psycholinguistics - syntax (goslin lecture 1) Flashcards
What is the focus of psycholinguistics?
Deals with human language competence
It encompasses what we know about the language that allows us to speak and understand.
Define implicit knowledge in linguistics.
Knowing what is right
Define explicit knowledge in linguistics.
Formal rules
What is phonology?
The study of how sounds are used in a language
What is phonetics?
The study of speech sounds and production
What is syntax?
The study of the structure of language - to relate surface form to semantics
independent of semantics
What is semantics?
The study of meaning
What is pragmatics?
The study of language use
What is morphology?
The study of words and word formation
What does linguistic performance refer to?
What we do; how knowledge is used
-how & why? we learn language, make errors, accomoodate accents
Who challenged Skinner’s behavioral approach?
Noam Chomsky
What is the cognitive revolution in linguistics?
A shift towards understanding the mind and cognitive processes in language acquisition
What is language nativism?
The idea that humans are born with an innate capacity for language
What is the critical period in language acquisition?
A time frame during which language acquisition occurs most easily
What does ‘poverty of the stimulus’ refer to?
The idea that children cannot learn language solely from the input they receive
degenerate input: segmentation problem, errors, cant learn from exposure alone and not enough training data
What is meant by ‘degenerate input’?
Input that is insufficient for children to learn language effectively
What is meant by ambiguity in language?
A situation where a sentence can have multiple meanings
What is Chomsky’s concept of universal grammar?
The theory that the ability to acquire language is innate to humans, but we are not born with a particular grammar
syntax is a cognitive reality, we can utter an infinite number of sentences - finite storage in the brain
What does syntax allow us to do?
Utter and understand an infinite number of sentences
What is the difference between surface structure and deep structure?
Surface structure refers to the outward form of a sentence, whereas deep structure refers to the underlying meaning
What is a constituent of a sentence?
A group of words that functions as a unit
What is the substitution test?
A method to determine constituents by replacing them with pro-forms
What is the stand-alone test?
A method to determine constituents by checking if they can answer a question
What is parsing in linguistics?
Breaking a sentence into its component parts and indicating the relationships between these components
What do phrase structure diagrams represent?
Hierarchical relations between constituents
What are phrase structure rules?
Rules that define what is syntactically legal
What is generative grammar?
A system that provides rules for generating sentences
What does syntactic recursion allow for?
One constituent to be embedded inside another constituent of the same type
True or False: Syntax is uniquely human.
True
Fill in the blank: The phrase structure rule S → NP + VP indicates that a _______ consists of a noun phrase followed by a verb phrase.
[sentence]
What is the significance of Chomsky’s work in syntax?
It established the idea of infinite rule-governed creativity in language
what is the modern definition of psychoinguistics?
examination of the psychological processes that underlie our langauge abilities
what is the genetic basis for grammar?
- speef of acquistion
- critical period
- poverty of the stimulus
- convergence of grammars
- specificty to the species
what is meant by speed of acquisition?
children learn language when exposed in a normal language environment - adults dont teach language
how is grammar universal?
infants hear surrounding language
detect patterns and matches them with stored structures
switches on those that match
children develop language
what is the heirarchial structure for syntax?
sentences are hierachial organisations of constitutuents
e.g. the wolf, ate, the little pigs,
how is constituency determined?
through the substitution test and the stand alone test
what are some generative grammer rules?
what are the meanings of symbols?
is there a limit to depth of syntactic recusion?
no limit
-chomsky: infinite rule governed creativity, finite series of syntactic rules, limited number of words but unlimited number of possible sentences & meanings
