L&C, WEEK 1

Question 1

Communication

Answer 1

• is where an organism (aka transmitter) encodes information into a signal > the signal is sent to another organism which is called the receiver, the receiver decodes and understands what the signal is saying and then gives the appropriate response
• Communication does NOT need to be verbal > can be non-verbal too (e.g. pointing

Question 2

Verbal: spoken/written transmission of a message

Answer 2

• language, but also dialects, language of a group (e.g. African American Vernacular English), constructed languages (e.g. Esperanto)

Question 3

Non-verbal: non-linguistic aspects of a message

Answer 3

• e.g. body language, gestures, emoticons > Language also has non-verbal elements (e.g. tone, rhythm, stress) > tone can communicate more than just the word does (saying yes confidently vs saying it uneasy)
  • Language: is a type of communication > A structured system of symbols (“words”) and the rules (“grammar”) by which they are combined > combining symbols and using the rules to do this to use language to communicate.

Question 4

When is a language a language?

Answer 4

• Even though a Londoner and Glaswegian may both speak English, the way they speak can be very different thus are they speaking different languages? E.G. Someone from Glasgow speaking English would be difficult to understand as a Londoner
• Or what is the difference between British English and American English? Are they classed as separate languages?
• What is classed as a language is unclear and could be due to political reasoning/motive / e.g. someone from Belgium may say they grew up speaking Dutch whilst others would say they spoke Flemish (no actual difference aside from political reasoning)
• Between 3,000 + 8,000 languages exist but they die out at the rate of 1 every 2 weeks
• European languages (French, German, Spanish) are what are typically thought of when you think of existing languages BUT all European lan only makes up 3% of total languages in the world > not as prevalent as assumed
- Most languages spoken are Chinese, Spanish and English > but if you look at how many people speak English as a first language and not a second, this is only 20% of the world

Question 5

Aphasia:

Answer 5

Aphasia is when a person has difficulty with their language or speech. It’s usually caused by damage to the left side of the brain (for example, after a stroke).

Question 6

Lexeme:

Answer 6

a basic lexical unit of a language consisting of one word or several words, the elements of which do not separately convey the meaning of the whole.

Question 7

What actually is Language?

Answer 7

• Language is a system helping us to communicate thoughts, feelings, info > consists of using arbitrary signs (random words) that refer to things in the world and these have meaning (not onomatopoeia > e.g. BOOM, CRASH)
these arbitrary signs are then combined using syntax (words forming into sentences)
- Limited number of words & rules combine to form unlimited number of expressions > this allows us to go beyond the here and now (we don’t just talk about what is in front of us) > is meant to be used by a group of people because it would not be effective to have a language for each individual person > destroys the purpose of language which is to communicate with others

Question 8

Language design features (Hockett, 1960)

Answer 8

• Hockett made lan design features to try distinguish between language and communication
• Communication IS NOT language but language is part of communication > all language is communication but not all communication is language
• E.G. animals and organisms all communicate with each other differently, but is the way they communicate language?
• Hockett (1960, and later) made 16 design features to distinguish language from communication > some more essential than others
○ According to Hockett communication system needs all these features in order to be called a “language”
- Somewhat limited because focused on speech mainly + left out things like sign language

Question 9

Important design features for humans (Hockett, 1960)

Answer 9

• Some/most of these features are shared with other types of non-human communication. Very much directed to speech – e.g. sign language is forgotten.
  • Semanticity: words are symbols/signs that express meaning > other animals limited inventories of signals
  • Prevarication: we can lie – other animals can deceive but no evidence they can lie as humans do
  • Arbitrariness: no intrinsic relation between (most) words and their meaning (but onomatopoeia) > e.g. something very big is described in a short word while something very small is described with a long word
  • Displacement: not tied to here & now, can talk about past, future, somewhere else; hypotheticals (if… then…)
  • Productivity/Generativity: new language can be generated; we are not stuck with the words we have before, we can use our fine collection to produce an infinite amount of messages - a finite collection of sounds and words allows an infinite number of messages- as long as we obey the rules of the language, any message can be understood by the other language users
  • Reflexiveness: we can use language to talk about language > something non-human animals cannot do

Question 10

Naming things may not be arbitrary > sound symbolism

Answer 10

• Sound symbolism: the way we name something is determined by what it looks like (bouba/kiki effect)
If you show people the shapes below and ask which one is kiki and which is bouba then you see a pattern in responses (95% say sharp ended shape is kiki and soft curvy shape is bouba) > Implication of this and sound symbolism is that naming objects is not as arbitrary as thought (some kind of meaning based on sounds of the word)

Question 11

Animal Language

Answer 11

• Animals certainly can communicate*
• Bee dance: Novel messages, but only about food
• Dolphins: Can communicate there is something new in the water; No evidence of syntax use (some evidence they can understand human syntax with a lot of training but cannot use it themselves). Can they combine distinctive sounds? Can they say: Tomorrow I’d like to have some herring?
• Songbirds: The way songbirds learn songs overlap with human language acquisition > stages include babbling period, critical period, left-hemisphere specialisation > is this language?

Question 12

Apes:

Answer 12

• Apes have a very social and very rich communication system > 95% - 98.5% genetic overlap, highly social, IQ is equal to a 3yo
• Researchers have tried to teach apes, chimps and bonobos (Kanzi) the human language > particularly bonobos who are more intelligent + vocal
• Apes have similar brain asymmetries as humans including enlarged Broca’s area > Possibly different function (making complex head movements rather than complex speech sounds)
• Teaching them to speak is near impossible > probably related to the way we differently articulate sounds as apes have different articulatory apparatus (throat) from humans. For humans: perpetual risk of choking as consequence
○ Instead use of sign language or artificial lexigrams (computerised symbols – “Yerkish”)
• Lexigram example > ape will look at it then press a symbol and can hear the word
Research on Kanzi (ape taught english) shows that he was trained to understand human language but could not necessarily vocalise it themselves due to having a different kind of throat to humans (but able to communicate using lexigram)

Question 13

Chimps

Answer 13

• GUA is a chimp whom Kellog & Kellog (1933) raised in their family with their infant son (“cross-fostering”). Gua learned to understand a few words but never produced any. > they had to stop the experiment after 9 months because their son started behaving more like a chimp
• VIKY was raised by Keith & Kathy Hayes (1952). After 6 years she could understand words and some word combinations. She also learned to articulate a few words (mama, papa, up, cup), but with difficulty and outsiders could barely recognise her speech
• WASHOE taught by Garner & Garner (1969). Caught in the wild at one then brought up as a human child. Taught ASL (American sign language). By 4 years she had acquired 85 signs (e.g., more, eat, listen, gimme, you, me, hurry). She also produced sign combinations such as you-drink, baby-mine. Some sensitivity + evidence to word order & some new combinations (water bird to refer to a duck). However, we don’t know the cases where she made mistakes > may have coincidentally been saying water that day already (like water car, water tree, etc..) Taught signs to her adopted son.
• NIM CHIMPSKY looked at by Terrace et al. (1979). Learned about 125 ASL signs and made sign combinations (e.g. play-me). Longer combinations heavily redundant: e.g. Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you. 40% simple repetitions; rarely signed spontaneously. No novel combinations (unlike children).

Question 14

The Structure of Language

Answer 14

Fred kicked the ball

1. Phonetics = term for the description and classification of speech sounds, particularly how sounds are produced, transmitted and received ( F (Fuh) R ( Ruh) E ( Eh) D (Duh, etc)
2. Phonology = is where you have the sound system of the speech sounds used in a particular language.
3. Morphology = how words are formed (e.g. kicked involves kick + ed)
4. Syntax = refers to sentence structure + how the sentence is built (Fred is subject, ball is object)
5. Semantics = meaning of the individual words (What does kick mean, what does ball mean > what does it mean together)
6. Pragmatics = language in context > e.g. a window was broken – who kicked the ball? You say Fred kicked the ball (not directly saying Fred broke the window but that is how it is interpreted because he kicked the ball to begin with)

Question 15

Phonetics

Answer 15

Concerned with describing and classifying the speech sounds that occur in all of the world’s languages.
○ Articulatory: How speech sounds are produced.
○ Auditory: How speech sounds are perceived
○ Acoustic: The physical properties of sounds.
Individual sounds > cat ( cuh, a, tuh) > sounds + letters are not the same thing > e.g. knot (nuh, o , tuh) > 3 sounds but 4 letters > not all sounds are represented by the same letters (e.g. see, sea and ae in caeser)

Question 16

Phonology

Answer 16

• Concerned with the way speech sounds form systems in a given language.
○ Phones: the inventory of phonetic segments that occur in your language; the instantiations (physical characteristics) of a phoneme. > physical characteristic of a phoneme > phones are actual sounds that you can hear (different phones are not necessarily critical to meaning.
○ Phonemes: the sounds in your language that can distinguish between words. Not physically different sounds but the mental representation of it.
So two words may look very similar but two different sounds in that language can distinguish between different meaning words (sip and zip)

Question 17

Languages differ in which phones they choose to use as phonemes.

Answer 17

• For instance, aspirated letters like an aspirated p (puhh - extra breath instead of normal puh) does not constitute a phoneme whereas in other languages like Thai the aspirated P does constitute a phoneme so having it aspirated changes the meaning of the word whereas in English aspirated letters do not change the meaning
• E.g. English: aspirated p in pill vs no aspirated p in pill still = pill. Thai: aspirated p in paa = to split while non aspirated p in paa = forest > phoneme
• [p] and [ph] are allophones (different realisation of same phoneme) in English but 2 different phonemes in Thai. > if you don’t make the distinction in your native language it will be hard to distinguish in a different language
• when 2 sounds are allophones in your native language, difficult to distinguish in a different language (e.g. [l] and [r] for Japanese speakers are allophones so they are the same phoneme) > harder for them to use L and R in English

Question 18

Language & Thought

Answer 18

• Cognition influences our language, but does our language influences our thinking?
• If you think of a doctor and nurse, people typically think the doctor is male and the nurse is female even if there is no good reason
• When asking people to read this passage, “The nurse applied the bandage and then he walked out of the door.” // “The doctor stitched up the patient and then she went for a coffee.” > people tend to stutter when they see “He” for nurse suggesting they did not expect that.
• Allows us to measure innate or unconscious biases without asking people
• If shown a picture of a bird, you may say you see a bird, or finch, or bullfinch depending on how well you know birds > does this mean the way you see and think about the bird is also different?
• This depends on frequency, stereotype and expertise > if we have more male nurses + more female doctors then the bias will go away

Question 19

Sapir-Whorf hypothesis

Answer 19

• Hypothesis suggests that language shapes our thoughts > 2 versions of this
• Linguistic determinism (strong version): thoughts are limited, constrained by language; language determines our thinking. People with a different language think differently.
- Linguistic relativism (weak version): people who speak a different language perceive and experience the world differently but not necessarily think differently

Question 20

Evidence for Linguistic Determinism

Answer 20

• One form of evidence is that Inuits have many more words for snow (4,7,50,100 over 400? Don’t know how many words for snow they have) > thus Inuits see the world differently but not necessarily think differently
• In reality, they only have 4 (or 2) root words for snow while the rest are modified > e.g. snow is the root while the mod might be wet so wet snow
• English also has more than 1 word for snow > sleet, powder > but can English speakers perceive all different types of snow but don’t label them because they don’t experience it much?
○ Research shows that English speakers use classifiers like (good-packing snow, grainy snow etc..) so they CAN perceive the differences
• Therefore, vocabulary differences is not good evidence for linguistic determinism + may just be related to differences in experience or expertise
• There is an issue of cirularity > Inuits speak differently so they must think differently (how do you know they think differently?) because they speak differently > circular argument without much value
Need to measure behaviour

Question 21

Evidence for Linguistic Relativism

Answer 21

• Boroditsky et al (2002) > she had German and Spanish speakers describe words (e.g. a bridge) > some of these objects had opposing kind of gender in the different languages> E.g. if the object named was a masculine term in that language, it was described in a masculine way and vice versa > e.g. Bridge in spanish is el puente and masculine = dangerous, jagged etc..
○ In contrast, bridge in German is Die Brucke and feminine so is decribed as = slender, fragile
• Another similar experiment is where Spanish and French people are shown cartoon characters which were forks, spoon and knives. They were asked what gender each character should be
○ French said the fork should be female because fork in french is more of a female term (la fourchette) while Spanish ppt said the fork should be male because fork in Spanish is a male term (el tenedor)
• Carmichael et al (1932) > more evidence comes from how an ambiguous object is described and later recalled.
○ Ppts were given the original figure which was ambiguous then were given words in either list 1 or 2 or were in a control group where there were no words
○ Later they had to recall and draw the things they saw from memory > found that depending on the word grouped with the picture, the image drawn would be influenced (e.g. after seeing original figure and bottle, it is later recalled and drawn as a bottle instead of the original image)
○ 45% of the control group drew things which resembled the image or either one of the words (despite seeing no words)
○ The way something is labelled can affect your memory + recall later on

Question 22

Glucksberg & Weisberg (1966)

Answer 22

• the way an object is described affects how we think about it’s use
  ○ Ppts were given this image and asked how would you fix this candle onto the wall? You have matches, box of tacks and candle OR ppts would be given exactly the same picture and question but say you have matches, candle and box and tacks
  ○ In the second instance (box AND tacks) > the linguistic expression is much less obvious and here ppts were better at coming up with how to put the candle on the wall than those who heard “box of tacks”
  ○ Because the box and tacks were seen as individual objects they were individually used.
  ○ The concept of functional fixedness predicts that the participant will only see the box as a device to hold the thumbtacks and not immediately perceive it as a separate and functional component available to be used in solving the task.
  • How does this support linguistic relativism? depending on how things are expressed may effect the experiences/perceptions we have

Question 23

Language affects encoding in space

Answer 23

• English speakers are egocentric: left, right, in front/back, next to,…: relative to their own frame of reference > thinking about space from our own bodies perspective
• Other languages are more Allocentric: north, south, uphill, downhill… absolute frame of reference
• People with an egocentric frame of reference when ask to look at a table with 3 objects then turn around and put them in the same order > egocentric people do it in the opposite direction because they order it from their OWN frame of reference as opposed to the absolute.
• However, people with allocentric language, they order it from an absolute frame of reference (use north, west, east, south)
• Brown & Levinson (1993) did this study with Dutch (egocentric) and Tenejapans (allocentric)
○ Found that the Dutch (egocentric lan) use their relative ordering so their left turns with them whereas Tenejapans (allocentric lan + space) restructured the objects in space using absolute ordering
This suggests speakers of different languages can experience the world differently

Question 24

Language also affects encoding in time (not just space)

Answer 24

• Boroditsky (2001) looks at how time is expressed in different languages (peoples idea of time differs by language)
• E.g. English: think of time horizontally (“The best is ahead/behind us”) whereas Mandarin: think of time vertically (e.g. next month = “down” month, previous month = “up” month)
• The experiment task involved them having to respond to the statement, saying if it is true or false > statement is June comes before August
• They were primed before answering the question by looking at picture which was either horizontal or vertical (Horizontal prime = black snake ahead of white snake or Vertical prime = black ball above white ball)
• When speakers were primed with something coinciding with their way of conceptualising time, they responded faster
- Boroditsky also tested English speakers who were trained to think of time vertically > their results were more similar to Mandarin speakers after this.