Professor Greg Francis 8/14/12 PSY 200: Intro. to Cognitive Psychology 1 Purdue University Words PSY 200 Greg Francis Lecture 28 What is the plural of walkman? Purdue University Grammar  The rules of phrases  rules for combining phrases  universals for all languages  So why do we have so difficult a time communicating with people that speak other languages? Purdue University Words  Even if all languages have similar rules for combining phrases, they use different words  Words are symbols that are arbitrary in many respects  “dog” is nothing like a dog  is it rote memorization? » partly, but it is also more than that Purdue University --?- E or L --?- E or L Words are special  We are better at identifying a word than an individual letter  Word superiority effect XXXX L XXXX FELT Purdue University --?- E or L --?- E or L Words are special  Note: context does not give the answer  Just knowing there was a word should not help  FEET FELT XXXX L XXXX FELT Purdue University Words are special  Nevertheless, a letter in a word is better identified  CogLab class data  Results are based on data from 155 participants" Condition ! !Percent correct detections" Target letter in a word "67.4" Target letter in isolation "66.7" CogLab global data" Results are based on data from 39,489 participants" Condition ! !Percent correct detections" Target letter in a word "77.2" Target letter in isolation "76.0" No convincing explanationProfessor Greg Francis 8/14/12 PSY 200: Intro. to Cognitive Psychology 2 Purdue University Word rules  Part of linguistics identifies the rules for working with words (morphology)  Show this page to a preschooler  The child will say wugs even though he has never seen a wug before  This implies that there must be a rule for pluralizing nouns Purdue University Morphology  The rules of word formation  In many respects English has a very limited morphology  nouns have two forms  verbs have four forms duck ducks quack quacks quacked quacking Purdue University Morphology  Other languages have many more variations  Italian and Spanish have 50 forms of each verb  classical Greek has 350 forms of each verb  Turkish has 2 million forms of each verb  some languages build entire sentences around one complex verb  There are rules for these forms Purdue University Morphology  English can convey this information in as many ways as other languages, but we use grammatical phrases to do so  Simple present tense  General truths: Ducks quack.  Habitual action: I quack like a duck when I wake up.  Present Perfect Progressive  To express duration of an action that began in the past, has continued into the present, and may continue into the future: The duck has been quacking for two hours, and he hasn’t finished yet.  Other languages have different verb forms to indicate these conditions Purdue University Morphology  On the other hand, English morphology allows one to easily create new words from old words  add suffixes and prefixes teach teachable unteachable teacher teachableness Purdue University Suffixes  English has lots of these derivational suffixes -able -age -al -ate -ed -en -ify -ion -ish -ize -an -ant -ance -ary -er -ful -hood -ic -ism -ist -ity -ive -ness -ory -ous -y You probably do not consciously know what some of these mean, but your language system does. Examples of morphemesProfessor Greg Francis 8/14/12 PSY 200: Intro. to Cognitive Psychology 3 Purdue University Compounding  English also allows new words to be created out of other words  and combinations can be combined tooth brush toothbrush unmicrowaveability bootylicious Purdue University Rules  So what are the rules?  One looks to be easy  to pluralize a noun, add -s N Nstem Ninflection dog -s N Nstem Ninflection wug -s Purdue University Rules  The creation of compound nouns also follows a simple rule Nstem Nstem Nstem tooth brush Nstem Nstem Nstem dog bite By the way, ignore what grammar school might have taught you, these are not adjective-noun phrases Purdue University More detail on rules  Consider a rule that creates an adjective out of a verb  Or a noun out of a verb Astem Vstem Astemaffix crunch -able Nstem Vstem Nstemaffix crunch -er Purdue University Root  Some morphemes can only be attached to certain types of words  a root is a word that cannot be split into smaller parts  some morphemes attach only to roots  thus, Darwinianisms is a word, but Darwinismians is not » -ian must attach to a root Nstem Nstem Nstemaffix Nroot -ian Darwin Nrootaffix -ism N Ninflection -s Purdue University Lexicon  To keep track of what can attach to what, there must be a mental dictionary of morphemes  -able » adjective stem affiix; means “capable of being X’d”;attach me to a verb stem  -er » noun stem affix; means “one who X’s”; attach me to a verb stem  ...Professor Greg Francis 8/14/12 PSY 200: Intro. to Cognitive Psychology 4 Purdue University Exceptions  You can probably think of lots of exceptions to these types of rules  many words seem to follow arbitrary rules  Pluralization, past tense » mouse, mice teach, taught » leaf, leaves buy, bought » man, men fly, flew Purdue University Exceptions  These exceptions generally come from other languages (with appropriate rules)  English adopts the words but not the rules  These exceptions tend to be very common words  drink-drank sink-sank  throw-threw ring-rang  sit-sat blow-blew  All derive from a proto-Indo-European language that formed past tense by replacing one vowel with another Purdue University Language families  Many languages are related to each other and have broad families  Which is why you see so many similar words across languages Purdue University Very special cases  What is the plural of walkman?  walkmans?  walkmen?  Neither feels quite right  To answer this question we have to understand how the word walkman is formed and what it is about  this tells us how to pluralize the word Purdue University Heads  Most words have a