Language

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Language and the Brain First connections drawn
Brocas Aphasia
Paul Broca
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Phrenology A failed attempt to localize
cogntive functions in the brain.
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But it is not simply a production deficit
"The boy ate the cookie" "Who ate the cookie?"
"The boy"
"The boy hit the girl" "Who kicked whom?"
"?????"
Comprehension problems, when syntax is needed!
Telegrammatic speech
Meaning, but no syntax.
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Meaning and syntax (lesion evidence)
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Wernickes Aphasia comprehension lost
Carl Wernicke
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Patients with Wernicke's aphasia have problems
with understanding and producing meaningful
sentences. However, their speech is fluent and
obeys grammatical rules ("Jargon Aphasia").
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Sometimes called Jargon Aphasia
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Taken together, Brocas aphasia and Wernickes
aphasia suggest a double dissociation of the
cognitive processes underlying - the
production and comprehension of language. -
syntax and semantics of language
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Language Thought Outline

• General Effects of Language on Thought
• Language Specific Effects
• Appearance-Reality Distinction
• Color Terms
• Emotions

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Language Thought

• The way something is described can influence how
  we think about it.
• Carmichael, Hogan Walter (1932)
• The way an ambiguous figure is described
  influences how it is later recalled.

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Language Thought

• The way something is described can influence how
  we think about it.
• Carmichael, Hogan Walter (1932)
• The way an ambiguous figure is described
  influences how it is later recalled.
• Glucksberg Weisberg (1962)
• The way a problem is described can influence the
  salience of potential solutions.

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Language Thought

• The way something is described can influence how
  we think about it.
• Carmichael, Hogan Walter (1932)
• The way an ambiguous figure is described
  influences how it is later recalled.
• Glucksberg Weisberg (1962)
• The way a problem is described can influence the
  salience of potential solutions.
• Gelman Coley (1990)
• Children use labels to guide inductive inferences.

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Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis

• Linguistic determinism Language provides
  speakers with habitual ways of expression. These
  influence how speakers perceive the world.
• Language determines thought.
• Linguistic relativity If two languages differ on
  how they express a concept, speakers of the
  languages will different on how they think about
  that concept.
• Language differences gt thought differences.

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Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis

• Languages carve up reality in different ways.
• Language differences are tacit.
• Grammatical differences
• Language differences influence our world view.

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Language Thought Conclusions

• Linguistic Relativity

Strong
Weak
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Linguistic Relativity Evidence

• Hard to test. Need to
• Identify a grammatical difference between
  languages
• Identify a cognitive difference that should
  follow from the grammatical difference
• Determine whether the cognitive difference
  actually occurs
• Direction of causality
• Language gt Thought
• Thought gt Language

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Linguistic Relativity Evidence

• Sera, Bales, Del Castillo Pintado (1997)
• Appearance-Reality task
• Preschoolers fail to distinguish between
  temporary and enduring properties
• English Spanish-speaking children
• English is
• Spanish ser and estar
• Ser refers to permanent properties
• Estar refers to temporary properties

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• Both given appearance-reality test
• When you look at this lamb now through this
  filter, what color is (estar) it?
• What color is (ser) the lamb really and truly?
• Another study looked at bilingual children
  performing the task in English and Spanish

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English- and Spanish-speakers
What does it look like?
What color is it really?
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Bilingual Children
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Linguistic Relativity Basic Color Terms
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Linguistic Relativity Color Terms

• Rosch Linguistic Difference
• English 11 basic color terms
• Black, White, Red, Yellow, Green, Blue, Brown,
  Purple, Pink, Orange, Gray
• Dani of New Guinea 2 basic color terms
• Milli, Mola
• Do lexical differences lead to conceptual or
  perceptual differences?
• Named each of 160 color chips.

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Linguistic Relativity Focal Colors
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Memory for Focal Colors

• Dani memorized one chip
• Focal (English)
• Non-Focal
• Whorfian Prediction?

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Learning New Color Terms

• Dani taught new words for sets of colors
• Within Focal Color (English) Groups
• Across Focal Color (English) Groups
• Whorfian Prediction?

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Psycholinguists Question What is relationship
of generative grammar to comprehension
and production? Extremely controversial.
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1. Early attempts to draw 11 mapping with
comprehension failed. 2. Generative grammar may
have closer relationship to sentence
production than to sentence comprehension.
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Language and Thought
Q Do we think in language? Typical Laymans
response Yes or Often. Philosophers No.
(e.g., Fodor)
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The ambiguity of the speech stream
Additional, "context" information needs to be
used.
For example Prosody.
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Because the boy left the room seemed empty.
Because the boy left, the room seemed empty.
Prosody, the insertion of pauses or modulations
of amplitude, provide additional information to
segment the speech stream.
In written language, this function is carried out
by commas, question marks etc.
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Language
Domain of the simple feature net with detectors
for phonemes, morphemes, and words hierarchically
arranged.
But there are some additional complexities...
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Language
There is an infinite number of possible sentence
structures and meanings to convey. Language is
generative! Thus, there is no way there could be
a "detector" for every possible sentence. Here
we have reached the limits of a simple
feature-net. We need to find a way of
representing rules to generate and understand all
possible sentences (next session!).