Exam 3, Lecture 2 + 3 - Language

Language

a system of communication using sounds or symbols that enable us to express our feelings, thoughts, ideas, and experiences

• allows us to communicate (verbal allows us to express more than nonverbal)

• involves sequences of signals (sounds, words, signs)

• creates images (ex. reading poetry helps us visualize images)

• is meaningful (a lot can be said with just one word)

• is hierarchical (consist of smaller components that create larger units)

• follows rules (‘what are you doing?’ vs. ‘you doing are what’)

• is universal (every culture has a language, unique but the same)

noam chomsky

• children do not only learn language through imitation and reinforcement

• believes that humans have an inborn ability to master all the complex and various aspects of language

  • ie does not depend on experience/reinforcement

  • generation of novel sentence is an example

rule-based nature of language

components can be arranged in some ways, but not others

• semantic —> structure and meaning

• syntactic —> how symbols can be arranged

• phonological —> how sounds form words

semantic

meaning of a word, sentence, or passage

• lexical semantics —> meaning of words

• semantics is understanding that both ‘stop’ and ‘alto’ mean stop

syntax

rules that determine how words combine into sentences

• ex. every sentence has to have at least one noun and one verb

language (forming sentences) = …

semantics + syntax

• semantics —> meaning of a word

• syntax —> rules that determine how words combine into sentences

hierarchical nature of language

consists of small components that can be combined to form larger units

phonemes

smallest unit of speech sounds

• not the same as a syllable or letter, what counts as a phoneme depends on the culture and the language

morpheme

smallest meaningful unit of language

• not synonymous with a word

words

comprised of one or more morphemes

• can be a single morpheme, or a combination of morphemes

• one syllable words tend to be one morpheme

sentences

a meaningful collection of words

organization of hierarchical structure of language

phonemes —> th-uh b-oh-y l-ah-ee-d

morphemes —> the boy lie-ed

words —> the-boy-lied

sentences —> the boy lied

four aspects of language

• acquisition

• production

• comprehension

• representation

acquisition

how we learn language

production

how we produce language

comprehension

how we understand language

representation

how language is represented in the mind

lexical semantics

meaning of words

• lexicon

• semantics

lexicon

all of the words we know

semantics

meaning of words, sentences, or passages

how do we comprehend words?

by finding their meaning in our ‘mental dictionary’, and choosing the definition that makes sense within the context

word frequency

how often words occur

lexical decision task

• suggests that word frequency influences the way we process a word

• view stimuli and indicate whether it is a word or nonword

• used to test the effects of word frequency on word comprehension

• lower frequency words take longer to correctly identify

word frequency effect

• we respond faster to words that occur more frequently

• for eye movements, we fixate less to words that occur more frequently

word pronunciation

how we say words is affected by speech speed, accents, and word ‘slurring’

• ex. amana, juwana, dijoo —> nonsense words

  • “juwana come with me?”

  • “dijoo remember to bring your books?”

  • “amana go home after class”

  • now the words have meaning

speech segmentation

• we perceive individual words even though there are often no silences between them

  • ex. #didyouseethegamelastnight

  • ex.#Wonitatthebuzzer

• learned with experience

• improved by learning which speech sounds co-occur more often

• improved by hearing the words in context

mondegreens

mishear something; ‘slips of the ear’

• ex. hear: excuse me while I kiss this guy
  not: ‘excuse me while I kiss the sky’

lexical ambiguity

words often have more than one meaning

ex. rose is a thorny flower, a warm pink color, or past tense of stand

lexical priming task

read a priming sentence followed by a probe word as quickly as possible

• same meaning —> ‘she held a rose’ (priming sentence) / ‘flower’ (probe word)

• similar meaning —> ‘they all rose’ / ‘flower’

• different meaning —> ‘I smell a rose’ / ‘butter’

priming effect

• of the lexical priming task

• respond faster to probe words that have the same meaning as the priming sentence

• respond faster to probe words that have a similar meaning to the priming sentence, but less fast than same meaning

• after a delay, the sentence only primes the probe word with the same meaning

  • context still used to get the meaning, but the meanings are temporarily activated in the mind

biased dominance

one meaning occurs more often than others

• ex. the old man the ships —> man is the non-dominate verb

it is easier to understand words that _____

occur more frequently

phrasal semantics

meaning of sentences/phrases

parsing

mentally grouping the words into phrases to create meaning

• ex. words in: after the musician played the piano she left the stage
  parsed sentence in mind: [after the musician played the piano] [she left the stage]

phrasal semantics = …

lexical semantics + parsing

garden path sentence

sentences that begin by appearing to mean one thing, but end up meaning something else

• ex. “after the musician played the piano …

  • she left the stage

  • she bowed to the audience

  • the crowd cheered wildly

  • was wheeled off the stage —> “after the musician played, the piano was wheeled off the stage”

garden path model of parsing

listeners use heuristics (synax-based rules) to group words into phrases

heuristics

educated guesses, intuitive judgements, or common sense used to solve a problem quickly

• can lead us to make errors

late closure

parser assumed each new word is part of the current phrase

• common heuristic

• we initially rely on the late closure heuristic to parse each new word as part of the current phrase

• when the heuristic leads to an error, we re-parse the phrases

constraint based approach to parsing

listeners use syntax along with other information (word meaning, context, memory load) to group words into phrases

• easier to parse a sentence when the word meaning is not ambiguous (ex. the bird saw the man with the binoculars)

• easier to parse a sentence within the context of a story

• easier to parse a sentence that places fewer demands on memory load (speak in simpler constructions when speaking to people with lower working memory capacities)

visual word paradigm

view a scene and follow the instructions; “place the apple on the towel in the box”

• eye movements are less accurate when parsing an ambiguous sentence within a scene context (place the apple on the towel in the box)

• eye movements are more accurate when parsing an unambiguous sentence within a scene context (place the apply that’s on the towel in the box)

• eye movements occur as participant is reading and they are influenced by scene context

a) the senator who spotted the reporter shouted

subject-relative construction: the senator is the subject of the embedded clause

• ex. of memory load

b) the senator who the reporter spotted shouted

object-relative construction: the senator is the object of the embedded clause

• ex. of memory load

which of the following describes best the difference between the garden path and the constraint-based mdoels

the garden path model suggests we rely on syntax-based rules; the constraint-based model suggests we rely on syntax as well as word meaning, context, and memory load to group words into phrases

given-new contract

speaker should construct new sentences that include given information (that the listener already knows) and new information (that the listener is hearing for the first time)

• conversations that violate the given-new contract are hard to understand

common ground

knowledge and beliefs shared among conversation participants

• conversations with friends/colleagues are easy because there is so much shared knowledge

referential communication task

one person has to identify something (the reference) being described to them by someone else

• think of heads up the given, you have the category word on your forehead and the person lists things that fit in the category to cue you into what the category is

syntactic coordination

conversation participants coordinate their grammatical constructs

• you are more likely to respond to a statement using the same syntax

  • ex. talking in a valley girl accent makes you start responding in a valley girl accent

syntactic priming

hearing a grammatical construction increases the change that you will use it too

• ex. a confederate reads a statement and is hidden from listener, a suite of visual depictions in front of participants and they need to pick the card matching the statement, then describe that card to the confederate in the next round

  • participants use the same grammatical construction as the confederate when describing the next card

theory of mind

being able to understand what others feel, think, or believe

nonverbal communication

being able to interpret and react to the other persons’ gestures, facial expressions, tone of voice, and other cues to meaning

the principle of ____ states that it is easier to understand conversations when the participants already know the back story

common ground