Language - Northern Arizona University

Language
1
Study of Language
 Linguistics:
study of the internalized
knowledge of a language – the rules for
producing language
 Psycholinguistics:
The study of
language as it is used and learned by
people.
2
Defining Language
 Language:
Language is a shared
symbolic system for communication.
 Language
is a subset of communication
usually seen as having 3 defining parts



Use of symbols
A system of symbols are used by all speakers
of the language
It enables communication
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Universals of Language

Semanticity: Language exhibits Semanticity, which
means that language conveys meaning.

Arbitrariness: There is no inherent connection between
the units (sounds, words) used in a language and the
meanings referred by those units.

Flexibility of symbols: Language systems demonstrate
tremendous flexibility; that is, because the connection
between symbol and meaning is arbitrary, we can
change those connections and invent new ones.
4
Universals of Language (cont.)

Naming: We assign names to all the objects in
our environment, to all the feelings and emotions
we experience, and to all the ideas and
concepts we conceive of.

Displacement: The ability to talk about
something other than the present moment.

Productivity: Language is a productive and
inherently novel activity; we generate sentences
rather than repeat them.
5
Animal Communication Systems

Beyond the level of arbitrariness, no animal
communication system seems to exhibit the
characteristics that appear to be universally true
of—and vitally important to—human language.

In the wild, at any rate, there appear to be no
genuine languages.

In human cultures, genuine language is the rule,
apparently with no exceptions.
6
Teaching animals language

A great deal of disagreement on whether the great apes
can learn language

Cannot learn speech as their vocal tract cannot produce
needed speech sounds

Research has shown that many of the great apes can
learn and use symbols for objects and some actions

Difficulties seem to involve displacement and novelty
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Teaching animals language (cont)
 Most
accepted conclusion is that
nonhumans are capable of
comprehending language and are capable
of complex sign communication
 They
appear to acquire and use aspects of
language very differently than humans
8
Five Levels of Analysis of
Language

Grammar operates at three levels:
• Phonology of language deals with the sounds of language;
• Syntax deals with word order and grammaticality;
• And semantics deals with accessing and combining the separate
word meanings into a sensible, meaningful whole

Grammar: The grammar of a language is the complete
set of rules that will generate or produce all the
acceptable sentences and will not generate any
unacceptable, ill-formed sentences.

Comprehension operates at 2 levels – next week


Conceptual
Belief
9
A Critical Distinction
Competence: The internalized knowledge
of language and the rules that fully fluent
speakers of a language have.
Performance: The actual language
behavior a speaker generates, the string
of sounds and words that the speaker
utters.
10
Whorf’s Hypothesis


Linguistic Relativity Hypothesis: The
language you know shapes the way you think
about events in the world around you.
Eskimos think different about snow as
indicated by them having many more words
for snow than English speakers
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Challenges to Whorf’s Hypothesis

Issues about how many words do Eskimos have
for snow

Language of the Dani tribe

Study of Navajo speaking children

Conclusion: Language can influence thought,
but not control it.
12
Does language depend upon
thought?

Aristotle’s hypothesis – categories of thought
determine categories of language

Human thought or cognition appeared before
language in evolution and during development

Nonhumans show complex cognitive ability
without language

Most likely language developed as a tool to
communicate thought
13
Phonology

Phonology: The sounds of language and the
rule system for combining them.
 Phonemes: The basic sounds that compose a
language.
 English has 45-46 phonemes.
 Categorization of phonemes:
• For consonants, three variables are relevant: place of
articulation, manner of articulation, and voicing.
• Vowels differ on two dimensions: placement in the mouth,
and tongue position in the mouth.
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Categorization of phonemes
 Categorical
Perception: All the sounds
falling within a set of boundaries are
perceived as the same, despite physical
differences among them.
 The
use of voice onset time to set
phonetic boundaries
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Speech Perception and Context

Theory of acoustic invariance – our perception
of phonemes is provided by the consistent or
invariant acoustic cues of the phonetic features

Basic problems with this data driven theory:


We produce phonemes too fast to process this way
Spoken sounds are not invariant; they change
depending on what sounds precede and follow in the
word.
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Speech Perception and Context
 How
do we tolerate variability and still
decipher the changeable, almost
undependable spoken signal?
 The
answer is context or conceptually
driven processing.
17
Speech Perception and Context
(cont.)

Evidence points toward a combination of datadriven and conceptually driven processing in
speech recognition, a position now called the
integrative or interactive approach.

This approach claims that a variety of
conceptually distinct language processes
operate simultaneously, each having the
possibility of influencing the ongoing activity of
other processes.
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Combining Phonemes Into Words
 Phonemic
Competence: The extensive
knowledge of the rules of permissible
sound combinations for a specific
language
 These
rules are not taught but implicitly
learned as languages develop
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Perceptions of words
 There
is almost no consistent relationship
between pauses and the ends of words. If
anything, the pauses we produce while
speaking are longer within words than
between words.
 Segmenting
speech sounds into words is
learned
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Rules for combining words and
phrases together

Prescriptive rules: constraints on how we ought
to speak based upon how certain authorities
think a language should sound

They usually involve dialects or variations of a
particular language

Usually prescribed by the dominant group in a
society. Sentences not following the rules are
considered inferior regardless of whether the
meaning is clear
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Descriptive Rules or Syntax

Syntax: The arrangement of words as elements in a
sentence to show their relationship to one another; or
sentence structure.

Word Order



Phrase Order



Beth asked the man about his headaches
About the Beth headaches man asked his
Bill told the men to deliver the piano on Monday
Bill told the men on Monday to deliver the piano
Number Agreement - subject verb agreement
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Chomsky’s Transformational
Grammar

Language exists at least 2 levels



Deep structure - an abstract syntactic representation
of the sentence being constructed
Surface structure – the external structure; the actual
speech sounds and words in a sentence
Phrase structure grammar –rules that specify the
word groupings and phrases that make up the
whole utterance and the relationships among
those constituents.

We have basic sentence structures into which we
insert words
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Problems with phrase structure
grammar

Exact meaning of a sentence may not be
accurately expressed by the surface structure –
ambiguity



“I saw a man eating fish”
“The shooting of the hunters was terrible”
Sentences with completely different surface
structure can have the same deep structure


“Patrick bought a fine French wine”
“A fine French wine was bought by Patrick”
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Chomsky’s Transformational
Grammar
 Transformational
Rules: These convert
the deep structure into a surface structure,
a sentence ready to be spoken.
 They
allow us to covert deep structure
ideas into different surface structures that
state the same thought with a different
emphasis
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Limitations of the Transformational
Grammar Approach

In the late 1960s, psychology became
increasingly dissatisfied with this linguistically
motivated approach.

Primary reason – the linguistic emphasis on
structure relegated meaning as a secondary
factor

Since linguistic approach didn’t adequately deal
with meaning it was difficult to apply this theory
to the actual use of language
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Chomsky’s Example
 “Colorless


green ideas sleep furiously”
Grammatically acceptable
Makes no sense
 Since
Chomsky’s theory was competency
based, knowledge of the rules of syntax, it
could not transformed into a performance
based theory of how we use language
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The psychological purpose of
syntax
 To
help the listener figure out meaning
 To
minimize the processing demands of
comprehending language
 Syntax
helps listeners determine meaning
and speakers convey meaning
28
Lexical and semantic factors: The
third level of analysis

Involves the meaning of language

Mental lexicon – the mental dictionary of words and their
meanings

Morpheme – the smallest unit of language that has
meaning



Free morphemes – can stand alone – car, run, legal
Bound morphemes – are bound to free morphemes – s, est, un
Words can be made up of 1 or more morphemes
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The lexical representation of a
word

Includes much more than what the word means

Textbook example: chase – to run after or
pursue

Also connected to other information – run,
involving speed, etc.

We also know what kinds of things can be
chased and what kind of things can chase
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Case grammar – a psycholinguistic
approach

Case grammar: An approach in
psycholinguistics in which the meaning of a
sentence is determined by analyzing the
semantic roles or cases played by different
words, such as which word names the overall
relationship and which names the agent or
patient of the action.

Semantic Cases: The roles played by the
content words in sentences (also called case
roles).
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Case grammar


The key will open the door
The janitor will open the door with the key

Key has 2 grammatical roles in 1st sentence –
not important to meaning

A semantic analysis shows key as having the
same semantic role - an instrument that opens a
door
 Other roles: door is the recipient of the action
open; janitor is the agent of open
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Interaction of syntax and semantics
 Semantic
focus: the highlighted or most
important idea in a sentence. Usually
indicated by word order (syntax).




I’m going downtown with my sister at 4 o’clock
It’s at 4 o’clock that I’m going downtown with my sister
It’s my sister I’m going downtown with at 4 o’clock
The focus in each sentence is different as a
different phrase begins each sentence
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Semantic Knowledge Can
Overpower Syntax

Sometimes we comprehend what we expect to
hear instead of what we actually hear

Fillenbaum (1974) – ordered and disordered
sentences
Don’t print that or I’ll sue you
 John had a bath and put on his clothes



Don’t print that or I won’t sue you
John put on his clothes and had a bath
34
Evidence for the Semantic
Grammar Approaches

Two predictions of this approach:


Listeners (readers) begin to analyze the sentence immediately as soon
as words begin
This analysis is a process of assigning each word to a semantic role
that contributes to the overall comprehension of the sentence

Garden Path Sentence: A sentence in which the early part of the
sentence sets you up so the latter phrases of the sentence don’t
make sense given the way you assigned case roles in the 1st part.

For example:



“After the musician played the piano was moved off the stage.”
“The grounds man chased the girl waving a stick in her hand”
“The old train the young”
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Brain and Language - Aphasia

Aphasia: The disruption of language caused by
a brain-related disorder.

Broca’s Aphasia: Characterized by severe
difficulties in producing speech; it is also called
expressive or production aphasia.

Wernicke’s Aphasia: Comprehension is
impaired, as are repetition, naming, reading, and
writing, but the syntactic aspects of speech are
preserved.
36
Broca’s area and Wernicke’s area
37
Other forms of Aphasia

Conduction Aphasia: Patients are unable to repeat what they
have just heard.

Anomia or anomic aphasia: A disruption in word finding, an
impairment in the normal ability to retrieve a semantic concept and
say its name.

Alexia: A disruption of reading without any necessary disruption of
spoken language or aural (hearing) comprehension.

Agraphia: The patient is unable to write.

Pure word deafness: A patient cannot comprehend spoken
language, although he or she is still able to read and produce written
and spoken language.
38
Generalizing from Aphasia

The very different patterns of behavioral impairments in
Broca’s and Wernicke’s aphasia, resulting from different
physical structures in the brain, suggest that these
physical structures underlie different aspects of
language.

These selective impairments and different brain locations
also suggest that syntax and semantics are two
separable but interactive aspects of normal language.

An inference from these studies is that specialized
cerebral regions signal an innate biological basis for
language
39
Language in the intact brain

2 important terms: necessary and sufficient

Broca’s area is necessary for normal speech production,
but not sufficient. The damage of other areas can also
cause speech deficits

Lesions in different areas can lead to different amounts
of aphasia depending upon the gender of the person

There are great individual differences in where and how
different people process and produce language.
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