Language comprehension: 2. Understanding meaning

1. Language comprehension:2. Understanding meaning • Denotation vs. connotation • "The name reservation has a negative connotation among Native Americans--an intern camp of sorts.” • "Since 'tribe' has assumed a connotation of primitiveness or backwardness, it is suggested that the use of 'nation' or 'people' replace the term whenever possible in referring to Native American peoples.” • Remember concepts?

2. Language comprehension 3:Understanding syntax • Aka grammar • Descriptive grammar vs. prescriptive grammar • “Why did you bring that book that I don’t want to be read to out of for?”

3. `Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
  Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
  And the mome raths outgrabe Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
  The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
  The frumious Bandersnatch!” He took his vorpal sword in hand:
  Long time the manxome foe he sought --
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
  And stood awhile in thought.

4. Evidence for Power of Syntax • Speech errors • Spoonerisms (ch 10) • Heteronyms • Droodles

5. Activity: create sentences Use these words to make 5 grammatically correct sentences and 5 grammatically incorrect sentences • Ball, basket, bounced, into, put, red, rolled, tall, the, woman How did you do it?

6. Phrase structure rules PS 1 S (sentence) = NP + VP • PS 2 NP (noun phrase) = det + (adj) + N • PS 3 VP (verb phrase) = V +NP • PS 4 N (noun) = boy, dog, man, book • PS 5 V (verb) = ate, broke, kissed • PS 6 adj (adjective) = quiet, red, happy, wormy • PS 7 det (determiner) = a, the

7. Syntax and Tree Diagrams “The girl looked at the boy with the telescope”

8. Chompsky’s Transformational Grammar • underlying propositions can be rearranged to form multiple phrase structures • Deep structure • The structure of the sentence that conveys the connections between sentences • Surface structure • The actual phrase structures that may occur from transformations

9. Chomsky’s Transformational Grammar • To understand syntax, we must also consider syntactical relationships between sentences

10. The example of reading

11. When Reading Is a Problem • Dyslexia • Difficulty in deciphering, reading, and comprehending text • Developmental dyslexia • Acquired dyslexia

12. When Reading Is a Problem • Several different processes may be impaired • Phonological awareness • Phonological reading • Phonological coding in working memory • Lexical access

13. When Reading Is a Problem:Phonological Awareness • Awareness of the sound structure of spoken language • Phoneme-deletion task: say “goat” without the “-t.” • Phoneme counting: how many different sounds are there in the word “fish”? • Problems attaching sounds to letters • Cannot attach the sound “cuh” to the letter “c” in the word “cat”

14. When Reading Is a Problem:Phonological Reading • Reading words in isolation • “Word decoding” or “word attack” • Difficulty telling if two words rhyme or start with the same sound • Difficulty in sounding out the entire word and then repeating the sounds rapidly so that the word can be identified

15. When Reading Is a Problem:Phonological Coding • Remembering strings of phonemes that are sometimes confusing • Comparing working memory for confusable versus nonconfusable phonemes • t, b, z, v, g versus o, x, r, y, q

16. When Reading Is a Problem:Lexical Access • Ability to retrieve phonemes from long-term memory • If you see the word pond, do you immediately recognize the word as pond, or does it take you a while to retrieve it?

17. Processes in Reading • Lexical processes • Identify letters and words • Activate relevant information in memory about these word • Comprehension processes • Make sense of the text as a whole

18. Lexical processes: Eye movements • Readers fixate for a longer time on • longer words • less familiar words • the last word of a sentence • Visual span of fixations • 4 characters to the left of a fixation point/14 or 15 characters to the right • Found that readers fixated on an average of 67.8 percent of the words • Content words were fixated on 83% of the time • Function words were fixated on 38% of the time

19. Reading: Lexical Access • Bottom-up processing • Recognizing letters and words • Top-down processing • Meaning of words • Expectations and prior knowledge about material

20. 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

21. 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 interaction between top-down and bottom-up processing

22. Aoccdrning to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn’t mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Amzanig huh? yaeh and I awlyas thought slpeling was ipmorantt.

23. 1. A vheclie epxledod at a plocie cehckipont near the UN haduqertares in Bagahdd on Mnoday kilinlg the bmober and an Irqai polcie offceir. 2. Big ccunoil tax ineesacrs tihs yaer hvae seezueqd the inmcoes of mnay pneosenirs. 3. A dootcr has aimttded the magltheuansr of a tageene ceacnr pintaet who deid aetfr a hatospil durg blendur.

24. Understanding Discourse

25. Reading Comprehension Processes • Semantic encoding • Acquiring vocabulary • Comprehending ideas • Creating mental models • Impact of context on comprehension • Impact of point of view on comprehension

26. Semantic Encoding & Vocabulary • Strong relationship between vocabulary (word-meaning knowledge) and the ability to construct meaning • To understand and enjoy a text, you need to know 95-98% of the vocabulary words! • So how do we acquire more vocabulary? • Through wide reading • From the use of context • Through use of the dictionary • Direct instruction

27. Comprehension of Ideas • Kintsch’s model • We use propositions in working memory, not words • Macropropositions vs Macrostructure

28. Evidence for Propositions • All sentences had the same number of concepts, differed in number of propositions • The crowded passengers squirmed uncomfortably. (3 propositions) • The horse stumbled and broke a leg. (2 propositions) • The greater the number of propositions, the longer the reading time • Propositions, not single words, are the units of comprehension

29. Text Comprehension depends on.. • Point of view • Seller or owner? • Mental model • Forming propositions • Inferences • Text requiring inferences leads to longer processing time