language Flashcards
what are the four main features of language?
symbolic
discrete
productive
combinatorial
what do we use language for?
communication expression of emotion social interaction control the environment expression of social identity
4 aspects of language studied by psycholinguists
production
comprehension
acquisition
disorders
what does symbolic mean?
an element that bears no intrinsic resemblance to its referent
what does iconic mean?
an element that bears resemblance to its referent
advantages of language being symbolic
allows us to represent abstract concepts
can use words flexibly
disadvantages of language being symbolic
requires social interaction to learn
we need instruction and imitation
how is human language discrete?
it is made up of a finite number of elements
finite phonemes (sounds)
finite morphemes (smallest language unite that has meaning or grammatical function)
finite grammatical rules
how is human language productive?
can combine existing elements in new ways without limit as long as you follow the rules
what is recursion?
repetition of a rule or structure in a hierarchical way
what is the difference between linguistic competence and performance?
competence = knowing the rules performance = what we actually produce/can comprehend
what is parsing?
determining the syntactic structure of a sentence
what is syntax-first account of processing language?
build a syntactic structure first and then process meaning of sentence
what is the process of minimal attachment?
you build the simplest syntactic structure possible
what is a garden path sentence?
sentence that leads you to incorrectly interpret the sentence and have to reassess further on in the sentence
what is an interactionist account of language comprehension?
suggests that syntax does not have a special role
people use whatever information is available to them at each point
what is an online measure of how people comprehend utterances?
measures interpretations ‘as they go’
what are offline measures of how people comprehend utterances?
measure final interpretation
what are the methods to measures of comprehension? (4)
self-paces reading
eye tracking (reading)
eye tracking (visual scene)
EEG
what is a saccade? (in eye tracking?)
a rapid jump between location
what is a N400?
negative spike in ERP
happens 400ms after onset of stimulus
when something is presented that they don’t expect
do we anticipate language? evidence.
evidence = boy looking at the cake after hearing ‘eat’
suggest we predict what kind of thing will be mentioned
but cannot completely predict as language is infinite
how do people make predictions?
they imagine what they would say
what is bottom-up processing?
it relies strictly on data
upwards processing from auditory input to meaning
phoneme determine morpheme - determine words - determine phrase - determine sentences - determine conversation