Language

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Language
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Study of Language

• Linguistics study of the internalized knowledge
  of a language the rules for producing language
• Psycholinguistics The study of language as it
  is used and learned by people.

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Defining Language

• Language Language is a shared symbolic system
  for communication.
• Language is a subset of communication usually
  seen as having 3 defining parts
• Use of symbols
• A system of symbols are used by all speakers of
  the language
• It enables communication

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Universals of Language

• Semanticity Language exhibits Semanticity,
  which means that language conveys meaning.
• Arbitrariness There is no inherent connection
  between the units (sounds, words) used in a
  language and the meanings referred by those
  units.
• Flexibility of symbols Language systems
  demonstrate tremendous flexibility that is,
  because the connection between symbol and meaning
  is arbitrary, we can change those connections and
  invent new ones.

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Universals of Language (cont.)

• Naming We assign names to all the objects in
  our environment, to all the feelings and emotions
  we experience, and to all the ideas and concepts
  we conceive of.
• Displacement The ability to talk about
  something other than the present moment.
• Productivity Language is a productive and
  inherently novel activity we generate sentences
  rather than repeat them.

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Animal Communication Systems

• Beyond the level of arbitrariness, no animal
  communication system seems to exhibit the
  characteristics that appear to be universally
  true ofand vitally important tohuman language.
• In the wild, at any rate, there appear to be no
  genuine languages.
• In human cultures, genuine language is the rule,
  apparently with no exceptions.

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Teaching animals language

• A great deal of disagreement on whether the great
  apes can learn language
• Cannot learn speech as their vocal tract cannot
  produce needed speech sounds
• Research has shown that many of the great apes
  can learn and use symbols for objects and some
  actions
• Difficulties seem to involve displacement and
  novelty

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Teaching animals language (cont)

• Most accepted conclusion is that nonhumans are
  capable of comprehending language and are capable
  of complex sign communication
• They appear to acquire and use aspects of
  language very differently than humans

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Five Levels of Analysis of Language

• Grammar operates at three levels
• Phonology of language deals with the sounds of
  language
• Syntax deals with word order and grammaticality
• And semantics deals with accessing and combining
  the separate word meanings into a sensible,
  meaningful whole
• Grammar The grammar of a language is the
  complete set of rules that will generate or
  produce all the acceptable sentences and will not
  generate any unacceptable, ill-formed sentences.
• Comprehension operates at 2 levels next week
• Conceptual
• Belief

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A Critical Distinction

• Competence The internalized knowledge of
  language and the rules that fully fluent speakers
  of a language have.
• Performance The actual language behavior a
  speaker generates, the string of sounds and words
  that the speaker utters.

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Whorfs Hypothesis

• Linguistic Relativity Hypothesis The language
  you know shapes the way you think about events in
  the world around you.
• Eskimos think different about snow as indicated
  by them having many more words for snow than
  English speakers

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Challenges to Whorfs Hypothesis

• Issues about how many words do Eskimos have for
  snow
• Language of the Dani tribe
• Study of Navajo speaking children
• Conclusion Language can influence thought, but
  not control it.

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Does language depend upon thought?

• Aristotles hypothesis categories of thought
  determine categories of language
• Human thought or cognition appeared before
  language in evolution and during development
• Nonhumans show complex cognitive ability without
  language
• Most likely language developed as a tool to
  communicate thought

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Phonology

• Phonology The sounds of language and the rule
  system for combining them.
• Phonemes The basic sounds that compose a
  language.
• English has 45-46 phonemes.
• Categorization of phonemes
• For consonants, three variables are relevant
  place of articulation, manner of articulation,
  and voicing.
• Vowels differ on two dimensions placement in
  the mouth, and tongue position in the mouth.

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Categorization of phonemes

• Categorical Perception All the sounds falling
  within a set of boundaries are perceived as the
  same, despite physical differences among them.
• The use of voice onset time to set phonetic
  boundaries

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Speech Perception and Context

• Theory of acoustic invariance our perception of
  phonemes is provided by the consistent or
  invariant acoustic cues of the phonetic features
• Basic problems with this data driven theory
• We produce phonemes too fast to process this way
• Spoken sounds are not invariant they change
  depending on what sounds precede and follow in
  the word.

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Speech Perception and Context

• How do we tolerate variability and still decipher
  the changeable, almost undependable spoken
  signal?
• The answer is context or conceptually driven
  processing.

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Speech Perception and Context (cont.)

• Evidence points toward a combination of
  data-driven and conceptually driven processing in
  speech recognition, a position now called the
  integrative or interactive approach.
• This approach claims that a variety of
  conceptually distinct language processes operate
  simultaneously, each having the possibility of
  influencing the ongoing activity of other
  processes.

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Combining Phonemes Into Words

• Phonemic Competence The extensive knowledge of
  the rules of permissible sound combinations for a
  specific language
• These rules are not taught but implicitly learned
  as languages develop

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Perceptions of words

• There is almost no consistent relationship
  between pauses and the ends of words. If
  anything, the pauses we produce while speaking
  are longer within words than between words.
• Segmenting speech sounds into words is learned

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Rules for combining words and phrases together

• Prescriptive rules constraints on how we ought
  to speak based upon how certain authorities think
  a language should sound
• They usually involve dialects or variations of a
  particular language
• Usually prescribed by the dominant group in a
  society. Sentences not following the rules are
  considered inferior regardless of whether the
  meaning is clear

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Descriptive Rules or Syntax

• Syntax The arrangement of words as elements in
  a sentence to show their relationship to one
  another or sentence structure.
• Word Order
• Beth asked the man about his headaches
• About the Beth headaches man asked his
• Phrase Order
• Bill told the men to deliver the piano on Monday
• Bill told the men on Monday to deliver the piano
• Number Agreement - subject verb agreement

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Chomskys Transformational Grammar

• Language exists at least 2 levels
• Deep structure - an abstract syntactic
  representation of the sentence being constructed
• Surface structure the external structure the
  actual speech sounds and words in a sentence
• Phrase structure grammar rules that specify the
  word groupings and phrases that make up the whole
  utterance and the relationships among those
  constituents.
• We have basic sentence structures into which we
  insert words

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Problems with phrase structure grammar

• Exact meaning of a sentence may not be accurately
  expressed by the surface structure ambiguity
• I saw a man eating fish
• The shooting of the hunters was terrible
• Sentences with completely different surface
  structure can have the same deep structure
• Patrick bought a fine French wine
• A fine French wine was bought by Patrick

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Chomskys Transformational Grammar

• Transformational Rules These convert the deep
  structure into a surface structure, a sentence
  ready to be spoken.
• They allow us to covert deep structure ideas into
  different surface structures that state the same
  thought with a different emphasis

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Limitations of the Transformational Grammar
Approach

• In the late 1960s, psychology became increasingly
  dissatisfied with this linguistically motivated
  approach.
• Primary reason the linguistic emphasis on
  structure relegated meaning as a secondary factor
• Since linguistic approach didnt adequately deal
  with meaning it was difficult to apply this
  theory to the actual use of language

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Chomskys Example

• Colorless green ideas sleep furiously
• Grammatically acceptable
• Makes no sense
• Since Chomskys theory was competency based,
  knowledge of the rules of syntax, it could not
  transformed into a performance based theory of
  how we use language

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The psychological purpose of syntax

• To help the listener figure out meaning
• To minimize the processing demands of
  comprehending language
• Syntax helps listeners determine meaning and
  speakers convey meaning

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Lexical and semantic factors The third level of
analysis

• Involves the meaning of language
• Mental lexicon the mental dictionary of words
  and their meanings
• Morpheme the smallest unit of language that has
  meaning
• Free morphemes can stand alone car, run,
  legal
• Bound morphemes are bound to free morphemes
  s, est, un
• Words can be made up of 1 or more morphemes

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The lexical representation of a word

• Includes much more than what the word means
• Textbook example chase to run after or pursue
• Also connected to other information run,
  involving speed, etc.
• We also know what kinds of things can be chased
  and what kind of things can chase

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Case grammar a psycholinguistic approach

• Case grammar An approach in psycholinguistics
  in which the meaning of a sentence is determined
  by analyzing the semantic roles or cases played
  by different words, such as which word names the
  overall relationship and which names the agent or
  patient of the action.
• Semantic Cases The roles played by the content
  words in sentences (also called case roles).

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Case grammar

• The key will open the door
• The janitor will open the door with the key
• Key has 2 grammatical roles in 1st sentence not
  important to meaning
• A semantic analysis shows key as having the same
  semantic role - an instrument that opens a door
• Other roles door is the recipient of the action
  open janitor is the agent of open

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Interaction of syntax and semantics

• Semantic focus the highlighted or most important
  idea in a sentence. Usually indicated by word
  order (syntax).
• Im going downtown with my sister at 4 oclock
• Its at 4 oclock that Im going downtown with my
  sister
• Its my sister Im going downtown with at 4
  oclock
• The focus in each sentence is different as a
  different phrase begins each sentence

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Semantic Knowledge Can Overpower Syntax

• Sometimes we comprehend what we expect to hear
  instead of what we actually hear
• Fillenbaum (1974) ordered and disordered
  sentences
• Dont print that or Ill sue you
• John had a bath and put on his clothes
• Dont print that or I wont sue you
• John put on his clothes and had a bath

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Evidence for the Semantic Grammar Approaches

• Two predictions of this approach
• Listeners (readers) begin to analyze the sentence
  immediately as soon as words begin
• This analysis is a process of assigning each word
  to a semantic role that contributes to the
  overall comprehension of the sentence
• Garden Path Sentence A sentence in which the
  early part of the sentence sets you up so the
  latter phrases of the sentence dont make sense
  given the way you assigned case roles in the 1st
  part.
• For example
• After the musician played the piano was moved
  off the stage.
• The grounds man chased the girl waving a stick
  in her hand
• The old train the young

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Brain and Language - Aphasia

• Aphasia The disruption of language caused by a
  brain-related disorder.
• Brocas Aphasia Characterized by severe
  difficulties in producing speech it is also
  called expressive or production aphasia.
• Wernickes Aphasia Comprehension is impaired,
  as are repetition, naming, reading, and writing,
  but the syntactic aspects of speech are
  preserved.

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Brocas area and Wernickes area
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Other forms of Aphasia

• Conduction Aphasia Patients are unable to
  repeat what they have just heard.
• Anomia or anomic aphasia A disruption in word
  finding, an impairment in the normal ability to
  retrieve a semantic concept and say its name.
• Alexia A disruption of reading without any
  necessary disruption of spoken language or aural
  (hearing) comprehension.
• Agraphia The patient is unable to write.
• Pure word deafness A patient cannot comprehend
  spoken language, although he or she is still able
  to read and produce written and spoken language.

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Generalizing from Aphasia

• The very different patterns of behavioral
  impairments in Brocas and Wernickes aphasia,
  resulting from different physical structures in
  the brain, suggest that these physical structures
  underlie different aspects of language.
• These selective impairments and different brain
  locations also suggest that syntax and semantics
  are two separable but interactive aspects of
  normal language.
• An inference from these studies is that
  specialized cerebral regions signal an innate
  biological basis for language

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Language in the intact brain

• 2 important terms necessary and sufficient
• Brocas area is necessary for normal speech
  production, but not sufficient. The damage of
  other areas can also cause speech deficits
• Lesions in different areas can lead to different
  amounts of aphasia depending upon the gender of
  the person
• There are great individual differences in where
  and how different people process and produce
  language.