Cognitive Processes
PSY 334
Chapter 11 – Language
Structure
Linguistics
 Linguistics – studies the structure of
natural language.
 Psycholinguistics – studies the way
people process natural language.
 Linguistics focuses on:

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Productivity – an infinite number of
utterances are possible in any language.
Regularity – utterances are systematic in
many ways.
Grammar
 Words can be combined into trillions of
novel sentences, but not randomly.

From runners physicians prescribing a
states joy rests what thought most.
 Grammar is a set of rules that generates
acceptable sentences and rejects
unacceptable ones.
Three Kinds of Grammar
 Syntax – word order and inflection
(where emphasis is placed).

Did hit the girl the boys?
 Semantics – meaning of sentences.

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Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.
Sincerity frightened the cat.
 Phonology – sound structure of
sentences (pronunciation).
Prescriptive vs Descriptive
 Linguistic intuition – speakers can make
judgments about utterances without
knowing the explicit rules.
 Ambiguities:
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They are cooking apples – structural.
I am going to the bank – lexical.
 Everyday speech (performance) does
not conform to linguistic theory
(competence).
Phrase Structure
 Important to both linguistics and
psychology of language processing.
 Phrase structure – the hierarchical
division of the sentence into phrases.
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Verb phrase
Noun phrase
 Rewrite rules – rules for generating
sentences out of the parts.
Pauses
 When people produce sentences, they
generate a phrase at a time.
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Pauses occur at the boundaries of
phrases.
Pauses are longer at boundaries of major
phrases compared to minor ones.
 Pauses occur at the smallest level above
the word that bundles coherent semantic
information (meaning).
Speech Errors
 Errors show the reality of phrase
structure.

When people repeat themselves they tend
to repeat or correct a whole phrase.
 Anticipation – an early phoneme is
changed to a later phoneme (toin coss)

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Occurs within a phrase – 13% across
phrases
Word errors can occur across phrases –
83%
Transformations
 Some constructions seem to violate
phrase hierarchy:

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Whom is the dog chasing down the street?
The dog is chasing whom down the street?
 A transformational grammar has been
proposed which hypothesizes a deep
structure that guides such violations.

This idea about grammar is controversial.
Behaviorist Approaches
 Watson – utterances are learned
behaviors reinforced by environment.

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Thinking is just subvocal speech or other
body movement.
Smith et al. used curare to inhibit muscle
movements and still were able to think.
 Evidence that thought is more than
language comes from memory studies.

Animals are able to think.
Whorfian Hypothesis
 Linguistic determinism – the claim that
language strongly determines thought or
perceptions of the world.


Do eskimos have more words for snow?
Do they perceive snow differently because
of it?
 Rosch’s study of Dani color cognition:

Focal vs non-focal colors.
Navajo-Speaking Children
 Compared Navajo-speaking children
with English-speaking Navajo children.

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Yellow stick, blue rope, yellow rope.
Different verb form used for rigid items
compared to flexible ones.
 Navajo-speakers preferred form to color.
 English-speaking children from Boston
preferred form to color
 Evidence does not support Whorf’s idea.
Language and Thought
 Developmentally and evolutionarily,
thought occurs before language.

Language depends on thought, not vice
versa.
 Language is shaped to fit the thoughts it
must communicate.

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Propositions are reflected in phrases.
Colors determined by visual system.
Subject always precedes object in
sentence.
Modularity Position
 Chomsky, Fodor propose that language
and thought are independent of each
other.

Separate linguistic module processes
language – encapsulated.
 Is language acquired using special
processes?
 Does language work without using
general cognitive processes?
Language Acquisition
 By age 10 children learn all major rules
of a natural language, implicitly.
 Children learn in the same manner all
over the world:
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From birth – increasing vocalizations.
6 mo – babbling – sounds with intonation.
1 yr – first one-word utterances (concrete).
1-1/2 to 2 yrs – two-word utterances,
telegraphic speech (no function words).
Language Acquisition (Cont.)
 Children start out speaking all kinds of
utterances imperfectly:
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Do not distinguish singular and plural.
Later, add s to everything, without
recognizing irregular forms (foot, feet).
Difficulties with transformational word order
Difficulty comprehending some forms
(John promised Bill to leave.)
 By 6 yrs, 10,000 words, many special
cases.
Irregular Past Tenses
 Does a child learn a past tense rule or
are the past and present tenses learned
as an association (kick, kicked)?
 Sequence of learning answers this
question:
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First, use irregular correctly – sang.
Second, over-generalize rule – singed.
Third, learn irregular form as an exception
and use it correctly again – sang.
Connectionist Models
 Rumelhart & McClelland used a PDP
model to produce this developmental
sequence using associations not rules.
 Pinker’s criticism:

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Too many irregulars needed during training
Production of “membled” for “mailed.”
The way a past tense is formed depends
on its meaning, not just its base word –
ring/rang vs ring/ringed.
Neural Evidence
 Studying language acquisition may not
settle the question.
 Some people with aphasias are impaired
forming irregular past tenses, others
regular past tenses (Broca’s area).
 PET imaging shows activity in Broca’s
area only when processing regular past
tenses.
 Only regular verbs may be rule-based.
Language is Not Taught
 Children are not directly taught language

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No feedback about their errors.
Learning is inductive – infer acceptable
utterances from experience.
 How do they avoid being misled by
wrong sentences they hear?
 Motherese use is uncorrelated with
language development.
 Language develops under adversity too.
Critical Period
 Do young children learn a second
language faster?

Controlling for amounts and types of
exposure and motivation, older children
(11+) learn faster than younger ones.
 However, mastery of the fine points,
speaking without an accent, depends on
learning at a younger age.
 It is better to learn a language before 10.
Language Universals
 Chomsky – special innate mechanisms
underlie the acquisition of language.
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Competence not performance.
Study by seeking universals across
languages.
 Universals -- adjectives appear near the
nouns they modify.

May be based on cognitive constraints not
language mechanisms.
Parameter Setting
 Variability among natural languages can
be accounted for by setting about 100
parameters.
 Language learning consists of acquiring
the settings for these parameters.

Also, acquiring vocabulary.
 Pro-drop parameter:
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I go to the cinema (does not drop pronoun)
Voy al cinema esta noche (drops pronoun).