Lecture 1: Introduction to Language and Speaking

language

-an exchange of information

-used to convey information so must be stored in some sort of semantic form in the brain → to talk about ideas must understand and comprehend them

conceptualising language

-must be a set of words that are broadly accepted as part of that language

-words on their own have meaning and combining words develops the meaning

-to do this must have an understanding of grammar

-this facilitates human interaction

defining language

-definitions of language often reflect differences between human language and non-human animal communication systems

-language can be described as an arbitrary set of symbols and rules for combining symbols, which can be used to create an infinite variety of messages

Hockett - defining features of language

-initially 13 but 16 in total

-believed these differentiated human language from non-human language systems

-all human spoken language include all 16 features

vocal-auditory channel (Hockett)

-all human languages are usually transmitted through vocal-auditory channel

-evolutionary advantage → allows us to keep our hands free and speech carry distances

broadcast transmission and directional reception (Hockett)

-when speaking, sounds are produced in all directions, but the perceiver can localise the source of the speech

-attribute the sound to a being

rapid fading (Hockett)

-transitoriness

-speech disappears when talking stops

-the sounds cease to exist and so the language attributed to the sounds cease to exist

interchangeability (Hockett)

-competent users of the language can repeat any message they hear

-can understand their own messages

total feedback (Hockett)

-the speaker hears everything that they say

specialisation (Hockett)

-the sounds we produce are designed to convey meaning

-specialised and products of biological processes

semanticity (Hockett)

-the ties between the word and it’s meaning are definite

-sounds denote specific messages

-homophones are exceptions to this rule

arbitrariness (Hockett)

-words are arbitrary and decided by agreement

-the words themselves are not representative → we just agree this is what it means

discreteness (Hockett)

-linguistic representations can be broken down into small, discrete units, which combine with each other in rule-governed ways

displacement (Hockett)

-can talk about things that aren’t immediately in our vicinity

-argued to be uniquely human → understanding of what is around us and what is not

-links to memory

productivity (Hockett)

-language is not stagnant, it changes

-we develop new and novel words with new meanings

traditional transmission (Hockett)

-language is acquired through social groups, teaching through social interaction

-ongoing process

duality of patterning (Hockett)

-speech can be analysed on two levels:

1. made up of meaningless element → a limited inventory of sounds or phenomes

2. made up of meaningful elements → virtually limitless inventory of words or morphemes

human communication systems

-body language

-verbal language:

• spoken

• written

• sign

-enables us to communicate thoughts and concepts to other people

human language

-requires a person to:

• link words to meanings

• understand rules that subtly alter the meaning of a phrase

• be aware that specific combinations of sounds carry meaning

• use language to convey via the way we choose to speak

Sapir-Whorf theory (language on cognition)

-language frames our thinking

-allows us to understand difficult concepts, logical problems and philosophical debates

-language shapes the way we think

Winawer (language and cognition)

-colour perception affected by language

-Russian and English speakers have differing perception of colour

language and cognition

-word order affects ability to remember items on a list

-speakers of a language with front-load sentences with salient information demonstrates primacy effect

language based on mental representations

-assume the world is represented by mental representations which are developed via experience with sensory input

-the store of mental representations for language are developed via experience with language

-we match mental representations to words we see or hear

-we activate our mental representations of words to speak or write

language functions

-Lichtehim

• speaking + writing → production

• reading + understanding → comprehension

Sarah Scott (language and speech)

-suffered a stroke at 17

-can comprehend language but not produce it

-after years of therapy her speech returned to normal

-shows that language production and comprehension are distinct processes

building blocks of language

-semantics

-syntax

-morphology

-phonology (form)

-speech

semantic memory structure (building blocks of language)

-Collins & Loftus - associative network model

-organise things in memory through an associative network model

• all the meanings link to different elements

-links relevant and related concepts together

semantics (building blocks of language)

-semantics → meaning/concept

-to express something, must have understanding of what it is

-cannot speak about things we do not have a representation for

syntax (building blocks of language)

-grammar

-rules we apply to language which applies meaning to the way we speak and put things together

-rules help us to make sense of order of words to convey meaning

-different rules in different languages

phrase structure (syntax)

-sentence = noun phrase + verb phrase

-shifting syntax of a sentence can completely change the meaning

-limited number of rules means that there is an infinite number of unique statements

morphology (building blocks of language)

-study of words

-investigate the structure of words in terms of morphemes

morpheme (building blocks of language)

-smallest meaningful unit of sound that conveys meaning and grammatical properties

free morpheme (building blocks of language)

-can be on its own

bound morphemes (building blocks of language)

-don’t work on their own

-suffix, prefix, infix

-have to be added to something else to have meaning and make sense

form (building blocks of language)

-phonology → sound system

phonemes (form)

-a unit of sound

-do not necessarily correspond to a single letter in our alphabet

-phonemes in combination make up all the words we have learned and will know

orthography (form)

-writing systems

grapheme (form)

-visual representation of a phenome

-symbols in a writing system → letters

-children have to learn grapheme-phenome correspondence in order to learn how to write

graphemes and phenomes

-1 grapheme can represent more than 1 phenome e.g., ‘i’ in pint

-1 phenome can be represented by more than 1 grapheme e.g., ‘k’ can be represented by ‘c’ or ‘ck’

syntax (building blocks of language)

-representations and rules that specifies the ordering of words

-the abstract representation that specifies how words in a sentence are related by grammatical properties

basic phrase structure rules (syntax)

1. a sentence is made up of a noun phrase and a verb phrase

2. a noun phrase is made up of a noun that may be modified by an article, adjective and a prepositional phrase

3. a prepositional phrase is made up of a preposition followed by a noun phrase

pragmatics (building blocks of language)

-the meaning within the language

-language within context

-nuances in the way we speak to each other → underlying and more subtle way of understanding that impacts our speech

-e.g., idioms and metaphors

use of pragmatics (building blocks of language)

-the study of the choices we make when selecting language

-why we chose these options

-the effects of those choices

-context, emphasis, vocabulary, tone

-every aspect of language has a reason for its use

pragmatics - Grice’s Maxims

1. quantity

2. quality

3. relation

4. manner

semantics (building blocks of language)

-distinction between linguistic elements and the mental concepts with which they are related

mental lexicon (comprehending speech)

-our store of all the words and meanings that we possibly know

-when a word is said to someone:

1. activates the relevant sounds in our brain

2. this activates relevant phonology

3. then activates the relevant semantics

4. this is used to access the relevant syntax

   -this order is reversed when producing speech

spreading activation in the mental lexicon - competition

-in response to activation of a concept:

• related words are activated in the mental lexicon

• activated words compete for selection

-more competition between similar words means we are more likely to make a mistake when trying to select a word

how do we communicate

-speak at 2-3 words per second

-150-200 words per minute

-peppered with pauses and hesitations

methods to test speech production

-timing of speech onset, hesitations & pauses

-speech errors

-tip-of-the-tongue state

timing of speech onset, hesitations & pauses (methods to test speech production)

-a delay in initiating speech may be the result of processing problems

-Schacter found more fillers in speech for humanities compared to natural science lectures → more synonyms in the language used leads to more competition

timing of speech (methods to test speech production)

-hesitations provide insight into mental processes

-larger numbers of words in the lexicon result in more hesitations

-concepts compete for articulation

speech errors (methods to test speech production)

-you know what you want to say but retrieve the wrong word to say it

-Vigliocco & Hartsuiker estimate an error occurs every 500 sentences

slip of the tongue (speech errors)

-types of errors:

• words

• morphemes

• phonemes

• concept

-exchanges usually come from the same category

-make all these types of errors but they do not overlap and are distinct errors

speech errors - levels of processing

1. semantics → conceptualisation, semantic blend errors

2. syntax & morphemes → formulation, syntactic and morpheme exchange

3. articulation → word and phoneme exchange

sound and word errors (speech errors)

-most word errors involve words from the same syntactic category and involve words further apart

-in sound errors most vowels interact with other vowels and consonant with other consonants

-involve sounds close together

-suggests that lexical and phonological processing may occur separately

what speech errors tell us about speech production

-switches can occur at the end of a phrase

-syntactic/morphological elements are left in place

-tells us that phrases are planned and then articulated

-exchange or blend errors result in ‘legal’ non-words

• so phoneme combinations are restricted by the rules of language e.g., spork not fpoon

tip-of-the-tongue state (methods to test speech production)

-a state where you know what you want to say but have trouble retrieving the word to say it

-have access to semantic and syntactic representations of a word but not the phonological form

Vigliocco (tip-of-the-tongue state)

-Italian speakers in tip-of-the-tongue states know the grammatical gender of the word but cannot access the phonological form of the word

-shows that syntax and form are processed separately

-influence one another but are functionally separate

competition (tip-of-the-tongue state)

• interference → from conflicting information results in hesitation or tip-of-the-tongue state

• activation and competition → between related items ‘blocks’ retrieval of the target word

Smith & Tindell - priming method (methods to test speech production)

-were given a prime word

-then given fragment of a target word and had to guess what is was

e.g., analogy → an_to_y → anatomy

-two conditions:

• related prime word

• unrelated prime word

Smith & Tindell - priming results (methods to test speech production)

-found participants got more correct for unrelated prime words

-activation of related information interferes with access of target information

-activation of unrelated information does not interfere with access of target information

language production is a series of processes

-competitive processes underpin selection of concepts

• hesitations in speech, blend errors, tip-of-the-tongue state

-production requires concepts to be activated, morphological elements to be added and words to be articulated

• speech errors respect syntactic, word and phonological categories, tip-of-the-tongue state

models of speech production

-evidence from speech errors resulted in the development of computational models of speech production that conceptualise production as a series of processes with rules

• spreading-activation theory of retrieval in sentence production (Dell)

• theory of lexical access in speech production (Levelt)