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Language
2
Intro
Chapter 9:
Language
Language &
Cognition
Structure
Comprehension
& Production
Neuro
Phonology
Pragmatics
Modularity
Morphology
Whorf
Syntax
Perception
Semantics
Errors
Sentence
Word
Meaning
Introduction
3
• What is language?
Text
Reading
Story
Grammars
Characteristics of Language
4
• Hockett proposed 14 common characteristics of
language, including following:
– Semanticity: conveys meaning
– Arbitrariness: meaning unrelated to form
– Discreteness: no continuous variables (saying
things louder doesn’t change meaning)
– Productivity: infinite possibilities (if Martians landed
tomorrow, we could talk about them)
– Displacement: can describe things that aren’t there
(situational freedom)
– Duality of Patterning: reuse simple meaningless
units to create meaningful utterances
– Organized system of combining words in order to
communicate
– Spoken, written, signed, …
• Communication
– Exchange of thoughts and feelings: language +
gestures, glances, handshakes, etc.
• Language universal
– Every culture has language
– Rules followed (but learning grammar difficult)
– Common features across languages: sounds,
meaning, syntax, …
– Deaf children invent language
Structure of Language
Grice
Maxims
5
A simple English sentence
6
• Language complex process requires analysis
at multiple levels (F9.1 +1)
– Phonemes: sounds of language
– Morphemes: smallest meaningful units
– Syntax: rules for putting sentences together
– Semantics: rules to associate meaning with
sentences
– Pragmatics: social assumptions of language
• Many regularities and rules of which most
users not even aware
– Much Implicit Learning in language
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Phonology
7
Some English Phonemes
8
• Two approaches
– Phonetics: speech sounds and how produced
– Phonology: way sounds combined & altered
• Phoneme
– Smallest unit of sound that makes meaning
different: e.g., beat-seat, coat-coal, fit-fat…
– Combined to create words
– English about 40 phonemes: more than letters
– Table 9.1 shows some (+1)
– Number varies across languages: some sounds
not present in some languages (e.g., r/l Japanese)
• Speakers control structures
in vocal tract
• Vowels: continuous air flow,
sustainable
• Consonants, vary in
Producing
Phonemes
Phonological
“Rules”
• Native speakers
learn certain
implicit rules,
such as how to
pronounce
plural and past
phonemes at
end of words
• Experience and Discrimination of Speech Sounds
– Hindi has two ts that sound identical to English speakers
– All born to recognize speech sounds from any language,
but without support from environment, capacity is lost
100
90
80
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
Hindispeaking
adults
6-8
months
8-10
months
Vowels
9
– Place of articulation: /p/
bilabial, /th/ dental
– Manner of articulation: air
flow stop total=/t/ or
partial=/s/
– Voicing: vocal cord vibration
(voiced) or not (voiceless)
/b/ vs. /p/ /v/ vs. /f/ /z/ vs. /s/
%
Correct
Consonants
10-12
months
Englishspeaking
adults
11
• /s/ cats, tips, laughs, …
• /z/ dads, bibs, dogs, …
• /ez/ churches, kisses,
judges, …
10
• /t/ kissed, washed,
coughed, …
• /d/ loved, jogged, teased,
…
• /ed/ patted, waded,
seeded, …
Categorical Perception of
Phonemes
12
• Categorical Perception
– Perceive phonemes as falling into discrete
categories of sound
– /b/, /d/, /g/: Liberman et al (1957); Lisker &
Abramson (1970) used synthetic speech and
varied acoustic parameter in continuous way to
produce gradual change from /b/ to /g/
– Labeling task: slide 13
– Comparison task: slides 14 & 15
– Both show evidence of categorical perception
Infants from English-speaking homes
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100
90
80
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
100
90
80
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
14
Even transition steps, but only reliably perceive 4 vs. 5 as
different
1 vs 2 2 vs 3 3 vs 4 4 vs 5 5 vs 6 6 vs 7 7vs 8
8
15
“Ba”= 1,2,3,4
“Pa”= 5,6,7,8,9
Theories of Speech Perception
16
• Two views
14
– Speech special
– Speech just another form of auditory perception
Results for another 2600 Class
# “Same” responses
Categorical Discrimination
13
Percent Correct Discriminations
% "ga" responses
ba - ga
12
10
• Motor Theory (speech special)
– Hearing speech sound
activates representation of
how sound produced
– Specialized module
– Perceive categorically because produced that way
8
6
4
2
• Auditory Theory
0
– Regular auditory processes
– Match speech to closest prototype: various /b/ sounds
still sound like /b/ more than /g/
Ba1 vs. Ba2 vs. Ba3 vs. Ba4 vs. Pa5 vs. Pa6 vs. Pa7 vs.
Ba3
Ba4
Pa5
Pa6
Pa7
Pa8
Pa9
• Morphemes
– Composed of phonemes
– Smallest unit of language that
has meaning
• dog, table, bake
• -ed, -ing,
• but not: /p/, /st/, cats
• Free morphemes:
morphemes that stand alone
– sleep, blue, at, the
• Bound morphemes: need
to be combined with other
morphemes
– -s, -ful, -ness
Morphology
17
Morpheme practice
Unbreakable
Free: break
Bound: un-, -able
Mary unlocked her
car.
Free: Mary, lock,
car
Bound: un-, -ed
Inflectional Morphology
• Changes usage without
altering basic meaning
• Usually small grammatical
changes
• Tense
– bake → baked, run →
running
– English (usually) signals
past tense using rule that
adds -d, -t, or -Id
– raised /rezd/, baked /bekt/,
tasted /testId/
• Number: add -s, -z, -Iz
– cats /kaets/, dogs /dagz/,
horses /horsIz/
Derivational Morphology 18
• Morphemes change word’s
meaning
• Usually changes
grammatical class
• e.g., -ly creates adverbs
from adjectives
– quick (adj)
quick-ly
(adv)
– absolute (adj)
absolute-ly (adv)
• -able creates adjectives
from verbs
– use (v)
use-able (adj)
• -ness…
– happy (adj)
happiness (n)
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Productivity of Morphology
19
• Speakers can create huge words using morphology
Learning English
Morphology
•
– -ing “mommy is
running”
– plural -s “two cats”
– possessive –s “daddy’s
socks”
– third person -s “the girl
laughs”
– irregular past “the girl
took the ball”
– regular past –ed “the
dolly danced with me”
– antidisestablishmentarianism
• easier example: uncomfortable
• [un [comfort[able]]]
– comfort (n)
– comfort-able (adj)
– un-comfortable (adj)
• Note speakers always process morphemes in pairs
– i.e., add one morpheme at a time
• Iterative process
– Morphology can apply repeatedly
Children & Productivity?
• Order of acquisition
relatively fixed across
children
20
Some interesting
anomalies
– Stage 1: correct past
tense for frequent but
irregular verbs
– Stage 2: start to use
rule and applied
(wrongly) to irregular
verbs (comed, camed)
– Stage 3: correct,
including exceptions
21
22
23
24
• Morphology: Appears
rule-based
– walk-ed, talk-ed…
– talk-ing, break-ing…
– table-s, cat-s…
This is a wug.
• Productive
– emails, blogging,
unfriended
• Do children learn
productive rules?
Here is another one.
There are two _____.
– Or just memorize?
• How to test this? Berko
(1958) wug test
• Children produce
plurals for new words
• Not memorization
– Learned morpheme
for plurality
• Evidence for
productivity
– As early as 3 years
• Order ( )
– Not due just to
frequency in parent
speech (italic #s), but
other qualities (+1)
What Wug
Study Shows
2
3
5
1
7
6
4
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Syntax
• Syntax or Grammar
– Concerns structure of sentences
• Sentences have structure, more than words stuck together
haphazardly
• Sentences consist of constituents (parts) and syntax concerns
rules about ordering constituents
– Two requirements
• Valid for legal sentences AND invalid for illegal sentences
– Many speakers not aware of rules of syntax
• What makes these sentences different?
26
• Native speakers appreciate which of following
are valid utterances
•
•
•
•
•
•
1. She’s a red-haired student of physics
2. She’s a physics student with red hair
3. She’s a red-haired physics student
4. She’s a physics red-haired student
5. She’s a student of physics with red hair
6. She’s a student with red hair of physics
• What kind of syntactical rules do we “know”
that allows for such discrimination?
– Bob chases Mary vs. Mary chases Bob
– The intern who the president liked left vs. The intern
who liked the president left
Phrase Structure Rules
Syntax Example
25
27
28
• Sentences are made up of phrases
– In English, Noun Phrase and Verb Phrase, in that order
– Sentence NP + VP
• Phrases consist of words and phrases
– NP
(DET) + (ADJ) + N
S
NP+VP
• A noun phrase is made up of an optional determiner, an
optional adjective, and a noun
– VP
(AUX) + V + (NP) + (ADV)
• At least one verb and whatever the verb acts on (if anything)
• Phrase structure rules that underly a sentence can
be conceptualized as Phrase Structure Tree (+1)
NP
Psychological Reality of PS Rules
29
• Sentence memory studies
– Transition Error Probability: in learning sentences,
people make more errors or stop at boundary
between NP and VP
• Reading Pauses
– Pauses longer and more distinct at phrase
structure boundaries
• Reaction Time
– RT to initiate saying memorized sentence depends
on syntactic complexity of sentence (+1)
(DET)+(ADJ)+N VP
• RT to initiate saying
memorized
sentences varying in
syntactic complexity
(AUX)+V+(NP)+(ADV)
30
– S-The river …
– LL-The large and
raging river …
– LM-The river near
their city …
– LH-The river that
stopped flooding …
– …empties into the
bay that borders the
little town
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Transformational Grammar
31
32
• Sometimes sentences are ambiguous
– Syntactic ambiguity
• The kids saw the man with the telescope
• Visiting relatives can be boring
• The shooting of the hunters was terrible
• Transformational Grammar (Chomsky)
– Two levels of structure
• Surface Structure: order of words in sentence
• Deep Structure: tree diagram depicts abstract
grammatical relationships underlying
sentence
• Transformational Rules: convert different
phrase structures (e.g., active
passive)
– Ambiguous sentences have multiple
possible deep structures (+1)
• How can theories explain
following?
– Anomaly: Why can’t we
say “Chocolate ice cream
can drive a car”?
– Self-contradiction: Why
can’t we say “My cat is
not an animal”?
– Synonymy: Why does
“John is not old enough”
mean the same as “John
is too young”?
– Entailment: Why does
“Pat is my aunt” mean
that Pat is female?
• Explained partly by
Semantic Memory and
Concepts & Categories
Semantics
33
• Syntax also important
for understanding
• Social rules of language
– Do not interrupt, Stay on Topic, …
– Language Conventions, such as Greetings (“hello”)
• The professor failed the
student vs.
• The student failed the
professor
• More in Language
Comprehension &
Production
– What you’re talking about
– Who you are
– Who you’re talking to
• Searle’s Speech Act Theory: different types of
utterances entail different responses
– Assertives: It’s cold today.
– Directives: Open the window. (It’s hot in here.)
– Commissives: I promise to study tonight.
– Expressives: I thank you for helping me.
– Declarations: You’re fired.
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36
– “Sally dropped the ball on that one”
• After a baseball game
34
• Context matters
– Syntax & Meaning
• Pragmatics includes non-literal (i.e., figurative)
aspects of meaning
Pragmatics
• Pragmatic
Language
Observation
Scale ()
vs. After a job interview
– Metaphor, Irony, Sarcasm, …
• Pragmatics often exploited in advertising
– Implications: ads may not explicitly say that their product
will cure your problems, but certainly implied (“Are you
tired of feeling run-down?”)
• Pragmatics may vary
across cultures
– How close to stand to other
person
– Nonverbal cues: tone, facial
expression, …
• Develop early in childhood,
for typical children (, +1)
• Pragmatic Rating
Scale ( )
– Autism Spectrum
Disorder, Fragile X,
Down Syndrome,
Typical
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Language Comprehension &
Production
37
– Complexities of auditory perception of speech
• Speech Errors in Production
• How do we do it?
– Categorical perception: pa / da as function of VOT
– Visual cues help identify sounds
– Spoonerisms and other speech errors
• Retrieving Meaning of Single Words
– Direct and Indirect Access
• Sentence Comprehension
• Comprehending Text
• Gricean Maxims of Cooperative Conversation
39
41
“I stubbed my” …. TOE idea
• Meaning-Related Errors
– I stubbed my finger.
• Rarely both, which suggests
different stages of production
body part
toe
finger
– Use speech context
• Phoneme Restoration Effect (+2)
Phonemic Restoration Effect
40
– It was found that the *eel was on the axle.
– It was found that the *eel was on the axle.
– It was found that the *eel was on the shoe.
– It was found that the *eel was on the orange.
– It was found that the *eel was on the table.
– People “hear” w, h, p, and m sounds without
realizing they were missing.
– Context is very helpful!
Phonemes depend on
surrounding context ( )
Speech Production Errors
• Talking face-to-face easier than phone
• McGurk Effect: mouth movements affect perception of
sound demo: Auditory ba paired with visual ba/va/tha/ga
produces perception of ba/va/tha/da
• Replace phoneme with cough (*)
No clear break between
phonemes ()
– Sue keeps food in her vesk. d v
– Keep your hands off my weet
speas. s shifts
– We need to wash the pons and
pats. Exchange sounds
38
– Speech is continuous. No clear pause or break in
sound between words. (F9.4 +1)
– Phoneme sound depends on context (F9.5 +1)
• Speech Perception
• Sound Substitutions and
Movements
Speech Perception
• Complex perceptual task
Meaning & Single Words
42
• How do we recognize individual words?
• Have already discussed some relevant
theories and findings
• Priming Effects in Lexical Decision Task (LDT)
– Related Prime
Target
– Faster than Unrelated Prime
Target
– Neely (+1) proposed two processes
• Two general models (+2)
– Direct-Access: Word Semantic Representation
– Indirect-Access (Phonological):
Word Phonology Semantic Representation
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Neely & Semantic Priming
• Two processes
– Spreading activation: fast
– Expectancy-driven process: slow
– Instructed subjects to expect DIFFERENT
category (switch instructions)
– Varied Prime to Target delay: 250ms or 750ms
– Results below: 0 no effect, + faster, - slower
Target
Prime
Expect
foot, … window, …
Building Body
250ms
0
+
750ms
+
-
Sentence Comprehension
– Decompose syntactic structure of sentence
– Assign syntactic categories to words
– But sentences not just chains of words
• Time course of Sentence comprehension?
– On-line: build mental trees as we listen word by word
– Off-line: wait for entire sentence, then parse
• Evidence favors On Line processing
– People process single phrase or clause, then discard
exact words and retain meaning
– Ambiguity (+1)
– Garden Path Sentences (+2)
– Word pairs with same sounds but different spellings &
meanings: reed & read; buy & bye
– Lexical Decision Time (word vs non-word judgment)
slower for homophones, especially low frequency words
• Van Orden (1987)
– Category verification task: Flower
• Tulip (member of category)
• Rows (homophone of member of category) – MORE ERRORS
• Robs (orthography similar to member of category)
• Dual Access Model
Sentence Ambiguity
48
The girl gave the letter
to her boyfriend
to the postman
• Garden Path Sentences
• The cotton shirts are made from comes from Arizona.
• The man who hunts ducks out on weekends.
• Longer fixation time at first word that disambiguates the
sentence
• Selective regressions to prior parts of sentence
46
• Various forms of ambiguity
– Syntactic Ambiguity: discussed earlier (deep structure)
– Phonetic Ambiguity
• Sounds in sentence activate multiple irrelevant words
• Remember a spoken sentence … Ream ember us poke
can cent tense …
• Suggests on-line disambiguation (word selection)
– Lexical Ambiguity (homonyms)
• They found a bug in the room.
• Both meanings initially activated (e.g., insect / spy) even
when preceding context strongly primes one sense
(Swinney, 1979), but after a few syllables (750-1000 ms)
only relevant meaning remains activated
47
– People rely on assumptions about underlying
structure, but may need to revise given later
information (+1)
– Evidence that people build models (interpretations)
as words are heard (i.e., on-line)
44
• Evidence that phonology activated?
• Homophones
45
• How do we comprehend sentences?
• “Parsing”
Sentence Comprehension
Direct vs. Indirect access
43
S
VP
NP
V
The
girl
PP
NP
gave
NP
P
PP
the letter
NP
to
the
P
postman
NP
to
her
boyfriend
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Sentence Comprehension
49
– Analyses of syntax and semantics are
Independent and Serial
– Syntactic structure
Semantics
– Traditional explanation for Garden Path Sentences
• Interactionist view
Same syntax but differ in plausibility of meaning:
Takes longer to comprehend
As the woman edited the magazine amused
all the reporters.
plausible
As the woman sailed the magazine amused
all the reporters.
– Syntax and Semantics processed simultaneously
– Two views tested using Garden Path Sentences
(+1)
just silly!
51
• Research on larger units of language has focused
on written text
• Implicates Reading processes
• Reading different than spoken language
• Eye Fixations (demo +1)
Reading
52
– Possible to monitor eye movements as people are
reading text
– Feels continuous, but …
– Series of Saccades (jumps) and Fixations
• Saccade: move from one point to another; no information
processing
• Fixations: brief pauses to take in information; length depends
on task and properties of material
• Speech evolutionary, universal, fast, on-line, …
– Human creation: about 3500 BC
– Not universal: some cultures no written language
(orthography), dyslexics, illiteracy, …
– Learned later, effortful, takes years to be fluent, …
– Spaces between words, fonts more uniform, …
– Reading spread across space, speech over time
– Reader controls rate of input of text
– More supplemental cues for speech (pragmatics)
Eye Fixations (Box 9.2)
50
• Two garden path sentences (i.e., magazine
initially object of verb), but one more difficult
• Shows semantic influence on syntax
• How do Syntax and Semantics (Meaning)
interact?
• Autonomous view
Comprehending Text Passages
Interaction of Syntax & Semantics
– Regressive saccades
• Backtracking (engine contains)
– Good vs. Poor readers
• Size of Saccades & Regressions (below), Length of Fixations
Good
Poor
53
Eye Fixations
54
• Determinants of Eye Fixation duration
– Content vs. Function words: fixate longer on
meaningful, less on function words (the, or, an)
– Only about 65% of words fixated: skip some
• Function, High frequency, Shorter
• Highly constrained by context
– Familiarity: Word Frequency and Length
– Slower to read sentences with higher Propositional
Complexity (units of meaning), not necessarily
sentences with more words (F9.6, +1)
– Relations between sentences: “given” vs “new”
information; best when “given” still in memory
• Sometimes requires inferences (e.g., Bridging Inferences)
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Eye Movements
56
• Eyes always attending ahead in direction of
reading
• Perceptual span
– Nearby letters that eyes see when fixated
– English: 3 to left, 15 to right
– Hebrew: 15 to left, 3 to right
– Influenced by difficulty of text
• Parafoveal
– Word length determination: fixate or skip?
• Perhaps why Dyslexics make smaller saccades
– Also some pre-processing of upcoming words?
• Lower fixation time for words viewed parafoveally
• Context important for
reading and
understanding text
57
Story Grammar
– Ambiguous story (Box 93): “If the balloons popped,
the sound wouldn’t be able
to carry since everything
would be too far away
from the correct floor. …”
– Memory much better if
picture shown before story,
but NOT if after story.
– Helps develop a coherent
mental representation.
Maxims of Conversation
59
• Grice proposed four maxims for cooperative
conversation
– Quantity: Make contribution just as informative as
it needs to be, no more, no less
– Quality: Be truthful, or at least make it clear when
you are being sarcastic!
– Relation: Be relevant
– Manner: Be clear, avoid ambiguity, be brief
• Inferences made about people who violate the
maxims
58
• Script for stories
• Better memory
for stories that
adhere to story
grammar
• Stories “revised”
in memory to fit
script
• Higher level
elements
recalled better
(see Box 9.4)
Language and Cognition
60
• Modularity hypothesis
(Fodor)
– Language module set apart
from other thought processes
(at least some aspects of
language separate)
– Language domain specific:
operates with certain kinds of
input and not others
– Informationally encapsulated:
operates independent of other
cognitive processes (modules)
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Linguistic Relativity (Whorfian)
Hypothesis
61
• In contrast to Modular Hypothesis, Whorf
(1956) and others proposed that languages
affect how people experience world and behave
– Whorf studied North American Indian languages
– Proposed that language affects how people
organize information
– Language used to pass knowledge across
generations
– No words for concept = no concept
62
Colour
Studies
– Colours vary continuously
in wavelength of light ()
– Languages vary in # colour
names (+1)
– Americans many color
names and Dani only 2
– Tested colour perception,
discrimination, & memory
– NO differences??
• Universal model of colour
perception?
• No words for green & blue, cannot talk about difference
• No spatial terms, cannot use maps
Color Terms Across Languages
• Much research on colour
naming, perception, &
memory (Rosch, 1972)
63
More Studies on Colour
64
• Recent studies report subtle effects
• Roberson: study of Berinmo (+1)
– Recognition Memory Task
• Shown colour chip and 30 seconds later tried to pick
chip from array of colour chips
• Tended to select chips with same name in Berinmo,
rather than English colour “categories”
– Similarity Judgments
• Shown 3 colour chips and choose which one least like
others
• Excluded chip with different name even if closer to one
of others on colour spectrum: e.g., NOL1, NOL2, WOR
English (top) & Berinmo (bottom)
65
• Due to verbal
encoding?
– Study colour
chip
– Interference
task: Verbal
(colour names)
or Visual (colour
chips)
– Test colour
memory
– Betweencategory effect
disappears
66
Between Category
Within Category
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• Winawer (2007)
67
– Russian speakers distinguish lighter (goluboy?) &
darker (siniy?) blues
– Select same colour chip, faster for between-category
– Spatial or Verbal distracting task
– Verbal: Between-category effect disappears
Relativity Conclusions
68
• Myth: “Eskimo has gazillion words for snow”
English
– Actually Inuktitut
– Not multiple words that mean snow, but multiple
ways to describe snow
– Single Inuktitut words vs. English sentence
– Tiiturumavit? Would you like some tea?
• Strong version of Whorfian hypothesis
probably not correct
• But more subtle effects of language, perhaps
only when language actually used during task
Russian
Neuropsychology & Language
• Localization of Language
69
70
Seeing
– What areas of brain contribute to
language functioning?
• Evidence from cases of Aphasia
Listening
– Areas shown on next slide
– Broca’s area: Damage associated with
difficulties producing spoken language
(expressive aphasia).
– Wernicke’s area: Damage associated1
with difficulties comprehending spoken
language (receptive aphasia).
Pronouncing
Generating
• More specific localization (right)
• Language often localized
in left hemisphere
71
– Varies with handedness
– RH: 96% left, 4% right
– LH: 70% right, 15% left,
15% both hemispheres
72
• Relevant findings distributed throughout notes
• Kimura
– Dichotic listening shows
right ear advantage, but not
in people with language in
Left Hemisphere
– Language organized
somewhat differently for
males and females
Individual Differences
& Applications
• Individual Differences
RH Language
– Effects of Age, Culture (Language), Psychological
Disorders, …
• Applications
LH Language
– Implications for Education, Clinical
Neuropsychology, …
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