Language Flashcards
What is language?
A shared symbolic system for purposeful communication
- Symbolic: There are units to reference something else
- Shared: It is common among a group of people
- Purposeful: To communicate and translate thoughts
Lexical tones are partly determined by…
climate
* Tonal languages spoken in warmer climates
When does morphology/complexity of a language decrease?
Morphology (complexity) decreases with languages spoken by more people
What is Aphasia?
Impaired language function, usually from brain injury
What is Broca’s aphasia?
Expressive aphasia
* Intact language comprehension
* Impaired speed production and articulation
- First described in Patient Tan
- 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
- Impairments range from deficits in
producing certain words à problems
generating all forms of language - Depends on amount of damage to Broca’s
area
What is Wernicke’s aphasia?
- Posterior superior temporal lobe
damage - Typically left hemisphere
- Language commonly in left hemisphere
- Written and spoken comprehension is
affected - Language content is not meaningful nor
comprehensible - “Word salad
Verbal Paraphasia
substituting a word with something semantically-related
* Shares meaning with intended word
* Swapping term brother with sister
Phonemic (literal) Paraphasia
swapping or adding speech sounds
* Shares sounds with intended word
* Calling Crab Salad: Sad Cralad
Neologisms Paraphasia
using a made-up word
* Mansplain
What is Conduction aphasia?
Neural pathway from between Broca’s and Wernicke’s area
* Reminds us language depends on a network of brain regions
* Speech production and comprehension intact
* Impaired repetition
* Load dependent
How is language split in the brain
Language is often considered left lateralized
Broader aspects of language are supported by the right hemisphere
* Prosody and pitch to convey intonation, mood, attitude, gestural
communication and overall comprehension
What does the right hemisphere do for language?
Right hemisphere seems to be important for higher-order
non-literal language use
* Example: Speech prosody (the music of language)
* Evidence: Right-hemisphere lesions disrupt ability to
interpret and express prosody of speech
* Problems understanding the emotion of a phrase
* Problems understanding sarcastic speech
What is the Nuturist or behaviourist view of language acquisition?
- Language acquisition is skill or associative learning
- Explicit training of language
- Trial and error reinforcement as well as
modelling other people shapes language
What is the Chomsky and Naturist views of language acquisition?
- Language is NOT
- stimulus dependent
- determined by reinforcement
- Language IS
- complex and acquired rapidly
- allows us understand and speak what we
have not heard before
What is the The innateness hypothesis?
Grammar, syntactic structure, is separate from semantic meaning and cognition
“Colorless green ideas sleep furiously”
- We are born with principles of grammar
- Language Acquisition Device (LAD): 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
Support: Convergence for the innateness hypothesis?
Children are exposed to different learning situations, yet converge on the same grammar
Support: Uniformity for the innateness hypothesis?
Kids tend to follow the same learning curves and patterns
What is the Poverty of stimulus argument?
A child doesn’t hear enough language samples to acquire all language, doesn’t have enough opportunities to learn from mistakes
- There must be something innate about language
What are Phonemes?
smallest linguistic unit /d/, /o/, /g/
* English has a few dozen phonemes to produce morphemes
What are Morphemes and Words?
the smallest meaningful units of
language /dog/
What is Syntax?
rules that govern how words are arranged in a sentence
What are Semantics?
The meaning of the word
What is Lexical ambiguity?
A single word form can refer to more than one different concept
Bat (baseball) vs Bat (animal)
What are homophones?
Ate Eight
Whole Hole
Son Sun
Here Hear
New Knew
What is the Cross modal priming task?
Try see if homophones activate the other meaning.
If talking about a baseball bat primes bat (animal)
Results: Both meanings initially retrieved, Contextually inappropriate meaning is quickly discarded
What is Sentence parsing?
dividing a sentence into words and identifying them as nouns, articles, verbs.
Ambiguity can come because ..
more than one way parse a sentence
What is a Garden path sentence
Sentences with multiple syntax structures
- Interpreting a word one way leads to faulty
interpretation
What are the Two theories of sentence parsing?
1. Syntax First
2. Constraint based model
- Syntax First
We use grammatical rules to interpret a sentence as we are hear/read it
Local or specific - Constraint based model
We use non-grammatical information to help interpret sentences and resolve any ambiguity
(* Semantic and thematic context
* Expectation
* Frequency)
Global or holistic
What are the two thoughts on language?
- Linguistic Universalists
- Linguistic Relativity
- Linguistic Universalists
Language and thought are
independent - Linguistic Relativity
Language and thought are
interconnected
(Sapir Whorf Hypothesis
* Language changes how we think and perceive
* People who speak different languages think differently)
How do Colors across languages (Russian and Blue)
Russian speakers faster for colors that fell into different blue categories than those
from the same blue category. English speakers showed no effect
* Language affects perception
-But inconsistent findings with other languages
What is Surface Dyslexia?
Reads letter-by-letter, sounds out words
* Difficulty matching words to a mental dictionary
* Impaired at producing irregular words (25% of English words), like
‘Comb” or “Thought”
What is Phonological Dyslexia?
- Reads by comparing whole words to mental dictionary (lexicon)
- Difficulty reading letter by letter, sounding out words
- Impaired at reading non-words or new words
