8. Language

Defined as an organized means of combining words for communication.
Communication encompasses the exchange of thoughts and feelings, which may not always be language-based (This can include non-verbal cues such as gestures, body language, facial expressions, or even visual symbols)
Psycholinguistics studies the interaction of language with the human mind.
Language comprehension involves:
- Understanding Words
- Understanding Meanings (Semantics)
- Understanding Sentences (Syntax)
- Understanding Conversations and Essays (Discourse)

Communicative: Facilitates communication.
Arbitrary Symbolic: Relates symbols to their representations without inherent connection (e.g., words differ from pictures).
Regularly Structured: Structured in specific patterns; different arrangements yield different meanings. ex. "The dog chased the cat." vs. "The cat chased the dog."
Structured at Multiple Levels: Analyzable at various levels—sounds, meaning units, words, and phrases.
1. Phonological Level: Sounds made (phonemes) in the word "cat" are /k/, /æ/, and /t/.
2. Morphological Level: Words like "unhappiness" can be broken down into morphemes: "un-", "happy", and "-ness".
3. Syntactical Level: The phrase "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog" has a specific syntactic structure that defines its grammatical correctness.
Generative and Productive: Allows the creation of an infinite number of utterances within linguistic constraints.
Dynamic: Evolves over time (e.g., new words emerge like 'netiquette').

Phone: The smallest unit of sound, e.g., a click.
Phoneme: Smallest unit of speech sound, distinguishing utterances (e.g., a, i, s, f).
Morpheme: Smallest unit of meaning; can be content or function morphemes.
- Content Morphemes: Convey the main meaning of a language.
- Function Morphemes: Add detail (e.g., prefixes, suffixes).
Example: 'recharge' has two morphemes: "re-" and "charge".

Syntax: Framework of rules for how words combine to form sentences.
Sentences comprise at least two parts:
- Noun Phrase (NP): Contains at least one noun (often the subject).
- Verb Phrase (VP): Contains at least one verb and its objects.

Human languages perceive up to 50 phonemes per second.
Coarticulation: When sounds blend; for example, "p" in "palace" vs. "pool."
Speech Segmentation: The process of separating continuous sounds into distinct words.

Interaction of auditory perception and cognitive anticipation.
Phonetic Refinement Theory: Various stages of auditory analysis leading to higher-level processing.
- An example is how the brain distinguishes between different sounds of a letter, such as the varying pronunciations of the letter 's' in "sue" vs. "zeal".
The TRACE Model: Three levels of feature detection—acoustic, phonemes, and words or lexical level (influenced by prediction).
Motor Theory of Speech Perception: speech understanding is heavily linked to the visual perception of mouth and vocal tract movements. This theory suggest that when we hear speech, we also observe the corresponding physical articulations that accompany sounds, aiding in our comprehension.
An example of the Motor Theory in action is the McGurk effect: when viewers watch a video of a person saying one sound but hear a different sound, they often perceive a third sound that blends both the auditory and visual components. For instance, if someone sees a video of a person articulating the syllable 'ga' while hearing 'ba,' they may perceive the sound 'da.'

Denotation: The dictionary definition of a word (e.g., "snake" = reptile).
Connotation: Emotional overtones and implied meanings of a word (e.g., "snake" = sneaky, evil).
Together, denotation and connotation create the overall meaning of a word.

Grammar: Study of language structure.
Prescriptive Grammar: Rules for correct language use.
Descriptive Grammar: Seeks to describe how language functions in practice.
Example: "Colorless green ideas sleep furiously" illustrates syntactic structure regardless of semantic content.

Phrase-Structure Grammar: Divides sentences into functional components (parse sentences as NP and VP).
Transformational Grammar: Rules mapping tree structures to illustrate syntactical relations.
- Deep Structure Example: "The dog chased the ball."
  - It captures the core meaning that the teacher performs the action of explaining the lesson, regardless of how it is expressed in different surface structures
- Surface Structure Example: "The ball was chased by the dog."

Lexical Processes: These are the components such as saccades (quick eye movements between fixations), regressions (backward movements to reread), and sequences of eye fixations (the patterns of where and how long the eyes focus on text).

Comprehension Processes: Relate to understanding and integrating textual information and context.
Comprehending Known vs. Unknown Words: Involves retrieving meanings and deriving from context.
- Unknown Word Comprehension: If the reader encounters the word "frugivore" for the first time, they may not have immediate access to its meaning. However, they can derive its meaning from context:
  - Context Example: "The frugivore, which primarily eats raw fruits, was seen in the lush forest."
    - By breaking it down, they may recognize that it relates to fruit due to the prefix "frugi-" (from fruits) and may infer that it refers to an animal.
Representing Text Mentally: Building mental models from texts and conceptualizing information.
- Example: When reading a novel, a reader visualizes the settings, characters, and events, creating a mental picture of the story.