Language 3

Language production - def

language built up hierarchically, with smaller components forming larger segments

Language production ex:

speaking and writing

language comprehension - def

interpreting language that we read or hear

language comprehension is not a

sequential process, we don’t approach language one small component at a time to reconstruct larger part

language comprehension is more like a

parallel process

parallel process

we evaluate many sources of info. at different levels in the hierarchy, all at the same time

Ex of parallel process of language comprehension

the mind is already guessing what the story may be before the sentences are done or guessing what the sentence may be before the words are done

They conduct a scientific experiment to illustrate this point

step 1 - recorded participants’ natural speech

step 2 - play participants’ own speech back to them under 2 conditions

Condition 1:

individual words played back in isolation (here, myself) and ask what word did you hear?

Result from condition 1

only 40% can identify the words

condition 2:

played 4 words sequence back together (I drove by myself here) and ask “did you hear the word ‘myself’ or what was the last word?”

condition 2 is to examine that we use our

knowledge about the sentence to figure out what individual words are

result from condition 2

80% can identify the words

Conclusion: knowledge of large components (sentence) helps

identify the smaller component (words)

2 short demos to prove the point

1) same writing but we interpret it as different according to context

2) didn’t notice the typo on the fortune cookie’s note bc interpretation of the word is guided by the sentence

Phoneme Restoration Effect (prove the parallel process as well)

when a phoneme is inaudible bc of noisy environment, the mind can sometimes fill in the missing phoneme, base on the sentence that surround it

Bottom line: in language comprehension, the mind makes

“educated guesses” based on whatever info. is available, at all the levels of the hierarchy in parallel, and from other suprising sources as well

in language comprehension, the mind extract info from all kinds of

unexpected sources

1st ex: What we see

influence what we hear

McGurk effect

the sound we hear someone say can change, depending on how we see their mouth move

ex of McGurk effect

Hear → ba

see → ga

Perceive → da

Ex 2: Language comprehension relies on

stored knowledge of statistical patterns in language

Speech Segmentation (ex of using knowledge of stat in language)

the ability to identify when one word ends and the next word begins, in spoken language

word boundaries in spoken language often not marked by

pause

so in spoken language, we ‘segment’ speech by using

statistical patterns in English (what are sounds sequence that are common within e words which ones are unlikely?)

EX of speech segmentation

when hearing these 4 syllables “Pretty Baby” without any pause between words we can distinguish “pretty” and “baby” because “pre”and “ty” can follow each other but “ty” and “ba” rarely do.

So when phrasing these sounds your mind makes use of the knowledge

inferring a word boundary between “ty” and “ba”

Multistable speech segmentation is when

sometimes your mind puts the word boundary in one place; somestimes in a different place

Multistable speech segmentation basically means

hear different things even tho the sounds don’t change

Multistable speech segmentation is when the statistics of the language don’t

strongly favor one particular way of segmenting the speech

when we use statistic regularities to interpret language, we use

implicit knowledge

implicit knowledge is

knowledge you have without being consciously aware of it

EX of implicit knowledge of statistic regularities in English

we guess that “bastrabot” and “quarum” are Eng words bc these 2 words used sequences of letters that are common in Eng (we recgnized them as plausible words)

“bastrabot” and “quarum” are called

Pseudowords

Pseudowords

made up of words that follow the rules of a language’s sounds or spelling system but don’t actually have meaning