Chapter 9: Language: Nature and Acquisitio

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Chapter 9 Language Nature and Acquisition
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Psycholinguistics

• The study of acquisition, storage, comprehension,
  and production of language

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Language

• Organized way to combine words to communicate
• Language is unique to humans
• A communication system that is learned instead of
  biologically inherited

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Four Areas in Psycholinguistics

• Linguistics
• Emphasis on universals of language
• Neurolinguistics
• Emphasis on brain changes during language use
• Sociolinguistics
• Emphasis on relationship between language and
  society
• Computational linguistics
• Emphasis on computer models of natural language

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Properties of Language

• Communicative
• Arbitrarily symbolic
• Regularly structured
• Structured at multiple levels
• Generative
• Dynamic

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Communicative Property

• Language is used to communicate
• Communication has meaning
• Individuals can send and receive information

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Arbitrarily Symbolic

• No connection between symbol and concept
• Words do not have to look or sound like what they
  describe
• Principle of conventionality
• Meanings of words are determined by conventions
• Principle of contrast
• Different words have different meanings

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Generative Property of Language

• Using rules of language can create an unlimited
  number of new utterances

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Dynamic Nature of Language

• Allows for new developments with the creation of
  new words and ideas
• Blog
• Online diary meant to be read by others
• Spam has a new meaning
• Weird meat in a can
• Unwanted email
• Shut Up! Has new meaning
• One meaning is to quit talking
• YouthSpeak for Really?

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Structure of Language

• Phonology
• Morphology
• Syntax
• Semantics
• Pragmatics

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Phonology

• Phoneme
• Smallest unit of speech
• Sounds of language
• /s/ /f/ /t/ /l/ /ae/ represent the sounds common
  in English
• Different languages use different sets of
  phonemes

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Morphology

• Study of word structure
• Morpheme
• The smallest unit that denotes meaning

Root words
Suffixes
Prefixes
Cake Chair Boy
Pre- Non- Un-
-ly -ist -ness
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Morphology

• Content Morphemes
• Word that conveys the core of the meaning (e.g.,
  attractive, happy)
• Function Morphemes
• Add nuances to core meaning (e.g., unattractive,
  happiness)
• Lexicon
• Entire set of morphemes for a language

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Syntax

• Rules used to put words together for a sentence
• Sentence Noun Phrase Verb Phrase
• Noun phrase NP
• Contains a noun and relevant descriptors
• Verb phrase VP
• Contains at least one verb and possibly objects
  it acts upon

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Semantics

• The study of meaning in a language
• To best understand semantics, read the following
  sentences
• The honest umbrella is in the garage.
• The salty craftsman appreciate the quality of the
  product.
• Cindy slept badly due to the sniffing dream.
• Knowing that the sentences do not make sense is
  your knowledge of semantics

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Language Comprehension

• Three primary approaches
• Speech perception
• Grammatical structure approach
• Discourse macro-level analysis

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Speech Perception

• We hear sounds
• Put sounds together to form words
• Comprehend the phrases of anothers sentences
• Understand the ideas being conveyed
• Often done with slurred, accented, or incomplete
  speech input

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Speech Perception

• Coarticulation Phonemes overlap in time so
• Context can interfere with speech signal
• Variability in speech signal
• No one-to-one correspondence between the acoustic
  stimuli and the speech sounds we hear
• How do we recognize sounds in a way so a stable
  set of phonemes is perceived?

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Speech Perception is Ordinary

• Phonetic refinement theory
• Analyze auditory signals
• Then go to higher level processing using context
  to help figure out what is heard

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Phoneme Restoration Effect

• Warren Warren (1970)
• 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
• was a cough but it was heard as the missing
  phoneme implied by the context

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Speech Perception is Special

• Evidence of categorical perception
• Continuous dimension perceived as discrete
• Sudden break between categories
• No discrimination within categories

Discrete Actual perception
Continuous Actual sounds
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Categorical Perception

• Voice onset time (VOT)
• The time between the beginning of the
  pronunciation of the word and the onset of the
  vibration of the vocal chords
• "ba" your vocal chords vibrate right from the
  start
• "pa" your vocal chords do not vibrate until after
  a short delay

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Categorical Perception

• The sounds "ba" and "pa" differ on the continuous
  dimension of VOT
• Listeners can differentiate between /p/ and /b/
  however, performance in distinguishing between
  different types of /p/ sounds is difficult
• Gives support for idea that specialized processes
  are being used

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McGurk Effect

• Lip movements to one sound ba
• Soundtrack indicates da
• What do you hear?
• McGurk MacDonald (1976) found that people make
  a comprised sound tha

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Semantics

• Denotation
• Definition of the word
• Connotation
• Additional nuances of word meaning (emotional,
  social, cultural)
• Consider these examples
• Bachelor, Spinster
• Hungry, Starving

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Syntax

• The grammatical arrangement of words into a
  sentence or phrase
• Descriptive grammar
• Describe the structures, functions, and
  relationships of words in language
• Prescriptive grammar
• The Correct way to structure sentences

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Syntactical Priming

• Exposure to a particular syntactic structure
  leads speakers to reproduce the same structure in
  subsequent speech
• Considered a priming phenomena

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Example of Syntactical Priming

• If you just heard
• The cat is being chased by the dog.
• You are more likely to say
• The mouse is being chased by the cat.
• versus
• The cat is chasing the dog.

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Other Evidence for Power of Syntax

• Speech errors
• Switch nouns for nouns
• Verbs for verbs
• Prepositions for prepositions
• Sample Error
• The butter drawers are in the knife.

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Phrase Structure Grammar

• Psycholinguists use phrase structure rules
• PS 1 S (sentence) NP VP
• PS 2 NP (noun phrase) det (adj) N
• PS 3 VP (verb phrase) V NP
• PS 4 N (noun) boy, dog, man, book
• PS 5 V (verb) ate, broke, kissed
• PS 6 adj (adjective) quiet, red, happy, wormy
• PS 7 det (determiner) a, the

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Syntax Tree Diagrams

• Tree diagrams are used to reveal relationships
  between and within phrases
• The shy girl hid the broken cup.

S
NP VP
det adj N V NP
The shy girl hid det adj N
the broken cup
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Create Tree Diagrams

• The rude girl pushed the boy.
• Wild horses ran the plains.
• Sally kissed the crying child.

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Chompskys Transformational Grammar

• Grammar that explains how the underlying
  propositions can be rearranged to form multiple
  phrase structures
• Deep Structure
• The structure of the sentence that conveys the
  connections between sentences
• Surface Structure
• The actual phrase structures that may occur from
  transformations

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Transformational Grammar

• Use phrase-structure rules to generate the
  underlying tree structure (deep structure)
• Apply a sequence of transformational rules to the
  deep structure to generate the surface structure
  of the sentence
• Transformations occur by adding, deleting, or
  moving constituents

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Problem with Transformational Grammar

• When converting the deep structure to surface
  structure, the number of transformation rules
  applied should affect how long it takes to
  process a sentence
• Experiments do not consistently show that this is
  true

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Lexical Functional Grammar Thematic

• Constituent Structure
• Similar to phrase structure
• Functional Structure
• All the information needed for semantic
  interpretation (subj, obj, past tense
  information)

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Lexical Functional Grammar Thematic

• Lexical Entries
• The forms of the word and the kinds of sentences
  into which they fit (Thematic Roles)
• Underlying semantic structure for kiss
• kiss (agent, patient)
• Forms of the word
• kiss agent subject patient object
• (be) kiss agentobject patient subject 

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Language Acquisition

• Universal Stages
• Cooing
• Babbling
• One-word utterances
• Two-word utterances
• Basic adult structure

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Cooing

• Cooing is universal across countries
• Eimas (1985)
• Japanese and American Infants
• Hear /l/ and /r/ sounds
• Can distinguish
• At age 1, Japanese children can no longer
  distinguish (no need to in Japanese language)
• Lose ability to distinguish sounds not relevant
  to our language at about 8 months

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Babbling

• Babble in phonemes of surrounding language
• Repetition of similar/identical syllables first
• Ba ba ba
• Ma ma ma
• End of stage varied babbling using non-repeated
  phonemes

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One-word Utterances

• Holophrases
• Blankie! Shoe! Book!
• Telegraphic (18-24 mo) 2 word stage
• Utterances are determined by semantic, not
  syntactic concerns - the need to communicate

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Children Speech Errors

• Overextension errors
• Doggie means all animals
• Blankie means all soft things
• Underextension errors
• Ball is used only when ball is under bed
• Kitty refers only to family pet

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Nature Support

• Language Acquisition Device
• Chompsky
• Proposes humans are biologically ready to learn
  language
• Special nature of phoneme processing
• Ability to detect syntax

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Nurture Support

• Environment is necessary during critical period
  of language development
• Case studies of linguistically isolated children
• Genie
• American sign language proficiency is influenced
  by what age language is acquired

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A Bit of Both Nature and Nurture

• Hypothesis Testing View
• Children create hypotheses about patterns based
  on their inherited skills for language
  acquisition
• Imitation Theory
• Children imitate parents
• Not sufficient to explain how they learn all
  nuances

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Animal Language Provides

• Simpler models
• Fewer ethical constraints than humans
• Full time subjects over whom we can exert
  complete control of environment
• Comparative analysis
• Differentiate between skills that are uniquely
  human and those that are not

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Grey Parrots Irene Pepperberg Alex

• What color is corn?
• Alexs answer yellow
• Whats the same?
• Alexs answer color

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Grey Parrots Irene Pepperberg Alex

• Labels for more than 35 objects (e.g., paper,
  key, wood, cork, etc.)
• Functional use of No
• Phrases such as I want X, Wanna go Y where X and
  Y are appropriate words
• Labels for 7 colors
• Can identify number of items up to 6
• Alex can use vocabulary to identify proficiently,
  request, refuse, categorize, and quantify more
  than 100 different objects

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Washoe

• Gardners (1966) taught sign language to
  chimpanzee named Washoe
• Always used sign language in Washoes presence
• Washoe was able to use term more appropriately
  in different contexts
• First use was more tickling
• Transferred the sign dog to the sound of barking
  by an unseen dog

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Washoe

• Bodamer, Fouts, Fouts, Jensvold (1994)
• Studied private signing by chimpanzees
• Found private signing is robust
• Gardner Gardner (1989)
• Washoe adopted an infant named Loulis
• No humans signed in front of infant chimp
• Loulis still managed to learn over 50 signs from
  other chimpanzees
• No active teaching, rather Loulis just learned
  through observation among other signing chimps

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Nim Chimpsky

• Terrace (1979)
• Skeptical of the reported success of the
  chimpanzees like Washoe
• Compared their behavior to that of pigeons who
  are taught to peck different colors in a certain
  order
• Believed that apes only used signs to get rewards
  from trainers

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Nim Chimpsky

• Raised Nim in a human-like setting
• Nim learned many words like dirty, sleep, bite
  and angry
• Nim did not learn to combine words to create new
  meaning on his own
• After the experiments were over, and Nim was
  retired, he continued to sign. His most-used
  signs seemed to be drink, gum, banana, and more

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Koko

• Patterson raising gorilla named Koko since 1972
• Taught Koko sign language
• Has a greater vocabulary than Nim
• Uses more words per utterances
• Patterson Linden (1981)
• Koko uses structure, is creative and spontaneous
  in her language
• Koko now has a vocabulary of over 1000 signs, and
  understands even more spoken English
• Koko invented her own new compound signs (e.g.,
  finger-bracelet for ring)