Language

Question 1

Pragmatics:

Answer 1

the context of language that contributes to its meaning

Question 2

Neuropsychology

Answer 2

deals with the relationship between the nervous system, especially the brain, and cerebral or mental functions such as language, memory, and perception.

Question 3

comprehension disorders ( Wernicke )

Answer 3

damage to posterior regions of superior temporal gyrus

Question 4

Broce: language production

Answer 4

damage in the left frontal lobe

Question 5

Aphasia

Answer 5

loss of language function due to acquired brain damage which cannot be attributed to perceptual, movement, thought disorder or dementia.

Question 6

Brocas aphasia

Answer 6

The syndrome is classically defined in terms of production difficulties:
effortful, telegraphic speech, with a lack of function words and grammatical markers (e.g. inflections).
Speech - “agrammatic”.
sometimes problems with the grammatical/syntactic aspects of comprehension

Anomia: impairment in naming people or objects

Preserved automatic speech

Comprehension intact

Motor problems/ paralysis

Question 7

Wernickes aphasia

Answer 7

This syndrome is associated with fluent but “empty” speech, characterised by many paraphasias (producing erroneous syllables or words) and neologisms (invented “words”). Comprehension is impaired ( reading and writing)

Paraphasias
- Sound and semantically based

Repitition

Question 8

Aphasia assumptions

Answer 8

• aphasias are coherent syndromes of symptoms,

- predictable based on the lesion location because language functions are localized to specific regions.

Question 9

Challenges to neuropsychological approach

Answer 9

lesion-deficit correlation ( assumption of coherent syndrom )
localising specific aspect of language in different types of aphasia

Question 10

Lesoin-deficit correlation detail

Answer 10

lesion-deficit correlations are often poor in aphasia

damage to Broca’s area does not necessarily result in Broca’s-type symptoms, ymptoms do not necessarily require damage to Broca’s area.

symptoms of aphasia are more variable - no coherent symptoms

Question 11

how are brocas and wernickes area connected?

Answer 11

arcuate fasiculus

Question 12

word comprehension network anatomy

Answer 12

left hemisphere regions

including inferior frontal cortex and superior and middle temporal cortex

Question 13

syntactic processing

Answer 13

left inferior frontal and posterior middle temporal lobe.

Question 14

Syntactic ambiguity .

Answer 14

two (or more) syntactic structures in conflict during comprehension, either temporarily (so that a momentary ambiguity is resolved within a sentences) or permanently (so that an entire sentence can be interpreted two or more ways

Question 15

principle of minimal attachment

Answer 15

syntactic ambiguity, listeners will prefer the interpretation that uses the simplest syntactic construction, independent of the semantic context

Question 16

challenges principle of minimal attachment

Answer 16

eye tracking and ERP (electrophysiology) during reading, which have found that the semantic context does influence the interpretation of ambiguous phrases in sentences

Question 17

dominance

Answer 17

dominance – that there is a preferred interpretation of ambiguous phrases based on how frequently interpretation is used in the language.

-dominant construction is preferred

Question 18

violations of dominance lead to ( behavioural )

Answer 18

subordinate interpretation is judged to be unacceptable more often than a dominant interpretation

Question 19

violations of dominance lead to ( neurally )

Answer 19

both left inferior frontal and left posterior middle temporal gyri are more active

Question 20

dominance preference leading to

Answer 20

frontal-temporal network involved in processing syntax;

Question 21

fMRI evidence for coordinated network

Answer 21

frontal and temporal activity are coordinated during syntactic processing

Question 22

patients: evidence for coordinated network

Answer 22

loss of function in either key frontal or temporal regions impairs syntactic processing

Question 23

autonomous parsing

Answer 23

single structure is calculated by the syntactic parser without any influence of the meaning of the sentence –> syntactic framework is constructed first with semantic information only involved after intial representation

using minimal attachment

Question 24

interactive

Answer 24

: the meaning (context) of the word/sentence helps guide the parser

Question 25

eye movement studies

Answer 25

Eye movement studies: used because of the temporal dimension of language processing ( it unfurls quickly ) + gives indivation of underlying processes as fixation time and regressions are common depend on ease of understanding

In reduced relative, semantic constraint conflicts with syntactic ambiguity for inanimate objects that have restricted syntactic roles as our semantics inform us that they can only be “acted upon”

The fixation times were equal in the key condition in which the sentence was syntactically but not semantically ambigious this indicates that semantics render the condition unambigious

Question 26

reduced relative clauses

Answer 26

introduce syntactic ambiguity while preserving minimal attachment across a sentence

Question 27

key language functions underpinned by

Answer 27

left frontal temporal network

flexibly modulated depending on :
linguistic representations
linguistic demand

Question 28

word comprehension

Answer 28

phon and semantic representation

left inferior frontal gyrus + MTG and STM

Question 29

syntax

Answer 29

dominance in sentence interpretation

frontal temporal network