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Language
Chapter 10
Outline
• Language and grammar
• Aphasia
• Speech errors
• Phrase-structure grammar
• Ambiguity
• Comprehension through Simulations
• Apply your knowledge
• Review
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Language
Language and Grammar
Language:
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•
•
•
For communication
It is symbolic: represented by spoken or written words
It is Generative: many different ways to construct sentences.
It is structured:
• Grammar: mental system of rules for producing correct sentences in a
language.
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Language and Grammar
Components of sentences:
• Semantics
• meaning
• Syntax
• grammar/ rules for sentence formation
• Morphemes
• smallest unit of meaning in a language, stem-words, affixes
• Lexicons
• words in memory
• Phonemes
• speech sounds
Language and Grammar
Morpheme breakdown for the word JUMPED
JUMP = stem-word
-ED = suffix
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Language and Grammar
Language is hierarchical:
Sentence:
The cat jumped the fence.
Phrase:
The cat (noun phrase), jumped the fence (verb phrase)
Word:
the, cat, jumped, the, fence
Morpheme:
the, cat, jump, -ed, the, fence
Phoneme:
ðə, kæt, dʒəmpt, ðə, fɛns
Language impairment
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Aphasia
Broca’s Aphasia:
Disorder resulting from damage to the left frontal lobe.
Characterized by limited speech production, intact semantic content.
Wernicke’s Aphasia:
Disorder resulting from damage to the left temporal lobe.
Characterized by fluent speech production, impaired semantic content.
Speech Errors
• Speech errors aka slips of the tongue
• Exchange errors occur within levels of the language hierarchy.
• Word exchange errors
• Morpheme exchange errors
• Phoneme exchange errors
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Speech Errors
• Word exchange errors:
• writing a letter to my mother  writing a mother to my letter
• Exchanged words are from the same syntactic category (nouns).
Speech Errors
• Morpheme exchange errors
• Thinly sliced  slicely thinned
• Words from different syntactic categories are exchanged but the suffix does
not move.
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Speech Errors
• Phoneme exchange errors
• York library  lork yibrary
• Initial consonants exchanged, and final consonant exchanged (also vowels
might be exchanged).
Phrase-Structure Grammar
to resolve ambiguity
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Phrase-Structure Grammar
• Rules to partition sentences into grammatical units.
1. Partition based into noun phrase and verb phrase
2. Partition noun phrase into determiner and noun
3. Partition verb phrase into verb and noun phrase (partition noun phrase)
Ambiguity
• Surface structure:
• Flying planes are dangerous.
• Deep structure
• Flying planes for a living can be dangerous
• Being around flying planes can be dangerous
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Ambiguity
Meaning of sentences might be ambiguous.
Resolve ambiguity:
• Using phrase-structure rules.
• Identify the deep structure of the sentence.
S
S
VP
NP
Noun
Verb
VP
NP
NP
Noun
Verb
Noun
They
are flying
The people are flying planes
planes
They
are
NP
Adj.
Noun
flying
planes
The items in the sky are flying planes
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Semantic Context
Semantic Context
Schwanenflugel and Shoben (1985)
Procedure:
• Read high-constraint context OR neutral context
• Presented with a string of letters and asked to complete a lexical decision task.
Results:
• Faster to decide locker was a word when it was presented after the high-constraint
context than when it was presented after the neutral context.
• slower to decide closet was a word when it was presented after the high-constraint
context than the neutral context because closet was an unexpected word.
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Semantic Context
High constraint sentence:
Sentence produces high expectation for a specific word.
John kept his gym clothes in a________.
Fast to respond to “LOCKER”
Slow to respond to “CLOSET”
Low constraint sentence:
Sentence produces expectation for a range of words.
The lady was a competent __________.
Semantic Context
• Ambiguous word (e.g., Bank: financial institution or side of a river)
• Activation of both concepts.
• Context helps to select the concept with the correct meaning quickly.
• He fished off the __________
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Reading comprehension
Reading and word ambiguity
• Skilled readers
• Large working memory capacity
• Keep both interpretations active long enough to resolve ambiguity of a word.
• Less-skilled readers
• Smaller working memory capacity
• interpretations are activated for a shorter time.
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Reading and word ambiguity
• Error recovery heuristic
• Strategy that is used to correct one’s comprehension of a sentence.
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•
•
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Reinterpret the word
Examine words that might have impaired comprehension.
Reading ahead for additional information.
Elaborating on the interpretation to make it more comprehensible.
Comprehension Through Simulation
Visual simulation hypothesis:
• Simulation helps us comprehend verbally described events.
• simulation can help with comprehension.
• Simulation can be used as the bases of our gestures.
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She pounded the
nail into the floor
time
She pounded the
nail into the floor
time
Review
• Language and grammar
• Aphasia
• Speech errors
• Phrase-structure grammar
• Ambiguity
• Comprehension through Simulations
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