Week 13 Flashcards
Language diversity
There are thought to be 6,000-7,000 languages worldwide, many with several dialects – Languages: not mutually intelligible – Dialects: are mutually intelligible, differ in grammar & vocabulary (usually associated with region or social class) – Accents: differences in pronunciation
The Nature of Language
Perhaps most distinctive & important human characteristic According to Chomsky: uniquely and universally human – Universal grammar – Critical period Evolution Reading & writing are ‘unnatural’
Properties
Communicative: Influencing minds
Arbitrary symbols
Not restricted to speech
Hierarchically structured
Levels: phonemes, morphemes, words, phrases, etc.
Combined via grammar rules: phonology, morphology,
syntax
Generative
We all say entirely novel sentences all the time
“Discrete infinity” (just like numbers)
Dynamic
Phonemes
Smallest unit of speech that makes a difference to meaning – cat vs bat: /k/ or /b/ Phonology: how sounds are put together – walk /walkt/; bat /batid/ Sound Spectogram Phonemes lack invariance
Speech perception
Motor theory of speech perception (Liberman) – The idea that the invariance lies in production, not in the acoustic signal – I.e., we hear sounds according to how we produce them
Contexts
But… identical phonemes are sometimes produced differently – E.g., the t sound in ‘a-tee’ vs. ‘a-too’ – Parallel computation (including surrounding phonemes) Top-down processes - real life context Visual cues – E.g., lip reading
The McGurk effect
Acoustic stimulus: /ba/ Visual lip movement: /ga/ Perception: /da/ Fuzzy Logical Model of speech perception (Massaro) Also works for entire sentences
Fuzzy Logical Model of Speech Perception
Integration of visual & auditory information
Morphemes
– The smallest unit of meaning (root words, prefixes &
suffixes), not sound
– Morphology: rules governing how morphemes are put
together
– Content morphemes
• Convey meaning: stems and prefixes like: after-, anti-, co- and
suffixes like: -able, -age, -ary,
– Functional morphemes (inflections)
• Grammatical function, with little meaning by themselves: -s, to
indicate plural, -ed to indicate past, -ing to indicate continuity
– Morphemes are words or can be combined into words
• About 60,000 words in your vocabulary
• Languages are alive (ie dynamic)
– New words and expressions are constantly added
– Old ones disappear
Syntax
Rules by which words are structured into phrases and phrases into sentences • Recursion: to tack clauses into clauses, or embed clauses within clauses, such as this one – Little to do with meaning (semantics) • Chomsky: “colourless green ideas sleep furiously” is syntactically correct but semantically meaningless
Recursion in language
Tail recursion:
This is the house that Jack built.
This is the cheese that lay in the house that Jack built.
This is the rat that ate the cheese that lay in the house that Jack built.
This is the cat that killed the rat that ate the cheese that lay in the house that Jack built.
This is the dog that chased the cat that killed the rat that ate the cheese that lay in the house that Jack built.
Embedded recursion:
The cheese that was eaten by the rat lay in the house that Jack built.
The cheese that the rat that the cat that the dog chased killed ate lay in the house that Jack built.
Chomsky’s Universal Grammar
– Languages differ in surface structure, underlying rules share many elements • Subject-Object-Verb languages (e.g. Japanese) vs Subject-Verb-Object languages (e.g. English) – Underlying deep structure reflects innate organising principles of cognition • Innate Language Acquisition Device (LAD) • Parameter setting to learn rules of particular language • Once learned they can be applied to other contexts
Pragmatics
Refers to how we use language in different settings (e.g., politely, sarcastically) Often guided by socially understood scripts (e.g., restaurant script) Cooperative principle - Gricean Maxims • quantity • quality • relation • manner
Four Gricean Maxims
– Maxim of Quantity: make your contribution to a
conversation as informative as required, but no
more informative than is appropriate
– Maxim of Quality: your contribution should be
truthful; you are expected to say what you believe
to be the case (with some exceptions…)
– Maxim of Relation: you should make your
contributions relevant to the aims of the
conversation
– Maxim of Manner: you should try to avoid
obscure expressions, vague utterances, and
purposeful obfuscations of your point
Is language special?
How is it learned?
How is it handled in the brain?
Do other animals have it?
Behaviorism’s attempt
to explain language
Skinner’s (1957) Verbal Behavior – Child utters sound at random, gets reinforced for approximations to correct – Language is shaped over time, via the principles of operant conditioning
Chomsky’s (1959) reply
Parents care more about truth than grammar,
and grammar is hard to correct anyway
Language acquisition
Predictable stages – 8 months: practice at pronouncing phonemes (babbling) – 10-15 months: real words appear – 18-24 months: rapid word acquisition (about 1 every 2 hours), 2-word sentences – 2-4 years: syntax acquisition
Language instinct
– Growth rather than learning
– Critical period
• Case study: Genie
• Language normally in the left hemisphere, but if this is
damaged early in childhood the right side can take over
– Poverty of the stimulus
• Impossible to learn language only from the information
given, therefore must be biologically predisposed
• Overgeneralisation (overregularisation)
– E.g., “I runned home mummy” / “Look at the mouses”
– Role of learning
• Phoneme selection
• Grammatical parameter setting
• Words acquired through association
Bilingualism
Bilingual children easily differentiate languages from 2 onwards Second language difficult to learn in adulthood - evidence for critical period – Foreign accent particularly difficult to eradicate, suggesting that phoneme acquisition is especially dependent on critical period
Neuroscience of language
Cerebral asymmetry Brain damage Broca’ s area – productive aphasia – agrammatism Wernicke’ s area – receptive aphasia
Teaching apes language systems
■ Attempts to teach vocal language failed
– Vocal apparatus not sufficient
– Lack of voluntary control of vocal tract and facial muscles
■ American Sign Language
– Chimpanzees: e.g. Washoe (Gardner, 1969)
– Gorillas: e.g. Koko (Patterson & Cohen, 1991)
– Orangutans: e.g. Chantek (Miles, 1994)
■ Symbols and pointing
– Chimpanzees:
• Sarah: Premack (1991),
• Nim Chimpsky: Terrace (1979)
• Bonobo Kanzi: Savage-Rumbaugh (1993)
Kanzi (a bonobo)
■ He began acquiring lexigram symbols spontaneously, while
researchers were attempting to train his foster mother, Matata
■ Acquired a multimodal symbol system:
– lexigrams
– spoken English
– ASL signs
■ Probably most linguistically competent non-human animal alive
– Comprehension like a 2 year old – can follow unusual commands:
• ‘put a sparkler in the coke can’
• ‘go scare Matata with the snake’
• ‘put the toothbrush in the lemonade’
– Production more limited – most common 3 word phrases:
• ‘chase Kanzi person’
• ‘person tickle person 2’
• ‘person Kanzi chase’
• No sign of open-ended, recursive syntax
• No questions
■ Side note: remember the Clever Hans phenomenon!
Language Evolution
The ban Modern revival Early bloomer theories Late bloomer theories
