Language Flashcards
Language
A symbolic shared 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
Different languages for Different Purposes
-Complexity of language (morphology) decreases with languages spoken by more people
-Cold climate languages have more words for snow
-Lexical tones are partly determined by climate
Aphasia
Impaired language function, usually from brain injury
Expressive Aphasia
-Intact language comprehension
-Impaired speed production and articulation
-Can understand everything, but can’t speak fluently
Broca’s Aphasia and Patient Tan
-Could only speak one syllable
-Still tried to communicate via gestures, tone, inflection
-Large lesion in the left inferior frontal gyrus
Broca’s Aphasia
-Struggle to produce speech
-Halted speech
-Simple sentences
-Speak in only nouns + verbs
-Drops words from sentences
-Writing also affected
-Impairments range from deficits -> depend on amount of damage to Broca’s area
Wernicke’s Aphasia
-Posterior superior temporal lobe damage
-Speech is fluent but incomprehensible
-Normal prosody + intonation
-Interrupts others + speak rapidly
-Words do not make a coherent thought, lacks meaning
-Includes paraphasias and neologisms, or invented words in speech
Verbal Paraphasia
Substituting a word with something related
-Shares meaning with intended word
-E.g. swapping term brother with sister
Phonemic (literal)
Swapping or adding speech sounds
-Shares sounds with intended word
-E.g. calling crab salad: sad cralad
Neologisms
Invented Words
-Different from those shared with community: Mansplain
-E.g. leg covers; instead of pants
Conduction Aphasia
Neural pathway from between Broca’s and Wernicke’s area disconnection
-Reminds us language depends on a network of brain regions
-Can read, write, and speak
-Can usually understand spoken messages
-Word-finding difficulty
-Unable to repeat words or sentences
-Lost connection between understanding something and speech production
Brain Lateralization
Language is often considered left lateralized
-Most cases of aphasia from left sided damage
Broad aspects of language are supported by the right hemisphere
-Prosody + pitch to convey intonation
-Mood, attitude, gestural communicaton
Right Hemisphere
Supports non-literal language use
-E.g. speech prosody (the music of language)
-How something is said conveys meaning
Right-Hemisphere Lesions
Disrupts the ability to interpret and express prosody of speech
-Problems understanding the emotion of a phrase
-Problems understanding sarcastic speech
Wernicke’s Aphasia
A patient comes to the clinic with some language problems. You ask this person to name some common items. For example, you point to a pair of shoes for them to name and they respond ‘‘feet-houses’’. What type of aphasia would you think this person has?
Nuturist or Behaviourist View
-Language is acquired through the same mechanisms as skill or associative learning
-Explicit training of language (conditioned)
-Trial and error reinforcement as well as modelling other people shapes language
Chomsky and Naturist View
-We are born with the innate capacity to learn language
-Language is not stimulus dependent or determined by reinforcement
-Language is complex and acquired rapidly
-We can understand and speak what we have not heard before
The Innateness Hypothesis
-Grammar, synatic structure, is serperate from semantic meaning and cognition
-E.g. ‘‘colourless green ideas sleep furiously’’
-We are born with principles of grammar
-Children only need to learn language-specific aspects to put ‘‘on top’’ of Universal Grammar
-This would mean that deep down, there is 1 language
Convergence
-Support for the innateness hypothesis
-Children are exposed to different learning situations, yet converge on the same grammar
-E.g. Anyone who is interested can see me later
1. Is anyone who is interested can see me later?
2. Can anyone who is interested see me later?
-Both assume a rule, but most children use (2) which is more ‘‘grammatical’’ than (1)
Uniformity
-Support for the innateness hypothesis
-Children develop speech at a constant pace as they are growing up and most children follow this same timeline
Poverty of Stimulus Argument
-The linguistic environment of a child is not sufficient enough for a child to learn a language via reinforcement, rules or imitation alone
-A child doesn’t hear enough language to acquire all language
-This means they won’t have enough opportunities to learn from mistakes
-This means there must be something innate about language
Evidence that rules are not all innate
-A child hears around 6000-21000 words per day!
-Adult reformulation of children’s speech target the structure but not meaning
-Opportunity to learn
is learned through feedback for ‘‘correct’’ and ‘‘incorrect’’ language
A supporter of the innateness hypothesis of language would consider a behaviourist is incorrect in thinking that language…
Psycholinguistics
-The building blocks of language
-Phonemes
-Morphemes
-Syntax
-Semantics
Phonemes
Smallest linguistic unit
-English has a few dozen phonemes to produce morphemes
- E.g. /d/, /o/, /g/
Morphemes and Words
The smallest meaningful units of language
-E.g. /dog/
Syntax
Rules that govern how words are arranged in a sentence
Semantics
The meaning
Language Comprehension
-Understanding the message that is meant to be conveyed
-Use context and top-down processing to resolve different types of ambiguity :
- Phonological - within a sound
- Lexical- within a word
- Syntactic or parsing - within a sentence
Phonological Ambiguity
-Phonemes (if this is not clear, it can completely change meaning, e.g. bag/bug)
-Determining phonemes depends on audio signal, often noisy
-You use context and internal knowledge of speech sounds to ‘‘hear’’
Lexical Ambiguity
-A single word form can refer to more than one different concept
-E.g. Bark
- >80% of english words have more than one dictionary entry
-Basis of puns
Homophones
Words that sound the same with different meanings
-The correct meaning is usually resolved by sentence context
-E.g. the baseball player picked up the bat
Cross-Modal Priming Task
-Word or nonword?
-Lexical decision SHORTLY after hearing the word bug -> both meanings were active
-Lexical decision at a DELAY from hearing the word bug -> only context biased meaning active
-CONCLUSION: both meanings initially retrieved, contextually inappropriate meaning is quickly discarded
Sentence Parsing
-Dividing a sentence into words
-Identifying them as nouns, articles, verbs
Syntactic Ambiguity
Ambiguity can come because…
-We hear setences incrementally
-There is often more than one way parse a sentence
Garden Path Sentence
-Sentences with multiple syntax structures
-Interpreting a word one way leads you awry
Two Theories of Sentence Parsing
- Syntax First
- Constraint based model
Syntax First Approach
We use grammatical rules to interpret a sentence as we hear or read it (in one direction)¸
-You may get to the end and ‘‘oops’’ wrong meaning, so must go back
Constraint Based Models
We use non-grammatical information to help interpret sentences and resolve any ambiguity
-Semantic + thematic context
-Expectation + meaning
-Frequency
Linguistic Relativity
Language and thought are interconnected
-Sapir Whorf Hypothesis
-Language changes how we think and perceive
-People who speak different languages think differenty
Linguistic Universalists
Language and thought are independent
Colours Across Languages
Russian speakers were faster to respond for colours that fell into different than from the same blue categoy
-English speakers showed no effect
Surface Dyslexia
Letter by letter reading, sounding out
-Impaired: matching words to a mental dictionary
-Presentation: impaired at producing irregular words
Phonological Dyslexia
Matching words to a mental dictionary
-Impaired: letter by letter readings, sounding out and recognizing phonemes
-Presentation: impaired at reading non-words or new words, switches phonemes or sounds
