PSYC 105 Midterm 2

Phonology

The sounds of a word

Morphology

Units of meaning that are part of a word

How is “slugs” and “geese” counted as 2 morphemes

Slugs is counted as 2 morphemes since it is plural, meanwhile geese is counted as 2 morphemes since it is implied based on context that this represented multiple goose.

Morphemes are based on…

Orthography, which is how words are written out

Semantics

The context of the meaning of morpheme

• Morphologically geese and slugs are the same, but because of semantics you know they are different

Lexicon

Vocabulary or concepts

• All the words you have at your disposal

Syntax (Grammar)

How words and phrases are arranged in language

• Sentences tend to follow this format: verb → object phrase → action

Pragmatics (Communication)

The tone you say something changes the meaning of the sentence

Gesture (Communication)

Non-verbal ways of communicating

• Hand-to-ear: to tell someone to speak up

Components of Language

1. Phonology

2. Meaning

   • Morphology

   • Semantics

   • Lexicon

3. Grammar

   • Syntax

4. Communication

   • Pragmatics

   • Gesture

Why is it hard to recognize when someone knows a word?

• Children might acquire phonemes and semantics at different rates for different words

• How they actually interact and combine them is going to keep developing

Production

You actually say the word

Comprehension

If you know the meaning of cow, point to it

When observing four of the children’s first words, what are something that were noticed?

1. A lot of the first words were nouns, there wasn’t a lot of verbs

2. More nouns because nouns can name a particular category

3. Very concrete and not abstract

Vocabulary Growth as an English Speaker

• By the time you are in elementary school, you know 10,000 words

  • Very rapid increase of vocab in early childhood, after that there is gradual increases.

Naming Explosion

Within 1.5 yrs into life, we see a big increase in vocab

• By age of 6, they know about 14,000 words

• Average 9 words/day everyday

Things that are involved in Word Learning

1. Identify the word

2. Learn the word (or sign)

3. Connect the sound to the correct meaning

4. Store that information

5. Remember that information

What are the things that are involved in Word Learning not involved in language?

1. Identify the word

2. Connect the sound to the correct meaning

These are aspects of how we learn in general

• Memory processing: encoding → storage → retrieval

What makes identifying a word harder or easier for us?

We can identify words easily in written language, however, we cannot identify speech through acoustic information.

• It is hard to know where our words start and where they end.

Statistical Learning Procedure

1. Infants listen to a 2 min speech stream with 4 repeating nonsense words

   • Bidaku padoti golabu bidaku

2. Tested infants with “words” vs. “part-words”

   1. Words: padoti & golabu

   2. Part-words: daku pa & ba bida

Statistical Learning Results

Children looked at part-words longer than words, meaning children are using their statistical properties and co-occurrences in their acoustic signal to figure out when a words starts and ends.

• Children are able to figure it out by hearing strings of words in their daily life

Evidence for Nativism

1. We have specialized brain regions

2. Home signs systems

   • Sign language made between family members

   • If not learned to communicate while deaf, they still produce their own sign language

3. Critical periods

4. Sensitive periods

Critical periods

• A particular period in development where you are meant to experience certain information

• If you don’t get that experience at that time then you are never going to have that skill.

Sensitive periods

• Different based on strictness

• If you are exposed to information by a certain point, you are going to be better at it

Evidence for Sensitive periods

1. It is easier to acquire a language before puberty

2. Case of Genie → didn’t know language until puberty due to maltreatment

3. Second language learners → we can learn, but we might not be as good

4. Late learners of sign language

Evidence for Late learners of sign language (Sensitive periods)

When learning about the morphology of ASL it has harder for late learners compared to native and early learners.

Evidence that the social world is still important in language learning

Infant directed speech (Higher & wider pitch, exaggerated speech)

• Supports infant language learning because it helps them find out where the segmentation of speech is suppose to happen

How does greater distinct language differences create better speech perception?

Depending on how exaggerated mother’s speech, infant were better at recognizing speech

Quine’s Problem

1. A native speaker exclaims, “Gavagai”, as a rabbit scurries by

2. What does “Gavagai” mean?

   • Gavagai can mean many things…

     • rabbit

     • ears

     • rabbit parts

     • Dinner

     • Cute

     • Fur

     • Plants etc.

The main idea of the Quine’s Problem

This relates to infants learning language, there is a lot of ambiguity of words, however, infants are very good at connecting meaning.

• How they so good despite ambiguity?

How do infants disambiguate words?

Infant may use social cues, concepts, and language form (how language is constructed)

Whole Object Assumption

Concept used to disambiguate words

• We assume that an entire word refers to an entire object

• When we see all possibilities of what an object can refer to, only a subset refers to the object

Shape bias

1. Tell children, “this is my zup”

2. Ask them what a zup is

Despite not specifying shape or texture, children still chose the shape

• Concept used to disambiguate words

Mutual Exclusivity

The assumption that an object can only have one name.

• Stephanie thinks orange and ahrange are different things

  • “oar-ange” = food

  • “ahr-ange” = color

    • This an oar-ange

    • Therefore, it can’t also be an ahr-ange

    • So, ahr-ange must mean something else

New words refer to new items in their environment

• Concept used to disambiguate words

Syntactic Bootstrapping

Children can figure out the meaning of words based on context

• Children start using language form clues by about 2 years of age

• a language form that is used to disambiguate words

Gaze following

By the way someone looks at an object while saying the word, you assume that object means that word.

• Social cue used to disambiguate words

Follow-in labeling

Researcher labels toy that child is looking at

• By 16-17 months, infants solve follow-in labels

• part of Gaze following

Discrepant labeling

Researcher labels the toys that the child is NOT looking at

• By 18-19 months, they can solve discrepant labels

• part of Gaze following

Emotional reaction

How people emotionally react to object can help find its meaning.

• Social cue used to disambiguate words

Kids attention in word learning

Mapping when the word was produced and what was in their visual field

• When children do learn the word they look at the target objects longer

• This shows that when we talk about the things they are experiencing, it is the best way to learn words

• Social cue used to disambiguate words

Gesture

• Critical mode of communication

• Used in tandem with words

• Can be used consciously or not

• Social cue used to disambiguate words

Emblems

Precise meaning gesture
“thumb up”

Deictic

Pointing gesture → very common among children

Beat

Emphasize rhythm gesture

Iconic

Gestures standing for concept aspects

Metaphoric

Gestures standing for abstract aspects

• “balancing” hand gesture

Producing words

Production lags behind comprehension

1. Infants coo to learn how to produce sound

2. Then they babble to learn word production

Children making errors in speech

Production isn’t always perfect

• children make errors all the time and parents rarely correct them

Types of errors

• phonemic

• semantic

• morphological

• syntactical

Overregularization

Applying a linguistic rule too broadly

• Morphological error

Child: I used to wear diapers. When I growed up

Father: When you grew up

Child: When I grewed up, I wore underpants

New born sequence of language acquisition

Prefer speech, discriminates phonemes, cries

1-4 months sequence of language acquisition

Sensitive to prosodic features of speech, coos

4-6 months sequence of language acquisition

Babbles

9-12 months sequence of language acquisition

Reduplicated babbling, first gesture

12-18 months sequence of language acquisition

One-word utterances, “first word”

18-24 months sequence of language acquisition

Vocabulary spurt

About 2 years sequence of language acquisition

Two-word utterances

Preschool year (2 ½ - 5) sequence of language acquisition

Increasingly complex utterances, humor, metaphors, vocabulary & communicate skills grow.