Language Comprehension Flashcards
(29 cards)
Why may language being defined as a ‘‘system of communication using sounds or symbols that enables us to transmit information’’ not be an entirely accuracte definition
Language is a system of communication using sounds or symbols that enables us to transmit…… an infinite variety of messages that can be adapted to changes in the environment and can refer to events that are not necessarily “here and now”… and so far only humans have been known to possess it.
What distinguishes language from simple communication
Infinite generativity - the ability to produce an endless number of meaningful sentences
How can language produce an endless number of meaningful sentences?
1) Hierarchial system (combining components to form larger units)
2) Goverened by rules , there are specific ways the components can be arranged
3) Universality
What does language allow humans to do?
Allows us to express feelings, thoughts, ideas and experiences without a shared context (beyond here and now)
Provide an example of the universality of language
Deaf children invent sign language in Nicaragua
In what manner is language universal?
Language development is similar across cultures . Children start babbling at about 7 months and are at the single word stage by 1 year. First multi-word utterances are formed by 2 years. Even deaf children babble with their hands around the same age as hearing children
What cultures have a language?
All cultures! There is not a single human culture in the world that doesn’t have a language
Explain the behaviourist explanation for learning language
Language development may be explained on the basis of learning principles such as association, imitation, and reinforcement.
- random production
- approximations to real words are reinforced
What are some problems with the behavioural explanation of language (chomsky)
Behaviorist accounts ignore that language is generative. Virtually everything you say and hear is novel.
It can’t be the case that this is because of reinforcement in the past, because you’ve never heard it before.
Provide evidence that opposes the behaviourist view of language acquisition
Generativity of language (production of novel sentences)
Overextension of grammar - incorrect things said that adults have never spoken.
According to Chomsky , how is language determined?
Determined by an inborn biological program that is triggered by exposure to adult language . Human langauge is coded in genes, the underlying basis of all language is similar,
What brain area is related to speech production
Broca’s area (damage leads to aphasia)
What brain area is related to speech comprehension
Wernicke’s areas - damage leads to aphasia
What is the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis?
The idea that an individual’s cognition is influenced by the language of their culture
One of Whorf’s examples was the supposedly large number of words for’snow’ in the Inuit language
(has been challenged)
What is mental lexicon?
Brain’s store of words
What is parsing?
using grammar rules to understand a sentence (includes syntax and grammar analysis)
What helps us parse?
Prosodic cues- stress, pauses, intonation, rhythm, and word duration
What is the two stage serial processing theory?
The garden path model is the most influential two stage serial processing theory. It is so called because when you first see the syntax of a sentence, it may initially lead you up the garden path, in other words mislead you, and your syntax will need revising in a second stage in order to make sense of the sentence.
What are the two stages of the two stage seriel processing model?
Stage 1. Splitting the sentence into clauses by splitting by fewest number of nodes. Attaching new words in the sentence to current phrase if grammatically permissible.
Stage 2. Syntax is revised if meaning doesn’t make sense (meaning is only considered at this stage)
Provide research support of the garden path model
Eye movement research and studies on areas of the brain that when damaged seem to directly affect the first stages of syntax processing.
What did Tueswell suggest? (opposing the assumption that meaning does not shape the inital stage)
Tueswell et al. (1994) used eye movement tracking with ever more nuanced sentences to conclude that the meaning of the words does affect the initial syntactic parsing stage.
Explain Macdonald et al.’s one stage parallel model (constrain-based model)
Constraint-based model, a sentence’s initial interpretation depends on multiple information sources (e.g., syntactic, semantic, general world knowledge) called constraints. These constraints limit, or constrain, the number of possible interpretations.
. So in other words syntactic, semantic (meaning), and word knowledge all are available initially, and they a processed in parallel, and all these aspects constraint (or mold) the final syntactic parsing of a sentence.
Provide research support for the parallel model
Cai et al. (2012) used ambiguous sentences to demonstrate that readers could process both subject analysis and object analysis in parallel—in what appeared to be at the same time
Provide research support for the constraint model
Wilson and Garnsey showed that knowledge of the meaning of a verb in a sentence appears to affect early parsing—in effect suggesting that prior knowledge of a word, and it’s meaning, in a sentence is important in the early stages of parsing—and one constraint that may be considered in parallel to syntax.
