Midterm 3 Flashcards
language
system of communication using sounds or symbols that enable us to express feelings, thoughts, ideas, and experiences
importance of language
provides a way of arranging a sequence of signals to transmit different types of information from one person to another; makes it possible to create new and unique sentences
structure of language
hierarchical system, governed by rules
hierarchical system in language
components that can be combined to form larger units
rules in language
specific ways components can be arranged
the universality of language
language occurs wherever there are people; language development is similar across cultures; language are “unique but the same” because they have different words, sounds, and rules but all have nouns, verbs, negatives, questions, past/present tense
B. F. Skinner on language
language learned through reinforcement
Noam Chomsky on language
human language coded in the genes; underlying basis of all language is similar; children produce sentences they have never heard and that have never been reinforced
psycholinguistics
discover psychological processes by which humans acquire and process language
organization of language
sentence –> phrase –> word –> morpheme –> phoneme
sentence
coherent sequence of words
word
a complete, discrete unit of meaning in a language
morpheme
the smallest language unit that carries meaning
phoneme
the smallest unit of sound that serves to distinguish meaning
production of speech
speech produced by airflow from the lungs that pass through the larynx and oral and nasal cavities; different vowels are created by movements of the lips and tongue that change the size and shape of the oral cavity; consonants are produced by movements that temporarily obstruct the airflow through the vocal tract
ways to distinguish sounds
- manner of production
- voicing
- place of articulation
manner of production
how the airflow is restricted to produce different speech sounds
voicing
distinguish between sounds that are and are not voiced
place of articulation
point of airflow restriction; closing of lips, top teeth against bottom lip, tongue behind upper teeth
speech segmentation
the “slicing” of a continuous speech stream into appropriate segments
coarticulation
how the production of each phoneme is slightly altered depending on the preceding and following sounds
complexity of speech perception
has to “read past” context differences in order to identify the phonemes produced
perception of language
relies on prior knowledge and expectations to supplement input
phonemic restoration effect
occurs when phonemes are perceived in speech when the sound of the phoneme is covered up; “fill in” missing phonemes based on context of sentence and portion of word
categorical perception
people are better at hearing differences between categories of sounds than within sound categories
for each word that a speaker knows, the speaker…
knows the word’s sound; usually knows the word’s orthography (how it’s spelled); knows the rules of syntax (how to combine it with other words); knows the word’s semantics (what it means)
generativity
the capacity to create an endless series of new combinations from a small set of fundamental units
morphological knowledge
specifies how to create variations of each word by adding appropriate morphemes
lexical ambiguity
words have more than one meaning
meaning dominance
a particular meaning of a word could be used more frequently than others
biased dominance
when words have two or more meanings with different dominance
balanced dominance
when words have two or more meanings with about the same dominance
semantics
meanings of words and sentences
syntax
rules for combining words into sentences
factors that influence the way people access the meaning of words
meaning frequency, context
prescriptive rules
rules describing how something is “supposed to be” in the language
descriptive rules
rules describing the language as it is ordinarily used by fluent speakers and listeners
parsing
mental grouping of words in a sentence into phrases; central process for determining the meaning of a sentence
garden path sentences
sentences that begin by appearing to mean one thing, but then end up meaning something else
temporary ambiguity
when the initial words are ambiguous, but the meaning is made clear by the end of the sentence
syntax-first approach to parsing
- as people read a sentence, their grouping of words into phrases is governed by a number of rules that are based on syntax
- if readers realize there is something wrong with their parsing, then they take other information into account in order to reinterpret the sentence
interactionist approach to parsing
semantics and syntax both influence processing as one reads a sentence (ex. how “the spy saw the man with the binoculars” is interpreted)
people tend to do this regarding parsing…
- seek the simplest interpretation in parsing sentences
- assume that sentences will be in an active voice rather than passive voice
interpretations are influenced by…
context, experience, function words, morphemes signaling syntactic roles, background knowledge
N400 wave
peculiarity produced in the N400 brain wave when someone hears a semantic anomaly or perfectly sensible but false sentence
extralinguistic context
the physical and social setting in which we encounter sentences
prosody
the patterns of pauses and pitch changes that characterize speech production; reveals speaker’s mood, directs the listener’s attention to the sentences focus and theme, highlights the sentences intended meaning
language users rely on a set of principles when processing linguistic inputs
syntax, semantics, prosody
pragmatic rules
rules that govern how people actually use a language; maxim of relation and maxim of quantity
maxim of relation
says the speaker should say things that are relevant in conversation
maxim of quantity
says the speaker shouldn’t be more informative than is necessary
common ground
beliefs shared by the conversational partners
early stages of a conversation often serve to establish…
common ground
conversations
two or more people talking together; dynamic and rapid; involves shared knowledge; need to take into account what the other person is saying
given-new contract
speaker constructs sentences; they include given information, new information
syntactic coordination
using similar grammatical constructions in conversation
syntactic priming
production of a specific grammatical construction by one person increases chances other person will use that construction
speakers are sensitive to…
the linguistic behavior or other speakers and adjust their behavior to match
fluent language use in humans
enabled via innate neural machinery that is specialized for language learning and use
Broca’s aphasia
characterized by slow, laborious, nonfluent speech; better language comprehension than production; difficulty with function words; better with content words; produced by lesions in and around Broca’s area
agrammatism
difficulty in using grammatical constructions and comprehending them; produced by lesions in and around Broca’s area
anomia
word-finding difficulty; produced by lesions in and around Broca’s area
Wernicke’s aphasia
production of meaningless speech
by 3 to 4 years
most children can reasonably converse
overregularization errors
an error in which a person perceives or remembers a word/event as being closer to the “norm” than it really is
language learning
depends on one’s environment; children are sensitive to patterns and regularities; children derive broad principles form the language to which they are exposed
animal language
many species have sophisticated communication systems, but no naturally occurring animal communication system comes close to human language in richness or complexity
vervet monkey language
give alarm calls when they spot a nearby predator; distinct alarm calls for different types of predators
language learning may depend on both a human genome and a human environment
approximately 30 wild children have been discovered; none have been able to use language normally
linguistic relativity
the hypothesis that people who speak different languages think differently as a result; claims that the categories recognized by your language become the categories used in your thoughts
cultural differences in color perception
Berinmo people have only five words for describing colors; people who speak languages with a richer color vocabulary are able to make finer and more sharply defined distinctions among various hues
cultural differences in spatial terminology
absolute directions vs. relative directions; language differences can lead to corresponding differences in how people remember, and perhaps, how they perceive position
cultural differences in descriptions of events
active voice vs. passive voice; speakers of languages that do not mention the agent for an accidental event are less likely to remember the person who triggered the accident
another hypothesis
our language guides what we pay attention to, and what we pat attention to shapes our thinking
children raised in bilingual homes…
learn both languages as quickly as monolingual children learn one language; tendency to have a temporarily smaller vocabulary than monolingual children at an early age
bilingual patients with lesions
could show aphasia symptoms in one language and not another or specific deficits in one language and writing in another
decisions
the process of making choices between alternatives
judgement and reasoning
processes through which people draw conclusions from the evidence they encounter
inductive reasoning
reasoning based on observations; reaching conclusions from evidence
strength of argument of inductive reasoning
representativeness of observations, number of observations, quality of observations
inductive reasoning uses
make scientific discoveries; used in everyday life; some types of inductive reasoning happen automatically
frequency estimate
assessment of how often various events have occurred in the past
attribute substitution
strategy of relying on easily assessed information as a proxy for needed information; how easily and how quickly you can come up with relevant examples; thinking the more examples that come to mind, the more common something is
heuristics
shortcuts to help people reach conclusions rapidly based on past experience
two types of heuristics
availability and representativeness heuristics
availability heuristic
events more easily remembered are judged as being more probable than those less easily remembered
problem with availability heuristic
factors could make events stand out in memory and make you believe it is more probable than it actually is (e.g., distinctiveness, emotional salience, frequency of encoding/retrieval)