language Flashcards
define language
system of communication using sounds or symbols to express feelings, thoughts, ideas, and experiences
why is human language creative?
because it allows for the arrangement of signals (sounds, letters, signs) in countless ways to transmit simple and complex messages
language has a ________ structure.
Language consists of small components (______) combined to form larger units (____)
Hierarchical
words
phrases, sentences, stories
2 features of language
- hierarchical structure - Language consists of small components (words) combined to form larger units (phrases, sentences, stories)
- Rule-Based Nature - Components of language can be arranged in specific, permissible ways
- guided by grammar, including syntax (sentence structure) and morphology (word formation
- allow for consistency, interpretation, and the ability to generate infinite new sentences
The need to communicate through language is universal across ___________
culture
The need to communicate through language is universal across cultures. what are some supporting evidence?
Deaf children invent sign language when not exposed to it.
All humans with normal capacities develop language.
Language is universal across cultures (over 5,000 languages)
Language development is similar across cultures (babbling at 7 months, meaningful words by the first birthday, multiword utterances at age 2)
Languages are unique but the same; they use different words/sounds but have nouns, verbs, and systems for negation, questions, and past/present reference
Languages are ______ but the _______; they use different words/sounds but have nouns, verbs, and systems for negation, questions, and past/present reference
unique; same
__________ is responsible for language production.
___________ is responsible for comprehension.
Broca’s area (frontal lobe)
Wernicke’s area (temporal lobe)
BF Skinner vs Chomsky: _____ vs _____approach
B. F. Skinner hypothesised that language is learned through ____________
Chomsky hypothesised that language is ________ and humans are _________ to acquire and use language. aka __________.
Chomsky’s criticism of Skinner emphasized that _____ produce sentences they’ve never heard, which led to the rise of __________
behaviorism; cognitive
reinforcement (behaviourism)
coded in the genes (innate); programmed; nativism
children; psycholinguistics
what is psycholinguistics? what are the concerns under this?
psychological study of language
Concerns (focus on 1 n 2):
1. Comprehension: How people understand spoken and written language.
2. Representation: How language is represented in the mind.
3. Speech production: How people produce language.
4. Acquisition: How people learn language
in understanding words, we need what?
6 points
lexicon - All the words we know (mental dictionary)
semantics - meaning of language
lexical semantics - meaning of words
word frequency - frequency with which a word appears in a language
- word frequency effect
pronunciation variability - People pronounce words differently due to accents and speaking styles
no silences between words - In normal conversation, there are often no physical breaks between words
- Speech Segmentation
in understanding words, we need to consider word frequency. what’s that? what is the word frequency effect?
word frequency - frequency with which a word appears in a language (how often it shows up in large language corpora/collections of texts)
word frequency effect:
1. faster responding to high-frequency words (cat, dog, house)
2. Slower responding to low-frequency words (eg. galleon, fjord) in lexical decision tasks
3. Eye-tracking studies show longer fixation durations on low-frequency words
in pronunciation variability, _______ helps in understanding variable pronunciation.
context
Words are more difficult to understand when taken out of context
what is speech segmentation (infants vs adults)
Perceiving individual words despite the lack of pauses
- Infants are sensitive to statistical regularities in speech signals (eg. notice that certain syllables often appear together (pret-ty), helps to learn word boundaries without understanding meaning of words)
- adults use knowledge of word meanings aids speech segmentation (If you hear: “thecatsatonthemat”, you can easily break it into “the cat sat on the mat” due to prior semantic knowledge)
what is lexical ambiguity?
Words often have more than one meaning
when faced with lexical ambiguity, people briefly access ________ meanings of ________ words before _____ takes over
multiple; ambiguous; context
lexical priming is? what is the process?
exposure to one word makes it faster or easier to recognize or respond to a related word shortly afterward
- All meanings of a heard ambiguous word (eg. bat) are activated immediately, then context helps determine the appropriate meaning of a word after a slight delay
in understanding ambiguous words, ___________ influences meaning activation
frequency
in understanding ambiguous words, frequency of meanings influences which meaning is activated.
what are the 2 main types of meaning dominance (How frequently different meanings occur)?
- Biased Dominance: One meaning occurs more often than others (dominant meaning likely to be activated first)
- Balanced dominance: Meanings are equally likely to be activated
in understanding sentences, what does syntax mean?
structure of a sentence
in understanding sentences, what does parsing mean?
Grouping words into phrases to understand the grammatical structure and meaning of a sentence
example: “The old man the boats.”
- seems ungrammatical.
- But correct parsing reveals:
“The old” (noun phrase)
“man” (verb)
“the boats” (object)
- It means: Old people are the ones who man the boats.
define garden path sentences
Sentences that initially suggest one interpretation but then forces you to re-parse it once you realize that initial interpretation doesn’t make sense.
“The old man the boats.”
“The horse raced past the barn fell.”
SHOWS:
- Our brains use parsing strategies (like assuming the simplest structure first).
- Sometimes we guess wrong and have to backtrack and reinterpret the sentence.
what is late closure? which model does it fall under?
a type of parsing strategy - assumes new word belongs to the phrase you are currently working on, rather than starting a new phrase or idea.
falls under Garden Path Model of sentence parsing - sentence parsing guided by heuristics (simple rules or strategies) that help our brains process sentences efficiently, even if they sometimes lead us to incorrect interpretations (ie. garden path)
what is Garden Path Model? what is one key heuristic?
sentence parsing guided by heuristics (simple rules or strategies) that help our brains process sentences efficiently, even if they sometimes lead us to incorrect interpretations (ie. garden path)
One key heuristic is Late Closure - parsing mechanism assumes a new word is part of the current phrase
