SoL FINAL

Semantic (lexical) ambiguity

Confusion due to word usage (ex: “I went to the river bank = financial or river ?)

Syntactic ambiguity

Confusion due to sentence structure

Clark Joint Action

Autonomous action: things you do by yourself (speaking and listening)

Participatory action: interlocutors acting in coordination with one another

FLA v. SLA

Age L2>L1, Knowledge of a lang L2>L1, Ultimate attainment L1>L2, Explicit instruction L2>L1

Factors affecting language acquisition

how many, when (sequence v. simultaneous), where (home v. school), how (intensively)

Evidence in support of critical period for SLA

younger age of exposure = less likely to be judged as having an accent (Italian), better performance on tests of english grammar (Korean and Chinese)

Evidence against critical period of SLA

some late-learners can reach native level proficiency, no sharp drop off in linguistic ability but gradual decline, not all areas of language are subject to age effects

Aphasia

impaired production and comprehension of language, separate from speech and cognition

Non-fluent aphasia

lesion near Broca’s/motor areas, short utterances, speech sounds are effortful with frequent hesitations, agrammatic

Fluent aphasia

lesion near Wernicke’s/auditory areas, grammatically well-formatted and effortful, utterances are normal length, speech may not make sense due to word finding errors

Anomia

word/name finding difficulty

Semantic Paraphasia

related to target word in meaning (ex: cat v. dog)

Phonemic Paraphasia

Related to target in sound (ex: cap v. cat)

Unrelated Paraphasia

ex: table v. cat

Neologisms (nonwords)

no clear semantic or phonemic target (ex: caniber v. cat)

Empty Speech

vague words (ex: things, stuff, it)

Perseveration

unintended repetition of phoneme/word

Variation within a language

language changes over time, cultural/social groups, within individual speakers

Lexical variation

Word choice (ex: sofa v. couch)

Phonetic Variation

pronunciation (ex: about v. aboot)

(morpho)Syntactic variation

word order and usage (ex: learned v. learnt)

Support for linguistic relativity- English v. Hopi speakers on flying objects

Hopi only has one term for flying objects and English has many. Hopi speakers are able to distinguish different flying objects from each other, though slightly slower from English

Berlin and Kay’s colors

Color perception is similar universally, regardless of color terms; there is a color hierarchy in developing color terms

Rosch’s Dani and English speakers

Dani speakers only have two color terms and English speakers have many.

~Dani speakers perceived and remembered the colors for which they had no words = consistent with universalist

~performance of Dani speakers was poorer compared to English speakers. It suggests that language influenced on color perception (at least partially) = consistent with relativist

Top Down processing

broad info trying to restore specifics; brain is able to fill in bc of context (ex: legiXlature)

Bottom Up processing

specific information needed to restore braod info; filling in info bc of acoustic or audio-visual cues (ex: McGurk, vot)

Voice onset time (VOT)

measure of time lapsed between burst of air and vocal fold vibration of adjacent vowel; best cue for determining voiced/voiceless consonants

Categorical perception

listeners perceive one sound up to a point and then perceive another, voicing contrasts perceived categorically

Sentence verification

people have faster reactions to closer related words (slide —> table v. chair —> table)

garden path effect experimental techniques

reading tasks and measuring reaction time

speech error- shift

morpheme/word/sound shifted from one word to another (ex: She decide to hits it (decides to hit it))

speech error- exchange

exchanging words while other morphemes remain in the same location (ex: Getting your model renosed (getting your nose remodeled))

speech error- anticipation

saying an upcoming morpheme early (ex: Bake my bike (take my bike))

speech error- perseveration

continuation of a previous morpheme onto a new word (ex: He pulled a pantrum (tantrum))

speech error- addition

adding a morpheme (ex: I didn’t explain this clarefully enough (carefully enough))

speech error- deletion

getting rid of a morpheme (ex: I’ll just get up and mutter intelligibly (unintellibigly))

speech error- substitution

using semantically/phonologically related word (ex: At low speeds it’s too light (heavy))

speech error- blend

blending two words (ex: my stummy hurts (stomach and tummy)

Grice’s conversational maxims

• Quantity: appropriate amount of information given

• Quality: true information

• Relevance: staying on topic

• Manner: talking as clearly as possible

Problems w localizationist model

Oversimplification

▻ Usually studies on simple tasks, word-level tasks

▻ Ignores “real world” context

▻ Patients don’t clearly fit categories

▻ Lacks anatomical precision

▻ Lesion location doesn’t always explain symptom profile