Psych 372 Mod 33

Front 1

What kid of pattern do we see early on in preschoolers in terms of lang development?

Back 1

Preschoolers have internalized many rules (and over generalize many of them, like adding an /ed/ to the end even if it is an irregular verb, because they have learned that rule. Often before they learn the rules, they get them right but then once they learn the rules they over generalize)

Front 2

What is syntax?

Back 2

Syntax - usually considered as being “meaning free”, just the rules for how you compose sentences and combine words.

Front 3

What are semantics?

Back 3

oThe meaning of individual words
oThe meaning of sentences
oThe meaning of larger elements - discourse

Front 4

What does grammar do?

Back 4

oBreaks up the sentence into functional pieces
oNoun-phrase, verb-phrase, prepositional phrase

Front 5

How does grammar relate to meaning?

Back 5

Largely insensitive to meaning of a sentence

Front 6

What is transformational grammar?

Back 6

Transformational grammar * looking at sentence not as single events that have a certain syntactical structure, but that a sentence represents meaning of a certain type, and that meaning is represented in its deep structure and there are multiple different ways of expressing that syntactically

Front 7

What are some examples of transformational grammar?

Back 7

oThe professor taught the students
oThe students were taught by the professor
Active [ NP1 VP(NP2)]
Passive [NP2 were VP (by NP1)]
Changing back and forth from active tenses to passive tenses is one way in which the structure of sentences can be very different but still contain the same meaning (their deep meaning).
oI am sad / You are blue

Front 8

What is evidence that we store syntactical information in our lexicons?

Back 8

oSpeech errors hardly ever break the thematic category within the sentence
The dog was put in the cat (car) Freudian slips * the words sounds similar but also fit the same kind of thematic role within sentence.
What you would not hear “The dog was put in the think” where you put a verb in the place of the noun, which doesn’t fit the thematic role.
So it seems that we make mistakes a lot, but the mistakes still follow certain rules, or follow along our thematic categories.

Front 9

What are thematic roles in language?

Back 9

The ways in which syntax provides us with slots to be filled with "appropriate" lexicon entries.

Front 10

What are exchange errors?

Back 10

Swapping of words withing a sentence. Happen mostly within the same thematic category within the sentence
The chief slicely thinned the carrots

Front 11

In terms of language, what is a standing error?

Back 11

standing errors- where we substitute the verb for a noun, but we change the noun into a verb to accommodate, will still have the “ed” on it
I trucked the park

Front 12

WHat is syntax tendency?

Back 12

The ways humans can judge syntactical structure for meaningless sentences…"Twas brillig and the slithy toves did gyre and gimble in the wabe (sentence from Jabberwoky) the syntactical structure is still visible
o when the order of non-sensical words is jumbled, then it is much harder to read even though the words are still created. The was toves and in gimble the wabe brillig did slighty twas gyre

Front 13

How is syntactical structure is "infectious"?

Back 13

oIn communication, one person’s syntactical structure often follows the other person’s syntax
oSyntax can shaped by conditioning * by reinforcing certain syntactical structure but not reinforcing other, like nodding subtlety when person uses past tenses versus present tense. Over time it will have an effect. Passive voice over active voice.
oSecond language acquisition: particular syntactic structures might be rote memorized

Front 14

Q: How does LTD happen?

Back 14

Diff rate=less AMPA
no NO = less glutamate
. So less AMPA receptors means it is harder to depolarize that neuron.
• In addition we get a smaller amount of glutamate from the pre-synaptic neuron.

Front 15

Q: Why would we have machinery in place that makes synapses less able to communicate?

Back 15

Extinction/pruning. So with extinction, if a learned relationship no longer holds (or is no longer adaptive) then the pathways will taper off. With senaptic pruning, idea that we are born with more neurons than we need and the ones we need taper off which helps because it is removing excess that we don’t need, hence the idea of pruning.