Chapter 10 (cog psych)

Sentence

A sequence of words that confirms to the rules of syntax and has the right constituents in the right sequence

Morphemes

The smallest language unit that carries meaning

Phonemes

A unit of sound that distinguishes one word from another (or one morpheme) from another.

Voicing

One of the properties that distinguishes different categories of speech sounds a sound is considered voice if the vocal fold are vibrating while the sound is produced.

Manner of production

The way in which a speaker momentarily obstructs the flow of air out of the lungs to produce a speech sound.

Place of articulation

Position at which a speaker momentarily obstructs the flow of air out of the lungs to produce a speech sound. For example, the place of articulation is the lips

Speech segmentation

The process through which a stream of speech is “sliced” into constituent words and within words into the constituent phonemes

Coarticulation

A trait of speech production in which the way a sound is produced is altered slightly by the immediately preceding an immediately following sounds

Phonemic restoration effect

A pattern in which people hear phonemes that actually are not presented, but they are highly likely in that context

Catorgorical perception

The pattern in which speed sounds are heard “merely” as members of a category. The category of “Z” sounds the category P sounds and so on.

Generativity

The trait that enables someone to combine and recombine basic units to create new and more complex entities. Linguistic rules are generative because they enable a person to combine and recombine a limited set of words to produce a vast number of sentences

Phrase-structure rules

Constraints that govern what elements must be contained within phrase and, in many languages, what the sequence of those elements must be.

Tree structure

A style of depiction often used to indicate hierarchical relationships, such as the relationship among the words in phase or sentence

prescriptive rules

Rules describing how things are supposed to instead of how they are. Often called “normative rules” and contrasted with a descriptive rules

Descriptive rules

Rules that simply describe the regularities in a pattern of observations with no commentary on whether the pattern is “proper” ”correct” or “desirable”

Parse

To divide an input into its appropriate elements - for example, dividing the stream of incoming speech into its constituent words - or a sequence of words into its constituent phrases. In some settings, parsing also includes the additional step of determining each elements role within the sequence.

Gardnen-path sentence

A sentence that initially leads the reader to one understanding of how the sentence’s words are related but then requires a change in this understanding to comprehend the full sentence

Extralinguistic context

The social and physical setting in which an utterance is encountered, usually, cues within this setting guide the interpretation is of the utterance

Prosody

The pattern of pauses and pitch changes that characterize speech produce. Prosody can be used to emphasize elements of a spoken sentence to highlight intended structure

Pragmatic rules

Principles describing how language is ordinarily used; listeners rely on these principles to guide their interpretation of what they hear.

Common ground

The set beliefs and assumptions shared by conversational partners. Speakers and listeners count on this shared knowledge as a basis

Broca’s area

An area in the left frontal lobe of the brain, damage here typically causes non-fluent aphasia

Non-fluent aphasia

A disruption of language, caused by brain damage, in which a person loses the ability to speak or write with any fluency

Wernicke’s area

An area in the temporal lobe of the brain, where the temporal and parietal lobes meet; damage here typically causes fluent aphasia

Specific-language impairment (SLI)

A disorder in which individuals seem to have normal intelligence but experience problems in learning the rules of language.

Overegularization error

An error in which a person produces a form that is consistent with a broad pattern, even though that pattern does not apply to the current utterance.

linguistic relativity

The proposal that the language people speak shapes their thought, because the structure and vocabulary of their language create certain ways of thinking about the world