Lecture 4

Question 1

what is competence?

Answer 1

speaker-hearer’s knowledge of the language

• allows for grammaticality judgements, even of sentences we have never heard before
  (what linguists are more interested in)

Question 2

what is performance?

Answer 2

the actual use of language in concrete situations

not (necessarily) the same as what is in our competence due to memory limitations, hesitations, errors, distractions
(more of interest to psycholinguists)

Question 3

describe how grammar is generative

Answer 3

finite number of rules to generate infinite number of sentences

this is the house that jack built

due to a property of the language knows as recursion (when a rule refers to a version of itself in its definition)

Question 4

what is on-line incremental parsing?

Answer 4

the parser constructs a syntactic structure on the basis of the words as they arrive, based on our syntactic knowledge

Question 5

what is syntax?

Answer 5

the arrangement of words and phrases to create well formed sentences in a language

Question 6

considering parsing models, what is the question of encapsulation?

Answer 6

are different sources of knowledge (e.g., syntax, semantics, discourse) separate, specialised components, and/or do they interact with each other?

generally accepted they do interact but when? immediately or are there independent stages?

syntactic information first and on its own

Question 7

what kind of information does serial processing take into account?

Answer 7

semantics, 2 stages -> modular accounts

Question 8

what kind of information does interactive processing take into account?

Answer 8

all info at the same time, interactive account

Question 9

what is the Garden-Path model?

Answer 9

modular accounts

stage 1: parsing done solely on basis of syntactic preferences. two principles: minimal attachment and late closure
stage 2: if the parse is incompatible with (following) syntactic, semantic, thematic, information, reanalysis occurs

Question 10

what is minimal attachment?

Answer 10

go for the simplest structure, i.e. the one with the fewest nodes (S, NP, VP, V, P, PP)

Question 11

what is late closure?

Answer 11

(if no difference in tree nodes) keep phrase open attach incoming material to the constituent being processed

“Attach low”, i.e. attach to the most recent constituent

Question 12

what are the constraint-based models?

Answer 12

all potentially relevant sources of information “constraints” can be used immediately to help syntactic parsing

including semantics, discourse, frequency of a syntactic construction

all possible syntactic analyses are generate in parallel with the activation of each analysis dependent upon the support available at that moment

• if one analysis is strongly preferred -> easy
• if several analyses get comparable support -> difficult because of competition between the different analyses

Question 13

what semantic information gets activated upon reading a word?

Answer 13

unlike syntactic processing/parsing, unlimited number of possibilities: Sentence: 10 words, 20 choices/position -> 10^20 combinations

semantic processor needs to be flexible in order to deal with the variety of input quickly

Question 14

define homonym

Answer 14

word with 2 unrelated interpretations

Question 15

what is selective access (older models)?

Answer 15

context restricts access to contextually appropriate meaning

Question 16

what is ordered access (older models)?

Answer 16

activation on basis of meaning frequency, tried against context

Question 17

what is parallel access (older models)?

Answer 17

all meanings activated

Question 18

give an example of a biased homonym

Answer 18

last night, the port had a strange flavour
last night, the soup had a strange flavour

because it had a strange flavour, the port was not served
because it had a strange flavour, the soup was not served

Question 19

give an example of balanced homonyms

Answer 19

he found the cabin too hot to sleep in
he found the coach too hot to sleep in

because it was too hot to sleep in, the cabin was not used
because it was too hot to sleep in, the coach was not used

Question 20

describe the reordered access model

Answer 20

hybrid of exhaustive and selective access models

prior context can give “contextual boost”, increase the activation level of one meaning

homonyms can be biased or balanced, depending on the relative frequencies of the meanings

subordinate bias effect

Question 21

define metonymy

Answer 21

one salient part or property of an entity is used to refer to the entity as a whole

e.g. the wings took off from the runway (part-for-whole or synecdoche)

the concerned father walked to the school (literal)
the concerned father talked to the school (metonymy)

Question 22

what are the 4 conditions for place-for-institution?

Answer 22

literal context-familiar metonymy (LC - FM)

metonymic context-familiar metonymy (MC - FM)

literal context-no familiar metonymy (LC - NM)

metonymic context-no familiar metonymy (MC - NM)

Question 23

what are the 4 conditions for place-for-event?

Answer 23

literal context-familiar metonymy (LC - FM)

metonymic context-familiar metonymy (MC - FM)

literal context-no familiar metonymy (LC - NM)

metonymic context-no familiar metonymy (MC - NM)

Question 24

define pragmatics

Answer 24

the distinction between what a speaker’s words (literally) mean and what the speaker might mean by his words”

combination of word meanings for individual words (lexical ambiguity) and some kind of principle of compositionally [word meanings and how they are combined]

Question 25

how do we understand the meaning of text and discourse (written and spoken passages)?

Answer 25

words identified, syntactic structure built

Question 26

what is an inference?

Answer 26

inference is the process of developing information that goes beyond the literal meaning of text “the fisherman pulled the fish onto the deck of the ship with some difficulty”

Question 27

what are the three main types of inferences?

Answer 27

logical, bridging, elaborative

Question 28

what are logical inferences?

Answer 28

based on word meaning
e.g. “fish” -> implies “lives in the sea”

Question 29

what are bridiging inferences?

Answer 29

aka backward inference: relate new to previous information in order to maintain coherence

Question 30

what are elaborative inferences?

Answer 30

aka forward inferences: extend the text with your own world knowledge

become part of our memory of the text, practically indistinguishable from original material

Question 31

what is the minimalist approach to whether inferences are automatic?

Answer 31

only two kinds of inferences encoded during reading automatically

1. those necessary for local coherence - connections between sentences that are no further than one to two sentences apart
2. those based on quickly and easily available information - info based in STM
   in practice: logical & bridging inferences (+ maybe a few easily available elaborative ones)
   (most) elaborative inferences are made at the time of recall (hence, not during processing)

Question 32

what is the constructionist approach to whether inferences are automatic?

Answer 32

numerous elaborative inferences are typically drawn during reading
“three turtles rested on a floating log and a fish swam beneath them”

inference: “swimming beneath them” and “them being on a log” implies. that the fish also swam beneath “it”. the fish swam beneath them/it: pps can’t distinguish what they heard (in contrast to “rested beside the log”)

Question 33

describe the hybrid approach search-after-meaning

Answer 33

sometimes we read more minimalist, sometimes more constructionist

depends on the reader’s goals:
- more cursory, faster reading, and/or when reader has less background knowledge: minimalist
- more in-depth, slower, when reading for enjoyment: more constructionist
-> drawing inferences can be strategic
and might depend on individual differences *

*better adolescent readers -> more likely to draw inferences

Question 34

explain individual differences in comprehension skills

Answer 34

less skilled comprehenders:
- drawer fewer inferences;
- poorer integration of meaning across sentences

related to:
- differences in verbal working memory;
- measured by reading span
- attention;
- suppression of irrelevant/inappropriate material

Question 35

give three examples of suppression

Answer 35

1. suppressing the inappropriate meaning of homonyms
   he dug with the spade -> ACE (unrelated to intended meaning of spade)
2. rejecting the incorrect form of homophones
   he had lots of patients -> CALM (related to patience)
3. understanding puns: understanding the pun hinges on the ability to suppress the contextually more predictable meaning or bar -> more difficult for less skilled comprehenders

Question 36

explain essentialism

Answer 36

2 words with the same referent

natural kinds -> identify judgements based on innate, “essential” underlying qualities. (its “DNA”)

artefacts -> identify judgements based on superficial, perceptual features *includes functional aspects

Question 37

what is the theory of mind?

Answer 37

the ability to understand that other people can have different views, beliefs, mental states,… and that their mental representations of the world can be different from the actual one

emerges around 3-4 y.o.a

ToM crucial for successful communication & understanding of many different kinds of language
- irony, sarcasm, metaphors, lies
- character’s perspectives, knowledge status

Question 38

summarise the lecture

Answer 38

readers/listeners constructs a syntactic representation incrementally

the activation of the meanings of lexically ambiguous words is affected (bottom-up) by meaning frequency and (top down) by contextual support. for lexically polysemous words: initial activation of underspecified meaning

inferencing is necessary to maintain coherence and cohesiveness

language users usually use “good enough” heuristics rather than calculating trying to attain an in-depth understanding