language Flashcards
language
a shared symbolic system for purposeful communications
symbolic: units to reference something else
shared: common among a group of people
purposeful: to communicate and translate thoughts
is human language unique
some animals communicate very basically - ants use chemical signals through antenna, bees use body movements, some monkeys have basic vocalization styles
however, human language can generate an infinite variety of sequences in novel ways
environment and language
vocabulary is shaped by the environment
morphology decreases with languages spoken by more people
lexical tones are partly determined by climate
gender inequality and language
countries with gendered languages experience higher average gender inequality
changing language = making changes in society
language differences men and women
women use more adjectives and first person plurals than men (we need to hurry) and use a ‘reverse accent’ more than men (end statements like questions)
aphasia
impaired language function from brain injury
includes:
brocas aphasia
wernickes aphasia
conduction aphasia
broca’s aphasia
non fluent/expressive aphasia
- intact language comprehension
- impaired speech production and articulation
speech is halting and difficult to produce (mostly nouns and verbs)
writing is typically also affected in a similar way
depending on the damage, impairments can range from deficits in producing certain words to problems with generating all forms of language
patient Tan
first example of Broca’s aphasia
could only speak one syllable (tan)
still tried to communicate via gestures, tone, inflection
large lesion in the left inferior frontal gyrus (broca’s area)
broca’s area
large lesion in the left inferior frontal gyrus
wernicke’s area
posterior superior temporal lobe - wernicke’s aphasia usually happens in the left hemisphere
wernicke’s aphasia
damage to the posterior superior temporal lobe, usually in the left hemisphere
affects both written and spoken language comprehension
ability to produce language, but the content is neither meaningful nor comrehensible - “word salad”
paraphasias (3 types)
verbal: substituting a word with something semantically related (something that shares meaning with intended word - ex. swapping terms brother and sister (both mean sibling))
phonemic (literal): swapping or adding speech sounds - shares sounds with intended word
neologisms: using a made up word
conduction aphasia
damage to the neural pathway between Broca’s and Wernicke’s area
production and comprehension intact
repetition is impaired - load dependent
lateralization and language
aphasias indicate that language is left lateralized
lateralization is not fully understood and isn’t linked to handedness - data shows that up to 70% of left handed people demonstrate left hemisphere language dominance
what type of language does the right hemisphere support?
broader aspects of language like prosody and pitch to convey intonation, mood, attitude, gestural communication
what do aphasias show us
laterlization of language and division in language capacities
- acquisition and comphrehension
nuturists vs naturists view of language aquisition
nuturist view: no, we acquire language through the same mechanisms as skill learning
naturist view: yes, we are born with the innate capacity to learn language
behaviourist view of language acquisition
language acquisition is skill or associative learning
language is explicitly trained through trial and error reinforcement and modelling other people
chomsky’s opinion on behaviourism
- language is too complex and acquired too rapidly for a behaviourist view of language learning
- not stimulus dependent
- not determined by reinforcement
- learned rapidly
- we can understand and speak sentences we have not heard before
the innateness hypothesis
grammar and syntactic structure is separate from semantic meaning and we are born with principles of grammar
chomsky’s three examples for how we are born with principles of grammar
Language Acquisition Device (LAD): abstracted entity that supports language
Universal grammar: a part of the LAD that includes rules for all languages
children only need to learn language specific aspects to put “on top” of universal grammar
convergence
support for noam chomsky’s innateness hypothesis
- children are exposed to different learning situations yet converge on the same grammar
uniformity
support for noam chomsky’s innateness hypothesis
- children follow generally the same stages of language development
poverty of stimulus argument
support for noam chomsky’s innateness hypothesis
the linguistic environment of a child is not sufficient enough to allow that child to learn a language via reinforcement, rules or imitation
a child doesn’t hear enough language samples to acquire all language, doesn’t have enough opportunities to learn from mistakes
means there must be something innate about language
critiques of the poverty of stimulus argument
- cannot address the questions:
- what information is innate?
- how can you disprove this argument?
- how do you provide a complete account of all the linguistic data available to a child
there are actually lots of things in the environment that support language learning:
- adult reformulations of children’s speech that target the structure but not the meaning
- children extract regularities from experiences to form rules
- not all rules are innate
support of chomsky’s innateness hypothesis:
convergence
uniformity
poverty of stimulus
parentese
baby talk
- helps babies learn the basic building blocks of language
exposure to parenthese linked to more complex language use later in life
phonemes
smallest linguistic unit
english has a few dozen phonemes to prodyce morphemes
morphemes and words
the smallest meaningful units of language - ex. dog
syntax
rules that govern how words are arranged in a sentence
semantics
the meaning
language comprehension
understanding the message - semantics - from language
requires resolving many types of linguistic ambiguity using context and top down processing
three types of language comprehension
phonological - within a sound
lexical - within a word
syntactic or parsing - within a sentence
phonemes
small unit of speech that can change the meaning of a word
phonological ambuiguity
determining phonemes depends on audio signal, often noisy
we use context and internal knowledge of speech sounds to ‘hear’
lexical ambiguity
a single word form can refer to more than one different concept
over 80% of common English words have more than one dictionary entre
homophones
words that sound the same but have different meanings
cross modal priming task
ps presented with a homophone and must make a lexical decision (bug: ant or spyware?) at the same time as they are listening to the word
some trials included words that were semantically related to either one meaning of the homophone or the other (homophone presented in a little blurb)
measured response times for the decision for all words (ant and spyware and random word) - response times are faster when related words are presented together
also
in short time frames for decision making both meanings were activated (ant and spyware both had fast reactions0 - after awhile, only the meaning activated by context speeds up
shows that the brain briefly entertains multiple meanings of a word before settling on one based on the rest of the sentence
parsing a sentence
dividing a sentence into parts and identifying them as elements - (nouns, articles, verbs)
syntatic ambiguity
we hear sentences incrementally, partial information
there is often more than one way to parse a sentence
garden path sentence
grammatic sentences with multiple syntax structures
shows how we parse incrementally
syntax first approach
we read via grammar principles alone, in one direction
constraint based models
constraints used to resolve ambiguity
- semantic and thematic context
- expectation
- frequency
how many years old is reading as a form of language
5500 years old
two forms of dyslexia
surface and phonological
surface dyslexia
impaired at producing irregular words (25% of english words), like comb or thought
- reading happens letter by letter
- difficulty matching words to mental dictionary
phonological dyslexia
impaired at reading non words or new words
readings happen by comparing whole words to mental dictionary(lexicon)
difficulty reading letter by letter
dual route model of reading
mental dictionary for whole words
grapheme phoneme conversion for letter by letter
nativism vs linguistic relativity
nativism: language and thought are independent
linguistic relativity: language and thought are interconnected
mentalese
concept created by nativists
an innate, non spoken language to represent all conceptual content and propositions to create thought
explains why children (and animals) without a spoken language can have thoughts
gasoline drums and linguistic relativity
gasoline fire caused by people flicking cigs towards empty drums
people presume empty means safe
sapir whorf hypothesis
linguistic determinism states a person’s thoughts are determined by language
maybe a person’s thoughts are just influenced by language
color language studies
tested peoples memory for colors they had seen
compared the berinmo tribe, which don’t use words blue and green
and english speakers who don’t use words nol and wor
tested them in their language and the other language
presented with colour, and them two colours with words on them
their memories were impaired when the words presented weren’t in their language
language shapes colour memory
color language
different languages have different numbers of names for colors
accessing color categories with out language labels doesn’t change across languages in tests
intrinstic frame
spatial relations described in terms of objects
relative frame
spatial relations described from an observer’s viewpoint
absolute frame
spatial relations described as map coordinates
three spatial frames of reference
intrinsic, relative and absolute
does a languages method of describing space affect though and behaviour
asked different language speakers to pick a card matching on relative and absolute frames of reference
- the card they picked depended on the frame of reference used in their language
