Language 2 Flashcards
processing spoken words overview
- Properties of spoken language
- Major elements of speech recognition:
- Segmentation- speech is continuous so need to extract units of information e.g. words from this
- Lexical selection- once we have isolated units we have to map the meaning/representation from mental dictionary
- Access to meaning- want to understand the meaning of units
- Context effects- all of this mechanism shows you how contexts can facilitate different meanings
Speech processing in the brain
speech processing
- A process of progressively extracting invariant, discrete representations from a variable, continuous input…
- Speech signal challenges:
- Continuous. Distributed in time. Fast-fading Words are not neatly segmented (e.g., by pauses). Consecutive speech sounds blend into each other due to mechanical constraints on articulators.
Variable Speaker differences; pitch affected by age and sex; different accents, talking speeds, often heard in noise.
- Continuous. Distributed in time. Fast-fading Words are not neatly segmented (e.g., by pauses). Consecutive speech sounds blend into each other due to mechanical constraints on articulators.
word segmentation (Cutler & Norris, 1988)
- The rhythmic structure of English is stress- timed (some syllables are emphasised)
- Lettuce Trousers Cigar (underlined = stressed syllable)
Metrical Segmentation Strategy (MSS): In English, stressed (strong) syllables are likely onsets of words. Continuous speech is segmented at stressed syllables.
syllable stress and word types
- Syllables
- Stressed syllables- Full vowels (lettuce)
- Unstressed syllables- Reduced vowels (behind)
- Words
- Content words- Nouns, verbs, adjectives
- Grammatical words- Articles, pronouns, prepositions, conjunctions
Evidence in favour of MSS: the 74% of stressed syllables in English corresponds to sole or initial syllable of a content word. This is not the case for unstressed syllables - only 5% corresponds to content words (Cutler & Carter, 1987).
metrical segmentation strategy
- It is not infallible – it is a strategy ( * examples of incorrectly segmented words with complex syllabic structure). Listeners need other source of information to segment successfully.
- Alert *lert
- Assassinate *sassinate
- MSS is language specific. Other languages may use different strategies.
It solves the child’s paradox (how could a child segment a word, if the child does not know the word?)
lexical selection
- Segmented stream is the input for lexical selection.
- searching process that determines the best fit between the input and the abstract lexical representations.
- fast: it starts as soon as there is some information about the word, and can finish before the word has been fully pronounced.
Words in context can be recognised within 175-200 ms of their onset, or when only a part of their acoustic content has been presented.
evidence from shadowing (Marslen-Wilson, 1975)
- Task: Participants hear a sentence and they repeat aloud what they heard.
- Results: Participants corrected the words when repeating them.
- The corrections occurred before the incorrect word was presented in full.
We are fast in recognising words - not mere repetition of sounds but they access known lexical representations
- The corrections occurred before the incorrect word was presented in full.
evidence from gating (Tyler & Wessels, 1983)
- Task: Participants are given a word to listen. The word is chopped in different fragments/gates of different durations.
- The gates start from the beginning of the word, and become increasingly larger (e.g., +25ms every time).
The task is to say what is the word.
cohort model (marlin-Wilson & Welsh, 1978)
- 3 stages: access, selection, and integration
- Access: activation of initial set of candidates based on word-initial cohort
- Selection: words that mismatch the incoming signal removed from the cohort
- Integration: their syntactic and semantic properties integrated with context
- A word is recognised at the point where it is the only word still consistent with the input (Recognition Point).
Optimally efficient system: maximally effective use of incoming signal, a word will be recognized as soon as the info is available to differentiate it from competitors, even before end of the word.
salience of word onsets and additional late activation (Allopenna et al.m 1998)
- The Cohort model suggests that word onsets, i.e., information that we have at the very beginning helps to set up the search and the cohort;
This is consistent with evidence showing that word onsets are particularly salient (Cole and Jakimik, 1980) but information coming at later points can also activate lexical entries
access to meaning (swinney, 1979)
- Ambiguous context: Rumour had it that, for years, the government building had been plagued with problems. The man was not surprised when he found bugs in the corner of his room.
- Disambiguating context :Rumour had it that, for years, the government building had been plagued with problems. The man was not surprised when he found several spiders, cockroaches and other bugs in the corner of his room.
- Different meanings are initially activated: contextual info is not used to determine which words are considered for recognition;
Contextual information is critical for the selection of the appropriate meaning amongst the activated alternatives.
context effects (in monitoring) Marslen-Wilson, Brown & Tyler, 1988)
- Task: Listening to sentences & monitoring for specific words
- Results:
- Word in isolation: guitar ~300ms
- Normal: The boy held the guitar. ~240ms
- Pragmatic Anomalous: The boy buried the guitar. ~268ms
- Semantic Anomalous: The boy drank the guitar. ~291ms
- Categorical Anomalous: The boy slept the guitar. ~320ms
Multiple types of contextual information are integrated during spoken word recognition
- Categorical Anomalous: The boy slept the guitar. ~320ms
speech processing in the brain (Gil-da-costa et al., 2006)
- Bilateral activity in Heschl’s gyrus (low level processing), STG and MTG for simple mapping of sound to meaning
- Left-lateralised activation in the dorsal stream, and especially left IFG, for more complex spoken inputs (e.g., sentences)
- Evolutionary context
- Non-human primates also communicate by exchanging meaningful calls
- This triggers comparable bilateral activity in the brain of a macaque
- Suggests evolutionary continuity of the bilateral system that supports mapping from sound to meaning (ventral stream)
Strong dorsal connections between temporal and frontal areas in the left hemisphere are unique to humans (important for syntax).
sentence processing
- Sentences are not stored in the mental lexicon
We need rapid mechanisms for parsing and extraction of the information they convey (‘who is doing what to whom’)
syntactic rules
- Syntactic rules: the rules that govern how words can be combined
- They allow all permissible sentences to be generated; and rule out all illegal sentences
- Powerful little fruits produce open-source initiatives
- No meaning, but syntactically correct
- Principles for combining words into sentences that do not depend on meaning
Based on knowledge about grammatical categories such as nouns, verbs, adjectives, prepositions etc
syntactic parsing
- The girl hits the woman with a bag
- The girl hits the woman with a bag
- The girl hits the woman with a bag
Comprehension depends (in part) on the grammatical relations that listeners can establish among the words in a sentence
main theories of sentence processing
- Garden-path model (Frazier & Rayner, 1982) Initial parsing is purely syntactic, meaning is not involved in the selection of the initial syntactic structure
- Constraint-based theories (MacDonald et al, 1994) The initial interpretation depends on all available sources of information (syntactic, semantic, general world knowledge)
- Unrestricted race-model (Van Gompel et al, 2000)
All sources of information used to identify a syntactic structure
‘Good-enough’ representations (Ferreira et al, 2002) Processing depth / type of information used depend on the task
evidence- sentence parsing cues
- Types of information used to understand sentences:
- syntactic principles
- statistical regularities
- grammatical categories
- prosodic cues
- semantic information
- world knowledge
(…and more)
syntactic principles (Frazier, 1987)
- Late closure principle: new items are attached to the phrase or the clause most recently processed, if grammatically possible.
- Minimal attachment: Minimal attachment links each incoming word to the existing structure using the simplest syntactic structure that is consistent with the input.
A strategy of parsimony: The parser builds the simplest structure that obeys the rules of language.
statistical regularities (Slobin, 1966)
Word order: Evidence: Effects of word order have been demonstrated in sentence to picture matching tasks, where active sentence types are processed (canonical word order, more frequently used) faster than passive sentence
grammatical categories
- Individual words provide reliable cues for sentence interpretation (esp. grammatical words like prepositions, articles, pronouns)
- A grammatical word and signals a new phrase node
A complementiser (that, which, etc.) signals embedded sentence
neurobiology of syntax
- Meta-analysis of 128 neuroimaging studies of syntactic processing
- Extended fronto-temporal processing network, more prominent on the left
- Requires intact left fronto-temporal white matter connections (dorsal and ventral)
example of neurocognitive syntax
- Strict left-lateralization of grammatical function; primacy of Broca’s area
- Emphasis on distinguishing between simple and complex syntactic computations
- Two neural computational systems:
- Ventral pathway (BA45 – aSTG) for simple syntax The cat sat on the mat
Dorsal pathway (BA 44 – pSTG) for complex syntax The juice that the child spilled stained the rug
- Ventral pathway (BA45 – aSTG) for simple syntax The cat sat on the mat
communication
- Exchange of information between individuals using a common system of symbols, signs, or behaviour
- Broader than language as it also refers to:
- non-verbal communication
use of iconic and indexical signs - animal communication, etc.
- non-verbal communication