how is language is hierarchically structured, infinitely creative, symbolic, grammatical and arbitrary
o Sound -> Words -> Phrases -> Sentences
- Discrete units can be recombined to make other utterances
-no limit to how many things we can say ( infinitely creative)
o Kids realize that verbal representation can represent what they want “milk” (symbolic)
o Rules about “legal” combinations (grammatical)
-There is nothing inherent that we make us called a dog a dog or spell it that way (arbitrary)
- How Can language be broken down in to a number of levels
o Phonemes (phonology)
-The sounds of the language with no meaning
o Morphemes (lexical or semantic level)
- Smallest meaningful language units
- Content & function morphemes; free & bound morphemes
• Ex: Words have 2 morphemes: we are talking about a word, the s (bound) indicated that it is plural
o Words (lexical or semantic level): how we represent our knowledge about world
o Phrases (syntax)
o Sentences (syntax & semantics)
o Discourse (conceptual & belief)
explain Speech Perception
- Not a simple process of phoneme detection
o No markers at beginning or end of phonemes (or words)
o Effect of context & co-articulation (phonemic overlap) don’t sound out the word BAT, the sounds of the letters overlap in regular speech
- Categorical perception
o The tendency to hear sounds as members of a category – there is a boundary
o All sounds of a given category sound identical – don’t hear difference between far out and boarder-line sounds
o Perceive abrupt transitions between sound categories – just as the boundary is crossed completely different perception
describe the Importance of Top-Down Processing (why we’re better than any computer)
- One reason is humans make use of top-down knowledge to aid speech perceptions (siri cant do this)
ex. knowing the song title may help you hear the lyrics correctly
-usually context make us break up the work in the right way
o Big earl = Big girl
-phoneme detection (is there a “b” sound?)
-> “BAT, BAF, B” -we are fastest to respond to the “b” sound when hearing BAT because we know about bats/how to spell them (higher level knowledge helps us with lower level processing)
what are Homophones (& homonyms)
May sound the same but be spelled different
Might be spelled the same way but mean different thing
o Ate/eight, bank/bank, bear/bare, litter/litter/litter
- Orthographic representation of a word?
the spelling of the word
- what is Sense
o Meaning of word (or phrase) -doesn’t change
o E.g. President of the United States (changes every four years; elected official but president still has same meaning)
- Referent ?
o What the word refers to in the world- changes
o E.g. which particular president
- benefits to the generativity of language
ability to create new words
Allows us to deal with/describe novel situations
• Photobomb
- Think of all the new words we have created in the past 100 years
o Binge watching
-possible to create an infinite number of sentences using a finite number of words and grammatical rules
- describe Prescriptive rules and descriptive riles?
- Prescriptive rules
o How things ought to be done
o Focus for many linguists (and English teachers!!) - Descriptive rules
o How things are ACTUALLY done
o Focus for cognitive psychologists and psycholinguists
- What is Competence?
- What is Performance?
Competence:
o What you’re able to do or understand…often under ideal conditions
o E.g. formal knowledge of grammar rules, ability to recognize words
Performance:
o How you actually use language…in more “real world” conditions
o E.g. slips of the tongue, spoken language (including grammatical errors)
explain Language Development through infancy
learning begins in utero
o Vocal play – 16 weeks
o Babbling with syllable production – 36 weeks
o Recognition of phonemes across infancy
Can hear and produce all of the sounds that can be produced in human language. As we get older we lose the universal phenome sensitivity.
o In all languages, language acquisition follows the same pattern
First word - ~52 weeks
“Rules” of language - ~3 years of age
-learn concrete nouns first and later verbs
“motherese”
sing-song baby talk that we use when talking to infants and animals bc suggested that babies like high pitch sounds
describe the 3 Specific patterns of errors
o Under-extensions- thinking only one specific thing is a whole category
E.g. dog refers to only a specific dog (their dog)
o Overextensions- thinking too much fits into a category
E.g. dog refers to all 4-legged animal
o *Over-regularization -trying to make rules fit everything
E.g. “I” before “e” except after “c”
E.g. add –ed to make all verbs past tense (e.g. goed)
- Grammar vs syntax ?
- Grammar:
o Which combination of words are legal - Syntax: falls under grammar
o The rules governing the sequence of words in a phrase or sentence
o The role each word plays in a sentence
o Verb, noun, adjective, etc. - Syntax does not equal meaning
o Sentences can be syntactically correct but meaningless
o “colorless green ideas sleep furiously”: every word is in its proper place but it doesn’t mean anything
- Phase structure ambiguity
o Sometimes more than one phrase structure compatible with a sentence
He saw the gorilla with his binoculars
Levels of Language?
- Deep structure vs. surface structure
o Deep structure = intended meaning
o Surface structure = words & phrases used
The boy threw the ball
The ball was thrown by the boy (different surface structure, same deep structure)
Landing planes can be dangerous (different deep structure, same surface structure)
what is Sentence Parsing?
- Determine each words syntactic role
- >A much more complex process than we realize
o Temporary ambiguity?
ambiguous at the moment until you hear the end of the sentence => hang on that word arrested
The man arrested…by the cop went to court yesterday
o Garden-path sentences ?
cause a reader to become ‘lost’ or ‘tangled’ in an incorrect interpretation of the early part of the sentence, meaning that they later have to ‘re-parse’ the sentence, backtracking through the syntax to find a different way of interpreting and coordinating the sentence
-setting up the wrong phrase structure
-often missing function words
ex The horse that ran past the barn fell vs. The horse raced past the barn fell
- Assumption of minimal attachment
o Keep it simple…
o Build the least complex phrase structure possible
-there is less commas because we are trying to shorten things up but often becomes ambiguous
- Modular view of sentence parsing/language comprehension vs. Interactionist view of sentence parsing
- Evidence favors the interactionist view for sentence parsing, modular for word identification
Other Cues to Decode Language
- Prosody??
o The rise and fall of speech intonation/pitch and the pattern of pauses
o Can find cues as to the intent of the utterance – can be sarcastic or kind
