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Language processingin the mind

Linguistics lecture #5

November 9, 2006

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Overview

• Linguistic performance

• Speech perception

• Sentence comprehension

• Testing modularity

• Language production

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Good-bye competence,hello performance!

• Performance is language processing: how linguistic information is translated into different types and used in real time

• The study of language processing is called psycholinguistics

• Ideally, psycholinguists should know about linguistic competence like linguists, but also know psychological methods and models

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Semantics

Syntax

Phonology

Language perceptionand comprehension

Physical speech/signs

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Semantics

Syntax

Phonology

Physical speech/signs

Language production

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Speech perception

• Speech perception seems very easy: just hear the sounds, and then you know what the words are

• But the processing must actually be quite complex, since even today, computers are bad at speech perception

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Is speech perception “special”?

• That is, do people perceive speech differently from how they perceive other types of sounds?

• One possible difference:

If ordinary sounds are physically similar, they will be perceived similarly, and if they are physically different, they will be perceived differently.

This is not always true for speech sounds.

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Categorical perception

• Speech sounds are grouped into categories by the brain; it is hard to hear the actual physical details.

肉 百 拍

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Why does this happen?

• Categorical perception may result from duality of patterning: we perceive the phonological atoms, not the physics

• Is this ability innate?Even babies have categorical perception

However, trained animals also perceive human speech sounds categorically

So even if it is innate, it may not be modular

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Sentence comprehension

• Remember that competence and performance are not the same thing.

• This sentence is grammatical:

(1) The girl heard music is good for the soul.

• But what happens when it’s being processed?

The girl heard music . . . .is good for the soul.

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Garden path sentences

• Sentences that start out as if they have one structure, but really end up having another, are called garden path sentences: they “lead you down a garden path” to get lost.

• Chinese also has them:

(2) 在首都機場已經關閉了。(3) 我們多買一些蔬菜吃腸胃才會覺得舒服。

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Performance, not competence

• Garden path sentences are grammatical, but they cause problems with processing. Why?

• Which hypothesis about sentence processing better explains the “garden path effect”?

Hypothesis A: Readers/listeners wait until the end of the sentence, then try to build syntactic structure

Hypothesis B: Readers/listeners try to build as much syntactic structure as possible with each word

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Hypothesis B!

• This is the immediacy principle: make an immediate guess about syntactic structure, even if you turn out to be wrong later

The girl heard music is good for the soul.

NP

VP

S?

S

NP VP

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Parsing and meaning

• Parse = figuring out the syntactic structure

• Parsing must be done in order to calculate the correct proposition

• But after the proposition has been calculated, the syntactic structure and words are forgotten

(4) The little dog was not happy today.

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Which sentence was it…?

• Which phrase did you just read?

(5) a. not sadb. sadc. not happyd. happy

• When people are tested immediately, they remember the exact words, but pretty soon they remember only the meaning

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Testing modularity

• But can knowledge of meaning also affect syntactic parsing? If so, then syntactic parsing is not modular.

• NOTE: The question is not whether people get meaning after parsing (of course they do), but whether meaning can affect parsing before it’s finished (maybe it can’t).

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Another way to ask this….

• Can semantics block the garden path effect?

• If it can, then what do we predict about the following sentences?

(6) a. The woman visited by the reporter was very interesting. b. The factory visited by the reporter was very interesting.

• Experiments showed that (6a) caused a garden path effect at the word “by”, but (6b) didn’t.

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What explains these results?

(6) a. The woman visited by the reporter was very interesting. b. The factory visited by the reporter was very interesting.

• Both sentences have the same syntax, but in (6b) semantics can help to avoid a garden path:

“The woman visited somebody” makes sense, so the “by” is surprising“The factory visited somebody” doesn’t make sense, so you don’t even consider it

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Does production work backwards?

• Perception/comprehension:

Form (phonology, syntax) mostly before meaning, though some meaning can come before form

• Production:

Meaning always before form…?

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Word production

• When we are speaking, does the semantics of a word become active in our minds before its phonology, or do semantics and phonology become active at the same time?

• What do you think…?

• How could you test your hypothesis?

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Tip of the tongue….

• One argument that meaning comes before form in production comes from tip of the tongue states:

when you know the meaning of a word, but you have trouble recalling the form

• Interestingly, you often know something about the form: usually the first sound and the number of syllables

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A processing modelfor word production

• First you activate the word’s meaning

• Then you active two aspects of the word’s phonology: first sound, syllables

• These provide the key to look up the rest of the form in memory

d…(1 syllable)

“dog”

semantics phonologyinterface key

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Summary

• Psycholinguistics studies language processing• Perception/comprehension and production

don’t work exactly the same way• Speech is perceived in terms of categories• Garden path sentences support the immediacy

principle in syntactic parsing• Tip of the tongue states support a particular

model of word production