9.

Language Content morphemes = the words that convey the

bulk of the meaning of a language
Language = the use of an organized means of
combining words in order to communicate Function morphemes add detail and nuance to the
meaning of the content morphemes or help the
Makes it possible to think about things and processes content morphemes to fit the grammatical context
people currently cannot see, hear, feel, touch, or smell
Lexicon = entire set of morphemes in a given
Communication = exchange of thoughts and feelings language or in a given person’s linguistic repertoire
(verbal or nonverbal)
The Basic Components of Sentences
Psycholinguistics = psychology of our language as it
interacts with the human mind Syntax = the systematic way in which words can be
combined and sequenced to form meaningful phrases
Considers production and comprehension of language and sentences
Linguistics = the study of language structure and A sentence comprises at least two parts: a noun
change phrase and a verb phrase
Neurolinguistics =the study of the relationship Understanding the Meaning of Words, Sentences,
among the brain, cognition, and language and Larger Text Units
Sociolinguistics = the study of the relationship Semantics = the study of meaning in a language
between social behavior and language
Coarticulation = simultaneous pronunciation of
Computational linguistics = the study of language more than one sound (Result of the anticipation of the
via computational methods next word)
Referent = the thing or concept in the real world that Speech segmentation = the process of trying to
a word refers to separate the continuous sound stream into distinct
Principle of conventionality: meanings of words are words
determined by conventions The View of Speech Perception as Ordinary
Principle of contrast: different words have different Template-matching or feature-detection processes
meanings
(1) Speech sounds are analyzed into their components
 Regularly structured
(2) Components are analyzed for patterns and
 Structured at multiple levels (sounds, meaning matched to a prototype or template
units, words, and phrases)
Require decision-making processes above and
The Basic Components of Words beyond feature detection or template matching
Phone = the smallest unit of speech, a single vocal cognitive and contextual factors influence perception
sound of speech (e.g. phonemic restauration effect)

Phoneme = the smallest unit of speech sound that Phonetic refinement theory
can be used to distinguish one utterance in a given  Start with the analysis of auditory sensations and
language from another shift to higher-level processing
Phonemics = the study of the particular phonemes  Identification of words on the basis of successively
Phonetics = the study of how to produce or combine paring down the possibilities for matches between
speech sounds or to represent them with written each of the phonemes and the words already known
symbols  The initial sound that establishes the set of possible
Morpheme = the smallest unit of meaning within a words people have heard need to be the first phoneme
particular language alone
 TRACE model  When retrieving the meaning of words, people
may rely on their perceptual features and the function
 Speech perception begins with three levels of
feature detection Understanding Sentences: Syntax

o Acoustic features o Phonemes o Words  Grammar = the study of language in terms of

noticing regular patterns (patterns relate to the
Speech perception is highly interactive  lower functions and relationships of words in a sentence)
levels affect higher levels and vice versa
 Prescriptive grammar: describes the “correct” ways
Phonemic restauration effect = integration of what is in which to structure the use of written and spoken
known with what is heard when perceiving speech language
 Similar to the visual phenomenon of closure  Descriptive language: describes the structures,
 Gestalt principles: symmetry proximity, similarity functions, and relationships of words in language

Categorical Perception = discontinuous categories Syntactical Priming = People tend to use syntactical
of speech sounds structures and read faster sentences that parallel the
structures of sentences they have just heard
Perception of speech sounds is experienced
categorically Sentence priming = independent of its grammatical
correctness, a sentence is rated more grammatically
People are better able to discriminate between two correct when a sentence with the same structure was
different categories than within categories presented before
People with reading disabilities: vice versa

The Motor Theory of Speech Perception = Speech Errors = When speech errors occur they do so
Movements of the speakers’ vocal tract are used to in grammatical correctness (nouns are switched for
perceive what is said nouns, verbs for verbs, propositions for propositions,
etc.)
 Motor parts of the cortex are involved in the
production and perception of speech

 McGurk effect = perceptual phenomenon that Analyzing Sentences: Phrase-Structure Grammar

demonstrates an interaction between hearing and
vision  Humans seem to have a mental mechanism for
classifying words according to syntactical categories
in speech perception, illusion occurs when the which is separate from the meaning of words
auditory component of one sound is paired with the
visual component of another sound, leading to the (1) Parsing: when composing sentences, people
perception of a third sound seem to analyze and divide them into functional
components
Understanding Meaning: Semantic
(2) People assign appropriate categories to each
 Denotation = strict dictionary definition of a word component
 Connotation = a word’s emotional overtones, (3) Syntax rules are used to construct grammatical
presuppositions, and other non-explicit meanings sequences of the parsed components
 Denotation and connotation together form the  Sentences are organized in hierarchical structures
meaning of a word of embedded phrases
 Being able to comprehend the conceptual
meanings of words is important
A New Approach to Syntax: Transformational Reading
Grammar
When Reading Is a Problem – Dyslexia
Relationship among different phrase structures that
involve transformations of elements within the Dyslexia = the difficulty in deciphering, reading, and
sentences (Chomsky, 1957) comprehending text

Transformational grammar involves transformational  Impaired processes:

rules (Chomsky, 1957)  Phonological awareness = sound structure of
Rules guide the ways in which an underlying spoken language
proposition can be arranged into a sentence  Phonological reading = reading words in isolation
 Deep structure = underlying syntactical structure  Phonological coding = remembering strings of
that links various phrase structures through phonemes that are sometimes confusing
various transformation rules  Lexical access = ability to retrieve phonemes from
 Surface structure = any of the various phrase long-term memory
structures that may result from such transformations  Kinds of dyslexia
Relationships between Syntactical and Lexical  Developmental dyslexia: difficulty learning the
Structures rules that relate letters to sound
 Each lexical item contains syntactical information,  Acquired dyslexia (brain injury)
which indicates
Perceptual Issues in Reading
The syntactical category of the items (noun, verb…)
 Two basic kinds of processes
The appropriate syntactical contexts in which the
particular morpheme may be used (pronouns as  Lexical processes: used to identify letters and
subjects, direct objects…) words; activate relevant information in memory about
these words
 Any idiosyncratic information about the syntactical
uses of the morpheme (treatment of irregular  Comprehension processes: used to make sense of
verbs…) By making the mental lexicon more the text as a whole
complex, the syntax is made simpler
Lexical Processes in Reading
Critics: too much focus on syntax, too less on
Fixations and Reading Speed
meaning
 When reading the eyes move in saccades as they
 Thematic roles = ways in which items can be used
fixate on successive clumps of text
in the context of communication
 Longer on longer words, unfamiliar words, and the
 Agent = “doer” of any action
last word in a sentence (“sentence wrap-up time”)
 Patient = direct recipient of the action
 Readers fixate up to about 80% of the content
 Beneficiary = indirect recipient of the action words in a text

 Instrument = means by which the action is  Extraction of useful information from a perceptual
implemented window of characters about four characters to the left
of a fixation point and about 14 or 15 characters to
 Location = place where the action occurs the right of it
 Source = where the action originated  Saccadic movements leap an average of about 7-9
 Goal = where the action is going characters between successive fixations
Lexical Access = the identification of a word that representation (representation is based on understand
allows people to gain access to the meaning of the of the meanings of words)
word from memory
 People with larger vocabularies are able to access
Interactive process: combines information of lexical information more rapidly than those with
different kinds (features of letters, the letters smaller vocabularies
themselves the words comprising the letters…)
Comprehending Unknown Words: Deriving Word
Interactive-activation model (McClelland, Meanings from Context
Rumelhart)
 Most of the vocabulary is learned indirectly
 Activation of lexical elements occurs at multiple through context information
levels: feature level, letter level, word level
 High-verbal people perform a deeper analysis of
 Activity at each level is interactive the possibilities for a new word’s meaning; they used
a well-formulated strategy for figuring out word
 Information at each level is represented separately meanings
in memory
 Low-verbal people seem to have no clear strategy
 Information passes from one level to another
bidirectionally Comprehending Ideas: Propositional Representations

 Bottom-up and top-down processes  People extract the fundamental idea from groups of
words and store them in a simplified representational
 Word-superiority effect: letters are read more form in working memory (Kintsch)
easily when they are embedded in words than when
they are presented either in isolation or with letters  Representational form: propositions
that do not form words (Reicher-Wheeler effect)
 Propositions that are thematically central to the
 Sentence-superiority effect: people take about understanding of a text (=macro propositions) will
twice as long to read unrelated words as to read
words in a sentence remain in working memory longer than propositions
that are irrelevant to the theme
 Context effects occur on a conscious and
preconscious level  Thematic structure = macrostructure

Intelligence and Lexical-Access Speed Comprehending Text Based on Context and Point
of View
 Lexical-access speed = the speed with which
people can retrieve information about words stored in  Varying the retrieval situations or cues can cause
long-term memory different details to be remembered

Understanding Conversations and Essay: Representing the Text in Mental Models

Discourse  Creation of a mental representation that contains
 Discourse involves units of language larger than the main elements of a text
individual sentences  Elements are simpler and more concrete than the
 Understanding discourse: knowledge of discourse text itself
structure and a greater context (physical, social,  To form mental models one must make at least
cultural…) tentative inferences about what is meant
Comprehending Known Words: Retrieving Word  Passages of text that lead to a single mental model
Meaning from Memory are easier to comprehend than are passages that may
Semantic encoding = the process by which people lead to multiple mental models
translate sensory information into a meaningful
 Bridging inference = an inference a reader/ Concepts = When fluent in more than one language,
listener makes when a sentence seems not to follow thought in influences according to which language is
directly from the sentence preceding it spoken or being read in at the moment

10. Language in Context  Language and thought interact with each other
throughout the life span
Language and Thought
Bilingualism and Dialects
Differences among Languages
Bilingualism – An Advantage or Disadvantage?
 Different order of subject, verb, object
Factors That Influence Second Language Acquisition
 Different ranges of grammatical inflections
 There do not appear to be critical periods for
The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis second-language acquisitions
 Linguistic = assertion that speakers of different  Age and proficiency in a language are negatively
languages have differing cognitive systems and that correlated
these different cognitive systems influence the ways
in which people think about the world  The kinds of learning experiences that facilitate
second-language acquisition should match the
 Language may not determine thought but just context
influence it (facilitates it)
and uses for the second language once it is acquired
 Language affects perception
Bilingualism: One System or Two?
 Language affects encoding, storage and retrieval
 Single system hypothesis: two languages are
Linguistic Relativity or Linguistic Universals? represented in just one system or brain region
 Linguistic universals = characteristic patterns  Dual-system hypothesis: two languages are
across all languages of various cultures represented somehow in separate systems of the mind
Colors = A systematic pattern seems universally to  Individuals who suffered from brain injury:
govern color naming across languages recovery of one or both languages seem contingent
 All languages take their basic color terms from a on age
set of 11 color names: black, white, red, yellow, of acquisition of the second language and on pre-
green, blue, brown, purple, pink, orange, gray incident language proficiency
 When only some of the color names are used, the  Some aspects of two languages may be represented
naming falls into a hierarchy of five levels singly, other aspects may be represented separately
 Black-white  Yellow, green, blue  Purple, pink, Language Mixtures and Change
orange, gray
 Prolonged contact between people of two different
 Red  Brown language groups  sharing of the same vocabulary
 Color names can have an impact on perception and  pidgin = language that has no native speakers
cognition
 Pidgin can develop into a distinct linguistic form:
Verbs and Grammatical Gender own grammar  becomes a creole
 To be (Spanish vs. English)  Modern creoles may resemble an evolutionarily
 Put in/ put on – tight fit/ loose fit (English vs. early form of language (=protolanguage)
Korean)  Dialect = regional variety of a language
 Gender of objects (German vs. Spanish) distinguished by features such as vocabulary, syntax,
and pronunciation
 Linguicism = a stereotype based on dialect Comparison view: highlights importance of
comparison
Neuroscience and Bilingualism
Anomaly view: emphasizes the dissimilarity
 Learning a second language  increase of gray
matter in the left inferior parietal cortex  positively Domain-interaction view: integrates aspects of
comparison and anomaly view
correlated with proficiency
Another view: metaphors are an non-literal form of
 Negative correlation between age of acquisition class-inclusion statements
and density in the left inferior parietal cortex
Language in a Social Context
Slips of the Tongue
 Pragmatics = the study of how people use
Inadvertent linguistic error may occur at any level of language
linguistic analysis
 Use of language changes in response to contextual
Indicate that that language of thought differs cues
somewhat from the language through which thought
is expressed  Proxemics = the study of interpersonal distance or
proximity
 Anticipation = usage of an element before it is
appropriate in the sentence Interpersonal space is important in all kinds of
interactions
 Perseveration = usage of language that was
appropriate earlier 10.2.1 Speech Acts, Direct Speech Acts

 Substitution = one element is substituted by  Speech acts: address the question of what you can
another accomplish with speech

 Reversal/ transposition = switch of two elements  Five basic categories based on the purpose of the
acts (Searles’s taxonomy: Table 10.1)
 Spoonerisms = reversal of initial sounds of two
words Classifies almost any statement that might be made

 Malapropism = one word is replaced by another Shows different kinds of things speech can
that is similar in sound but different in meaning accomplish

 Insertions or deletion/ blending of sounds Shows the close relationship between language
structure and language function
Metaphorical Language
Indirect Speech Acts: Types
 Juxtapose two nouns in a way that positively
asserts their similarities, while not disconfirming Four basic ways
their dissimilarities
 Asking of making statements about abilities
 Four key elements: items being compared ways in
which the items are related  Stating a desire

tenor: topic of the metaphor  Stating a future action

vehicle: way in which the tenor is described in terms  Citing reasons

ground: set of the similarities between tenor and  Often anticipate what potential obstacles the
vehicle respondent might pose

tension: set of dissimilarities  Indirect requests that ask permission are judged to
be the most polite
 Indirect requests that speak to an obligation are  Females: seek to establish a connection between
judged as the most impolite the two participants, to give support and confirmation
to others, to reach consensus through communication

Do Animals Have Language?

Pinker’s Theory of Indirect Speech
 Chimpanzees = Able to use sign language
Communication is always a mixture of cooperation
and conflict Not as structures and organized as human language

Indirect speech gives the speaker the chance to voice Not spontaneously acquired
an ambiguous request that the listener can accept or
decline without reaction adversely to it The gorilla Koko = Can use about 1000 signs

 Indirect speech can serve three purposes Can communicate effectively with humans,
expressing desires and thoughts, Evidence suggests
 Plausible deniability he is able to understand and use humor

 Relationship negotiation  Seems to be able to use language in a novel way

(combining signs in new ways, forming entirely to
 Language as a digital medium of indirect as well as signs)
direct communication
 The parrot Alex = Could produce over 200 words
Characteristics of Successful Conversations
Could express a variety of complex concepts
 Conversations thrive on the basis of a cooperative (present, absent, zero-like concept)
principle: people seek to communicate in ways that
make it easy for our listener to understand what they  Evidence suggests he was capable of novel
mean combinations of words to form new ways of
expressing concepts
Successful conversations follow four maxims/
conversational postulattes (Grice, 1967) Aphasia

Quantity  Aphasia = impairment of language functioning

Quality caused by damage to the brain
Relation
Manner Wernicke’s Aphasia =Caused by damage to
Wernicke’s area
Gender and Language Notable impairment in the understanding of spoken
 Males: political views, sources of personal pride, words and sentences
what they like about the other person, object  Involves the production of sentences that have the
properties, impersonal topics basic structure of language spoken but make no sense
 Females: feelings toward parents, friends, fears; Broca’s Aphasia = Caused by damage to Broca’s
disclose more about themselves, psychological and area
social processes
Production of agrammatical speech at the same time
 Differences in conversational style largely center that verbal comprehension ability is largely preserved
on differing understandings of the goals of
communication Global Aphasia = Combination of highly impaired
comprehension and production of speech
 Males: world as a hierarchical social order in
which the purpose of communication is to negotiate Caused by lesions to Broca’s and Wernicke’s areas
for the upper hand, to preserve independence, and to
avoid failure
Anomic Aphasia = Involves difficulties in naming
objects or in retrieving words (Sometimes specific
categories of things cannot be recalled)

Autism = a developmental disorder characterized by

abnormalities in social behavior, language, and
cognition