language Flashcards
Skinner and Chomsky
behaviourism cannot explain the learning of language. Skinner thought that language can be learnt through reward and punishment for correct and incorrect language.
Chomsky said there must be something innate as a child can copy others but can also create sentences they have never heard before
what are the 2 types of language
receptive
productive
what is receptive language
receive meaning from someone else
through reading and listening
understanding of words
what is productive language
produce speech
tell motor sensors to move mouth to make the correct sound
there are 6 ways to describe language, what are they
semantics syntax morphology pragmatics phonetics phonology
what are semanics
the study of meaning
shared meaning of words between people
what is a syntax
the rules of word order
what is morphology
study of how words are built from morphemes
what is a morpheme
the smallest meaning of a word
what are pragmatics
meaning that do not affect the literal truth of something
e.g. sarcasm
what is phonetics
acoustic detail of speech sounds
what is phonology
study of how sounds relate to languages
when listening, you decode what they say, so you go from……
sentence phrase word morphemes phonemes
when talking, you encode what you want to say so you start with
phonemes morphemes words phrases sentences
what is a word
smallest meaningful unit of speech that can stand by itself
what is a phrase
small group of words standing together
what is a sentence
noun and verb phrase
what is the mental lexicon
a structure that stores our mental representations of the words we have which are connected via semantics
semantic priming
neely 1991
neely 1991
semantic priming
semantic priming
study
reaction times were recorded for words that are semantically related. words were presented so quickly that the participants probably didnt see it.
if dog is presented before the word wolf, reaction time for wolf was faster than if unprimed
if triangle was presented before the word wolf, reaction times were slower because it was unprimed
dog and wolf have semantic associations
associative priming
meyer and schvanveldt 1971
meyer and schvanveldt 1971
associative priming
associative priming
study
reaction times were recorded for words that were associatively related.
if spider was presented before the word web, reaction times were faster than if web was unprimed
if biscuit was presented before the word web, reaction times for web were slower because it was unprimed
how do we produce speech
levelt 1999
levelt 1999
how do we produce speech
levelt 1999
3 stages
conceptualisation
formulation
articulation
levelt 1999
what is conceptualisation
idea/thought/feeling you want to get across to someone
levelt 1999
what is formulation
formulate the message using the tools of language to express
levelt 1999
what is articulation
create speech sounds
tip of tongue state
brown and mcneill 1966
brown and mcneill 1966
tip of tongue state
tip of tongue state
study
gave participants definition of rare words and noticed 3 possible outcomes
1-identify and generate correct word
2-identify and generate incorrect word
3-identify but cannot generate word
this is tip of tongue state
if those in outcome 3 were asked to generate all know knowledge of that word, they could they just couldnt identify the word
why? activation is not going to target word, nodes around are not being triggered enough to activate the target word.
how do we perceive speech?
how do we separate sounds/speech coming from the other sounds coming in
speech segmentation-how do we know where one word stops and another begins? people pronounce words differently in isolation compared to in normal speech
co-articulation- the way we pronounce phonemes can change depending on proceeding/following phonemes
decoding speech
pollack and pickett 1964
pollack and pickett 1964
decoding speech
decoding speech
study
recorded natural conversations between people and asked p’s to identify sections of speech in one of two conditions
condition 1-individual words 505 ACCURACY
condition 2-sequence of 7 consecutive words- 90% ACCURACY
demonstrates a top down effect
conceptual information helps guide basic processes
it is easier for us to identify words in sentences as we can use the context to understand
phonetic restoration effect
warren 1970
warren 1970
phonetic restoration effect
phonetic restoration effect
study
in a video, a 0.12 second portion is removed and replaced with a cough. When we go to figure out the word missing, we restore the missing sound and not split it into 2 separate sounds/words. We use our top down knowledge to make an educated guess.
cohort model
marslen-wilson 1990+1994
marslen and wilson 1990 and 1994
cohort model
cohort model
study
early in the speech stream, words that match the incoming signal become activated-they are a COHORT of potential candidates.
the better the match, the higher the activation
activation levels can decrease as the speech stream progresses which can lead to words being eliminated from the cohort,
the uniqueness point is the point at which there is only one candidate left
reading words
what do we do when we read
we read to extract meaning from print.
it depends whether we have an existing representation of that word stored in our mental lexicon
reading words
when we read, we use our mental lexicon which is split into 4 sections
semantic-what it means
grammatical-how to use it
phonological-what words it sounds like
orthographic-look of letters/word
word superiority effect
reicher 1960
reicher 1960
word superiority effect
word superiority effect
the phenomenon whereby people are better to identify if a letter is present in a real word as compared to a non real word
