language Flashcards
what are linguistic symbols
arbitrary
what is grammar
- rule governed
- rules that governs how symbols are combined
what is semantics
meanings of words and sentences
how many phonemes does english have
44
what are the 5 properties of language
- symbolic
- rule governed
- meaningful
- generative
- displacement
what are phonemes
smallest unit in language
- building block
language is a h….
hierarchy
what is bottom up processing
- relies on sensory input to build a perception from the ground up
- makes contact with store (lexicon) with words you know
whats top down processing
- using our experiences, expectations, our biases in order to anticipate things
why do we need boundries in language?
- to perceive words
whats speech segmentation
breaking our language into segments or words
- there is no single rule for it
what is phonotactics
the distribution of sounds in speech
what was the word spotting task and conclusions
- presented with a sound and told to find the word ‘apple’ hear words like ‘fapple’ and ‘vuffaple’, faster to identify ‘apple’ in ‘fapple’ because ‘fuf apple’ could be a word, ‘vuuapple’ cannot, there is no constraint of language.
- speech perception is influenced by both phonotactic constraints and lexical expectations.
what did pollack and picket 1964 find about segmentation
- context helps with segmentation
- when words are presented in context they are much better at identifying the word then when it is presented in isolation
what do we use to help us segment spoken language
cues
what are phonotactics
what sounds/ letters are more likely to come at start/end of a word, how we make sense of language
- distribution of sounds
whats the stressed syllable constraint (Norris et al 1997)
there is one stressed syllable per word constraint (per word)
why did people find it easier to identify apple in ‘vuffapple’
easier to seperate ‘vuff’ and ‘apple’ as segmentation process works this way, found it harder to remove the ‘f’ from apple because of this
who found that context helps speech segmentation and what was study
-pollack and picket 1964
- presented words in context and isolation
- found in context people responded much faster
what does recognition involve
matching the input stimulus (spoken or written word) with an internal mental representation
where do we store words?
in our mental lexicon
what factors impact frequency
- frequency (how often you hear, read, say a word)
- priming (by something related e.g cat you will recognise dog faster
what did morris 1994
- B and C (the barber not actually doing the cutting) are slower to be recalled, shows how priming does have an affect on how we canr ecognise something faster
what is foresters serial search model and year
- 1976
- different in formation stored in different ways and interconnected
-access files’, lists of words - you search the list that matches the input (modality specific)
- search conducted in a serial way
- lemma contains information about the word’s syntactic and semantic properties
- lemmas are interelated (cat, dog, mouse), explains semantic priming
is Forsters serial search modell 1976 a top down or bottom up process
- purely bottom up input driven process
why was the interactive activation competition model made
- serial search models couldn’t account for top down influences on word recognition
- interactive activation models allow for top down and bottom up influences
what are 2 components of the interactive activation competition models
- aloows for top down and bottom up processing
- competitive, multiple words get activated at the same time and one of them has to win
how does the interactive activation competition model work
- visual stimuli activate features that match the perceptual experience
- features excite compatible letters/words and inhibits incompatible letters/words
- words feedback excitatory and inhibitory activation to letters
- active words, letter and features can also inhibit competing representations at the same time through LATERAL INHIBITION
what is lateral inhibition
process where excited neuron reduces activity of its surrounding neurons, which enhances contrast and sharpens sensory signals
who added weights to the connections of the IAC model
- Seidenberg and McClelland 1989
what are ‘weights’ on the IAC
- can change weight of activation (how much activation gets passed), way inhibiton works, nature of representations
- flexible and adaptable
- introduces frequency (not in early IAC model)
where is language in brain
largely left lateralised
what is aphasia
a language disorder from a lesion in the brain following a stroke or brain injury
what is Broca’s aphasia
- mid 19th cent
- observed impaired speech, but understood him
- slow, effortful searching for words
- language production was offline
- damage to brain in front of and above the left ear
wernicke’s aphasia
- late 19th cent
- did not understand well
- but speak fluent but meaningless
- made up words, unaware of their difficulty
- found to have damage behind left ear
conduction aphasia
- can understand others well
- hard to repeat words or phrases
- comprehension is preserved
- speech fluent
- aware of their errors
whats the theory of the bi lingual cognitive advantage
- constant practise with selective activation, inhibiton and attention gives rise to superior executive functioning
what tasks were done in the cogntive advantage in bilingual people
- card sorting task
- simon task
- flanker task
what is the linguistic relativity hypothesis and who made it
- Sapir- Whorf hypothesis
- the structure and vocabularly of a language influences how is speakers think and perceive the world
- looked at constrained vocabularly sets (colour)
what was found about Dani
able to categorie colours even if they didn’t have words for those colours
what was found about weak and strong linguistic relativity
- discrimination judgements between categories are faster than judgement within categories
- memory for borderline colour better for speakers that make the distinction
what did Boroditsky find about how people describe a bridge
- masculine and femine words
- Germen speakers used typically feminine words to describe it while spanish speakers used more masculine language
