Psyc 340 -Mt

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Semantics

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the study of meaning

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Syntax

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the rules of word order of a language

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Morphology

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the study of how words are built up by morphemes

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Pragmatics

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the aspects of meaning that do not affect the literal truth of what is being said; these concern things such as choice from words with the same meaning, implications in conversation, and maintaining coherence in conversation

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phonetics

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the acoustic detail of speech sounds and how they are articulated

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phonology

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the study of sounds and how they relate to languages; phonology describes the sound categories each language uses to divide up the space of possible sounds

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morphemes

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the smallest unit of meaning (e.g. "dogs" contains two, dog + plural s)

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inflectional morphology

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the study of inflectons - changes that do not alter underlying meaning/syntactic category

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derivational morphology

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the study of derivational morphology - changes that alter underlying meaning/syntactic category

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psycholinguistics

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the psychology of language

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word

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the smallest unit of grammar than can stand alone

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lexicon

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our mental dictionary

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connectionism

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an approach to cognition that involves computer simulations with many simple processing units, and where knowledge comes from learning statistical regularities rather than explicitly presented rules

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activation

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can be thought of as the amount of energy possessed by something. The more highly activated something is, the more likely it is to be be output

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priming

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affecting a response to a target by presenting a related item prior to it; priming can have either facilitatory or inhibitory effects

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semantic priming

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priming - usually facilitatory, obtained by the prior presentation of a stimulus related in meaning (e.g. "doctor" - "nurse")

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facilitation

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making processing faster, usually as a result of priming. It is the opposite of inhibition

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inhibition

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this has two uses. In terms of processing it means slowing processing down. In this sense priming may lead to inhibition. Inhibition is the opposite of facilitation. In comprehension it is closely related to the idea of suppression. In terms of networks it refers to how some connections decrease the amount of activation of the target unit.

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double dissociation

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a pattern of dissociations whereby one patient can do one task but not another, whereas another patient shows the reverse pattern

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EEGs

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electroencephalography - a means of measuring electrical potentials in the brain by placing electrodes across the scalp

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ERPs

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event-related potential - electrical activity in the brain after a particular event. An ERP is a complex electrical waveform related in time to a specific event, measure by EEG.

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modularity

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the idea that the mind is built up from discrete modules; its resurgence is associated w/ the philosopher Jerry Fodor, who said that modules cannot tinker around with the insides of other modules. A further step is to say that the modules of the mind correspond to identifiable neural structures in the brain

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discrete stage model

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processing models where information can only be passed to the next stage when the current one has completed its processing (contrast w/ cascaded processing)

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cascade model

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a type of processing where information can flow from one level of processing to the next before the first has finished processing; contrast with discrete stage model

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bottom-up

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processing that is purely data driven

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top-down

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processing that involves knowledge coming from higher levels (such as predicting a word fro the context)

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Inner speech

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that voice we hear in our head;speech that is not overtly articulated

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working memory

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in the USA, often used as a general term for short-term memory. According to the British psychology Alan Baddeley, working memory has a particular structure comprising a central executive, a short term visual store, and a phonological loop

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sentences

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a group of words that expresses a complete thought, indicated in writing by the capitalization of the first letter, and ending with a period (full stop). Sentences contain a subject and a predicate

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Acoustics

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the study of the physical properties of sounds

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acoustics

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the study of the physical properties of sounds

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formants

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a concentration of acoustic energy in a sound

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phonetics

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the acoustic detail of speech sounds and how they are articulated

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phonology

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the study of sounds and how they relate to languages; phonology describes the sound categories each language uses to divide up the space of possible sounds

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aspirated

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a sound that is produced with an audible breath (e.g. the start of "pin)

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unaspirated

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a sound that is produced w/o an audible breath (e.g. the /p/ in "spin")

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phoneme

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a sound of the language; changing a phoneme changes the meaning of a word

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allophones

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phonetic variants of phonemes. For example, in English the phoneme /p/ has two variants, aspirated and non-aspirated

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minimal pairs

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a pair of words that differ in meaning when only one sound is changed (e.g. pear and bear)

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vowels

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a speech sound produced w/ very little constriction of the airstream, unlike a consonant

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consonants

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a sound produced w/ some constriction of the airstream, unlike a vowel

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diphthong

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a type of vowel that combines two vowel sounds (e.g. in boy, my, and cow)

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place of articulation

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where the airstream in the articulatory apparatus is constricted

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voicing

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consonants produced w/ vibration of the vocal cords

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unvoiced

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a sound that is produced w/o vibration of the vocal cords, such as /p/ and /t/- the same as voiceless and w/o voice

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voice onset time (VOT)

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the time b/w the release of the constriction of the airstream when we produce a consonant, and when the vocal cords start to vibrate. Abbreviated to VOT

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Glottal stop

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a sound produced by closing and opening the glottis (e.g. bottle south english)

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manner of articulation

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the way in which the airstream is constricted in speaking

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syllables

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a rhythmic unit of speech; it can be analyzed in terms of onset and rime, with the rime further being analyzable into nucleus and coda. Hence in speaks, sp is the onset, ea the nucleus, ks is the coda, eaks is the rime

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monosyllabic

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a word having just one syllable

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rime

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the end part of a word that produces the rhyme: more formally, the VC or VCC (vowel-consonant) part of a word

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grammar

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the set of syntactic rules of our language

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competence

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our knowledge of our language, as distinct from our linguistic performance

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performance

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our actual language ability, limited by our cognitive capacity, distinct from our competence

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generative grammar

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a finite set of rules that will produce or generate all the sentences of a language (but no non-sentences)

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class

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the grammatical class of a word is the major grammatical category o which a word belongs (ex noun, verb etc.)

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nouns

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the syntactic category of words that can act as names and can all be subjects or objects of a clause; all things are nouns

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adjectives

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a describing word

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verbs

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a syntactic class of words expressing actions, events and states, and which have tenses

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adverbs

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a type of word that modifies a verb

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determiners

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a grammatical word that determines the number of a noun (ex the, a, an, soe)

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prepositions

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the grammatical word expressing a relation (ex. to, with, from)

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conjuncitons

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a part of speech that connects words w/i a sentence

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pronouns

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a grammatical class of words that can stand for nouns or noun phrases (ex she, he, it)

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content words

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one of the enormous number of words that convey most of the meaning of a sentence- nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs. Content words are the same as open-class words. Contrasted w/ function words

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function words

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one of the limited number of words that do the grammatical work of the language (determiners, prepositions, conjunctions)

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open class words

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same as content words

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closed class items

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same as grammatical element

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phrases

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a grop of words forming a grammatical unit beneath the level of a clause (ex up a tree). A phrase does not contain both a subject and a predicate. In general, if you can replace a sequence of words in a sentence w/ a single word w/o changing the overall structure of the sentence, then that sequence of words is a phrase

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noun phrases

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grammatical phrase based on a noun (ex the red house), abbreviated to NP

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clauses

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a group of related words containing a subject and a verb

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subject

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the word or phrase that the sentence is about; the clause about which something is predicated. The subject of the verb: who or what is doing something. More formally it is the grammatical category of the noun phrase that is immediately beneath the sentence node in the phrase structure tree; the thing about which something is stated

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predicate

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the part of the clause that givers in formation about the subject (ex: "the ghost is laughing" is laughing is the predicate)

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constituents

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a linguistic unit that is part of a larger linguistic unit

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object

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the person, thing or idea that is acted on by the verb. In the sentence "the cat chased the dog" the dog is the subject. Can be direct or indirect. In "She gave the dog to the man" dog is d.o., man is i.o.

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transitive verbs

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a verb that takes an object (ex the cat hit the dog)

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intransitive verbs

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a verb that does not take an object (the man laughs)

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themes

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the thing that is being acted on or being moved

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transformations

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a grammatical rule for transforming one syntactic structure into another (ex active to passive)

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transformational grammar

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a system of grammar based on transformation, introduced by Chomsky

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auxillary verb

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a linking verb used w/ other verbs (ex in "you must have done that" must and have are auxillaries)

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parameters

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a component of Chomsky's theory that governs aspects of language, and that is set in childhood by exposure to a particular language

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modifiers

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a part of speech that is dependent on another, which it modifies or qualifies in some way (ex adjectives modify nouns)

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aphasia

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a disorder of language, including a defect or loss of expressive (production) or receptive (comprehension) aspects of written or spoken language as a result of brain damage

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syndrome

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a medical term for a cluster of symptoms that cohere as a result of a single underlying cause

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Broca's aphasia

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a tpe of aphasia that follows from damage to broca's region of the brain,characterized by many dysfluencies, slow, laborious speech, difficulties in articulation, and by agrammatism

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Wernicke's aphasia

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a type of aphasia resulting from damage to WErnicke's area of the brain, characterized by poor comprehension and fluent, often meaningless speech w/ clear word-finding difficulties

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maturation

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the sequential unfolding of characteristics, usually governed by instructions in the genetic code

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hemicortication

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complete removal of the cortex of one side of the brain

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sucking habituation paradigm

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a metohd for examining whether or not very young infants can discriminate between two stimuli. The child sucks on a special piece of apparatus; as the child habituates to the stimulus, their sucking rate drops, but if a new stimulus is presented, the sucking rate increases again, but only if the child can detect that the stimulus is different from the first

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nativist

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the idea that knowledge is innate

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telegraphic speech

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a type of speech used by young children, marked by syntactic simplification, particularly in the omission of function words

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child directed speech (CDS)

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the speech of caretakers to young children that is modified to make it easier to understand (called "motherese")

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Language acquisition device (LAD)

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Chomsky argued that children hear an impoverished language input and therefore need the assistance of an innate language acquisition device in order to acquire language

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universal grammar

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the core of the grammar that is universal to all languages, and which specifies and restricts the form that individual languages can take

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parameter

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a component of Chomsky's theory that governs aspects of language, and that is set in childhood by exposure to a particular language

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pidgins

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a type of language with reduced structure and form,without any native speakers of its own,and which is created by the contact of two peoples who do not speak each other's native languages

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creole

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a pidgin that has become hte language of a community through an evolutionary process known as creolization

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specific-language impairment

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specific language impairment- a developmental disorder affecting just children

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distributional information

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information about what tends to co-occur w/ what; for example, the knowledge that the letter q is almost always followed by the letter u or that the word "the"is always followed by a noun, are instances of distributional information

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babbling

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an early stage of language, starting at the age of about 5 or 6 months, where the child babbles, repetitively combining consonants and vowels into syllable-like sequences (ex bababababa)

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ostensive

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youcan define an object ostensively by pointing to it

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basic level

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the level of representation in a hierarchy that is the default level (ex dog rather than terrier or animal)

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bootstrapping

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the way in which children can increase their knowledge when they have some - such as inferring syntax when they have semantics

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over-extensions

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when a child uses a word to refer to things in a way that is based on particular attributes of the word, so that many things can be named usingthat word (ex using moon to refer to all round things, or stick to all long things)

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semantic feature

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a unit that represents part of the meaning of a word

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prototype

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an abstraction that is the best example of a category

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thematic roles

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the set of semantic roles in a sentence that conveys information about who is doing what to whom, as distinct from the syntactic roles of subject and object. Examples include agent and theme

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agent

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the thematic role describing the entity that instigates an action

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patient

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the thematic role of a person or thing acted on by the agent

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saccades

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a fast movement of the eye, for example to change the fixation point when reading

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tachistoscope

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a device for presenting materials (ex words) or extremely short durations; tachistoscopic presentation therefore means an item that is presented very briefly

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Stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA)

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the time between the onset of the presentation of one stimulus and the onset of another. The time between the offset of the presentation of the first stimulus and the onset of the second is known as stimulus offset-onset asynchrony

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nonwords

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a string of letters that does not form a word

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pseudowords

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a string of letters that form a pronounceable nonword (ex "smeak")

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repetition priming

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facilitatory priming by repeating a stimulus

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automatic processing

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processing that is unconscious, fast, obligatory, facilitatory, does not involve working memory space, and is generally not susceptible to dual-task interference

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attentional/controlled processing

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processing requring central resources. It is non-obligatory,generally uses working memory space, is prone to dual-task interference, is relatively slow, and may be accessible to consciousness

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mediated priming

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priming through a semantic intermediary (ex lion > tiger > stripes)

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agnosia

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disorder of object recognition

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homophone

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two words that sound the same

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heterographic homophones

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two words w/ different spellings that sound the same (ex soul and sole)

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homographs

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different words that are spelled the same (ex lead > base metal or verb)

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polysemous words

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words that have more than one meaning