Language Flashcards
central aspect of language
communication
language is important for…
- learning (without learning only conditioning and observing)
- daily life (social exchange, ook gossip!)
- culture (art, science, technology)
- humanity (laws, human rights)
language 2 forms
comprehension: hearing, reading
production: speech, writing
is language difficult?
Intuition
– Simple
– Easy to learn
– Thinking about your message is difficult,
speech itself goes effortlessly
In reality
– Besides the message, lots of muscles and
motor programming involved for each
speech sound (zie xray ken stevens -> je gebruikt een hele hoop spieren!)
source filter model
- air expelled from the lungs
- vocal cords in larynx produce basic frequencies
- final sound door influence oral and nasal cavities
speech sounds change depending on the context
(bv it takes one to know one)
wat is de hierarchy van speech
discourse - sentence - words - sound/phones - phoneme
phones
the physical speech sound itself (k in kit and skill is perceived as the same, even though it is different)
phoneme
smallest unit of sound that causes a difference in meaning (bag - bat)
3 kenmerken van phonemes
- phoneme =/= meaning (two, too, to = zelfde phoneme)
- phoneme =/= letters (e in deserve zijn anders)
- phonemes only exist in our minds
how do we produce words
Use of rules
– Which orders of sounds are allowed?
– Different for each language
* In Dutch: not more than four subsequent consonant
sounds in one syllable
– Herfst
* Train station name in Wales:
Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch
– For most people the rules are completely
unconscious
Permitted speech-sound order can be formally
described in grammar
how do we produce sentences
Use of rules
– Which orders of words are allowed?
– Different for each language
* I see that John kicks the dog
– English is a Subject Verb Object-language (SVO)
* Ik zie dat Jan de hond slaat
– Dutch is an SOV-language
– Again, for most completely unconscious!
The rules that define the structure of words
in a sentence can be formally described in a
syntax
grammar=
permitted speech-sound order
synthax=
the structure of words in a sentence
gekke aan speech-sound perception
we horen altijd hetzelfde, hoewel er verschillen zitten tussen…
- woorden (bet en bee)
- verschillen tussen speakers (man-vrouw)
- verschillen within speakers (als je ziek bent)
- coarticulation (a sound gets influenced by a sound that came before that)
- physical differences between the same phoneme within different words
hoe zit het met phonemes bij babies tijdens eerste 6 maanden
- babies can hear all phonemes until 6 mo
- after 6 mo: they can still hear all possible phonemes of every language, but start to prefer phonemes from their own language
na 6 maanden wat doen babies
use phonetic protoypes (perceptual magnets) to group phones to phonemes in their own language.
but similer phones that group in other languages are still perceived as individual phones
example experiment phonemes babies
On each trial, babies heard
the prototype and a variant,
both for English /i/ and
Swedish /y/
When they detected a
change they made a head
turn
– Rewarded by a toy bear
playing a miniature drum
experiment grafiek interpreteren
Y-axes: percentage of
trials in which children
did not move their head
(indicating they did not
hear a difference):
Red = American /i/
Blue = Swedish /y/
6 month old babies were
better to discriminate the
two sounds in the nonnative
language
(dus lagere scores = beter)
dus similar phones in own language vs similar phones in other languages
own: grouped to phonemes due to perceptual magnets
other: remain perceived as individual, different phones
hoe heet perceptual magnets ook wel
categorical perception
phonetic prototypes
wat als we een artificially made gradual change is (bijv van ba naar da)
we only hear abrupt changes
na 10 maanden
babies horen geen verschil meer tussen twee tonen uit hindi
dus newborn, 6 mo and after 1 year regarding phonemes:
new-borns: can differentiate between all posible phonemes
6 mo: can discriminate phonemmes from non-native language better
after one year: babies have lost the ability to hear all possible phonemes. horen alleen categorieën en de relevante verschillen tussen phonemes voor eigen taal.
dus na 1 jaar
After 1 year, babies have lost the ability to
hear all possible phonemes… -> tuned in to own mother tongue!
- They distinguish between native phonemes
- They fail to distinguish between non-native
phonemes which would not cause a different
phonemic concept in their mother tongue
hoe zie je het verschil na 1 jaar in experiment
4-month-old English and Japanese babies
hear the difference between the closely
related phones [r] and [l]
– alive vs arrive
When these toddlers are 1 year old, the
English toddlers still hear the difference but
the Japanese toddlers don’t…
-> in engels zijn dit verschillende phonemes, maar in japan niet relevant, dus daarom horen zij het verschil niet meer. babies learn to ignore the things that are not relevant in their own language
wat helpt bij het ignoren van phonemes
motherese (baby talk -> overexaggeration of these phonemes)
McGurk effect
when phonemes are not categorized correctly (you hear BA, see GA, perceive DA)
welke delen van sensory geven input tijdens McGurk effect
- auditory: manner of articulation
- visual: lip movement (place of articulation)
- visual information is automatically integrated in the speech perception process! -> superior temporal sulcus is involved
phonemes is een…
mental representation, separate entities
hoe gaat het vanaf phonemes
phonemes - words - sentence - dialogue
words are also mental constructs…
we hear breaks, but these do not exist in real life! (denk aan frans)
Written words often do not convey the correct phonemic information
because because letters often do not correspond to phonemes
letter sound relations
- regular/transparant (boxer) -> obvious how to pronounce
- irregular/opaque (cough) -> not obvious how to pronounce
english is regular/irregular
irregular
dutch is regular/irregular
regular
dyslexia in brein
underdeveloped cortex and white matter
less activation in visual word form area VWFA
language learning mechanisms
- categorical perception
- motherese
- veel blootstelling aan
- fast mapping of words on meaning in mind
verschillende hersen gebieden bij volwassen en kinderen tijdens…
language generation
language in welke hemisfeer
left!
mental lexicon
soort mental dictionary met alle informatie over woorden (meaning, pronouncuation)
connectionist theories
associations between words in mental lexicon en ook meaning - pronouncuation etc
hoe weten we dat L hemisphere for language is
wada test (temporarily anesthetise one half of the brain)
language domincance facts
Language is dominant in the left hemisphere
for most people (± 90%)
Language-dominant right only in:
– ± 4% of right-handed people
– ± 15% of ambidextrous
– ± 27% of left-handed people
hoe worden broca en wernicke geconnect
door arcuate fisciculus
repeating a word route
primary auditory cortex - wernicke - arcuate fasciculus - broca - motor cortex
reading out loud route
primary visual cortex - angular gyrus - wernicke - arcuate fasciculus - broca - motor
aphasia
cannot speak
aphasia causes
external: accident, violence
internal: CVA (hemorrage (burst) or infarct (blockage)), tumour, infection, degenerative condition
most famous patient Broca
leborgne (Tan) -> damage left frontal lobe (brocas area)
brocas aphasia
- speech production
- finding the right words
- grammar
spreken vooral met…
- telegram style, veel pauzes
- no function of words or morphemes
wernickes area waar
superior temporal gyrus
wernickes aphasia
fluent, but sentences make no sense.
speech perception
speech has phonemic paraphasias
right hemisphere damage may cause
aprosodia
aprosodia
problems with melody of speech -> monotonic
semantic errors in ERPs
produce N400 –> negative activity 400 ms after stimulus presentation
Blind people use the “visual” cortex for
processing Braille, memory and sound
Some patients with limited damage to the
left temporal lobe show language difficulties
for animals but not for non-animate objects
oke
different categories of language
have different areas of the brain (bv animals vs tools)
communication between animal language and humans
bees -> bee dance in right direction for food
can animals learn human language
The African grey
Parrot Alex
– Good pronunciation
– Knew about 100 words
– Could answer simple questions (e.g.
about size, colour, material, number if <
7)
It took a lot of training.
(training started in 1977, Alex † 2007)
The bonobo Kanzi
– Can use more than 256 lexigrams
– Knows the meaning of 500 English
words
– Has language understanding of a 2½
year old child
– Little training needed
(Picked it up himself during
the training of his
mother)
difference of the animals vs humans in use of syntax
– Bees
* Very limited
– Alex
* Hardly any grammar (had some expressions)
– Kanzi
* Some grammatical knowledge (but no plurals,
verb conjugations, etc.)
is human language unique
Other species seem to use similar communication systems, but less complex
engels is…
SVO
