lesson 9 language Flashcards
in english there is a rule for adjectives
opinion size age shape color origin material purpose noun
how does language work
humans evolved another strategy of decoding sounds we have agreed have the same meaning
other animals’ communication system
bee waggle dance as location for food
bird and whale songs
ants dancing with pheromones
animal forms of communication
limited repotoire for limited services like location and threat
language
a system for communicating with others using signals that are combined according to rules
of grammar and that convey meaning
idea needs to be encoded in words then made into sounds and listener goes backwards
semantics
ideas to words
syntax
rules about order and shape of words
phonology
encoding of words into sounds
word
arbitrary vocalization or hand gesture that refers to mental concept
-if i say apple you can visualize what i mean
human semantics are arbitrary
different languages connect different concepts to different sounds/words (manzana, pomme)
-asl vs bsl
how do we learn words
average hs grad knows 45-60k words
learn 6.5 words a day, very fast intake as kids
reference problem
an unfamiliar word can refer to many concepts, how does a language figure out which one
how do children tend to solve reference problems
reasoning the speaker’s mental states
social referencing
who is the speaker paying attention to? what are they looking at because that has a cue toward what they’re talking about
novelty matching
why is the speaker using this new word instead of the one we already have?
intentionality
does the speech seem to match what the speaker is trying to convey?
the parsing problem
identify word boundaries, like where there are breaks or pauses
how we solve parsing problem
motherese- singsongy voice we use with kids: speak slowly, enunciate clearly, and use simpler sentences than they do when speaking with adults
-changing nature of acoustic signal and making it easier for kids to learn how words sound and end by elongating words and adding breaks and pauses
solving parsing problem (older)
the statistics of the speech stream- kids use big data approach to figure out which words exist in their language
phonology
motor cortex wilder penfield
ton of cortex in mouth/lips/face
1) taking a breath
2) voicing by moving vocal cords
3) resonance (mouth shape)
4) articulation (how words are pronounced)
experiment with phonology
newborns can figure out the difference between two english sounds, b and d
babies can hear the difference in two hindi sounds but once thy grow to a certain age they cant hear the difference because it’s not maintained
categorical perception
the phenomenon in which a continuous acoustic dimension, such as voice-onset time, is perceived as having distinct categories with sharp discontinuities at certain points
when items that range along a continuum are perceived as being either more or less similar to each other
Take for example the /l/ and /r/ sounds of the English language. While native English speakers easily distinguish these two sounds, Japanese speakers are generally unable to hear the difference. The English words ‘lag’ and ‘rag’ would sound the same to them
analogy: take continuous stream of audio and impose boundaries where it makes sense
syntax aphasia
broca’s
individuals with damage to this
area, which results in Broca’s aphasia, understand language relatively well, but they have increasing comprehension difficulty as grammatical structures get more complex. Their real struggle, though, is with speech
production. Typically, they speak in short, staccato phrases that consist mostly of content morphemes (e.g., cat, dog). Function morphemes (e.g., and, but) are usually missing, and grammatical structure is impaired. A person with Broca’s aphasia might say something like “Ah, Monday, uh, Casey park. Two, uh, friends, and, uh, 30 minutes
semantics aphasia
wernicke’s
They can produce
grammatical speech, but it tends to be meaningless, and they have considerable difficulty comprehending language. A person suffering from Wernicke’s aphasia might say something like “Feel very well. In other words, I used to be able to work cigarettes. I don’t know how. Things I couldn’t hear from are here
syntax (grammar)
allows us to specify the relation among concepts
relations specified in special rules like word order, inflection (-ed equals past) or helper words (like i will do this)
semantics
meanings of words, signs, symbols, and the phrases that represent them
how do kids learn the rules of their language
-parents dont police kids grammar
-kids arent imitating their parents; they generate novel utterances
-kids dont need reward to learn language
instruction, imitation, reinforcement are wrong so behaviorism is wrong, language is modular
noam chomsky
conditioning and reinforcement cannot get you to learn language (skinner behaviorism is not correct)
we already programmed to learn language, we have strong expectations about language
pinker says “language instinct”
language instinct
children invent grammatical structure
“i runned”, my teacher “holded”
untilt they learn the rule about modifying verbs and how it’s applied properly
The nativist theory also explains why deaf infants babble speech sounds they have never heard and why the pattern of language development is similar in children throughout the world
nicaraguan sign language section read
At first, the school did not teach a formal sign language, and none of the children had learned to sign at home, but the children gradually began to communicate using hand signals they themselves invented.
Over the past 30 years, their sign language has developed considerably and researchers have studied this new language for the telltale characteristics of languages that have evolved over much longer periods. For instance, mature languages typically break down experience into separate
components. When we describe something in motion, such as a rock rolling down a hill, our language separates the type of movement (rolling) and the direction of movement (down). If we simply made a gesture, however, we would use a single continuous downward movement to indicate this motion. This is exactly what the first children to develop the Nicaraguan sign language did. But younger groups of children, who have developed the sign language further, use separate signs to describe the direction and
the type of movement—a defining characteristic of mature languages. That the younger children did not
merely copy the signs from the older users suggests that a predisposition exists to use language to dissect
our experiences. Thus, their acts of creation nicely illustrate the interplay of nativism (the predisposition to
use language) and experience (growing up in an insulated deaf culture)
enculturated apes
what happens if you treat apes like human kids?
nothing ever “clicks” for them- you have to teach them the 100th time like you taught them the 1st time
they dont have any word order, every utterance is an imperative, asking for something or directing something
can learn semantics but not syntax
universal grammar
theory that humans have genetically determined language faculty- we are born knowing the rules of syntax
rules have certain free parameters that are fixed by certain languages
all languages have verbs and two types of nouns
order of words varies with limits (most languages are subject object verb)
critical period for syntax
genie
parents chained her to basement and never spoke with her but she was never able to learn syntax (linguistic too late, modules hungry for rules to grammar were rededicated to other things)
grammatical knowledge poor “mike paint” or “applesauce buy store”
left and right hemispheres processing
people who moved to us at various stages of life
lots of left activity, but those who learned second language late in childhood had a lot of input from right hemisphere
earlier you start speaking the language, closer it is to sounding native
prosody
modulating tone to understand what is being said (speaker)
implicature
a lot of what we say is implied, we fill in what the person is saying (listener)
*if i say he ate some cookies, i assume he only ate some but not all
*i slept on a boat means it wasnt their boat, or they would have said that
noam chomsky and liz spelke experiment
put you in a room and in front of a table with 4 buckets and you have to keep track of the prize under the bucket (diagonal)
now if i paint one side of the table, it’s easier to keep track
little kids werent able to keep track even with blue wall
linguistic determinism (sapir whorf hypothesis)
the language you speak has influence on the thoughts you have (feminine or masculine)
The most frequently cited example of linguistic relativity comes from the Inuit in Canada.
Their language has many different terms for frozen white flakes of precipitation, for which we use the word snow. Whorf believed that because they have so many terms for snow, the Inuit perceive and think about snow differently than do English speakers
like hebrew and russian have separate words for light blue and dark blue so they have greater capacity to identify different blues
*some say worf was too simplistic and should be more specific about how language influences thought
what is language for
cognitive psych
primarily for communication and thinking
Grammar
a set of rules that specify how the units of language
can be combined to produce meaningful messages
genetic dysphasia
a syndrome characterized by an inability to learn the
grammatical structure of language despite having otherwise normal intelligence
bilingualism
Learning a second language early in life increases the density of gray matter in the
brain. Panel (a) shows a view of the lower left parietal region, which has denser gray matter in bilingual individuals
relative to monolingual individuals. (b) As proficiency in a second language increases, so does the density of gray matter
in the lower parietal region. People who acquired a second language earlier in life were also found to have denser gray
matter in this region. Interestingly, this area corresponds to the same area that is activated during verbal fluency tasks
the language instinct
Pinker sees language as an ability unique to humans, produced by evolution to solve the specific problem of communication among social hunter-gatherers. He compares language to other species’ specialized adaptations such as spiders’ web-weaving or beavers’ dam-building behavior, calling all three “instincts”.
nativist
Pinker argues that all languages are built on the same universal grammar and that the language mechanism is built into the human brain
phonemic difference
difference in sound leads to difference in meaning
phonemic restoration effect
sounds missing from a speech signal can be restored by the brain and appear to be heard
syntantic processing
Syntactic processing is usually taken to be the most basic analysis step, which feeds into semantic processing and the inclusion of other information. A separate mental module parses sentences and lexical access happens first. Then, one syntactic hypothesis is considered at a time.
