphophonological structure
(How the phonemes are arranged/grouped to form words & morphemes)

• Syllabic structure
(How spoken words can be deconstructed into syllables)

• Prosodic structure
(Assigning stress & intonation within a sentence)

23
Q

phonemes

A
  • What you hear, not what you see

* Smallest unit of sound in a word

24
Q

graphemes

A
  • Written alternative to the phoneme
  • What you see, not what you hear
  • A phoneme can form graphemes in multiple ways (multiple spellings)
  • i.e. shun can also be spelt as tion in words such as ration
25
Q

sublexical route`

A
  • Also known as:
  • Sound-to-spelling conversion
  • Phoneme-to-grapheme conversion
  • The word is prepared as in speech until the point where phonemes can be converted to graphemes
26
Q

lexical route

A
  • Direct retrieval of the orthographic word
  • Stored knowledge about how the word is written
  • Very important for languages (i.e. English) with deep orthographies
  • Allows us to spell words with poor sound-to-spelling consistency, or words with same spelling (i.e. there/their)
27
Q

semantics

A
  • Meaning conveyed by words, phrases or sentences

* Not to be confused with syntax/syntactic structure

28
Q

whorfian hypothesis

A

• Language determines or influences thinking

  • Strong version:- Language determines thinking
  • Weak version:- Language imposes constraints on thinking
  • Weakest version:- Language influences memory
  • Alternative account:
  • Roschian hypothesis - Language does not determine our thinking.
  • Language is only used to describe our perceptions of the world.
29
Q

intertranslatability

A

(contradiction of the strongest version of the Whorfian hypothesis)
• We can translate a statement in one language to a statement in the other
• It just may not be the same number of words
• Contradicts the argument that a thought expressible in one language is not expressible in another

30
Q

winawer (20070

A
  • Studied categorical perception in English and Russian subjects
  • Russian has distinctive words for dark blue (siniy) and light blue (goluboy)
  • Examined performance in a speeded colour discrimination task
  • Which of the bottom two square matches the top square?
  • Russian speakers were faster to discriminate two colours if they can be categorised separately (i.e., one siniy & one goluboy)
  • Categories in language can affect performance of basic perceptual colour discrimination tasks
31
Q

pragmatics

A

literal vs intended meaning

32
Q

traditional approach

A
  • Three stage approach (e.g., Grice, 1975; Searl, 1979)
  • Stage 1. Literal meaning is accessed
  • Stage 2. Listener/reader decided if this meaning makes sense in context.
  • If it does it is accepted
  • If it doesn’t…
  • Stage 3. Alternative context appropriate meaning is searched for
  • Predictions:
  • Literal meaning should be accessed faster than metaphorical meaning
  • Literal meanings should be accessed automatically
33
Q

graded salience model

A
  • Graded salience model: initial processing of message is determined by salience or prominence of the meaning rather the type (literal vs. non-literal)
  • Meaning is really a matter of degree
  • Frequency of exposure to and familiarity with meaning in question
  • A lot of our language use is metaphorical and hence common (Cacciari & Glucksberg, 1994) thus extraction of the actual meaning is often fast and effortless (Gibbs et al., 1989)
34
Q

inference making

A

• Integrating sentence information in to a discourse would be impossible with out drawing inferences

35
Q

shared meaning

A

• The presence/absence of shared meaning, knowledge etc = very important in understanding the intended meaning
• How?
• Two heuristics (‘rule of thumb’) are used early on in sentence processing:
- common ground
-egocentric heuristic

cognitive (14 decks)

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