Topic 7: Language Flashcards
language
a systematic means of communicating information by the use of conventionalized sounds, gestures, marks, or signals having understood meaning
what is the function of human language?
to influence people’s behaviour by changing what they know, think, believe, or desire
what is the problem with language?
how to efficiently and expressively communicate information
what is the importance of language?
it is the basis for society; allows us to interact with each other in a way that goes beyond our immediate surroundings
what is the challenge of language?
the power of language lies in the seemingly conflicting needs for it to be shared between people and yet capable of expressing novel ideas
Language:
a) ____ information quickly
b) facilitates an _____ social network
c) ____ knowledge outside individuals
d) allows wisdom to ______ over generations
e) ____ to any time or place, real or imaginary
f) enables creative expression due to _____ and ______
a) communicates
b) interactive
c) stores
d) accure
e) refers
f) generatively; compositionality
phonemes
- smallest unit of speech
- different phonemes in different languages
- 10-150 per language
- language specific rules (phonology)
morphemes (5)
- smallest unit that signals meaning
- combination of phonemes
- prefixes, suffixes, roots, or words
- many thousand per language (morphology)
- language specific rules
words (4)
- smallest stand-alone unit of meaning
- combinations of one or more morphemes
- tens or hundreds of thousands per language
- language specific rules (syntax)
phrases (4)
- organized groupings of one or more words
- role in grammar of sentences
- almost limitless number
- language specific rules (syntax)
sentences (4)
- set of words/phrases that (in principle) tells a complete thought
- can express a statement, question, exclamation, request, command, or suggestion
- almost limitless number
- sentences can be combined to form larger linguistic units (e.g. paragraphs)
what are Chomsky’s main principles?
language can’t be based solely on imitation, therefore we must learn a set of rules (grammar) that can be applied in a generative way; language must be determine by an inborn biological program
grammar
- rules for language structure including morphology and syntax
morphology
rules for combining morphemes into words
syntax
rules for combining words into phrases into sentences
semantics
how meaning is derived from morphemes, words, phrases, and sentences
generative grammar
rules specify what orders and combinations word roles can occur in (e.g. noun phrase/verb phrase)
what are two problems about relying on phrase structure alone?
- one phrase structure, but two meanings
- two phrase structures, but one meaning
surface structure
phrase structure that applies tp order in which words are actually spoken
deep structure
fundamentally, underlying phrase structure that conveys meaning
transformational grammar
rules that transform among surface structures having the same deep structure
ambiguity in language
multiple interpretations for the same thing; can provide insight into cognitive processing of language
homonyms and homophones
homonyms: words represented by the same spelling, but have multiple meanings
homophones
lexical ambiguity
when a word has two different meanings
syntactic ambiguity
when words can be grouped together into more than one phrase structure
referential ambiguity
when the same word/phrase can refer to two different things within a sentence
explain each source of ambiguous meanings (genes; past experiences; internal states; environmental context; proximal stimulus)
- genes: their genetic code; learned on the timescale of evolution
- past experience: the language the participants have been exposed to in the past; learned on the timescale of a human life
- internal state: their active goals, intentions, and feelings as they read the sentences; learned on the timescale of current episode
- environmental context: the other words on the screen as they read the sentence; learned now
- proximal stimulus: the ambiguous word itself
McGurk effect
shows that our brain uses both auditory and visual information to comprehend spoken speech (how they physically act when speaking and what they’re saying)
when do children start to show preferences for their native phonemes
6 months
when do children stop stop responding to phonetic elements of non-native language?
by 1 year
when is a child’s critical period?
0-7 years
T/F language-specific speech perception follows speech production
False
phones vs. phonemes
phones = actual sounds phonemes = perceived sounds
perceptual magnet effect/categorical speech perception
perceiving sound as it’s intended exemplar, even if it is not exactly that exemplar (e.g. categorizing a spectrum of in-between phones as the intended phoneme
three major challenges of learning words
1) detecting words in stream of speech
2) figuring out rules for combining morphemes
3) figuring out what words mean
three stages of past tense acquisition
1) small number of irregular verbs
2) learning “-ed” rule; regularization (rop->ropped); overregularization (give -> gived)
3) correcting overregularization
connectionist theory
- when someone is presented with a word, other words come to mind
- connectivity of neural networks whose connection weight vary according to experience
neural networks
artificial network o interconnected nodes whose connections change in strength as a means of solving problem
poverty of the stimulus
children are not exposed to enough examples to learn grammar without a head start
T/F We all have a hard-wired “language acquisition device”
true
T/F each languages has its own specific rules and parameter setting
False: same general set of rules with different parameter settings
T/F Learning a new language requires learning parameter settings
true! (e.g. SOV vs SVO)
statistical pattern recognition
children are able to learn grammar solely from examples; the general machinery in the brain for detecting patterns is sufficient to learn the rules of language as we actually practice them
Broca’s area
area in the ventral posterior region of the left frontal lobe that helps mediate language expression
Broca’s aphasia (motor aphasia/production aphasia)
language deficit arising from damage to Broca’s area in the frontal love, and characterized by difficulty in the production of speech
common effects of Broca’s aphasia
- speech is laboured, slow, and nonfluent with awkward articulation
- phonemic errors
- written output shows same errors as speech
- beter fluency for memorized phrases
- singing may be more fluent than speech
- comprehension is relatively spared
- problems with language planning and production
T/F Broca’s Aphasia is a result of a motor issue
false
Patients with Broca’s aphasia often have greatest difficulty with ____, ____, and ____
verbs, articles, and pronouns
Patients with Broca’s amnesia have problems understanding and using ____
syntax
speech comprehension is fundamentally a ____ process
perceptual
which lobe is responsible for the production of language and which is responsible for the comprehension of language?
pro- frontal (where motor functions are carried out)
com- temporal (where auditory functions are carried out)
aphasia
difficulty producing or comprehending speech, even if vocal apparatus is fine
Wernicke’s area
in the superior and posterior region of the left temporal lobe that helps mediate language comprehension
Wernicke’s aphasia (receptive aphasia/sensory aphasia)
language deficit arising from damage to Werknicke’s area in the posterior temporal lobe and characterized by an inability to link objects or dead and the words that signify them and to subjectively comprehend this relationships
speech difference in Broca’s aphasia and Wernicke’s aphasia
B - broken up, slow, not fluent, etc.
W - often superficially fluent and well sturucted but make little or no sense because words and meaning are not correctly linked
common effects on Wenicke’s aphasia
- speech is phonetically and grammatically normal but meaningless
- generally fluent, unlabored, well articulate
- normal intonation
- words used inappropriately, nonsense “word salad”
- meaning expressing in roundabout way
- comprehension is severely impaired
- problems translating auditory input into phonological forms that can then access semantics
- problems with language comprehension
- problems with understanding and using semantics
what happened to the N400 component when a word was semantically inappropriate/unexpected (nonsensical) vs. when it the word had a larger font (and still sensical)
enhanced response to unexpected - because it wasn’t enhanced with the different size, we know it’s not just a response to anything different with it, but specifically language related
what does the N400 wave reflect
stumbling over and reprocessing of language information that does not make sense (semantics)
words used frequently in speech elicit _____ N400 waves than uncommon words do, suggesting that processing familiar language information requires _____ neural engagement
smaller; less
homogenous worse elect a ____ N400 wave when embedded in a sentence that clarifies the intended meaning
smaller
P600 wave has a positive shift following a ______ violation
syntactic/grammar
what were the results of the syntax/semantics ERP study?
Left anterior negativity or LAN (syntax) is more anterior whereas N400 (semantics) more posterior
for a typical split brain patient, showing an image on their _____ visual field will allow them to verbally describe what they see
right
which hemisphere can name objects
left
average percent of a) right handedness; b) left handedness; c) mixed handed or cross-dominant
a) 70-90%
b) ~10%
c) ~20%
split brain patients have a severed _______
corpus callosum
left hemisphere is primarily specialized for……..
right hemisphere is primarily specialized for……..
- for more explicit aspects of the verbal and symbolic processing important in communication
- processing visuospatial and emotional information
T/F there is no superiority between hemispheres, and being left or right handed does not make that hemisphere more developed
true
language lateralization
most right-handed individuals were left-hemisphere dominant (95%) and only 15% of left handed individuals were right-hemisphere dominant (70% left dominant and 15% mixed)
prosody
intonation, tone, stress, and rhythm; used for emotion state, form, irony/sarcasm, emphases, contrast, and focus
aprosodia
- difficulty processing prosody
difference between productive aprosodia and receptive aprosodia
Pro - monotonic; robotic speech lacking emotional tone; associated with damage to the right hemisphere Broca’s equivalent
Receptive - difficulty detecting and understanding emotional tone in speech; associated with damage to the right hemisphere Wernick’s equivalent
interactive activation theory
integrate bottom up and top down processes
- letter and word perception
garden path sentence
grammatically correct sentence that starts in a way that a reader’s most likely interpretation will be infarct based on past experiences
interactive language network
cortical language circuit by Friederici, which consists of two ventral and two dorsal pathways in the inferior frontal gyrus, the superior frontal gyrus, and the middle temporal gyrus
fMRI
functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging; measures changes in magnetization using electromagnetic radiation and nuclear magnetic resonance
how does an fMRI work?
neural activity –> increased blood flow – change in magnetic field –> fMRI BOLD signal
benefits of fMRI
- spatial resolution is in mm
- good temporal resolution (seconds)
- non-invaise
- low-risk (risks include flying unsecured metallic objects)
what were the steps taken in Mitchell et al.’s study on the relationship between concepts as the building blocks of meaning
- search online to find verbs that co-occur with nouns (text analysis)
- identify brain areas whose activation is associated with different verbs
- predict activation for nouns as summation of activation for related verbs
4) test predictions for nouns
what were the conclusions of Mitchell et al’s study on the relationship between concepts as the building blocks of meaning
- concepts are represented by highly distributed patterns of activation across the brain
- perceptual and motor brain areas involved in presenting meaning
- the association between concepts (measured by co-occurence of words) can be used to predict brain activations for those concepts
