Lecture 15: Language Flashcards
Phonemes
distinctive subset of all possible phones in a language
/t/ + /å/ + /k/ + /s/…
Morphemes
from the distinctive lexicon of morphemes
…take (content morpheme) + s (plural function morpheme)…
Words
From the distinctive vocabulary of words (It + takes + a + heap + of + sense + to + write +…)
Phrase
Noun phrase + verb phrase
Sentences
based on the language’s syntax - syntactical structure
Communicative
language permits us to communicate with one or more people who share our language
arbitrarily symbolic
language creates an arbitrary relationship between a symbol and what it represents: an idea, a thing, a process, a relationship, or a description
regularly structured
language has a structure; only particularly patterned arrangements of symbols have meaning, and different arrangements yield different meanings
generative, productive
within the limits of a linguistic structure, language users can produce novel utterances
dynamic
languages constantly evolve
The hierarchy of language (from top to bottom)
sentence, phrase, word, morpheme, phoneme
How many phonemes are there in English?
about 40
What is the smallest unit of sound that signals meaning?
morpheme (prefixes, suffixes, roots, or stems)
Adults know about ______ morphemes
50-80,000
Syntax
rules that determine word order
How can phonological inflections help?
they can distinguish meanings from phrases of which words can convey different messages
Ambiguity
results when the same wording corresponds to more than one meaning
Lexical ambiguity
word has 2 different meanings
Syntactic ambiguity
words can be grouped together into more than one phrase structure
(they are (cooking apples))
How we process language
hear sounds, identify phonemes, morphemes, and words and figure out the sentence context
McGurk effect
something can sound like another word when you don’t see the person saying it. (think of the youtube video of ba ba ba/da da da)
Language processing is P_____
predictive
Predictability affects ______ time in reading
fixation
What can you see on an EEG with word predictability?
you can see the extra processing (for words you didn’t expect to be there)
______ is an ERP response to unexpected words
N400
Lexical access
accessing word meaning
lexicon
mental dictionary
What are the 2 hypotheses for “When does context have its effects”?
- Get ALL word meanings from lexicon, context operates later
- Context allows you to get only the CORRECT word meaning from the lexicon
What was Swinney’s evidence?
all word meanings are accessed initially
What was Swinney’s experiment?
Subjects heard a sentence, and were shown words or non-words on a screen and had to do a lexical decision task; faster to decide if something is a word
What happens to priming after time passes
only a relevant meaning is primed
Reading
involves perception, language, memory, thinking, and intelligence
Orthography
sounds are mapped onto a set of written symbols
ideographic languages
words/morphemes are mapped with a pictorial symbol (Chinese)
syllabic
syllables are associated with visual representation (Japanese syllabic symbols)
alphabetic
each letter (grapheme) is supposed to represent a phoneme
consonantal scripts
not all sounds are represented, vowels aren’t written down at all (Hebrew)
What is the ratio of grapheme-phoneme in transparent languages?
there’s a 1:1 ratio (Italian)
What is the ratio of grapheme-phoneme in opaque languages?
1:many directions (english)
Sometimes it’s hard to plough through the tough dough …
What is alphabetic reading?
mapping from graphemes to phonemes (the sounds in words)
Regular spelling-to-sounds correspondence:
graphemes map onto phonemes in a regular way; no special knowledge about the word needed to pronounce it
Regular words
all the graphemes have the standard pronunciation
pseudowords
pronounceable strings of letters that have never been seen before
irregular spelling to sound
graphemes don’t map onto phonemes in a regular way
Developmental dyslexia
difficulty in learning and reading, poor phonological awareness, short term memory impairments
Phonological awareness
phonological awareness increases as one learns to read; a central concept in reading
