S1W7-Lang Flashcards
How many words do babies hear?
5000-7000 utterances a day
3mo baby has had 54k minutes of input (900 hours).
How many words in adults?
21yo - spoken 50m words.
Adult lexicon: 50-100k words.
120-150 words per minute (double under pressure).
Components of language
Phonology (sound)
Morphology (smallest unit)
Semantics (meaning)
Syntactic category/rules
Prosody
The rhythm, tempo, cadence, melody and intonation pattern used when speaking a language.
Prosodic cues
Rhythm
Stress
Intonation (intonation rises at end of question)
Discourse markers
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.
Written vs. spoken discourse markers
Different markers for speech and writing.
Written language: Although, Moreover, On the other hand, Nevertheless.
Spoken language: Anyway, Actually, Well, Oh, Um.
Conceptualisation
Planning the message we are going to communicate..
Formulation
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.
Articulation
Words are produced.
Three stages of speech production
Conceptualisation
Formulation
Articulation
Speech planning
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”.
Speech error rate
1 error per 1000 words.
1 error every 7 minutes of normal speech.
1 error every 3 minutes of fast speech.
Errors in lexical selection
Problems selecting correct word:
Semantic word substitutions
Blending
Word exchange errors
Semantic word substitutions
The word that replaces the intended word is in 99% of the cases semantically related.
E.g. cat > dog.
Blending
Two different expressions are activated at the same time and they get blended.
E.g. the sky is shining.
Word exchange errors
Two words in a sentence switch places.
E.g. Let the house out of the cat.
Morpheme exchange errors
Inflections or suffixes appear in the right position but are attached to the wrong word.
E.g. it sounded to start.
Phonological word substitution (malapropism):
The sound of part of a word is substituted by another one.
E.g. cat > mat.
Spoonerism
Phoneme error.
The first sounds/letters of two words are exchanged.
E.g. chilled greese vs. grilled cheese.
Spreading activation theory levels
Semantic level: the meaning.
Syntactic level: grammatical structure.
Morphological level: the morphemes.
Phonological level: the sounds.
Spreading activation theory
Activation occurs at 4 levels.
Representation formed at each level.
Parallel and interactive processing but higher levels (semantic) activated earlier than lower levels (phonology).
Speech errors that spreading activation accounts for
Semantic word substitutions
Phonological word substitutions (malapropisms)
Mixed error (both semantic and phonological) - suggest interactivity between the two levels.
Strengths of spreading activation
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.
Limitations of spreading activation
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.
Weaver++
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
Weaver++ stages
Conceptual Preparation (dog, puppy).
Lexical Selection (puppy = noun).
Morphological Encoding.
Phonological Encoding (2 syllables)
Phonetic Encoding (preparing speech).
Articulation.
Weaver++ weaknesses
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.
Weaver++ strengths
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
Anomia
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.
Anomia causes
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
