Topic 8 - Spoken Lang

Neurolinguistic Model Dorsal 1 Path

Sound to motor (auditory motor integration); Develops early

pSTG to premotor cortex 

Neurolinguistic Model Dorsal 2 Path

Process nonadjacent elements (complex syntax); Develops later on

pSTG to BA44

Neurolinguistic Model Ventral 1 Path

Sound to meaning (speech comprehension)

STG to BA45

Neurolinguistic Model Ventral 2 Path

Combining sequences of adjacent elements 

Ant STG to FOP 

What does it mean to know a lang?

• Production

• Comprehension

• Metalinguistic judgement about utterances

Production

Correctly say whatever one wants to say

• Words (lexical items)

• Prefixes + affixes (morphology)

• Sentences (syntax)

• Convos + stories (discourse + pragmatics)

What does it mean to know a lang?

Comprehension 

Understand all well formed utterances at all levels 

What does it mean to know a lang?

Word

Sound unit that has meaning

What does it mean to know a word?

• Know what word means (like link between sound + concept)

• Can produce word

• Can understand word

• Know grammatical class/restriction of word

• Grammatical forms of wrd

• Know connotations of a word

Metalinguistic Judgement about Utterances

Understand that one thing can be described in many ways - through verbs, nouns, adj

What does it mean to know a lang?

How to Say a Word - Broad 

1. Lexical Access

2. Speech Production 

How to Say a Word - Detailed

1. Conceptual Perception in Terms of Lexical Access

2. Lexical Selection

3. Morphological Encoding

4. Phonological Encoding Syllabification

5. Phonetic Encoding

6. Articulation

Step 1-4 → lexical access

Step 4-6 → speech production

Lexicon

Mental dictionary that contains info about lexical items (words)

Lexicon Contents 

• Meanings

• Pronunciation

• Spelling

• Syntactic info (part of speech, irreg forms, etc)

• ?

How are words accessed from lexicon?

Multiple routes;

1. Meaning

2. Pronunciation

3. Spelling

How do we study lexicon structure?

By studying lexical access

Ways to Study Lexical Access List 

1. Verbal Fluency Task

2. Tip of Tongue

3. Slip of Tongue 

4. Pic Naming Tasks

5. Lexical Decision Tasks

6. Lexical Naming Tasks

Verbal Fluency Task

Name an example of a category (like veg, vehicles, animals) + have them list as many as possible

Ways to Study Lexical Access List 

Tip of Tongue

Can be spontaneous or called; Failure to fully retrieve a word from lexicon

Mostly for proper nouns + worse as you age

Ways to Study Lexical Access List 

Slip of Tongue

Can only be spontaneous; Retrieval misfires

Ways to Study Lexical Access List 

Pic Naming Task

Show pictures + have them say what it is

Ways to Study Lexical Access List 

Lexical Decision Task

Decide if a string of letters is a real or nonsense word

Ways to Study Lexical Access List 

Lexical Naming Task

Give a written word + have them read it aloud

Ways to Study Lexical Access List 

What issue is it when patients can understand words but cannot rapidly name them?

Lexical access prob

Multiple Routes to Retrieve a Word

• Phonological

• Semantic

• Syntactic

• Orthographic (but not last sound of word)

When is there faster word retrieval?

When there is an appropriate route

Ex. Find a word starting with /t/

Priming

Faster retrieval if you are nearby in the same catalogue

Ex. You will find top faster if you just found toe

What do retrieval errors reflect?

Types of catalogues/organization

Ex. Saying toe for top

What does Tip of the Tongue Reveal about Lexicon?

Shows meaning is still there + its organization and that you retain specific things about the words form (such as phonemes letters, etc)

What kind of errors do slips of the tongue reveal?

Sound based (retrieving a similar sounding word, anticipating a sound, switching phonemes, perseverating on a sound, omitting a sound) AND meaning based (blends of words + substitution)

What are people faster on for the lexical decision task? 

Real words (maybe bc fake words need to go through whole lexicon) + high freq words (bc maybe lexicon organized by freq)

Blends

Gripping + grasping = grisping

Slips of the Tongue

Substitution

California → Colorado

Slips of the Tongue

Limits of Lexical Decision Task 

• Can get something correct by guessing/reconstructing

• Cant tell % of time on accessing v deciding/post access checking 

Factors that Affect Lexical Access

1. Frequency (high freq words easier)

2. Imageability/Correctness (concrete words easier; ink>idea)

3. Semantic Route (tip/slip of tongue, rapid naming)

4. Phonological Route (tip/slip of tongue, rapid naming, segmental, suprasegmental)

5. Orthographic Route (in written lang)

6. Grammatical Category (noun, verb, adj)

7. Age (slower when older)

8. Developmentally (dif types of acess)

9. Brain Injury

Segmental

Phonetic features + phonemes

Phonological Route

Suprasegmental 

Number of syllables, stress, rhyme, etc

Phonological Route

Orthographic Route 

In written lang 

Morpheme

Smallest unit of meaning; morpheme ≠ word

Words can be more than 1 morpheme

Root Morphemes

Stems of words

Affixes

Prefixes/suffixes

Root Morphemes + Affixes

Dogs = dog (root morph) + s (affix)

Closed Class (Grammatical) Morphemes

No new members allowed

Open Class (Lexical) Morphemes 

New members welcomed (neologisms)

Do people create novel grammatical morphemes or novel lexical morphemes?

Lexical morphemes

Inflectional

Inflecting words to fit the grammar of a sentence

• Singular/plural (ex. i have one cat/cats)

• Tense (ex. everyday i eat/eated/ate dinner)

• Subj Verb Agreement (ex. she love/loves coffee)

Derivational 

Creating new words with new meanings 

Ex. Antivaxxer, influencer 

Can you generalize forms to new/nonsense words? (morpho-phonology)

Ex. Homer has a snib

Lisa gives him another

Now, Homer has two ___ (snibs)

Ex. Homer spilled splet on his shirt

Now, his shirt is all ____ (spleddy)

Syntax

Rules for how words + morphemes combine to express propositions beyond the meanings of indiv items

Word order can matter + so can inflectional (grammatical) morphemes

Classical Theory of Concepts 

A concept is the intersection of necessary + sufficient primitive features 

Necessary - Classical Theory of Concepts 

In order to be a member of a concept, something must have ALL the primitive features of the concept

Sufficient - Classical Theory of Concepts

If something exhibits all the primitive features of a concept, then it MUST be a member of the concept

What is the main positive about the classical theory of concepts? 

Solves a lot of problems, like semantic decomposition, priming, etc 

Family Resemblance/Prototype Theory

The more features something has, the more prototypical it is; Categories are formed by overlapping similarities among members, rather than a single shared feature

Collection of primitive features; The more the better

None are necessary or sufficient

Pros of Family Resemblance/Prototype Theory

• Prototypical are easier + faster to learn/access

• Prototypical acquired earlier

• Prototypical more likely to be named

• Linguistic hedges (ex. flightless bird)

Exemplar Model 

Concepts have no features because category representation of “dog” just consists of storage of specific examples of dogs (“exemplars”); There are no internal structure bc its just specific exemplars 

Storage of specific examples, no features

New instances of “dog” are compared to these exemplars and the most similar one will have the most influence on classification 

Hierarchal Network Def

A cognitive theory where knowledge is organized like a branching tree, with broader categories at the top and more specific examples at lower levels

Hierarchal Network Levels

1. Superordinate

2. Ordinate/Basic Object Level

3. Subordinate

Superordinate Level

A general, overarching category that contains more specific subcategories, or "basic" and "subordinate" categories

Ex. Animal

Hierarchal Network Levels

Ordinate or Basic Object Level

More categorized than superordinate, but still broad

Ex. bird or fish

Hierarchal Network Levels

Subordinate Level

Specific examples at the bottom

Ex. lemonhead shark

Hierarchal Network Levels

Ed Smith’s Semantic Feature Model 

A way to organize and understand words or concepts by breaking them down into their individual characteristics or features

Has defining vs characteristic features + weak vs strong strength of connections 

Semantic Networks + the Grounding Prob

Semantic networks represent knowledge as a network of nodes and edges, but they face the symbol grounding problem because the symbols (words and concepts) lack inherent meaning and real-world connections

Indexical Hypothesis Def

Words are tied to representations we build with our senses

1. Indexes

2. Affordances

3. Meshing

Indexical Hypothesis 3 Necessary Parts 

1. Indexes 

2. Affordances

3. Meshing 

Indexes

Word must be tied (indexed) to something in real world or analog representation (perceptual symbol) in mind 

Indexical Hypothesis 3 Necessary Parts 

Affordances

The actions available for an obj (like a sandwich affords eating); Indexed obj or symbol is used to drive them

Affordances are the result of interaction among characteristics of a physical object, body, or perception

Indexical Hypothesis 3 Necessary Parts 

Meshing

Combining affordances of all the indexed obj + actors in an utterance

Indexical Hypothesis 3 Necessary Parts 

How do we interpret an utterance? 

We index words to real world obj by activating their mental representations; The combo of mental representations det what actions are possible/likely 

TRACE Model

A theory of speech perception that uses interactive activation to explain how listeners process sounds, phonemes, and words

Features multiple levels of processing—auditory features, phonemes, and words—where information flows in both bottom-up (from sound to word) and top-down (from word knowledge back to sound) directions, with activation spreading excitatory and inhibitory connections across and between levels

Dell’s Spreading Activation Production Model

A connectionist neurolinguistic model of speech production where activation spreads across a network of semantic, lexical, and phonological nodes

Interactive and messy on purpose—all levels influence each other (meaning ↔ words ↔ sounds), like a neural network, not a clean step-by-step pathway

Do sentences hv hierarchal structure?

Yes

Syntactic Recursion 

Embedding phrases within same type of phrase (= a constituent can contain a constituent of the same type); A sentence in a sentence 

Ex. Zain is a veg → Emma believes Zain is a veg → Pooja thinks Emma believes Zain is a veg; Virtually infinite

Can you understand sentences that are ungrammatical?

Yes

Is it possible to not understand sentences that are grammatical?

Yes

Ex. Colorless green ideas sleep furiously

Do all sentences require language?

No

Ex. Comb your hair

What do semantically irreversible sentences only require? 

Only word understanding 

Ex. The dog chews the bone

What do semantically reversible sentences require?

Word order + sometimes morphology

Ex. Word order → the kitty bumps the swing vs the swing bumps the kitty

Ex. Morphology → the kitty was scratching vs the kitty was scratched

Semantic Network

Concept’s meaning + its connection to other concepts

Does lang = communication (aka linguistic form = communication form)?

No

Linguistic Competence

Ability to produce + understand grammatical, meaningful, utterances

Communicative Competence 

Ability to produce + understand these utterances in socially appropriate ways 

Pragmatics of Lang Usage

• How does context affect meaning?

• What is the meaning of an utterance above + beyond its literal meaning?

• How do speakers/hearers rely upon shared knowledge to communicate?

• How to speakers + hearers cooperate (or choose not to cooperate) when communicating?

Ex. Do I look like your mother? (sarcastic or literal)

Requirements for Narratives (Stories) + Dialogues (Convos)

1. Nonlinguistic info (what to convey, whos listener, what does listener know, what is situation)

2. Linguistic info (who, when, new vs given info)

3. Take turns

4. Initiate approp new topics

5. Repair convo misunderstandings

Superior Temporal Sulcus (STS)

Sound interpretation

Primary Auditory Cortex 

Sound perception 

Middle Temporal Gyrus (MTG)

Auditory memory

Angular Gyrus

Reading

Wernicke-Lichtheium-Geschwind Model

Says 3 main lang regions:

1. Wernicke’s Area (Posterior)

2. Arcuate Fasciculus

3. Broca’s Area (Anterior)

Wernicke’s Area in Wernicke-Lichtheium-Geschwind Model

Stores sound + meaning; Activates appropriate representations in comprehension and production 

Posterior 

Wernicke-Lichtheium-Geschwind Model

Arucate Fasciculus in Wernicke-Lichtheium-Geschwind Model

Transmits info from Wernicke’s area to Broca’s area

Wernicke-Lichtheium-Geschwind Model

Broca’s Area in Wernicke-Lichtheium-Geschwind Model

Sequences words + generates grammatical forms; Stores motor plans that produce speech output

Anterior

Wernicke-Lichtheium-Geschwind Model

Aphasia Syndromes Def

Comprehension + production can dissociate; Posterior and anterior subsystems can function indep

Posterior damage, frontal damage, arcuate fasciculus damage

Posterior Damage 

Probs with sound and meaning 

Aphasia Syndromes

Frontal Damage

Probs with syntax and production (apraxia)

Aphasia Syndromes

Arcuate Fasciculus Damage 

Probs repeating; Conduction aphasia

Aphasia Syndromes

Broca’s Aphasia 

Poor production (expressive aphasia) + agrammatic; Poor comprehension of semantically reversible, complex sentence

Grammatical > Lexical for reading

Ex. the girl was pushing the boy/the girl was pushed by the boy 

Frontal Damage 

Agrammatic

Use semantics + simple word order to understand

Broca’s Aphasia 

Expressive Aphasia

Poor production; Main deficit is in expressing language — speaking and writing but comprehension intact

Broca’s Aphasia 

Early Left Anterior Negativity (ELAN)

Peaks <200 ms; Occurs during local phrase structure violation

Ex. The in room, the calculate, to sofa

ERP Lang Components