Language 2 Flashcards
What is the paradox of language?
It is rapidly produced and understood, yet complex
What are the 6 components of language?
1) Phonemes
2) Morphemes
3) Phonology
4) Syntax
5) Semantics
6) Pragmatics
Phonemes are 1/6 of the components of language. Define and provide an example of Phonemes
Definition = The smallest units of sound
Example = “Rice” and “Lice” differ from each other by just one sound “Ruh” and “Luh”
Morphemes are 1/6 of the components of language. Define and provide an example of Morphemes
Definition = The smallest units of meaning in language
Example = “Dog” and “Dogs” differ from each other by just one letter (letter “s”) which indicates singular or plural
Phonology is 1/6 of the components of language. Define and provide an example of Phonology
Definition = Rules governing the sound of words and parts of words (rules that tell us how one should pronounce certain sounds and words)
Syntax is 1/6 of the components of language. Define and provide an example of Syntax
Definition = Rules governing word order and meaning resulting in sentences (rules that tell us where words should be ordered/arranged in order for a sentence to make sense)
Example = “Pass the salt” makes more sense that “The pass salt”
Semantics are 1/6 of the components of language. Define and provide an example of Semantics
Definition = The meaning of words and sentences
Example = “Bank” is where you store your money
Pragmatics are 1/6 of the components of language. Define and provide an example of Pragmatics
Definition = The use of language as a function of the content and social rules (how we use language in an everyday setting depending on who you’re speaking to)
Example = “Hello” -> More formal
“Hi” and “Hey” -> More casual
What component of language is the use of language as a function of the content and social rules?
Pragmatics
What component of language is the meaning of words and sentences?
Semantics
What component of language are the rules governing word order and meaning resulting in sentences?
Syntax
What component of language is the rules governing the sound of words and parts of words?
Phonology
What component of language is the smallest unit of sound?
Phonemes
What is speech segmentation?
When the brain determines where one meaningful unit (e.g., word or morpheme) ends and the next begins in a continuous speech, and it is critical for auditory language processing
What is the purpose of speech segmentation?
- To help us determine when one word ends and the next word begins
- Because when we hear a speech, we hear a continuous pattern of sound so it order to comprehend it, we must know when each word starts and ends
What is co-articulation?
The pronunciation of a phoneme by a speaker depends on the preceding and following phonemes
Simply = It’s a situation when a conceptually isolated speech sound (from the 1st word you say) influences another conceptually isolated speech sound/word (from the next word you say)
e.g. The word “job” is likely to be misperceived if the “job” part was recorded from the previous word you said which was “jog”
“The pronunciation of a phoneme by a speaker depends on the preceding and following phonemes” is known as…
Co-articulation
What are the 3 problems with co-articulation?
1) No one-to-one relationship between acoustic signals and phonemes
2) Phonemesmes have different sounds depending on what sound is produced before or afterwards
3) Variability makes it harder to detect and analyse the acoustic properties of speech
What are the 2 benefits of co-articulation?
1) Allows for speech signals to transfer info in parallel
(Acoustic messages are transmitted more quickly than strings of discrete units)
2) Allows for the prediction of the next sound which makes speech perception faster
(Prediction due to co-articulation occurs within words and not between different words)
What are the 2 well-known theories of speech perception?
1) Motor theory (Liberman et al)
2) Trace (McClelland and Elman)
What theory did Liberman et al. propose about speech perception?
Motor theory
Who proposed the Motor theory on speech perception?
Liberman et al.
What theory did McClelland and Elman propose about speech perception?
TRACE
Who proposed the TRACE theory on speech perception?
McClelland and Elman
What does the Motor theory imply about speech perception?
Listeners perceive spoken words by reproducing the movements of the speaker’s vocal tract (what the speaker is mouthing when they are saying something) rather than identifying sound patterns that the speech generates
“Listeners perceive spoken words by reproducing the movements of the speaker’s vocal tract (what the speaker is mouthing when they are saying something) rather than identifying sound patterns that the speech generates” Which theory proposes this?
The motor theory
(….) is involved in both speech perception and production
Motor system
What are the benefits of the motor system?
It can produce language as well as help us with speech perception (uses only one system to do both of these tasks)
What are the 3 main evidence supporting the motor theory?
1) McGurk effect
2) Categorical perception
3) Motor cortex is functionally involved in speech perception
What theory does the McGurk effect support?
The motor theory
What theory does categorical perception support?
The motor theory
What theory does the “motor cortex is functionally involved in speech perception” support?
The motor theory
What does the McGurk effect suggest?
When the auditory component of one sound pairs with the visual component of another sound, it leads to the perception of a third sound
“When the auditory component of one sound pairs with the visual component of another sound, it leads to the perception of a third sound” What effect is this?
The McGurk effect
What does the McGurk effect suggest about our auditory and visual processing?
- Our auditory and visual info processing is merged
- Because usually what we see (someone mouthing a word/sound) can influence what we believe we are hearing
Who proposed the categorical speech perception theory?
Paizada and Poldrack
What were the findings of Paizada and Poldrack’s categorical speech perception experiment?
1) Speakers did not perceive gradual change and instead suddenly switched from perceiving one sound to perceiving the other
2) There was better discrimination of pairs of sounds when the sounds were across the crucial point
Which theory suggests that speakers do not perceive gradual change and instead suddenly switch from perceiving one sound to perceiving the other?
The categorical speech perception
How does the motor cortex relate to speech perception?
1) Listening to speech and imagining you are speaking activates the speech motor cortex (as shown in fMRI)
2) Disrupting the motor cortex with TMS (magnet) decreases phoneme discrimination
Who thought of the TRACE model?
McClelland and Elman
What did McClelland and Elman propose about speech perception?
TRACE model
What is the TRACE model?
- It is a networking model with processing units at 3 levels
- Connections between levels are facilitatory (e.g. auditory feature helps activate phoneme)
- Connections with the same level are inhibitory (e.g. at the auditory feature level, when you first hear /c/ then /a/ is initially inhibited)
What are the 3 levels of processing units according to the TRACE model?
1) Auditory feature nodes (connected to phoneme nodes)
2) Phoneme nodes (connected to word nodes)
3) Word nodes
What is the purpose of TRACE?
1) The primary function is to take all of the various sources of information found in speech and integrate them to identify single words (connecting different parts of a speech together to make sense of the speech)
e.g.
Word = CAT
Phoneme = C … A … T
Auditory feature = “Cuh” “Ah” “Tuh”
2) All components of speech (auditory features, phonemes, and words) have their own role in creating a speech, and using TRACE to unite them leads to a complete stream of speech, instead of individual components.
What is the step-by-step process of TRACE?
1) You hear the auditory feature
2) The auditory feature activates a phoneme (unit of sound)
3) Phoneme activates words
4) Words then activate additional phonemes that the listener expects to hear next
What is the evidence supporting the TRACE model?
1) Ganong effect/lexical identification shift
2) Phonemic restoration effect
The Ganong effect/lexical identification shift supports which model on speech perception?
The TRACE model
The Phonemic restoration effect supports which model on speech perception?
The TRACE model
What does the Ganong effect/lexical identification shift suggest?
- When we listen to sounds ranging in phonemes (e.g. “dash” and “tash”) the phonemes were assigned to words rather than non-words
- “Tash” is not a real word; so we tend to perceive an ambiguous speech sound as a phoneme that would complete a real word, such as “Dash”, rather than completing a nonsense/fake word