SHS 427 Semantics Midterm Review

semantic feature - definition

basic unit of meaning that helps define the characteristics of a word or phrase

example: “boy” and “man” both share the semantic feature of “male”

role of semantic features in semantic categories

plays a key role in:

• distinguishing similar categories of objects (example: dog vs cat)

• helps us generalize words to new concepts (example: the word “crown” representing the one kings wear and the one dentists place on teeth)

object concepts vs words

object concepts: mental representations of things

words: labels used to express things

how object concepts are stored in the brain

broadly distributed in the brain

grounded cognition model - 2 main ideas

• object concepts consist of multiple fragments of semantic information that are distributed widely across the cerebral cortex

• comprehension of object concepts involves activating modal brain regions that represent what it’s like to sense and interact with the object (aka distribution is NOT random)

example: the word “banana”

• some meaning aspects are stored in tactile areas while others are stored in action-oriented areas

evidence for the grounded cognition model - left supramarginal gyrus (3 in total)

• damage to the left supramarginal gyrus causes ideational apraxia - impaired ability to use or understand the use of a tool (but can still name it)

• larger activation of the left supramarginal gyrus AND left premotor cortex when naming manipulable objects (e.g., cup) compared to non-manipulable objects

• stronger activation of the left supramarginal gyrus when asked to think about using an object rather than just accessing the word in a conversation

difference between top-down and bottom-up effects

top-down: what your brain expects/predicts (e.g., word frequency, context, etc)

bottom-up: what the acoustic signal tells you

how top-down effects are measured (2 in total)

• lexical decision task: participant hits “yes” or “no” when asked if something is a word; measure reaction time

  • faster reaction time for high-frequency word

• phoneme restoration effect: when part of a word is removed and replaced by white noise

  • missing part is perceptually filled in based on context

Ganong effect - definition

people tend to perceive an ambiguous speech sound as a valid word rather than a nonsense word

represents top-down influence of lexical knowledge

how bottom-up effects are measured (2 in total)

• eye-tracking experiments: tracks eye movement while a participant looks at images and receives instructions on which image to look at

  • re-evaluating what word we hear over time based on bottom-up info

  • example: “look at the beaker” - looked at “beetle” and “beaker” but then only looked at “beaker” as the word continued

• phoneme restoration effect: when part of a word is removed and replaced by white noise

  • white noise needs to be in the frequency region where the phoneme would have been

what makes swearing different than speaking

can be inserted into the middle of a root word (infixation)

example: fan-*****-tastic

parts of the brain involved in swearing

mediated by the limbic system

how children break the acoustic signal into individual words

use statistical probabilities to determine word boundaries

• sounds that cross word boundaries are less likely to co-occur than sounds that are within the same word

growth of a child’s vocabulary - timeline (3 ages)

1 year of age: 1st word followed by exponential vocabulary growth

2 years of age: ~120 words

7 years of age: ~5000 words

effects on the growth of a child’s vocabulary (4 in total)

• ability to segment words from continuous speech

• knowledge of objects in the world

• joint attention (parent and child focusing on the same object)

• quality and amount of language the child is exposed to

code switching - definition

when a speaker switches languages or language varieties

under the speaker’s control and can occur for single words or longer segments

explanations for why code switching is used (3 in total)

• when a word or phrase is known in one language but not the other

• when the translation from one language to another is not straightforward

• to express solidarity

anomia - definition

inability to name object concepts

a symptom of aphasia, but not typically related to a focal lesion

semantic variant of PPA (svPPA) - definition

phonological and grammatical aspects of language are largely spared

gradual loss of semantic/conceptual knowledge

pattern underlying primary progressive aphasia (PPA) and why it occurs

definition: a neurodegenerative disease that causes progressive atrophy in the left cortex

pattern: gradual loss of semantic features that support discrimination

reason: damage is progressive so symptoms will worsen over time

Broca’s aphasia - definition and symptoms (3 in total)

definition: a language disorder resulting from neural damage (e.g., stroke, TBI, tumor, etc)

symptoms:

• non-fluent and agrammatical speech

• difficulties with comprehending and producing complex grammatical structures

• visibly frustrated (understand that what they are saying is not correct)

evidence for the separation/interaction of an individual’s multiple languages in the brain (4 in total)

separation:

• electrocortical stimulation of bilingual speakers often affects only one language

• different aphasia patterns - can affect primary, secondary, or both languages

interaction:

• interconnected blow flow

• ability to inhibit one language when using the other (e.g., code switching, antagonistic pattern of aphasia recovery)

bilingual aphasia recovery pattern - differential

both languages are recovered, but one language is recovered better than the other

bilingual aphasia recovery pattern - antagonistic

one language is initially preserved, but as the second language is recovered, the first one is lost

bilingual aphasia recovery pattern - alternating antagonism

same as antagonistic language recovery but in an alternating pattern

bilingual aphasia recovery pattern - blended

patient mixes words and syntax from the two languages involuntarily

bilingual aphasia recovery pattern - parallel

both languages are recovered in parallel

bilingual aphasia recovery pattern - selective aphasia

not all languages recover

bilingual aphasia recovery pattern - successive aphasia

one language fully recovers and then the second language starts to recover

Antovich & Graf Estes (2020) main takeaways (2 in total)

measured the looking time of 16-month-old monolinguals and bilinguals when presented with words and non-words from 2 artificial languages (following an exposure phase); language interviews were also conducted

• note: syllable inventories of the 2 languages overlapped; L1 speaker was male and L2 speaker was female

results:

• bilingual infants reliably discriminated between words and non-words, while monolinguals did not

  • what this means: bilingual infants are better at tracking syllable-level co-occurrence patterns and using them to segment words from continuous speech (than monolinguals)

• proportion of bilingual speakers in the infant’s environment significantly predicted the infant’s performance (but not language balance)

  • what this means: bilingual infants EXPECT language changes because of the linguistic environment they grew up in —> use the change in gender of the speakers to separate the languages and then track the syllable patterns of each (stronger preference for novelty)

how words are constructed in sign languages

built from a set of smaller units that do NOT have meaning themselves:

• hand shape

• hand orientation

• placement of the sign relative to the body

• type of movement

classifiers - definition

function as descriptive, visual tools by showing how objects appear or interact (rather than just naming them)

done simultaneously with other sign phonology to add further meaning/details

role of space in sign languages (2 in total)

indicates the location of objects in a room

used to distinguish between multiple people being discussed in the same conversation

suprasegmentals - definition (3 examples)

added on top of linguistic segments to add to the overall meaning

includes prosody, stress, and lexical tones

lexical stress - definition

relative prominence or emphasis on a syllable (example: GROcery)

sometimes carries meaning at the word/phrase level (otherwise, it occurs naturally)

emotional prosody and its associated acoustic cues (4 in total)

non-verbal, musical elements of speech that convey a speaker’s attitude

acoustic cues: overall pitch, pitch variation, speed, and stress patterns

lexical tones - definition

tones (and their shapes) that, when combined with phonemes, change the meaning of a word

found in tonal languages (e.g., Mandarin Chinese)

acoustic cues used for lexical tones

listeners will use overall pitch and pitch variation to derive meaning

example: high flat tone, falling/rising, etc

where lexical stress is processed in the brain

left hemisphere (but some contributions from the right hemisphere)

where emotional prosody is processed in the brain

right hemisphere

where tones for tonal languages are processed in the brain

for those who do NOT speak a tonal language: right hemisphere

for those who DO speak a tonal language: left hemisphere

Rosenblau et al (2017) main takeaways (2 in total + implications)

included a behavioral and fMRI task:

• behavioral - measured reaction time and accuracy of responses in participants with and without ASD while listening to semantically neutral sentences with various emotional prosodies (response: label the emotion)

• fMRI - measured brain activation while participants (with and without ASD) listened to semantically neutral sentences with emotional or neutral prosody (response: label the gender or emotion of the speaker)

results:

• ASD group: larger and more widespread brain activity predicted behavioral performance (note: more severe ASD symptoms correlated with worse performance)

• control group: coupling between the right superior temporal gyrus and anterior cingulate cortex predicted behavioral performance

• note: differences in activation for male and female ASD; verbal IQ only predicted control group’s performance

implications: differences in neural activity between ASD and non-ASD may account for social communication deficits associated with ASD