Language

1. Language • Psycholinguistics • study of mental processes and structures that underlie our ability to produce and comprehend language • Language versus Animal Communication • Human language is distinguished in three ways • symbolic - words have an arbitrary relationship to things they represent this symbolic basis allows for “effability” - talk about abstract concepts • generative - can generate an infinite number of sentences • structured - grammatical rules to produce sentences © 2001 Laura Snodgrass, Ph.D.

2. Language • Hierarchical structure • phonemes - sound units of our language • infants are born with ability to hear all phonemes in all languages, but as they learn the prototypes for a given the language they lose the ability ot distinguish phonemes in other languages • morphemes - smallest units that change word meanings (semantics) • e.g. house, houses, housed, housing • learn, learning, relearn, learned, relearning • grammar - rules for producing sentences • both explicit and implicit rules © 2001 Laura Snodgrass, Ph.D.

3. Language • Explicit rules (grammar) is taught in school • sentence diagramming • Implicit rules are picked up informally by listening to others speak • e.g. PA Dutch grammar - Throw the horse over the fence some hay. • Linguistic intuitions • implicit rules that we may not be able to formally state, but we know when they are violated © 2001 Laura Snodgrass, Ph.D.

4. Language • Examples of linguistic intuitions • 1) Grammaticality - word order • e.g. all politicians kiss babies • kiss politicians babies all • we can even judge the grammaticality of meaningless sentences • e.g. colorless green ideas sleep furiously • we can judge grammaticality even with meaningless letter strings • e.g. jibbles gwum tibblest foomly • jib gwum tib foom © 2001 Laura Snodgrass, Ph.D.

5. Language • Linguistic Intuitions • 2) grammatical relations - we can detect subject, object, verb, and modifiers • In the following example the word order remains constant but the grammatical relations change: • John is eager to please • John is easy to please © 2001 Laura Snodgrass, Ph.D.

6. Language • Linguistic intuitions • 3) sentence relations - many difference sentences can express the same idea and we can have difference sentences forms (types of sentences) • The gorilla chased the orangutan • The orangutan was chased by the gorilla • The gorilla did not chase the orangutan • The orangutan was not chased by the gorilla • Did the gorilla chase the orangutan? • What chased the orangutan? © 2001 Laura Snodgrass, Ph.D.

7. Language • Linguistic intuitions • 4) Ambiguity - sentences with multiple meanings • They are eating apples • Visiting relatives can be a nuisance • Flying planes can be dangerous © 2001 Laura Snodgrass, Ph.D.

8. Language • Many types of grammars - theoretical rules for sentence construction • left to right probabilistic grammar -based on sentence diagramming • Chomsky’s transformational grammar • constituent phrases (clauses, propositions) with two levels of structure • 1) surface level - string of words • 2) deep level - underlying proposition (meaning) • ambiguous sentences have one surface level and multiple deep levels • sentence relations show one deep level with multiple surface levels © 2001 Laura Snodgrass, Ph.D.

9. Language Acquisition • Early theories based on behaviorism • parents reinforce correct language use • imitation and reinforcement • Current theories suggest that babies are born with at least some innate knowledge of language • not random and rule usage • Evidence for the innate aspects of language • children deal with novel sequences in a systematic way • e.g. the pluralization of non-words • This is a wug. If I had one I will have two ________ © 2001 Laura Snodgrass, Ph.D.

10. Language Acquisition • Evidence continued • Over-regularization and over-generalization • children often learn correct forms such as came and went , but after exposure to many examples of past tenses start to use comed, goed, doed. This is not regression this is application of the rule - even if parents try to correct this. • In all languages children make a similar pattern of errors • negation - children start by adding “no” as the first or last word n the sentence • Imitation is not progressive • when children try to repeat after an adult, they do not mimic exactly, change the utterance to fit their current level of development • examples © 2001 Laura Snodgrass, Ph.D.

11. Language Acquisition • Evidence continued • Parents tend to reinforce the truth value of the utterance rather than the correct grammar. • example © 2001 Laura Snodgrass, Ph.D.

12. Language Errors • Slips of the tongue (speech errors) • very regularized errors based on the three levels of language (phonemic, semantic, and grammatical) • errors occur within but not across levels in the heirarchy • three levels produce three categories of errors • phoneme exchanges - “dazy lays” for “lazy days” • morpheme exchanges - “slicely thinned” for “thinly sliced” • exchange is always with same part of speech ie. Stem for stem, prefix for prefix, and suffix for suffix • word exchanges - noun for noun, verb for verb • “gave my dollar a brother” for “gave my brother a dollar” © 2001 Laura Snodgrass, Ph.D.

13. Language Errors • Aphasias • brain damage in left hemisphere • Broca’s aphasia - front left - problems with expression (non-fluent) • articulation problem - can’t produce speech sounds • leave out certain sounds • more problems with function words and inflections than content words • same problem in writing so it is not just a speech error • may be left with agrammaria simplified speech • may lose classes of words • sometimes produce a close associate e.g. spoon for fork © 2001 Laura Snodgrass, Ph.D.

14. Language Errors • Aphasias • Wernicke’s aphasia - rear left - produce fluent but meaningless speech. • “word salad” - speech without content • semantic disorganization • demonstrate little or no comprehension of words (can’t follow directions) • semantic disorganization • sometimes unaware of their disability • see example in text © 2001 Laura Snodgrass, Ph.D.