Sentences Flashcards
Sentence processing three levels
Conceptual level
Syntactic level
Phonological level
Conceptual level
where the intended message is formulated. Organizing thoughts into lemmas that are in no particular order.
Agent
The entity that causes the event portrayed in a sentence to occur
Patient
The entity that is acted upon in the event that is portrayed in a sentence.
Thematic Roles
The various types of participants involved in an event portrayed in a sentence. An agent and patient are the most common thematic roles.
Canonical Word Order
The typical sequence of sentence elements
English canonical word order is subject-verb-object
Thematic Role Assignment
The mapping of thematic roles onto syntactic positions such as subjects and object
Active voice
A sentence structure in which the agent is mapped on the subject position. E.g., I ate the cake.
Passive voice
A sentence structure in which the patient is mapped onto the subject position. The cake was eaten by me.
Irreversible sentence
A sentence that no longer makes real-world sense if the agent and patient swap subject and object positions. Jane ate the cake vs. The cake ate Jane
Reversible sentence
A sentence that still makes sense but with a different meaning if the agent and patient swap subject and object positions. I kicked Jane vs. Jane kicked me.
Clause
A simple sentence that is part of a larger complex sentence.
The clown rides the unicycle while the lady stands on the horse
Cleft Sentence
A syntactic structure that attaches an introductory clause to the beginning of a sentence for the purpose of highlighting one of the participants in the event.
It was the chocolate cake that I ate.
Relative Clause
A sentence that is placed inside of another sentence for the purpose of describing a noun.
I kicked Jane who was eating my cake
Dative Construction
A syntactic structure that entails the meaning of doing something for the benefit of someone else.
- The clown fed the lion a steak (double object version)
- The man baked a cake for the bearded lady (prepositional dative version).
Agreement
A set of syntactic devices for linking related elements within and between sentences. (e.g., bound morphemes like present progressive s, pronouns).
examples of subject-verb agreement
I run (no “s”) She runs (yes “s”) They run (no “s”)
two examples of noun-pronoun agreement
The children … They
Mary…She
John…He
two-stage model of sentence comprehension
A sentence is first analyzed for syntactic structure and then the lexicon is consulted to interpret the meaning of the sentence.
constraint-based model
Syntactic analysis and semantic interpretation occur simultaneously and influence each other.
Garden Path Sentence
A sentence that deviates significantly from expected structure, making it difficulty to process.
Heuristic
A mental shortcut to problem solving that usually, but not always gives the correct answer.
Late Closure
A syntactic parsing strategy that continues to add new words to the current structure unless there is sufficient evidence that a new structure should begin.
Reduced Relative Clause
A kind of embedded syntactic structure that allows for economy of expression but can be extremely difficult to process in some cases.
Minimal Attachment
Syntactic parsing strategy that assumes the simplest possible sentence structure.
High Attachment
Parsing strategy of attaching a prepositional phrase to the verb
Low Attachment
Parsing strategy of attaching a prepositional phrase to the object
Syntactic Priming
The tendency to repeat a previously heard sentence structure
supports two stage model
Lexical Boost
An increase in syntactic priming when the verb is repeated between the prime and target sentences
supports one stage model
Sentence-Picture Matching Task
A procedure in which the respondent selects from a set of pictures the one that is described by the prompt sentence.
Cloze Probability
The likelihood that a person will complete a sentence with a particular word.
ERP
Predictable waveform of brain electrical activity
Extracted from a continuous EEG signal
Each ERP component (peak) corresponds to a specific cognitive process
Peaks can be positive or negative
N400
Negative going peak that begins approximately 400 ms after a semantically inconsistent stimulus is presented.
P600
Positive going ERP waveform that starts about 600 milliseconds after a syntactically inconsistent stimulus is presented.
Broca’s aphasia patients with nonreversible passive sentences
good
Broca’s aphasia patients with reversible passive sentences
chance level
Broca’s area plays a role in
syntactic processing
vertical dimension
The flow of information from conceptual to phonological levels for each content word.
horizontal dimension
The flow of information from the beginning of the sentence to the end.
Serial Model of sentence production
A model in which all of the processing at one step needs to be completed before moving on to the next step.
Parallel model of sentence production
A model in which the processing at one step occurs simultaneously with the same processing at other steps.
Incremental Model
A model in which the processing at one step is still under way when the processing at the next step begins.
What did Wagner, Jescheniak, and Schriefers (2010) propose about the scope of planning in sentence production?
The scope of planning is flexible, not fixed depending on the complexity of the sentence and other cognitive tasks the speaker may currently be engaged in.
Hierarchical structure in advance planning
A programming approach that makes a general plan at the highest level while restricting the scope of planning at lower levels.
Referential Priming
An experimental procedure in which the participant is first shown only one of the items of a visual display before the full display is presented.
Scrambling
The syntactic process of putting the object before the subject.
in russian*
What are the findings of brain imaging studies of sentence production
The temporal lobe is implicated in lexical selection and the left inferior frontal gyrus is implicated in syntactic processing.
Repression Suppression
A reduction in brain activity when a syntactically primed sentence is processed (as opposed to a new sentence type).
Intonational Phrase Boundary
Prosodic cue consisting of a change in pitch, usually downward, and a lengthening of the final syllable that signals the end of a syntactic phrase.
Prosodic Bootstrapping
The use of prosodic patterns to identify syntactic structure.
Lexical Bootstrapping
The ability to use word meanings to make inferences about syntactic structure.
Syntactic Bootstrapping
The ability to use syntactic structure to infer the meanings of words
mean length of utterance (MLU)
A standard measure of children’s syntactic complexity
Utterance
A continuous piece of speech bounded by pauses, not necessarily a grammatical sentence.
How is MLU measured?
In morphemes.
Stall
Disruption of speech that does not change the syntactic structure of the utterance. It can consist of either silent or fillers such as um, uh.
Revision
A disruption of speech that changes the syntactic structure of the utterance.
Poverty of the stimulus argument
The position that the linguistic input children receive is insufficient for them to learn the language.
Usage-Based Framework
The position that the child uses general cognitive mechanisms like pattern detection and categorization to gradually build an understanding of the grammar of language.
children’s U-shaped learning curve for plural and past tense markers in English
At first, irregular inflections are correct
Second they are incorrect, instead overgeneralized regular forms are used
Finally, irregular inflections are correct again.
Overgeneralization
Treatment of irregular words as if they were regularly inflected
Connectionist Network
A computer program that models statistical learning.
How does a connectionist network learn
It doesn’t learn rules, only organizes examples by pattern.
What are three examples of English inflections that support a connectionist model
Irregular past
Irregular plural
Third person singular
Collocation
A sequence of words that frequently go together
Primacy of Meaning
Children learn syntactic structures that are meaningful.
Recursion
The ability to nest one sentence inside of another.
characteristics of Specific Language impairment
Difficulty in acquiring grammatical morphemes in the absence of any other cognitive or physical deficit.
What must be ruled out for this diagnosis, Specific Language impairment
Hearing impairment, mental retardation, autism
Late Language Emergence
A condition in which children are initially delayed in language development but eventually catch up with their peers.
avioural milestones associated with changes in the organization of the young brain
Year 1
Statistical learning drives language development, driven by auditory and association cortices in the temporal lobe
avioural milestones associated with changes in the organization of the young brain
Year 2 & 3
Children begin to develop syntax, the ventral stream is developed and subserves semantic- based syntax
avioural milestones associated with changes in the organization of the young brain
Year 7-9:
Complex syntax develops due to maturation of the dorsal stream.
