Language Study Notes
What is Language?
Definition: Language is a system of symbols and rules that allow us to communicate.
Arbitrary Symbols: The symbols used in language do not have inherent meaning and are selected arbitrarily.
Hierarchical Structure: Language is organized in a hierarchical fashion, allowing for complex communication.
Uniqueness to Humans: Language is a characteristic found uniquely within humans.
Types of Language
Reading: Visual representation of language through written symbols.
Speech: Spoken communication using vocal sounds.
Perception: The ability to understand and interpret language heard or read.
Studying Language
Semantics: The study of meaning in language.
Syntax: Consists of the rules governing word order and structure (grammar).
Pragmatics: The exploration of how language is used in varying real-world contexts.
Phonology: The study of how sounds function and are organized within specific languages.
Stages of Language Development: Early (Harley, 2008, pp.104)
Vegetative Sounds (0-6 weeks): Reflexive sounds not controlled for communication.
Cooing (6 weeks): Early vocalizations characterized by prolonged vowel sounds.
Laughter (10 weeks): Emergence of laughter as a communicative expression.
Vocal Play (10 weeks - 6 months): Experimentation with sounds, including variations in pitch and volume.
Babbling (6-10 months): Consonant-vowel combinations produced by infants in playful speech-like patterns.
Stages of Language Development: Later (Harley, 2008, pp.104)
Single word utterances (10-18 months): Children start using single words to express ideas or desires.
Two word utterances (18 months): Development of more complex communication with pairs of words.
Telegraphic Speech (2 years): Use of short phrases with essential meanings, often omitting less crucial words.
Full Sentences (2 years 6 months): Children begin forming complete sentences.
Language Development: Assumptions (Markman, 1989)
Whole Object Assumption: Children assume that a label corresponds to the entirety of the object presented.
Mutual Exclusivity: If a child knows the name of an object, they will avoid applying a new label to the same object.
Taxonomic Assumption: Children label categories of objects rather than just labeling an individual example.
Speech Production
Phonemes: The smallest unit of sound that differentiates between utterances.
Morphemes: The smallest unit of meaning in language (e.g., "recharge").
Words: Smallest unit that can stand alone as meaning.
Phrases: A small group of words conveying a conceptual idea, consisting of noun phrases (NP) and verb phrases (VP).
Sentences: Combinations of phrases to form complete thoughts.
Discourse: Longer, connected blocks of language, such as conversations.
Producing Sound
Process: Sound is produced through energy originating from the larynx and filtered by the vocal tract to create final auditory output.
Involves anatomical structures such as the nasal cavity, hard palate, soft palate, lips, tongue, pharynx, jaw, and hyoid.
Speaking & Listening Process
A speaker conceives an idea to communicate.
The idea is transformed into a grammatically organized spoken utterance.
The brain sends commands to the motor areas to prepare the articulators (mouth, lips, teeth, tongue) for speech.
An acoustic signal is produced and received by a listener.
The listener decomposes the message and accesses its meaning.
Speech Production Stages (Levelt, 1999)
Conceptualisation: The initial stage where the speaker thinks of something to convey.
Formulation: The process of devising how to express the intended message using language tools.
Articulation: The physical creation of speech sounds using the articulators.
The Role of Time in Speech
Hesitant vs. Fluent phases: Varying pause times and fluent speech patterns indicate timing in spontaneous speech (Figure 8-1).
Observational Study (Beattie, 1983): Linguistic planning is cognitively demanding and occurs incrementally.
Example of Errors: Spoonerisms (e.g., "hissed my mystery lecture" instead of "missed my history lecture") illustrate common linguistic errors during speech production.
Speech Segmentation
Definition: The process of identifying word boundaries in spoken language, known as speech segmentation.
Challenge: There are no obvious silences between words, making it difficult to discern the beginning and end of words.
Different Pronunciations: Words can be pronounced differently when spoken normally compared to isolation (e.g., the/le).
Cues in Speech Segmentation (Mattys et al., 2005)
Types of Cues:
Lexical: Pertaining to word knowledge and syntax.
Segmental: Related to phonetic characteristics (e.g., coarticulation).
Metrical Prosody: Involves word stress patterns, aiding in segmentation.
Co-Articulation Problem
Co-articulation can complicate the perception of individual phonemes during speech, as sounds influence one another.
Decoding Speech (Pollack & Pickett, 1964)
Study Overview: Participants listened to a natural conversation and were tasked with identifying speech segments.
Individual words produced poorer identification.
Sequences of seven words facilitated better identification.
Conclusion: This shows a top-down processing effect where higher-level context aids understanding of fundamental processes.
Phonemic Restoration Effect (Warren, 1970)
Observation: In experiments, participants were unable to detect the absence of a phoneme (/s/) despite it being removed.
Implication: The study indicates that phonemic restoration relies on high-level syntactic and semantic processes, suggesting a blend of bottom-up and top-down influences in speech perception.
Categorical Perception of Speech Sounds
Examples include phonemes like /BA/ and /DA/, they illustrate how speech sounds are processed categorically rather than linearly.
Motor Theory of Speech Perception (Liberman et al., 1967)
Theory Premise: Speech perception is grounded in an understanding of the physical movements used to produce speech sounds.
Seeing a speaker aids in speech decoding by leveraging visual cues of articulatory movements.
Cohort Model (Revised) by Marslen-Wilson (1990, 1994)
Mechanism: As speech is heard, potential word candidates are activated based on their match to the incoming signal.
Dynamics: As the speech progresses, words may become less activated and released from the cohort until one viable candidate remains—a 'uniqueness point'. Example: activating {"bin", "big", "ben", "bun", "ban", "beg"} and narrowing down as speech continues.
What Does It Mean to Read a Word?
Lexical Decision Task: Deciding if a word is familiar to the reader.
Word Naming Task: Accessing a word’s pronunciation.
Semantic Processing: Accessing the word's meaning.
Problems of Reading
Reading Complexity: The reading process is inherently complex, involving various cognitive skills and strategies.
Verbal Ability: Develops early and often does not require extensive effort to acquire.
Reading Ability: Acquired later, necessitates foundational skills and significant exposure to language.
Reading Process Overview
We read to extract meaning from print. Reading depends on matching a printed word with its corresponding representation in the mental lexicon.
The Lexicon
Definition: A hypothetical structure containing representations of all known words, which includes orthographic, phonological, semantic, and grammatical information.
Example Process for the Word ‘meat’
Orthographic: [Written Form of the Word]
Phonological: [Sounds that correspond to the word]
Examples include: meat, beat, seat, feat, moat, etc.
Semantic: Definition(s) related to the word, e.g., Edible flesh.
Grammatical: Parts of speech, e.g., meat (noun).
Example Process for Unfamiliar Word ‘feeb’
Orthographic Representation: [Written Form]
Phonological Representation: [Sound patterns that might be generated]
Semantic/Grammatical: Need for further context to establish meaning.
Two Mechanisms for Reading
Familiar Words: Extract meaning by matching familiar words with corresponding representations.
Unfamiliar Words: Use learning of sound-spelling principles for pronunciation and contextual aids for meaning.
Automaticity in Reading
Typical Reading Speed: Adult readers can read quickly and seemingly effortlessly (University students read at approximately 300 words per minute with 200 ms per word, Eysenck & Keane, 2015).
Stroop Effects: Evidence supporting the automaticity of reading, indicating that word meaning is accessible even when it is not needed.
Steps in Recognizing Visual Words
Identify Letters: Recognizing constituent letters in a written word.
Identify Words: Assembling letters into recognizable words.
Key Question: Must all individual letters be identified before recognizing the word as a whole?
Word Superiority Effect (Reicher, 1960; Wheeler, 1970)
Experiment Findings: Participants were quicker to identify a target letter when it was embedded in a real word compared to in a scrambled non-word (e.g., FTEAR).
Inference: The representation of the word aids in decision-making regarding the presence of target letters, suggesting a top-down processing influence on perception.
Language Summary
Incremental Processing: Both speech perception and reading entail incremental processes subject to both bottom-up and top-down effects.
Automatic Processing: Typical adults efficiently engage in automatic processing to access word representations, indicating that reading does not involve analyzing every individual letter before identifying a word.