Psycholinguistics Flashcards
modularity
perceptual systems (including language) have several key properties; the notion that human cognitive architecture includes an innate system of neural tissue that responds only to speech
global ambiguity
two interpretations of a sentence
local ambiguity
two interpretations of a sentence but the ambiguity is eventually resolved
- garden path sentences: a sentence does not end the way we expect
garden path model
parsing takes place in two stages
-processor draws only on syntactic information in the first stage
- initial attachment is determined by (minimal attachment, late closure)
- if initial parse is incompatible with semantics, pragmatics, etc. you go back and revise
minimal attachment
attach incoming words into the constituent currently being constructed using the fewest nodes consistent with the rules of the language
- node is a point in the tree diagram that can be assigned a syntactic category label
Late closure
attach to the most recent constituent
constraint based model
- interactive theory
- multiple sources of info are used to converge on the correct interpretation at the same time
speech errors
most errors are mundane and not predictiive
unconscious processes play a role in cognition; errors tend to be related to word that mean or sound similar to the target
psycholinguistic perspective of speech error
- the segments that change and move in speech errors are planning units in the production of an utterance
- we can look at the behavior of these units to learn more about the different aspects of language production including modularity
speech error patterns
- errors preserve syllable structure (slip street –> strip sleet)
- lexical bias (cat –> mat)
- formal bias (cat –> mat target and error tend to sound similar)
- mixed errors (cat –> rat)
