Psychology Exam 3 Study GuideChapter 9: Language1. Levels of Analysis in the Study of LanguagePhonology- Phonemes: the smallest units of sound that are recognizable as speech rather than as random noise- Single or few letters: /p/, /b/, /ch/, /sh/- Phonological rules indicate how phonemes can b combined to produce speech sounds- Initial sound /ts/ is acceptable in German, but not EnglishMorphology- Morphemes: the smallest meaningful units of language- Can be whole words or partial units such as suffixes- Dog and s are both morphemes because “dog” by itself has a different meaning than “dogs”- Morphological rules indicate how morphemes can be combined to form words- Content morphemes: things and events (whole words such as cat, dog, take)- Function morphemes: serve grammatical functions (whole words such as and, or, but, when)Syntax- Syntactic rules indicate how words can be combined to form phrases and sentences- A simple syntactic rule is that a sentence must contain at least one noun and verbPragmatics- Pragmatics: the study of how language is used and understood in context- Making sense of what people mean when they speak compared to the actual words being spoken and the context2. PhonologySpeech Perception Problems- Generally make automated voice recognition more difficult- Lack of invariance problem: there is no consistent relation between the physical features of the sounds and how sounds are perceived- Sources include speaker identity and coarticulation- Speaker identity: differences across speakers- Coarticulation: differences due to context (the “same” sound is produced differently depending on what comes before or after)- Speech segmentation problem: there are no reliable physical cues to the boundaries between words- While words are spoken, there are not consistent breaks between words like when they are written- There can be flows between words or gaps in the middle of a wordPhonemes vs. Allophones- Phoneme: the smallest units of sound that are recognizable as speech rather than as random noise- /b/ and /p/ are considered different phonemes because changing betweenthem leads to different meanings- Bat and pat are different words- Allophone: one of a set of possible spoken sounds to produce a single phoneme- Considered to be of the same phoneme- The two /k/ sounds in Cape Cod are considered allophones of one phoneme because switching them would not change meaning3. Morphology & SemanticsArbitrariness of the Sign- Arbitrariness of the sign refers to the idea that there is no transparent relation between the sound of a word and the concept/meaning to which it applies- Question of whether language is truly arbitrary- There are counterexamples/ideas that show there may be some meaning behind the sound- Onomatopoeia: a word that phonetically resembles the sounds it describes- Bang, beep, splash- Phonesthesia: clusters of words that share both sound and meaning elements- High amount of light and vision words beginning with “gl”: glasses,gleam, glare, glow, etc- Sound symbolism: sounds may actually carry some meaning with them- The Kiki vs. the Bouba: people tend to assign various shapes to the same names- English speakers listening to foreign languages often choose the correct meaning for a word when presented with opposite definitions (big vs. small)Morphemes- Morphemes: the smallest meaningful units of language- Can be whole words or partial units- Free morphemes: morphemes that are entire words by themselves (dog, cook, happy)- Bound morphemes: morphemes that combine to make words (dogs is made up of dog and s)- Morphological rules: the rules that govern how morphees can be combined to form words- The Wug Test requires kids to find the plural for the word “Wug” when there are two- They are able to define the plural as “Wugs”, which indicates they understand morphological rules very early indevelopment4. SyntaxCharacteristics of Syntax- Recursion: a procedure that an instance of itself- For example, a noun + verb + noun sentence can embed more parts of noun + verb + noun within it- Finite number of words allows for an infinity of sentences- Syntax exists independent of meaning- Noam Chomsky’s sentence “colorless green ideas sleep furiously” has little meaning, but shows how it can still be perceived as a well-constructed sentence- If the words in his sentence are jumbled, they are not perceived with cohesive meaningSurface vs. Deep Structure- Surface structure: how a sentence is worded- Structurally ambiguous sentences reveal the distinction between surface and deep structure- “On the program tonight, Conan discusses sex with Dr. Ruth”, “complaintsabout NBA referees growing ugly”- Deep structure: the meaning of a sentence- “The dog eats a juicy bone” and “a juicy bone is being eaten by the dog” have the same deep structure5. PragmaticsMeaning of Words- Pragmatics: the study of how language is used and understood in context- Making sense of what people actually mean when they speakLocutionary vs. Illocutionary- Illocutionary acts: what the speaker is trying to do with their words- Intended/indirect meaning- Locutionary acts: what is actually said- Literal meaning, based on syntax- “If you could pass me the guacamole, that would be awesome”- Illocutionary act: give me the guacamole- Locutionary act: a world in which you are capable of moving the guacamole to me would be heavenly6. Language DevelopmentDevelopment of Infant Speech Perception- From 0-4 months: infants can tell the difference between speech sounds (phonemes), and they coo in response to speech- From 4-6 months: they babble consonants- From 6-10 months: they understand some words and simple requests- From 10-12 months: they begin to use single words- From 12-18 months: they have a vocabulary of 30-50 words (simple nouns, adjectives, and action words)- From 18-24 months: two-word phrases are ordered according to syntactic rules (telegraphic speech), their vocabulary consists of 50-200 words, and they understand rules- From 24-36 months: they have a vocabulary of about 1,000 words and produce phrases and incomplete sentences- From 36-60 months: their vocabulary grows to more than 10,000 words, they show mastery of grammatical morphemes (-ed) and function words (but), and they can form questions and negotiationsChildren’s Speech Perception Concepts- Fast-mapping: the process whereby children map a word onto an underlying concept after only a single exposure- Can
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