Language

1. Language

2. Definition of Language • Communicative: transfer of information between individuals • Arbitrary: no relationship between the symbols (words) used to represent an object and the object • Structured: the pattern of the symbols is meaningful. • Two kinds of patterns to think about • Morphological structures (e.g., Latin, Arabic) • Syntax e.g., the boy ran from the angry dog the boy ran from the dog angry • Generative: The basic units can be used to build a limitless number of meanings. • Dynamic: Languages change by word absorption, and grammar rules shift.

3. Definitions of Language • Critical period • Developmental stages • Pattern of cognitive ability • Recursive • The dog is chasing its tail • It’s cold outside, isn’t it? • Displaced reference: Language can refer to things not present in the here and now • The ancient Greeks deduced the size of the Earth, Moon and Sun, and the distances amongst each, using simple geometry.

4. Taxonomy of Language • Phonemes • Morphemes • Syntax • Phonology (e.g., 44 sounds in English) – Sounds, including • Consonants • Vowels • Suprasegmentals – • Pitch, Tone, Cadence of sentences • Prosody, information conveyed through tone • Onomatopoeia , • eg. Umph, ouch, • /woof/ in English, /a-wau/ in Arabic

5. Taxonomy of Language • Phonemes • the smallest units of sound that are considered part of the language, • one letter like /t/ will have several variants the are aspirant or percussive (or non-aspirant) which are called allophones. • English has 44 phonemes, World average is 31 • 70% of World’s between 20 and 37 • Fewest is 11 (Rotakas, Indo-Pacific L.) • Most is 141 (!Xu, southern Africa) • Minimum number of vowels: 3, eg. Arabic • Some have 24, 13 have more than 16, • most languages have about 5 • English has around 11-12

6. Taxonomy of Language • Morphemes • String phonemes together and you get morphemes, the smallest units of meaning like /dog/ which is one morpheme or /doggy/ which is two. • There are plural morphemes like /s/, /z/, /zez/ or tense morphemes like /t/, /d/. There are irregular patterns for plurals which any native listener would be able to recognize when hearing them for the first time.

7. Taxonomy of Language • Syntax – Word order in sentences – Native speakers know what is not grammatical even if they have never heard the sentence before. – Hierarchical structure • Subject – Object – Verb (Japanese, Maninka) • Subject – Verb – Object (English, Spanish) • Verb – Subject – Object (Jacaltec, Irish) • Verb – Object – Subject (Malagasy, Madag.; Huave, Mx) • Object – Subject – Verb (Xavante) • All languages have NVO, prepositions, relative clauses, a way of negating, forming questions, issuing commands, referring to the past and future, and there are universal semantic categories like animate vs human, or male vs female. • No such thing as a “primitive language”, all languages can be expanded to include new words, all are equally complex, all languages change over time.

8. In class Activity • Construct a Table in which each of the 25 rows corresponds to a phoneme (sound unit) in the English language. List the consonantal phonemes in the following order (start with # for “none” then) p, t, k, b, d, g, m, n, ng, f, th, s, sh, ch, v, z, zh, j, l, r, y, w, hw, h. Each of the 25 columns also corresponds to a phoneme in English (start with V for any vowel, then) p, t, k, b, d, g, m, n, ng, f, th, s, sh, ch, v, z, zh, j, l, r, y, w, hw, h. • Reminder: These refer to sounds not letters. • Now fill in the table with an X to indicate which of the phonemes in the rows may be followed by which of the phonemes in the columns, in order to begin an English syllable. Place an X in each box in the Table that corresponds to a legal syllable onset in standard English.

9. In class Activity • Questions: • Which are the privileged / legal phonemes? • Why are some combinations of phonemes allowed and others not? • How is the structure of spoken language visible in this chart?

10. Language Acquisition • What makes language hard to acquire? • How do you know when one syllabe starts and another ends? Coarticulation: Phonemes overlap in time • Variability in speech signal • No one-to-one correspondence between the acoustic stimuli and the speech sounds we hear • How do we recognize sounds in a way so a stable set of phonemes is perceived?

11. Language Acquisition Vowel formants

12. Phoneme Restoration Effect • Warren & Warren (1970) • It was found that the *eel was on the axle • It was found that the *eel was on the shoe • It was found that the *eel was on the orange • It was found that the *eel was on the table • * was a cough but it was heard as the missing phoneme implied by the context

13. Word Superiority and Neural Nets

14. Demonstration Based on Reicher (1969) • On the next several slides, a row of six letters will appear. • You will then see two letters, one above and one below a letter that appeared • Guess which of the two letters actually appeared in the appropriate location

15. XXXXXX

16. JBDVLM

17. ----B- XXXXXX ----L-

18. XXXXXX

19. SOKDHR

20. --K--- XXXXXX --R---

21. XXXXXX

22. FATHER

23. ---T-- XXXXXX ---H--

24. XXXXXX

25. CGZIFW

26. ----F- XXXXXX ----G-

27. XXXXXX

28. POSTER

29. --R--- XXXXXX --S---

30. XXXXXX

31. RCHUQV

32. --H--- XXXXXX --U---

33. XXXXXX

34. STRIPE

35. ----K- XXXXXX ----P-

36. XXXXXX

37. CRATES

38. -----S XXXXXX -----R

39. end

40. Word Superiority Effect • Letters are more easily recognized in the context of a word than alone • Words are also more easily recognized after processing a sentence • This demonstrates the importance of the interaction between top-down and bottom-up processing

41. McGurk Effect • Lip movements to one sound “ga” • Soundtrack indicates “ba” • What do you hear? • McGurk & MacDonald (1976) found that people make a comprised sound “da” • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=73LE1vKGfy4&feature=related

42. Language Acquisition • What newborn and very young infants can already do • discriminate human speech from other sounds and prefer to listen to it • discriminate their mother’s voice from that of other adult women • discriminate their language from another language • they listen longer to a story that they have heard read in the womb

43. Motherese

44. Stages of Language Acquisition in Infants • Cooing – long vowel sounds (ooooooh) or consonant vowel combinations (gaaaaaah) • They are capable of generating any sound found in any language. • Babbling – (6-10 m.o.) consonant-vowel combinations and repetitions (dadadada) • 12-14 mo become selective towards sounds in mother tongue, by 18 mo has vocabulary of 50 words • 24 mo starts using two word sentences

45. Stages of Language Acquisition in Infants Babies can discriminate the sounds of all the world’s languages and adults cannot. Both Hindi and English: /ba/ vs. /da/ 6-8 month-old babies and adults could discriminate. Hindi, not English, easy /Ta/ vs. /ta/ 6-8 month-old babies could discriminate. Adults could not initially but could after 25 trials of training. Hindi, not English, hard /th/vs. /dh/ 6-8 month-old babies could discriminate. Adults could not, and never learned. Werker et al.

46. Stages of Language Acquisition in Infants 1. Present babies with strings of elements from an artificial grammar: VOT PEL JIC RUD TAM 2. The artificial grammar has rules as to the order of elements PEL can occur: 1st position 2nd position both 2nd and 3rd not at all JIC can occur: after VOT, PEL or TAM but its position depended on whether VOT or TAM was first 3. The babies listen to the strings following these rules for 2 minutes 4. Test with strings of the same sounds but different rules of combination 5.12-month-old babies listened longer to new strings from the grammar they had heard before than to strings from the other grammars Gomez & Gerken

47. Errors Made by Infants • Overextension / overgeneralization • Doggy means all four legged furry animals daddy means all grown up men who wear beards • Overregularization • Fish (pl.) = Fishes; run ~runned; go~goed • Competence vs. Knowledge Look at the Fisses It’s not fisses, it’s fish That’s what I said, fisses

48. Stages of Language Acquisition in Infants • Babies start off by being able to produce any sound then they become selective towards mother-tongue phonemes. • They are powerful statistical learners • As a new cognitive ability comes online, the preceding one shows a temporary deficit

49. AnimalsGot Language? • Story of Clever Hans • Honeybees • Songbirds • Parrots • Vervet Monkeys • Dolphins • Monkeys & Apes

50. Hi Honey! I’m Home! • Honeybees • • When a forager bee locates food it returns to the hive and performs a dance. • • The number of repetitions of the dance communicates the quality of the food. • • Distance is communicated by the form of the dance. • – Round Dance: < 20 ft • – Sickle Dance: 20 – 60 ft. • – Tail-Wagging Dance: > 60 ft, coded by rate • • Direction is also communicated in the sickle and tail-wagging dances. • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-7ijI-g4jHg • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4NtegAOQpSs&NR=1