Language - Chapter 11 Flashcards
Language
System of communication using sounds or symbols that enables us to express our feelings, thoughts, ideas, and experiences.
Hierarchical Nature of Language
Consists of a series of small components that can be combined to form larger units.
Rule-Based Nature of Language
Components can be arranged in certain ways, but not in other ways.
Psycholinguistics
Field concerned with the psychological study of language.
Lexicon
All the words we know; mental dictionary.
Semantics
Meaning of language.
Lexical Semantics
The meaning of words.
Word Frequency
The frequency with which a word appears in a language.
Word Frequency Effect
The fact that we respond more rapidly to high-frequency words than to low-frequency words.
Lexical Decision Task
The task to decide as quickly as possible whether strings of letters are words or nonwords.
Speech Segmentation
The perception of individual words even though there are often no pauses between words.
Lexical Ambiguity
When a word has more than one meaning.
Lexical Priming
Priming that involves the meaning of words.
Meaning Dominance
The relative frequency of the meanings of ambiguous words.
Biased Dominance
When one meaning occurs more often than another meaning.
Balanced Dominance
When each meaning is equally likely.
Syntax
The structure of a sentence.
Parsing
How meaning is created by the grouping of words into phrases.
Garden Path Sentences
Begin appearing to mean one thing but then end up meaning something else.
Temporary Ambiguity
When the meaning of a sentence is ambiguous because a number of meanings are available, depending on how sentence unfolds.
The Garden Path Model of Parsing
As people read a sentence, their grouping of words into phrases is governed by a number of processing mechanisms called heuristics.
Heuristics
A rule that can be applied rapidly to make a decision.
Constraint-Based Approach to Parsing
Information in addition to syntax participates in processing as a person reads or hears a sentence.
Visual World Paradigm
Determining how information in a scene can influence how a sentence is processed.