Washoe - language in primates
- brought up as human child
- taught ASL; learnt 150-200 words
- sensitivity to word order (you tickle me VS i tickle you)
- could use to words to describe another word she did not have a sign for (water + bird = duck)
- even taught her son sign language
Nim Chimpsky - language in primates
- learnt 125 ASL signs
- regularity of word order for 2 word utterances
- longer utterances become repetitive (banana me eat banana eat)
- less evidence of understanding the underlying structure of language
Frazier, 1987 - Structural principles
principles of late closure - assumes each new word part of current phrase being built (structural principles)
principle of minimal attachment - build simplest syntactic structure you can (fewest nodes of Noun phrase and Verb phrases)
garden path sentences and reanalysis (initial and subsequent reading)
Tanenhaus et al., 1995
“put the apple on the towel in the box”
- one/two referent
1. interpret towel as final location (minimum attachment)
2. no garden path - use context ‘on the towel’ as specifying which apple
–> language comprehension is incremental (like production)
Van Gompel, Pickering & Traxler, 2000
- the hunter killed only the poacher with the rifle not long after sunset (ambiguous- who has the rifle?)
- the hunter killed only the leopard with the rifle not long after sunset (verb phrase)
- the hunter killed only the leopard with the scars not long after sunset (noun phrase)
- between 2 & 3, only semantics change, garden path - should always use the verb phrase – rifle is with the verb phrase
Garvey, Caramazza & Yates, 1974 - implicit causality
expectations about the implicit cause of the first clause
Garvey, Caramazza & Yates, 1974 - implicit causality
expectations about the implicit cause of the first clause
Resolving lexical ambiguity - Glucksberg, Kreuz & Rho, 1986
selective access
- context restricts access/narrows down so only relevant meaning is selected
Resolving lexical ambiguity - Hogobaum & Perfetti, 1975
ordered access
- all senses of the word are accessed in order of frequency, how likely they are to be used
Resolving lexical ambiguity - Swinney, 1979
parallel access
- all sense activated and appropriate one selected based on context
Swinney 1987 - Lexical Decision Task
- compares visual and auditory priming (priming from reading and hearing)
task involved looking at what happens when we encounter ambiguous word - cross modal priming task
ppts have to do lexical decision task (decide if word shown is real/fake) while listening to a story. e.g. bugs is ambiguous but ppts saw phrase “spiders, roaches and other” which strongly biases you towards a particular sense of the word - insect. but bugs could be insect or electronic
target words - ant - biassed sense
- spy - irrelevant sense
- sew - neutral control
selective access would suggest ant is facilitated because context is immediately used so only the relevant sense is accessed
same for ordered access, based on frequency of bug to mean insect (more likely) = facilitatory for ant
parallel access would predict facilitation for ant and spy, since this account suggests all senses of word are available
Grice, 1989
Cooperative Principle
definition - conversational contribution such as is required at the stage it occurs by accepted purpose/direction of the talk exchange you engaging in
- quality : honest
- quantity : informative
- relation : relevant
- manner : clear
Sandford et al., 2011
example - “child abuse cases are being reported much more frequently these days. In recent trial, a 10-year sentence/care order was given to the victim, but this was subsequently appealed”
–> 63% detection rate
- no n400 effect for semantic illusions sentences
- n400 indicates semantic violations
Bilingualism - Bloomfield, 1933
someone who speaks 2 languages perfectly, with equal fluency
Bilingualism - Grosjean, 1982
use of 2 or more languages in one’s everyday life
Saffran et al., 1996
mini made up language (Sdkupadotigolabubidaku)
- 3 syllable words
- 10 starting syllables (prob = 0.1)
- 3 2nd syllables (prob = 0.3)
- 1 final syllable (prob = 1)
–> pibo, kulo
adults and 8-month-olds could discriminate between sounds that could go together as word –> good at statistical learning
Emipiricist - language development
behaviourists
- knowledge comes from experience
- imitation and reinforcement
–> poverty of stimulus & little explicit grammar teaching
Nativists - language
Chomsky
- fundamental knowledge innate
innate biological capacity
Byers-Heinstein, Burns & Walker, 2010
high amplitude sucking paradigm
english & tagalog sentences
newborns (0-5 days old)
- bilinguals were equally interested in both languages
- infants habituated to english/tagalog sentences
- at test, hear novel sentences from new speaker in other language
- if couldn’t tell difference, then no increase in sucking when new languages introduced
Alladi et al., 2013
Bilingualism delays onset of AD
why - cognitive reserve (protection against cognitive decline that comes from active engagement is stimulating intellectual, social, and physical activities)
Wernicke - Lichteim - Geschwind
models certain areas of the brain that communicate with each other to extract information about meanings of words- passed to production and motor areas of brain
Broca’s area
frontal end associated with language production
Wernicke’s area
associated with language comprehension
Fabbro (2001) - bilingual aphasia
different representation based on age of acquisition and proficiency
aphasic symptoms linked to where lesions occur and where language represented in the brain
- earlier learn & more proficient = more implicit knowledge & memory systems
- later learnt = explicit type of knowledge
- simultaneous/early sequential = procedural memory systems
- late bilingual = declarative memory systems
