Flashcards
Language
Cards in this deck (11)
- 1WHAT IS LANGUAGE? - Universal - Symbolic - represents something - Voluntary - used under individual control - Modality - spoken, written, signed - Systematic - hierarchial structure (organisation)COMPONENTIAL STRUCTURE -
- Broken down into sophisticated elements
- SYNTAX - rules a language has for putting words together into phrases and sentences
- WORDS = arbitrary signal refers to a particular concept - occupies meeting point between form and meaning - 2MORPHEMES - smalles units of language that have a definable meaning or grammatical function - (LOOMING - Loom = base morpheme) PHONEMES - shorted sound/speech that we articulate SEMANTICS - to do with meaning (words, phrases, higher order meaning) PSYCHOLINGUISTS - investigate interaction between language and thought GRAMMAR - refers to sum knowledge that someone has about the structure of their languageCHOMSKY -
- Generativity of language - words etc. can be recombined to produce unbounded no. of thoughts (NO LIMIT)
- RECURSION - embedding syntactic structures within structures
- Rule for generating next in sequence = involves 1 or more of preceding terms - property that CANT be captured by behaviourist chain of associations
- Argued children = NEVER ACQUIRE THIS ABILITY TO PROCESS AN INFINITE NO. OF SENTENCES IF INDEPENDENT SOLELY ON INPUT
- Babies born with innate knowledge of basic grammatical structures = basis to all languages (UNIVERSAL GRAMMAR) - 3Are Humans pre-wired to learn language (innate)? - Lots of similarities across cultures - In development (critical p) all babies babble around 7 months (even deaf) - Without formal training - 6000 words by 5yo. Newborns - preference for mother over stranger and native speech - ALL LANGUAGES - have words that serve functions of nouns and verbs and have ways to make things negative, refer to past and present and ask Q's.Is Language Unique to Humans?
- Many animals use complex communication systems
- Primate - Heimbauer et al (2011) - can understand spoken words even poo quality
- Greenfield and Savage-Rumbaugh (1990) use them to gain rewards
- Vocab = in 100's - nowhere near learning trajectory of human
- Human children = 1000's
- Apes can acquire many aspects of language - DONT produce many novel sentences - simple and have little/no understanding of grammar - 4EVALUATION - + Supported by evidence = strongly suggesting language is uniquely human + Some support identification of genes + Existence of brain areas = associated with language processing - Worlds languages differ more than expected - Universal grammar restricted in scope - WEAK - Notion that children linguistic input = too impoverished to produce LA - little support - Christiansen and Chater (2008) - argue nature of language probably directly reflects non-language cognitive processes - attention, perception - Language probably possess grammatical structure because facilitate man communication rather than because of universal grammarLANGUAGE COMPREHENSION
PROSODY - listeners work out grammatical structure - prosodic cues - stress intonation etc.
ASHBY + CLIFTON (2005) - lexical stress and prosody confirmed via eye tracking - monitored when adults read sentences with 1/2 stressed syllables
- 2 stressed syllables = longer - confirms readers supplied phonological info during silent reading - 5WORD FREQUENCY - SAVIN (1963) - common, higher frequency words = classified faster and obersved this with sentences using reading task DID NOT INITIALLY CONSIDER AGE OF ACQUISITION - early acquired words = recognised faster in picture naming and word recog. task - BROWN + WATSON (1987) and MORRISON + ELLIS (2000)CONTEXT - evidence = word superiority effect (info about word presented = facilitate identification of letters of the word)
REICHER (1969) + WHEELER (1970) - letters are easier to identify when part of a word vs. isolation or in non-word - 6GARDEN PATH MODEL - FRAZIER & RAYNER (1982) - - Sentences carry ambiguity - Identifying message of sentence - based on meaning of word (parsing) - May do this using syntax first approach - respond to rules = determined by grammatical structure of sentence - Highlights immediacy of interpretation - WE DONT WAIT TILL SENTENCE IS DONE - Studied using eye tracking Errors reveal the processes involved in understanding language - use late closure for making best guess about meaning in sentence as it unfoldsTHE ROLE OF LANGUAGE AND THOUGHT -
MEMORY -
+ LOFTUS AND PALMER (1974) - ps witness crash, asked q's immediately and a week later, use diff verbs, asked about glass.
- Speed estimates varied with words + glass estimates - smashed = 32% and contacted = 14%
- CLARE AND LEWANDOWSKY (2004) - ps witnessed event, some described criminal some didn't, attempted ID, from line up and faces
- P's = reluctant to ID after describing
- Forced choice = no effect
- Underlying memory tract NOT problem - change in willingness to make an error when choosing from a line up - 7WHORFIAN/LINGUISTIC RELATIVITY HYPOTHESIS - Language determines/influences thought SYSTEMATIC RELATIONSHIP between - language person speaks - how they understand world - how they behave in it Benjamin Lee Whorf - argued that grammatical structure of language influences and interacts with cognitionTHE STRONG VIEW (LANGUAGE DETERMINES THOUGHT)
- Linguistic Determinism - a persons native language determines how they conceptualise about everything - 8+ GORDON (2004) - no. abilities in people who use language with reduced number content + Numeracy tests and test capacity to place objects in a one to one corresondence THEIR ABILITY TO REASON ABOUT EXACT MAGNITUDES WAS COMPROMISED ESPECIALLY IN NUMEROSITIES ABOVE 4- HEIDER (2004) - compared colour perception and memory in Dani VS. Americans
- MEMORY TASK - present chip, delay, choose
- DANI SPEAKERS = STILL ABLE TO DISTINGUISH FOCAL COLOURS (RED BLUE GREEN) AS WELL AS ENGLISH SPEAKERS
- 2 POPULATIONS WITH WIDELY DIFFERING COLOUR VOCABS REMEMBERED COLOURS IN SIMILAR WAYS = PERFORMANCE WAS NOT AFFECTED BY DIFFERENCES IN COLOUR NAMING - 9THE WEAK VIEW (LANGUAGE INFLUENCES THOUGHT) - Linguistic Relativity - a persons native language influences how they conceptualise about certain things Debate = about the extent of the influence+ BORODITSKY, HAM AND RAMSCAR (2002) + Indonesian = no tense markers
Difference ENCODING events? people rated similarity of two images - Indonesians considered tense LESS than English speakers
Impact on MEMORY? learn action images and recognise from other tenses - POORER RECALL in INDONESIANS compared to English - 10- DAVIES (1998) - Russians 3 words for blue-green - goluboy (dark blue), siniy (light blue), zeleniy (green) - RUSSIAN AND ENGLISH SPEAKERS BOTH FORM RELIABLY SEPERATE BLUE AND GREEN GROUPS - RUSSIANS ARE NOT MORE LIKELY THAN ENGLISH TO FORM SEPARATE LIGHT + DARK BLUE GROUPSMETHODOLOGY -
- identify grammatical diff. between languages
- identify cognitive effect resulting from difference
AVOID LINGUISTIC DIFFERENCES (translation identical/use bilinguals)
AVOID ELICITING LANGUAGE RESPONSES (use pics etc.)
AVOID SUBJECTIVITY (online tasks)
TESTING DOMAIN (complex tasks) - 11BORODITSKY (2000) - time metaphors, test bilinguals, online, abstract task ENGLISH - horizontal temporal metaphors MANDARIN - vertical tm PRIME with spatial Q's - ask true/false Q's about time including H/V or NO tm REVEAL = English - faster when just thought about horizontal Mandarin - faster when just though about verticalif language influences though = language learning must change thinking
earlier bilingual Chinese learn english - less vertical bias = results confirm - mandarin who learn english late = stronger vertical effect