S1W7-Lang

Question 1

How many words do babies hear?

Answer 1

5000-7000 utterances a day

3mo baby has had 54k minutes of input (900 hours).

Question 2

How many words in adults?

Answer 2

21yo - spoken 50m words.

Adult lexicon: 50-100k words.

120-150 words per minute (double under pressure).

Question 3

Components of language

Answer 3

Phonology (sound)
Morphology (smallest unit)
Semantics (meaning)
Syntactic category/rules

Question 4

Prosody

Answer 4

The rhythm, tempo, cadence, melody and intonation pattern used when speaking a language.

Question 5

Prosodic cues

Answer 5

Rhythm

Stress

Intonation (intonation rises at end of question)

Question 6

Discourse markers

Answer 6

oh, ah, yeah etc.

Don’t contribute to the content of what we’re talking about.

Functions: change of topic, show politeness, etc.

Give us time to put our thoughts into speech.

Question 7

Written vs. spoken discourse markers

Answer 7

Different markers for speech and writing.

Written language: Although, Moreover, On the other hand, Nevertheless.

Spoken language: Anyway, Actually, Well, Oh, Um.

Question 8

Conceptualisation

Answer 8

Planning the message we are going to communicate..

Question 9

Formulation

Answer 9

Converting the intended message into words.

Including lexical & morphological selection, putting words in the correct place in the sentence and retrieving the phonological part of the words.

Question 10

Articulation

Answer 10

Words are produced.

Question 11

Three stages of speech production

Answer 11

Conceptualisation
Formulation
Articulation

Question 12

Speech planning

Answer 12

Use pauses and hestitations (um) to give us time to plan.

More pauses between clauses than within a clause.

To improve fluency of speech we produce phrases used before.

70% of speech produced include word combinations that we use repeatedly.

Use pronouns to simplify it “I have two children THEY go to school”.

Question 13

Speech error rate

Answer 13

1 error per 1000 words.

1 error every 7 minutes of normal speech.

1 error every 3 minutes of fast speech.

Question 14

Errors in lexical selection

Answer 14

Problems selecting correct word:

Semantic word substitutions
Blending
Word exchange errors

Question 15

Semantic word substitutions

Answer 15

The word that replaces the intended word is in 99% of the cases semantically related.

E.g. cat > dog.

Question 16

Blending

Answer 16

Two different expressions are activated at the same time and they get blended.

E.g. the sky is shining.

Question 17

Word exchange errors

Answer 17

Two words in a sentence switch places.

E.g. Let the house out of the cat.

Question 18

Morpheme exchange errors

Answer 18

Inflections or suffixes appear in the right position but are attached to the wrong word.

E.g. it sounded to start.

Question 19

Phonological word substitution (malapropism):

Answer 19

The sound of part of a word is substituted by another one.

E.g. cat > mat.

Question 20

Spoonerism

Answer 20

Phoneme error.

The first sounds/letters of two words are exchanged.

E.g. chilled greese vs. grilled cheese.

Question 21

Spreading activation theory levels

Answer 21

Semantic level: the meaning.

Syntactic level: grammatical structure.

Morphological level: the morphemes.

Phonological level: the sounds.

Question 22

Spreading activation theory

Answer 22

Activation occurs at 4 levels.

Representation formed at each level.

Parallel and interactive processing but higher levels (semantic) activated earlier than lower levels (phonology).

Question 23

Speech errors that spreading activation accounts for

Answer 23

Semantic word substitutions

Phonological word substitutions (malapropisms)

Mixed error (both semantic and phonological) - suggest interactivity between the two levels.

Question 24

Strengths of spreading activation

Answer 24

Predicts many speech errors that occur.

Provides links to other cognitive processes e.g. word recognition.

Generative nature of spoken language may be due to widespread activation between processing levels.

Question 25

Limitations of spreading activation

Answer 25

De-emphasises processes related to semantic level.

Can’t predict time taken to produce spoken words.

Interactive processes more apparent in errors than error-free speech.

Generally predicts too many errors in speech.

Question 26

Weaver++

Answer 26

Computational model.

Feed-forward activation-spreading network.

Serial processing (one stage follows another).

Self monitoring (instead of saying Luna to someone who doesn’t know her it would go back to select dog)

3 nodes:
Lexical concepts
Lemmas (abstract words)
Morphemes and phonemes

Question 27

Weaver++ stages

Answer 27

Conceptual Preparation (dog, puppy).

Lexical Selection (puppy = noun).

Morphological Encoding.

Phonological Encoding (2 syllables)

Phonetic Encoding (preparing speech).

Articulation.

Question 28

Weaver++ weaknesses

Answer 28

Emphasis on single-word production.

There is likely more interaction between processing stages than assumed.

Fails to explain speech errors that seem to suggest parallel processing.

Question 29

Weaver++ strengths

Answer 29

Shifts the focus away from errors and towards precise timing of word production processes.

Simple model that makes testable predictions.

Meta-analysis supports that word production moves from:
o Lexical selection
o Morphological encoding
o Phonological encoding

Question 30

Anomia

Answer 30

Difficulty finding right word to name an object but are good at object recognition.

Can apply only to certain categories e.g. to living objects but not non-living ones.

Question 31

Anomia causes

Answer 31

Damage to the temporal pole - Proper nouns.

Damage to the inferior temporal cortex - Common nouns

Damage to the frontal cortex, in and around Broca’s area - Verbs