Psyc 358 1st Edition Lecture 21 Outline of Last Lecture II. What is mental ImageryIII. HistoryIV. Cognitive approach to mental imagery & relation to perceptionV. The modern imagery debateVI. Cognitive neuroscience findingsVII. Use of imageryVIII. Summary/conclusionOutline of Current Lecture IX. What is Language?a. Systematicb. Flexiblec. UniversalX. PsycholinguisticsXI. Grammar being codedCurrent LectureCognition4.21.15Day 21 LanguageQuestion of the Day: How do we think with and about language?-Imagery is the content of thought, with or without input from the outside world. We have language input that needs to be processed and continues to be the content of our thoughts.What is Language?-A broad-ranging mechanism for expressing meaning. -Language ability is considered one of the hallmarks of human “specialness”-Animals have ways of communication. There are hints of interspecies communication aswell. Still, Humans’ language ability is far above what any other species. Animals have a motor prowess that we don’t have. Our language advantages are the reason we are able to get by.-Systematic (There are rules and organizations)-Hierarchical-There are things from line segments to letters to words to phrases to sentence to paragraphs to long form pros, no matter what aspect of These notes represent a detailed interpretation of the professor’s lecture. GradeBuddy is best used as a supplement to your own notes, not as a substitute.language how you look at you see how it all fits in a hierarchy of different levels-Rule-following-Can’t just say anything at anytime, there has to be a certain amount of structure and context. -Ex. Punctuation, grammar-Flexible (There must be flexibility in language and not completely all systematic)-Many-to-many mapping between expressed form and underlying meaning generativity-The same meaning can be related to different sets of words in different contexts and forms. A word can also have different meanings based on the context. -Generativity: can always make new things, language grows and extends into new places-Even the things that are very rigid go through slow changes-Universal-Commonalities/differences among individuals, cultures, languages-No matter where you look at language in the sphere of human affairs, you’ll always find certain things that hold in any culture in any content inany region in any language that is spoken; there are certain things that linguists believe will be true about the nature of that language. This is a thing like there is a systematic aspect of vocabulary-Par of what linguists have been all about is identifying these universals. Show these and me a new language are the things that is has to have. The idea is that spreads as far as language spreads. If sign language is still a language because is conforms to these propertiesPsycholinguistics-From language in the abstract to language as cognition and behavior-Theoretical elements-Mental representation (Chomsky vs. Skinner)-Novel comprehension and production-Chomsky made the point that how could language be just a matter of conditioned responses if we’re able to understand things we never heard before, or create sentences we’ve never spoken before. If we get to completely new territory how can it just be a matter of association of language experiences we had in the past-At the time it was crucial to make an argument about why that might not be true-Chomsky took a stand against any component of learning in ourlanguage ability. So Chomsky was the champion that language is something that we are born with. We have an innate ability, kind of like and evolved genetic adaptation, we have the ability to speak and understand language like we have the ability to walk.-Poverty of the stimulus argument-Means the data are poor. The information that you have to learn from as an infant or as a child is notenough information for you to become the language capable creature that we al become. The idea is that you can learn all the things you’ve learned before because you have good data available to you. Chomsky says it doesn’t matter how much you listen to other people speaking as a kid he argued that none of that data was good enough to explain how we become language experts at such an early age -Nature vs. Nurture-Language as reasoning (active, interactive, dynamic, statistical)-Chomsky liked the idea that language is fully formed. It is because of a fixed set of functions that you have. Skinner believed it was more like guess work and in the moment-Alternative language is the idea that we do our best with what we got in the moment-Descriptivism over prescriptivism-Prescriptivist approach says that when the language exists and takes its form outside its particular use. Language has a right way to be used and spoken. When anyone deviates from that, they are simply a poor user ofthat language.-Descriptivist approach. Whatever way the language is being used is what the language is. They respect violations of normal language. If people are saying “Y’all”, then that is part of the language. Language is like a living thing and-Chomsky is more of a prescriptivist-Methodological elements-Experimental approach-Computational models-Some profound questions…-How is language acquired?-How does language relate to thought?-How are the spoken and written forms of language processed?-What are implications of the sophistication of human language ability?-What is universal about language?Some basics about language-Productivity of language-We can talk about anything-New words-Function:-Form: stable set of sounds and letters-New sentences-Based on syntax-Allowable orders for combining words (in English)-Nouns, verbs, modifiers, “closed class” words-Cognitive neuroscience evidence-Broca’s and Wernicke’s areas in the brain-Broca damage leads to trouble in producing language. You can’tspeak as well anymore initially Broca’s was thought of as a productive disorder-You have ability to maintain semantics, you just don’t know how to put words together into sentences anymore-Wernicke’s damage, people can still talk but it would come out as gibberish. High quantity of language but low meaning-You can make sentences all over the place and its semantically well formed cause it still sounds like language but it doesn’t mean anything-So your syntactic ability is preserved but your semantics are out the window. This suggests there’s a brain basis for syntactic and semantic