Week 4- words and the mind Flashcards
why is it so difficult to define a word?
- many ‘words’ don’t fit the orthographic categories ¨ “unit of meaning” is problematic since ‘meaning’ is overly vague and difficult to define
- words have different forms but they aren’t necessarily different words (e.g. ‘talk’, ‘talks’ ‘talked’)
- words can have same form but different (unrelated) meanings (e.g. ‘bass’, ‘bass’; ‘tear’, ‘tear’; ‘bank’, ‘bank’) - multiword expressions (e.g. idioms) are problematic since they function as a single unit but include multiple orthographic words (e.g. ‘cats and dogs’)
what is a lexeme?
Abstract, basic, uninflected form of a ‘word’ (under which it would be found in a dictionary) Written in capital letters e.g. the lexeme EAT
what is a lexical item?
A lexical item is a single word, a part of a word, or a chain of words that forms the basic elements of a language’s lexicon. Examples are cat, traffic light, take care of, by the way, and it’s raining cats and dogs
what is a lemma?
The whole set of inflectional variations of a ‘word’ e.g. the lemma ‘eat’ includes ‘eat, eats, eating, eaten, ate’
how are words organised in the mental lexicon?
contains at least 20,000 words
high figures suggest mental lexicon is arranged on a systematic basis
speed of locating a word is very fast
native speakers can recognise a word within 200 milliseconds or less from onset
therefore mental lexicon is highly organised
what is did Collins and Quillian, 1969, come up with?
Hierarchical Network Model of Semantic Memory
1- Information is stored in categories.
- Categories are logically related to each other in a hierarchy: Broad categories of information, like “animal”, are subdivided into narrower categories, like “bird” and “fish”, which in turn are subdivided into still narrower categories.
- “Cognitive Economy”: Information stored at one level of the hierarchy is not repeated at other levels. A fact is stored at the highest level to which it applies. For example, the fact that birds breathe is stored in the ANIMAL category, not the BIRD category
what is the prototype theory?
an average of all the exemplars in the category
robin is a bird- big overlap = FAST
An ostrich is a bird- small overlap = SLOW
(Typicality effect)
what are the components of the lexical entry?
Form: Orthographical Phonological Morphological Syntax: Word class: Phrase structure: Meaning: Core meaning
what is a free morpheme?
cat, dog, cheese, fair, eat, swim, … Carry lexical content, Can occur on their own
what is a bound morpheme?
-s in ‘cats’; un- in ‘unfair’; -ing in ‘eating’, Cannot stand on their own
what is inflectional morphology?
- morphemes used to mark grammatical functions and properties
- tense, number, agreement, etc.
- tend to be regular , e.g. past tense: V + -ed
- irregular forms are also included in dictionary entries - e.g. mouse – mice, moose – moose, eat – ate
- inflected forms are word items of the same LEXEME - - e.g. talk, talks, talking, talked are all lexical items of the same lexeme, TALK
- do not change the semantic content of the lexical item
what is derivational morphology?
morphemes used to create a new lexeme
e.g. teach–teacher
compute–computer–computerize–computerization talk–talkative
what are the two types of derivational morphology?
class changing: more typical
verb–noun (teach, v. – teacher, n.)
adjective–adverb (simple, adj. – simply, adv.)
noun–verb (magnet, n. – magnetize, v.)
noun–adjective (kind, adj. – kindness, n.)
class maintaining: (child + -hood--childhood) or (un- + happy--unhappy)
are these words inflectional or derivational?
cats
faster infrequent John's modernise national nonsense overexcited slowest speaks walking worked
Inflectional:
cats faster john's slowest speaks walking worked
Derivational: dishonest drinkable infrequent modernise national nonsense overexcited
what are the three types of verb constructions?
INTRANSITIVE: no direct object (John is sleeping) TRANSITIVE: one direct object (John hit the ball) DITRANSITIVE: two objects (John gave Jane a book)
