Psychology Cognition - Language Floccinaucinihilipilification

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Willhelm Wundt

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Influential psyc'ist in language. Studied the relationships between experiences and the words to describe them.

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Language

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Shared symbolic system of communication.

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Speech

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Small subset of language which consists of sentences that are spoken.
Means that there must be a grammar capable of producing an infinite number of sentences. (i.e. finite state grammar can't exist)

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Phrase structure rules

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Rules describing the way in which symbols (NP for noun phrase, V for verb...) can be written as other symbols (VP = V + NP, NP = art + N...)

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Grammatical transformations

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Rules operation on entire strings of symbols, converting them to new strings, like changing an active sentence to passive.

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Optional transformations

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Grammatical operations that aren't necessary to make the sentence grammatical.

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Kernel sentences

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Sentences produced without any optional transformations, they are the most straight forward and understandable version of a same sentence.
This may simply be due to the length of the sentence.

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Competence and performance (language)

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One may have an internalized system of rules that constitutes a basic linguistic competence, but this competence may not always may not be reflected in the person's actual use of the language.

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Surface structure and deep structure

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SS: Sequence of words that make up the sentence
DS: actual meaning of said sentence.

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Innateness hypothesis

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(Chomsky) Language aquisition is innate, and children have a language acquisition device that comes with principles of universal grammar.

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Poverty of the stimulus argument

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(hypothesis) The linguistic environment a child is exposed to is too deficient to enable the child to acquire language on that basis alone.

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Skinner's view on language acquisition and counter-arguments

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Children learn language by receiving positive and negative responses to what they say depending on the syntax.
Parent's response is usually to the veracity rather than on the syntax.

Poverty of stimulus argument

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Minimalism

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Latest version of Chomsky's theory. Linguistic acquisition has only those characteristics that are absolutely necessary.

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Parameter setting

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(hypothesis) Universal grammar contains a variety of switches which can be set on a number of different parameters or universal aspect like "adjectives come before/after nouns"

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Concealing function of language

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Language serves not only to share information, but also to hide it from people who don't understand it.

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Parental reformulation

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When adults repeat children's wrong sentences but right, children tend to repeat the corrected sentence.
Provides counter-arguments to the poverty of stimulus argument.

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Children's syntactic development

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Children's development of their ability to organize words into grammatical sentences.
It is said to be very much influenced by teachers.

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Given, new contract

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Agreement whereby which the speaker connects new information to what the listener already knows.

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Code model

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Model based on information processing. word -> acoustic signal -> reaches the listener -> listener decodes.
This is based on the premise that the speaker and the listener share enough knowledge.

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Inferential model

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Model based on Grice's inferential theory that a listener intends to inform a listener who infers what the speaker intends. (ex: in sarcasm we know that what is meant is far from what is said)

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Conversational maxims

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Rules that interlocutors tend to obey in conversations. Grice observed 4 of them.

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Maxim of quantity

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One must say no more than is necessary

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Maxim of quality

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One must try to stay truthful

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Maxim of relation

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One must stay relevant

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Maxim of manner

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One must be clear and never ambiguous.

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Co-operative principle

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The assumption that our interlocutor will follow the conversation maxims.
This principle helps us understand things that, out of context, could have several meanings

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Irony

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A figure of speech where one says the opposite of what he means.

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Pretense

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The underlying principle of irony in which one pretends to mean what he says.

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Hesitation pauses

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Pauses in speech characterized by Speech difluencies.

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Speech disinfluencies

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The phonemes that indicate used to fill gaps when we think.
"uh" usually announces short pauses while "um" announces long ones.
People unconsciously announce how long their break will be

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Egocentric speech

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Speech that does not take the listener's perspective into account.
It's later internalized to become inner speech.

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Inner speech

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Once children grow out of egocentric speech, it becomes inner speech and helps regulate thought. It would give little information to anyone stranger to the system.

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Zone of proximal development

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Distance between the actual developmental level as determined by independent problem solving and the level of potential development under adult guidance or with the help of a more able peer. (language)

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Metalinguistic awareness

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The ability to talk about language without worrying about what it refers to (i.e. study of rhetoric figure).
Some argue that literacy is metalinguistic awareness

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Surface dyslexia

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An acquired dyslexia characterized by a deficit in whole-word reading but not phonetic reading. Printed word -> graphem-phoneme conversion -> speech.

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Phonological dyslexia

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Impairment in phonetic reading but not in whole-word reading. printed word -> mental dictionary -> speech.
Dual route theory

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Dual route theory

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There are 2 pathways for reading, one for comparing words to our lexicon, and another for converting letters to sounds.

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Sapir-Wolf hypothesis

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Two languages may be so different from each other as to make their native speakers' experience of the world qualitatively different from each other.

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Linguistic relativity

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The notion that different languages make different experiences of the world.
This would account for different languages to have a different number of times the same word

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Polysemy

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The existence of multiple meanings for one word.

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Basic color terms (Berlin-Kay order)

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(hypothesis) There is an invariant sequence regulating the emergence of color terms in any language.
This was disproved later.

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Opponent process of color vision

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The hypothesis that color vision is based on 3 pairs of antagonistic processes. Black-white, red-green, yellow blue.
This was disproved.

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Intrinsic frame of reference

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based on the relation of the objects (behind, in front of)

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Relative frame of reference

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Based on observer's viewepoint (to the left of, to the right of)

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Absolute frame of reference

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Based on invariant set of coordinates (to the north of, to the south of)