language Flashcards
formal definition of language
systematic means of communication info using conventionalized sounds, gestures, marks, or signals having understood meaning
function of human language
is to influence people’s behaviour by changing what they know, think, believe, or desire
allow us to affect what other people think, and thus what they do
When we speak we put ideas into other people’s heads or even our own heads
How do we communicate in an efficient and effective way - it is fund. To how we function in the world as humans
challenge of language
need shared understanding between two people who use it
key power of language is our ability to express novel ideas say things that have never been said, think things that have never been thought before and then communicate them
list some of the powers mentioned of human language
communicate info fast
makes a social netowrk
store info outside of ourselves
creative expression
refers to time and place
phonemes
smallest units of perceived speech. Categorical speech sounds
Ta, ba, ki.
rules on how phones can be combined to form larger units is
phonology
how many phonemes does English have
44
morphemes are defined as
smallest unit of language that carry meaning, combinations of phonemes, - players - ‘play’ ‘er’ ‘s’ -
3 separate morphemes all meaning different things.
rules about combining morphemes to form Words
morphology
definition fo words
smallest stand-alone units of meaning
Morphemes have meaning but you need to add them to give them plausibility
Ind words can at least stand alone. Combos of one or more morphemes,
syntax
language specific rules for combining words
happy child vs nino feliz
what are phrases
words in turn are combined into phrases
limitless in English
phrases combined to make sentences
in English - what order do verbs, objects and subjects go in for a sentence
SVO
John ate the apple
subject, object verb
what is a sentence
a set of words/phrases that in principle tells a complete thought, expresses an idea
can consist of one or more phrases,
even more limitless
understanding of language that we have in modern linguistics due to the researcher named what?
Noom Chomsky
Chomsky argued what 4 main ideas
1) young children combine words in novel ways they haven’t heard before to express new ideas - argued this showing there is more to language than just repetition of what you hear
2) same as above, it can’t just be about imitation and repetition
3) we learn an underlying set of rules that we can use to generate sentences based on them once we have learned them
4) there is a built in mechanism in our brain that knows from birth that sentences have Subjects, Verbs and Objects - and we just have to figure out what order they go in in our given language
we only learn parameters of language, not the whole thing from scratch
who is nim chimpsky
chimp they tried to teach English to, to understand how people learn the language
named after Noam Chomsky
difference between syntax and semantics
syntax - rules of word’s order - morphology, phonology - how to put things together
semantics - meaning of language - how meaning is derived from words phrases sentences
how did Chomsky demonstrate that syntax and semantics are ind. components of language
used a sentenced that is grammatical but meaningless
‘colourless green ideas sleep furiously’
what sentences is ungrammatical but meaningful
colourful green ants crawls furiously
phrase structure is generated from…
Generative Grammar - set of rules that specify what orders and combinations these roles can occur in
what is generative grammar
set of rules that specify what orders and combinations these roles can occur in
what is a noun phrase
consist of an optional article followed by a noun
fill in an article like ‘the’ and a noun like boy.
what is a verb phrase
verb followed by a noun phrase, optional article followed by a noun, constructed sentence
‘the boy hit the ball’
what are problems with relying on phrase structure alone to determine meaning
sentence example
what does this suggest
sometimes you have a sentence that has just one phrase structure and yet there are 2 possible meanings
the shooting of the hunters was terrible - did they got shot or was their aim the issue
suggests phrase structure alone isn’t determine meaning - it works the other way around
when we say phrase structure works the other way around what do we mean
look at these sentences
‘the boy hit the ball’, and the ‘the ball was hit by the boy’
these 2 have the same meaning and yet they have very different phrase structures
chomsky proposed - there are actually 2 types of structure involved in language understanding
Surface - refers to structure to words as they are actually spoken in order
Deep Structure - exists in our minds that is where the underlying meaning is represented - underlying phrase structure that conveys meaning
how do we get from surface structure to deep structure?
it was proposed our minds do this by
transformational grammar
take a deeps structure and convert it to surface structure when you want to say something and take surface to deep when you comprehend what someone is saying
core proposition refers to
the idea being represented by the sentence - like deep structure
the boy hit the ball vs the ball was hit by the ball
same meaning (DS) - what is their difference
emphasis
first one the emphasis is on the subject - the boy
2nd one the emphasis is on what was hit - the ball
what is ambiguity in terms of language
example of a sentence with multiple interpretations/meanings
studying ambiguity gives us insight on…?
gives us insight to the nature of that process our mind and brain does
A lot like how illusions can be helpful to get insight into perceptions
show the ways in which systems can fail and types of assumptions perceptual system makes
ambiguity serves a similar role for language
example of where ambiguity in language often appears
Newspaper Headlines - because they try to minimize their amount of words used
what kind of ambiguity occurs when a particular word was more than one meaning
Lexical Meaning
what is syntactic ambiguity
example
not due to word meanings,
due to multiple possible phrase structures that we construct in our minds to represent the relationships between the words
‘They are cooking apples’
‘I saw the gorilla in my pajamas’
what is referential ambiguity
often caused by use of ___
examples
has to do with certain words we use in language that necessarily refer to other entities in a sentence – ‘john grabbed his lunch, sat on a rock, and ate it’
the word it is an object - it refers to an object already introduced and so does it refer to the lunch or the rock?
caused by use of Anaphors
what are Anaphors
words that refer to a person place or thing that are referential, has to refer to something that was already introduced - the word stands in for that person place or thing
it, she, him, her,
list 3 kinds of ambiguity
Lexical - word w multiple meaning
Syntactic - possible relationships between the words
Referential - has to do with words that refer to other entities - it she her
like other motor control operations, speech control is heavily dependant on the ..?
prefrontal cortex
in speech production, when it comes to the planning of speech at the level of abstract language, an area of the brain strongly implicated is…?
where in the brain is this area
Broca’s area in the prefrontal cortex
most of us language is lateralized primarily to the ____ hemisphere including ______
most of us language is lateralized primarily to the LEFT hemisphere including BROCA’S AREA
what is aphasia
a language deficit
damage to Broca’s causes Broca’s Aphasia - what speech issues does this cause
Struggle to string words into complete sentences, can get words out, a few words but can’t link them together
Meaning is there but not conveyed through complete sentences for the most part
slow, confluent, awkward articulation, phonemic error (pelsil instead of pencil)
you see Broca’s aphasia in both __ and __ speech
spoken and written
Broca’s aphasia is not an issue __ it’s an issue of ___
you’l see a BA patient says something better if it is ____
not an issue of lip movement, issue of abstract language planning
better if it is memorized because they don’t have to plan out ind words
repeated words doesn’t depend much on broca’s area, but planning a sequence of words does
in broca’s aphasia patients - they’re speech planning is bad, but their ____ is spared
Comprehension is spared, they can understand straightforward questions you ask them
a problem with the planning and production of language. Not a motor problem
what kind of words to BA patients have the most issue with
verbs, articles, pronouns, words that are smaller and connect language together, or verbs where you have to conjugate them correctly.
No verb inflection.
Responses can make sense but are incorrect grammatically.
BA can comprehend pretty well, except their comprehension of _____ is limited
comprehension of syntax is limited.
If I asked them ‘did the dog chase the cat’ they understand, but if I asked ‘was the cat chased by the dog’ - they would understand they were being asked about a cat, a dog and a chase, but confused about who is chasing who due to the complicated syntax.
BA patients aren’t good at telling is a sentence is __ or not
they also have issue with function words like
grammatical or not
they have issues with function words like ‘and, for’ etc.
BA impacts people’s ability to produce language, but more than that is a difficulty with _____ in both production and comprehension of language
__ is in tact, but __ is impaired
that it is a difficulty with Syntax in both the production and comprehension of language. Semantics (meaning) is intact, but Syntax is more impaired.
Broca’s area is important for the ___ of language
syntax
what lobe is wernicke’s area in
_______ part of the brain
temporal lobe - perceptual part of the brain
why does it make sense WA is in the temporal lobe
in the ______ stream
because temporal lobe is about perception, and speech comprehension involves perception - visual or auditory
in the WHAT stream
WA causes a deficit in
language coming out is ___ correct, but hard to
speech compression
Language coming out is more syntactically correct but hard to figure out what they are talking about - the meaning is lacking,
Wernicke’s speech comes out sounding ____ but rather ______
sounding natural but rather meaningless.
which aphasia - broca’s or wernicke’s has good emphasis and normal intention
Wernicke’s speech has good articulation and prosody - normal emphasis and intonation
what aphasia has been called word salad
wernicke’s aphasia
when people with WA express meaning, they often do it in a
what is this called
roundabout sort of way called Circumlocution
what aphasia has impaired comprehension
wernicke’s
don’t understand what you ask them, they respond and talk and talk but you get the sense that they don’t really know what you asked them
problem in WA is the link between __ and ___
they ___ you, but don’t link it to _______, affecting ___ __________
seems to be the link between the sequence of sounds and the meaning to which that refers - this profoundly affects the comprehension of language
they hear the sound you say but don’t link it to meaning, and affects language production
___ aphasia is about syntax
______ aphasia is about semantics
broca’s is about syntax
wernicke’s is about semantics. Linking sounds and visuals of words to the meaning they have
what does split brain refer to
why does this happen
corpus callosum was severed
bridge between the two is no longer there
developmental reasons - also done to help Epilepsy
In a split brain patient an object presented in the _____ hemisphere only goes to the ______ hemi and can’t get across, and vice versa.
an object presented in the left hemisphere only goes to the right hemi and can’t get across, and vice versa.
what happens with the split brain patient looking at the photo fo the dog and cat on left and right side
cat is in the right visual field, it gets sent to the left hemisphere the left hemisphere also controls the right hand, because motor control is also contralateral.
left side uses right hand to draw the photo
dog goes to right hemi, that controls left hand to draw the dog
they can draw both at the same time as their 2 hemi’s act independently
what % are right handed, and what % are left handed
the rest are one of what 3 things
70-90% right handed
10% left
some folks are ambidextrous, cross Dom, or mixed handedness
for right handers, 95% have language primarily in their
left hemisphere
the rest are right hemisphere Dom for language
for left handed, what % of them are left hemisphere Dom for language
what % right
what % split evenly
70% left hemisphere for language
15% are right hemisphere dom
15% are split evenly
if we are left hemisphere Dom for language, what goes on in the right equivalent area
one way right hemisphere is involved in Prosody - the that we say words, stress, rhythm, question tones, sarcasm, tone
deficit of prosody is called
what are the diff kinds of this
Aprosodia
produce and receptive
what is productive aprosodia, what is it caused by
caused by damage to RH equivalent to Broca’s Area that is used for incorporating prosody into one’s language
can’t use prosody in one’s own speech,
right words but monotone speech, lacks emotion
what is receptive aprosodia
associated with what area
refers to difficulty processing prosody in other’s speech
associated with RH equivalent to Wernicke’s Area
left hemi wernicke’s is important for Language Comprehension and it RH equivalent is important for Comprehension of Prosody
Not correct to say language is entirely in LH in typical brain, more accurate to say that ___ are on one side
core functions
syntax, processing, meaning from words
Broca’s area is for
wernicke’s area is for
Broca’s - syntax and planning for production
Wernicke - word perception and semantics
sensory vs motor cortices in language
Sensory Cortices - are also important for language because we hear or read language, even braille
Motor Cortices - how we produce language, same parts of brain that control mouth face tongue, hands and arm to write
what is association cortices used for in language
the core is getting a meaning across to someone else
a highly distributed representation of meaning throughout cortex is fundamental to meaning
what 5 sources of info are used to interpret what we comprehend from language
Genes
Past Experience
Internal State
Environmental Context
Proximal Stimulus
what is the interactive activation theory
time and accuracy that we can perceive ind letters depends on perception of letter and also faster when we can perceive them in the context of words
top down influence on letter perception
is language processing bottom up or top down
both
why do people hear da in the mcgurk effect
person says GA
audio says BA
B is on lips and G is back in the throat, and so what you end up perceiving is something in between, Da is on tip of the tongue - in between the lips and the throat, your mind and brain combine the two inputs allowing the perception of the sound to be influenced by your visual context
garden path sentences
example of how we hear language one word at a time, but the brain doesn’t wait until the end of the sentence to start processing - we process it word by word ‘online’ - we have to guess the correct phrase structure of the sentence as it comes in.
know where broca’s and wernicke’s area are on the brain map image on page 15 on our google notes
okay
broca’s pink - rostral and large
wern green - above blue, caudal
fmri measures changes in __ using __ and ___
measures changes in magnetization using electromagnetic radiation and nuclear magnetic resonance,
diff between functional mri and mri
instead of focusing on a structure of the body
functional mri is trying to measure what’s going on and in particular we are interested in brain activity
how does an MRI measure magnetization - 4 steps
sending ElectroMagnetic Radiation (radio waves) into body
absorbed by atoms in our body (usually Hydrogen)
releases it back out
and how quickly it is released depends on the type of brain tissue it is in and what is going on in that tissue
fmri is based on a principle called
Nuclear Magnetic Resonance
fmri can’t measure neural activity, it measures ____
how is this helpful
changes in blood oxygenation, how much oxygenated vs deoxygenated hemoglobin there is in our blood
you can measure that is because hemoglobin has iron in it, iron has strong magnetic properties
when brain becomes active, body pushes blood to that part of the brain, pushes out deoxy hemo. so we end up w more oxy hemo less deoxy
this change in blood oxygenation represents brain activity
fmri is good for _ resolution, bad for _ resolution
temporal resolution isn’t great takes 5-6 seconds to see result
spatial resolution is good - because this neuromuscular response is very specific - a few mm
where the change in blood flow occurs tells you within m where the neural activity is
EEG is the opposite
pros and cons of Fmri
pros - non invasive, no surgery, no injection, low risk, used a lot, rare complications
cons - safety issues regarding magnetic objects colliding with the strong magnet
Mitchells brain study overview
use text to see which nouns commonly co-occur w which verbs
recorded neural pattern of people thinking about verbs
predicted the neural activity for nouns that co-occured with verbs
got patients to think of nouns and see if they could guess which noun they thought of based on their brain activity
Mitchells study conceptually idea - celery example
any given noun like celery we may be able to think of it as a combo of different semantic features
if we knew the brain activation associated with each of those features we could make a prediction for what the overall pattern of activation in brain would be as a combo of those features
they said what if a noun is essentially the combo of meanings of the related verbs? Would that let us make accurate predictions in the brain
his study worked
