Section 8: Language

Question 1

What are the properties of language?

Answer 1

1. Semanticity (assign meaning)
2. Arbitrariness (no inherent link)
3. Flexibility of symbols (symbols/words can change)
4. Range of naming (label anything)
5. Displacement (beyond present)
6. Productivity (creativity)

Question 2

What are limits to teaching apes language?

Answer 2

• Apes can learn some aspects of communication, but not full language
• CAN learn 200 signs/words & combine two-word utterances
• CANNOT learn syntax & abstract rules

Question 3

What are differences in human language and animal communication?

Answer 3

• Animal communication revolves around mating, social interaction, survival (limited)
• Human language is a system for structuring reality, abstract concepts, and thoughts

Question 4

What is a behaviorist account of language acquisition?

Answer 4

Language is learned through imitation, reinforcement, gradual shaping

Question 5

What are problems with a behaviorist account of language acquisition?

Answer 5

• Animals can learn through reinforcement, but no language
• Children show creativity from start (produce novel sentences)
• Children acquire abstract rules (overregularization like “goed” or “mouses”)
• Children learn without consistent reinforcement
• Homesign (invent own communication systems without language)
• Pidgins & creoles (broken input into full grammatical sentences)

Question 6

What is the distinction between writing and language?

Answer 6

• Speech is older
• Speech is more universal
• Writing systems differ while spoken languages share universal features (alphabetic vs. logographic vs. syllabary)

Question 7

What is linguistic relativity (sapir-whorf) hypothesis?

Answer 7

• STRONG CLAIM that language determines how you think & perceive reality (NO EVIDENCE SUPPORTS THIS)
• WEAK CLAIM that language can influence certain cognitive tasks (SOME EVIDENCE = color perception, spatial processing)

Question 8

What are the three levels of language (Chomsky)?

Answer 8

1. Phonology = sound structure
2. Syntax = word order, grammar
3. Semantics = meanings, combinations

Question 9

What is competence vs. performance?

Answer 9

• Competence = internal knowledge of language/grammar
• Performance = actual language use (including errors, slips, distractions)

Question 10

What are phones?

Answer 10

Raw, physical sounds, smallest speech unit

Question 11

What are allophones?

Answer 11

• Different versions of a phoneme (does not change meaning)
• E.g., /t/ is different in top, stop, and butter

Question 12

What are phonemes?

Answer 12

• Smallest psychologically meaningful sound unit (if changing sound changes meaning… different phonemes)
• E.g., /p/ vs. /b/ (pat is not the same as bat)

Question 13

For consonants, what 3 features determine phoneme?

Answer 13

1. Place of articulation (where airflow stopped)
2. Manner of articulation (how airflow disrupted)
3. Voicing (vocal cords vibrating)

Question 14

For vowels, what are the 2 defining features?

Answer 14

• No major obstruction of airflow
• Distinguished by mouth placement & tongue height

Question 15

What is categorical perception?

Answer 15

• Brain treats speech sounds as categories (psychological vs. acoustic)
• Easy discrimination ACROSS categories (/b/ vs. /p/)
• Hard discrimination WITHIN categories (/b/ vs. /b/)

Question 16

What is the problem of invariance (speech perception)?

Answer 16

Phonemes perceived as the same even though sounds change all the time (variation between speakers, sounds overlap)

Question 17

What is the problem of segmentation?

Answer 17

Few acoustic cues as to where one PHONEME ends and the next begins (speech doesn’t come with spaces)

Question 18

What is the problem of lexical segmentation?

Answer 18

Few acoustic cues as to where one WORD ends and the next begins

Question 19

What is ambiguous input?

Answer 19

Easily identify words in context, but hard when played in isolation

Question 20

What is the TRACE model?

Answer 20

• Connectionist model for speech perception
• Feature –> phoneme –> word
• Bottom-up & top-down activation
• Lateral inhibition (competing phonemes/words at the same level inhibit each other)
• Memory trace (order of phonemes)
• Over time, one word becomes dominant –> conscious recognitionB

Question 21

What are the four assumptions of TRACE?

Answer 21

1. Spoken word recognition involved interactive processing at multiple levels
2. As a word is heard, multiple representations are activated
3. Level of activation depends on similarity and frequency of occurrence (probability)
4. Spoken word recognition guided by competition of activated representations

Question 22

What does “Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.” have to do with syntax?

Answer 22

• Grammatically correct, but meaningless
• Syntax is separate from meaning

Question 23

What are phase structure rules?

Answer 23

• Explain how words group into phrases and how phrases combine to sentences
• E.g., Sentence = noun phrase + verb phrase

Question 24

What are transformational rules?

Answer 24

• Transform deep structure into different surface forms
• Surface structure = form you see (The ball was hit by Joe)
• Deep structure = underlying meaning (Joe hit the ball)

Question 25

What is the given-new strategy?

Answer 25

- Speakers choose syntax that helps present given info before new info - E.g., "at the store, I saw a dog" vs. "I saw a dog at the store" - Syntax interacts with meaning & context!