Wk 7 - Language Flashcards
What are the special characteristics of human language, according to Chomsky? (x5)
Open-ended language is unique - allows working to shared goal
Generativity: creation of new, eg can always come up w new ‘longest sentence’
Universal grammar: different rules cross-culturally (on surface) eg subject, object, verb order, but same deeper structure
Critical periods: harder to learn second language later
Doesn’t need structured learning - is natural
What is the hierarchy of linguistic components?
Phonemes - individual sound, 145 altogether, culture uses subset (38 in English)
Morphemes - smallest unit of meaning, root words/prefix/suffix, a number of phonemes
Syntax - not meaning, but rules of construction
Grammar - the deep structure of language
The McGurk effect is that… (x1)
Test it by… (x3)
And it supports which model of speech perception? (x1)
What we see influences the sound we hear
• Acoustic stimulus, ba +
• Visual lip movement, ga =
• Perception, da – is closer to ba in sound, and ga in visual, so brain takes a middle path – leads to…
Fuzzy logic model: the product of probability of each mode = choosing the sound with the highest probability – works for whole sentences too
What are the Gricean maxims?
And how can they be violated?
Quantity: Be informative, but not more than necessary; eg ‘it’s hot’ not ‘it’s 38.7598 degrees’
Quality: be truthful, language doesn’t work if people lied all the time; white lies are accepted violation
Relation: make your contribution relevant to aims of conversation; work toward the goal, eg the opposite of the way politicians answer questions
Manner: avoid obscure expressions, vagueness, modify for audience
What brain areas are associated with language?
Broca’s area - speech production
Wernicke’s area - comprehension
What is the rationale behind the idea of a language instinct? (x4)
Growth rather than learning – doesn’t take effortful processing
Critical period is before 7yo: eg Genie couldn’t acquire syntax; lots of plasticity during this period - right takes over if left is damaged
Poverty (Chomsky): acquisition not possible thru reinforcement/punishment, therefor must be predisposed; overextensions
Learning still plays role: culturally determined - phoneme selection, words acquired, and parameter setting eg SOV or SVO
Properties of language (x4)
Not just speech – signing uses same cognitive structures, and brail is same as spoken language; vision, touch, hearing can all convey language
Can influence minds
Arbitrary symbols – only meaningful through agreement
Hierarchical - phonemes, morphemes, words, phrases
The fuzzy logic model of speech perception is…(x2)
And is supported by… (x1)
That the product of probability of each mode = choosing the sound with the highest probability
Works for whole sentences too
The McGurk effect - what we see influence sound we hear
Phonemes… (x6)
Smallest unit of speech that influences meaning, eg cat to bat
Phonology – how sounds are put together
There’s 145 altogether, culture uses a subset
38 in English, 100 in an African tribe, 15 in Maori: less = more repetition, longer words
Lack invariance – physical properties of sounds vary across individuals/time
Physical signal radically altered by context (surrounding phonemes) - makes decoding speech very difficult, computers etc
How do we understand speech given the variance in phonemes/sounds across time/individuals/contexts? (X4)
Motor theory (Liberman): we perceive according to physical production, not acoustic signal; German sinking/thinking
But, context: also relies on cues/li-reading
Must be parallel processing, to include the surrounding phonemes
Top-down processes – expectations affect what we hear, eg hello not yellow
The motor theory of speech perception (Liberman)… (x2)
Holds that we perceive according to physical production, not acoustic signal
eg we hear the sounds according to how we produce them; German sinking/thinking
Morphemes… (x5)
Smallest unit of meaning - root words/prefix/suffic, a number of phonemes
Joining is governed by morphological rules
Eg en-joy-ment = prefix-root-suffix
Root words are content morphemes
English doesn’t create many new words from morphemes, German does
Syntax… (x2)
Plus two processes of…
Not meaning, but rules of construction
Eg ‘me Tarzan’ still has meaning, but syntactically incorrect
Recursion: tacking clauses together, or embedding them
Parsing: syntactical analysis to make sense of strings of symbols
Recursion is part of which elements of language? (x1)
Involves? (x1)
And possibly relates to… (x2)
Syntax
To tack clauses together, or embed them within
Mental time-travel (embedding past/future in present, and maintaining relationships) and TOM (embedding thoughts of another’s mind in your own)?
Chomsky’s universal grammar holds that… (x5)
Underlying rules share many elements, despite surface structural diffs
Eg subject object verb (Japanese), or SVO (English)
That these deep structures reflect innate organising principle of cognition
LAD: innate human capacity for learning language within our environment; not genetic
Kids learn rules, which are then applied to other contexts, sometimes inappropriately
