language

what is naming

we assign names to objects, ideas and concepts

what is displacement

we can talk about things other than the present moment

what is productivity

inherently novel activity, we generate sentences rather than repeat them

what is language

a collection of symbols and rules which allow us to create an infinite set of well-formed sentences

what are is the hierarchy of structural levels of language

1. sentence

2. phrase

3. word

4. morpheme (morphology)

5. phoneme (phonology)

Each level has its own set of rules

what are phonological rules

describe the sound structure of a language

basic units of sound in a language - english has about 46

what are morphological rules

describe how words can be formed by combining 1 or more morphemes

e.g. adding er to verb = noun, doer of action

what are syntactic rules

specify how words are put together to form phrases and sentences

what are semantic rules

specify meanings of individual morphemes and of combinations of morphemes

explain properties of the meanings of words

what are pragmatic rules

specify the social interactions regarding language

why is the perception of phonemes a complex process

variability (or ambiguity) in the acoustic signal, including different instances of a particular phoneme

what is the segmentation problem

patterns of sound and silence do not regularly mark word boundaries

pauses and breaks between sounds do not always occur at the ends of words but rather within the words themselves

what is parsing

the process of figuring out how words should be grouped together to determine the phrase structure of a sentence

what is syntax

the set of rules for ordering words into acceptable, well formed sentences

why do people experiences issues with parsing

sentences come in many different lengths and structural forms and are frequently ambiguous

what are parsing strategies

1. incremental strategy: build structure as you go along

2. word-order strategy: assume a subject-verb-object construction, unless there is explicit evidence to the contrary

3. minimal attachment: build the simplest structure possible

4. late-closure principle: whenever possible, attach a new material to the structure currently being processed

5. make use of semantics and/or prior knowledge

6. make use of visual or linguistic context

what is the syntax first approach

assumes that grammatical category information is only source used during initial parse. semantics used later

what is the interactionist approach

assumes that any type of relevant information can affect parsing right from the start