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?
