Semantic memory and episodic memory by reference to
the ontological grounding of the Old and New metainformative status in the MIC theory
Presentation
at
the Interdisciplinary Conference
MIC Sorbonne 2012
Context-bound Communication
Université Paris-Sorbonne
CELTA
Nov 15, 2012
Franz J. Stachowiak
School of Community Health – Speech Pathology
Attention-Getter
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Goal of the talk
This talk attempts to demonstrate how
neuropsychological findings and models can
contribute to further elaborate the MIC theory and
thus, in turn, provide a basis to explain
pathological data.
Such models are required for diagnostics and
intervention in speech pathology.
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Outline
 Language disorders vs. cognitive communication disorders
 Information processing and linguistic pragmatics
 New and old information in language processing
 Episodic and semantic memory
 An integrated model of pragmatic competence (based on MIC theory)
 A pilot study
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Pragmatic competence
The pragmatic competence of a speaker/listener consists of
his/her ability to produce and understand verbal expressions whose
predicational structure exhibits meta-information which draws attention
to the “subject” of the message. The centres of attention are related to
the world (“ontology”, “encyclopaedic knowledge” etc.) via the semantic
system. One of the main features of verbal communication is that the
information to be conveyed is treated as new or old, the newness or
oldness being its meta-informative status depending on the discourse
strategies (i.e. the pragmatic attitude) of the speaker. (A. and H.
Wlodarczyk, 2010).
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Cognitive CommunicationDisorders
Definition from: Preferred Practice Guideline for Cognitive-Communication Disorders · Approved
September 2002 College of Audiologists and Speech-Language Pathologists of Ontario
Cognitive-communication disorders are disturbances of communicative
competence (listening, speaking, reading, writing, conversation and social
interaction) which result from underlying cognitive impairments (attention,
memory, organization, information processing, problem solving, and executive
functions). These disorders are distinct from other neurological communication
disorders (e.g., aphasia, dysarthria etc.). Cognitive-communication disorders
are commonly associated with traumatic brain injury (TBI) but can also occur as
a result of other acquired brain injuries (ABI) such as haemorrhages, stroke,
meningitis, encephalitis, anoxia, or tumours.
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Right Hemisphere Language and Communication
Abusamra contin., p. 74
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Right Hemisphere Language and Communication
Abusamra contin., p. 75 Example
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Schizophasia
Similarly schizophasia is characterized by a problem to maintain
attention to relevant information; patients often produce chains of
associations to what was said in the context and drift away from the
topic. The following example from Ian Thompson (2001: see also:
discourse in neuropsychiatry) shows this typical kind of drifting away
from the centre of attention:
“Parents are people that raise you. Anything that
raises you can be a parent. Parents can be anything,
material, vegetable or mineral, that has taught you
something. Parents would be the world of things that are
alive, that are there. Rocks, a person can look at a rock
and learn something from it, so that would be a parent.”
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The distribution of new and old information
One of the main features of verbal communication according to the ASMIC theory (A. and H. Wlodarczyk, 2010) is that information is treated
as new or old, the newness or oldness being its meta-informative status
depending on the discourse strategies (i.e. the pragmatic attitude) of
the speaker with respect to the addressee of the utterance. “Old and
new meta-informative status may be grounded either in discourse
(anaphora/cataphora), beliefs (Known/unknown) or ontological
knowledge (referential grounding)”
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The distribution of new and old information: an
example
“In the following utterance: “It is Albert Einstein who discovered the law
of Relativity.” the subject Albert Einstein is focalized as a new chunk of
information contrasting with what is treated as the old information (or
presupposition): “(there is somebody who) discovered the law of
Relativity”.” (p.4). Although Albert Einstein is one of the best known
persons worldwide, in this context the reference to him gets the status
of new information. To use the figure-ground metapher, Albert Einstein
is attributed figure-status on the ground of the information about the
discovery of Relativity. The speaker assumes that the addressee has
connected the act of discovery to another person or does not know at
all, who was the discoverer of Relativity. Yet, the speaker attributes the
knowledge to her/him that she/he knows about the fact of the discovery.
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Episodic and semantic memory
Interestingly, the discovery of Relativity was an event in Albert
Einstein´s life, which must have left strong traces in his and his
colleagues´ episodic memories, but the important fact that it happened
became general knowledge, i.e. semantic knowledge of billions of
traditionally educated people. In contrast, most private events of
Einstein´s life are not known to the public. The fact that he got divorced
from his wife Mileva in order to marry his cousin Elsa, cannot be
considered as general knowledge. However, if this information is
predicated to his name, new epistemic knowledge is produced. Thus
information from episodic and semantic memory get combined.
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Classification of Memory Types
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Episodic memory as a source of information
Episodic memory pertains to the
learning, storing and retrieval of
autobiographical facts, i.e. unique
personal experiences, to events in
our lives, occurrences, careers,
encounters, talks with others,
accidents, etc. The question
“Where were you and what did
you do when Sep 9, 11
happened?” is a question about
an episode in one´s personal life.
Information in Episodic Memory
Space—Physical layout of the place(s)
Actor—Range of people involved
Activity—A set of related activities that
occur
Object—The physical things that are
present
Act—Single actions people undertake
Event—Activities that people carry out
Time—The sequencing of events that
occur
Goal—Things that people are trying to
accomplish
Feeling—Emotions felt and expressed
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Semantic memory as a source of information
Semantic memory, although it is like episodic memory a form of long
term declarative (factual) memory , stores knowledge that can be
learnt independently of reference to time and place. According to the
classical view it is not relevant where and when it was learnt. The fact
of the discovery of Relativity can be learnt at school. “Encyclopedic
knowledge of information such as the features of objects (e.g. apples
are usually red), categories (e.g. oranges and bananas are both types
of fruit), historical events, mathematical tables, cognitive maps, and
similar types of information are considered to be stored in semantic
memory systems of the brain” (Dickerson and Eichbaum, 2010:87).
Semantic memory in this encompasses more than linguistics
semantics.
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Clinical evidence for the relative autonomy of
different types of memory
Certain brain lesions can lead either to impairment of
episodic or semantic memory. Bilateral lesions of the
medial temporal lobe (including the hippocampus) can lead
to a complete loss of episodic memory whereas semantic
memory remains largely intact. See following case
description.
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Loss of episodic memory: a case
A 42 year old teacher of mathematics and physics had suffered a heart arrest
followed by an ischemic thalamic lesion. He suffered from a severe amnesia. He was
forced to believe others that he was married, had children, had built a house, had worked
at a particular school etc. as all of that information was lost from his memory. He had no
aphasia and showed no semantic disorder, but when asked what a chicken is, he was
very uncertain whether it is a kind of bird. The sentence “Chickens lay eggs” sounded
normal to him. In a pizzeria he noted in an astonished way: “Ah, that´s a Pizza”. When
eating it he said that he knows the taste. He was able to demonstrate – after some
preparation – that he could still teach mathematics. His behaviour showed the typical
demeanour of a teacher, and he understood the contents well enough to make them
plausible to the students. He understood the rules of soccer and watched matches on TV,
but did not know any player and could not remember any important matches. In
comparison to the deep loss of his episodic memory (except for a short period in his
childhood), his semantic memory and world knowledge was intact to such an extent that
he could lead a rather independent life.
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Interaction between the types of memory
Recent models assume a rather complex feedback system between episodic
and semantic memory. They accentuate the interaction between these systems
in building up generic “semantic” knowledge from autobiographical experience
and vice versa facilitating the retrieval of information from episodic memory by
contributing generic information from semantic memory.
Episodic memories enable us to re-evaluate our past in light of new information
and thus contribute to human social interactionapply. In general, semantic
memory speeds up decisions, whereas episodic memory provides accuracy
Thus semantic memory lends itself to background (old) information, whereas
episodic memory provides new information (it can be the other way round
depending on the speaker´s pragmatic attitude)
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Relationsship between episodic and semantic
memory
„Experimental
evidence points to a gradual transformation of memories,
following encoding, from an episodic to a semantic character. This may
require an exchange of information between different memory modules
during inactive periods. We propose a theory for such interactions and
for the formation of semantic memory, in which episodic memory is
encoded as relational data. Semantic memory is modelled as a
modified stochastic grammar, which learns to parse episodic
configurations expressed as an association matrix. The grammar
produces tree-like representations of episodes, describing the
relationships between its main constituents at multiple levels of
categorization, based on its current knowledge of world regularities.
These regularities are learned by the grammar from episodic memory
information, through an expectation-maximization procedure, analogous
to the inside–outside algorithm for stochastic context-free grammars.”
(Battaglia and Pennartz, 2011: 1).
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Reading other peoples´minds (memories)
Basic to human interaction is that we continuously try to read other peoples´
mind. We are guided by presumptions about what others know, think, feel and
intend and on what kind of experiences their thinking, knowledge, emotions and
intentions are based upon. This includes naturally that we try to scan their
episodic and semantic memories in order to find out what is new to them and
what is known by them. Two related theories try to explain this behaviour: The
mirror neuron theory (Gallese, 2001) provides the basis for the human capacity
of empathy and the theory of mind (Dennet, 1977) describes the ability of
humans to acknowledge that others have minds by analogy to their own. It
implies that we interpret others´activities as goal directed and based on
particular beliefs, desires, knowledge etc.. This intentionality or “aboutness” is a
continuous driving force for directing attention in human communication.
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A model of the interaction between memory
components and the language system
Based on the AS-MIC (associative semantics – metainformative centering theory by André and Hélène
Wlodarczyk) a cognitive component (MIC-component) is
assumed to be a decisive module of the human pragmatic
competence to produce and understand verbal expressions
whose predicational structure exhibits meta-information
serving to draw attention to and to detect the “subject” of
the message by monitoring old and new information.
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An integrated model of of pragmatic competence
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A pilot study
A small study to elucidate the relationship
between episodic and
semantic memory and
the meta-informative
status of the information
retrieved from memory
Eight 3 rd year students were asked to give a
short report about their memories of the first
day at Charles Sturt University.
Task: Please write a report of your first visit to
Charles Sturt University. Describe this event
with the details you remember. Describe in a
few sentences how memory influences your
verbal report, for instance if you can´t
remember details.
The responses were evaluated using the
organizing categories of episodic memory
described above (Reeves, Kuper, and Hodges,
2008). The distribution of information related to
these categories was classified as new or old
(meta-informative status) and further subclassified according to sentence initial or final
position.
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Example of report on first day at CSU
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Results of Pilot Study
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Interpretation of results
As English has fixed word order (SPO), it was to be expected that information which is
expressed in VPs appears regularly as new information in final sentential position, if no
object follows. Interestingly this applied to all categories used, for instance to information
about space. The actor, usually the first person “I”, which was considered as old
information, appeared most frequently in initial subject position (26 instances), as can – of
course – be expected if the task was to describe one´s own first day at the University
(Theme). Generic information can have “old”-status in initial position as in “The University
was smaller than I was expecting” or new status as in “Feelings of exitement are what I
remember about my experience”.
These data are, of course, too sparse to arrive at sound conclusions, but they seem to
indicate that the mapping between information stored in episodic and semantic memory
on the one hand and centres of attention on the other as a result of the meta-informative
processing of utterances - is guided by structural principles. There is no 1:1 mapping of
memory entries into fixed positions in the meta-informative structuring of utterances, but
probably some probability relationship.
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Word order free languages
From a linguistic point of view it would be
interesting to find out what kind of information from
episodic and semantic memory gets spotlighted in
initial position.
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Word order in a free word order
language: the case of Jiwarli* from Peter Austen ( 2001)
in: Jane Simpson, David Nash, Mary Laughren, Peter Austin, Barry Alpher, (eds) Forty years on: Ken
Hale and Australian languages, 205-323. Canberra: Pacific
Linguistics.
Swartz (1987 and 1988) has shown that Warlpiri too has
pragmatically determined word order. He argues (1988:154) that
initial position in the sentence in Warlpiri is pragmatically significant
and that this is where prominent topical material is placed, and
proposes that Warlpiri word order can be captured by the formula:
(sentence topic) — [verb phrase — (remainder of comment)].
It seems that Swartz’s concept of ‘prominence’ coincides with
Mithun’s ‘most newsworthy’ and Blake’s ‘focus’. Swartz (1987:42-43)
concludes that “Warlpiri too is a pragmatically ordered language. By
that is meant that there is no basic word order in Warlpiri from which
all other orderings are variations.” Hale (1992:76) has accepted
Swartz’s arguments here (along with Mithun’s observations on the
pragmatic ordering of Coos, Cayuga, and Ngandi)
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Jiwarli (p. 5)
Jiwarli is an Aboriginal language traditionally spoken in the north-west of
Western Australia, inland from the town of Carnarvon (see maps in Austin
1981a, 1988b and 1992b)
Morphologically, Jiwarli shows a rich system or case marking of the splitergative type (see Dixon 1979 and Silverstein 1976); formal marking
shows syncretism according to inherent lexical content (animacy) of the
marked nominal. The first-person singular pronoun ngatha (and
optionally the second-person pronoun nhurra) syncretise on a
nominative/accusative pattern, i.e. the forms for intransitive and transitive
subject functions (abbreviated following Dixon 1979 as S and A
respectively) fall together, while there is a different form (accusative) for
transitive object (P) function.8 Inanimate nominals and demonstratives
syncretise ergative and absolutive, i.e. there is one form (ergative) for A
function, but S and P functions are marked by a single form. All other
nominals have three distinct forms for A, S, and P functions (see also
Austin 1995)
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Jiwarli (p. 10)
It will be evident in examining the text extracts that positions early in the clause,
and especially initial position, are pragmatically important in Jiwarli. Initial
position is particularly prominent since it serves a number of functions — it is
where we find:
1. temporal adverbs such as kuwarti ‘now, today’ occur, serving as scene
setters.
2. connectives such as parru ‘and then’ and ngurnuparnti ‘after that’.
3. exclamations and vocatives.
4. new topics of a piece of text are introduced initially. Typically, Jiwarli text
episodes are bounded by the introduction of new topics in sentence-initial
position; these topics continue as agents or actors in subsequent sentences but
are left unexpressed in these sentences. This accounts for the majority of
incomplete sentences which contain just intransitive verbs or contain transitive
verbs with a P (but no A). 5. significant new information is introduced, including
new or important actions or events contributing to the main story line, new
locations where events take place, and new nontopics (typically new transitive
object nominals). The placing of new information in initial position accounts for
the high number of V S intransitive clauses and for the numbers of
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9. Jiwarli (p. 12)
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Thank you for your attention
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