Language

PSYC 2700
Chapters 10-11

David Pierre Leibovitz - Language

My Purpose
Enlightenment
So please do ask questions anytime.
Focused on the more difficult linguistic
aspects. Other parts of chap 10/11 easier to
understand

More fun & engaging

PS. Im not a linguist nor language expert

David Pierre Leibovitz - Language

Language & Cognition

Chomskys Attack on Skinner
Language is generational
Many speech acts by children have never been heard beforehand
(as required by behaviourism); they understand novel sentences
Generation cognitive rules

Language is learned by children with no positive or negative

feedback; and mostly positive evidence from adults
Minimal negative evidence does not seem to make an immediate
difference (see next slide)
Given general feedback, how would a child identify the wrong part
of speech?
Without feedback (reward/punishment), speech behaviour cannot
be directed in a behaviourist fashion

A specific language is effortlessly learned (out of infinite

possibilities)
There must be innate cognitive constraints on possible hypothesis
The set of human languages is a restricted subset of all possible
languages

A linguist restarted Cognitive Science yet most cognitive

scientists understand language the least!
David Pierre Leibovitz - Language

Immunity from Error Correction

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_acquisition)

Children are remarkably immune from adult

error correction:
(need male & female volunteer)
Child: My teacher holded the baby rabbits and we patted them.
Adult: Did you say your teacher held the baby rabbits?
Child: Yes.
Adult: What did you say she did?
Child: She holded the baby rabbits and we patted them.
Adult: Did you say she held them tightly?
Child: No, she holded them loosely.

David Pierre Leibovitz - Language

Time & U-Shaped Learning

Takes a long time to learn past tense
Children do NOT receive feedback (nor make use of it)

For past tense, there is a U-Shaped learning curve.

Children overgeneralize the -ed rule. A rule denotes structure.
(There are connectionist (neural network) models that learn similarly
but without apparent rules nor structure.)
Accuracy vs Age (APPROXIMATE)
60

Accuracy (% correct)

50

Conflict between regular

(-ed applies) and
irregular verbs such as
go/went or kiss/kissed

U-Shape

40

30
20

10

0
6

12

18

24
Age (months)

30

36

40

David Pierre Leibovitz - Language

Structure
Structure (rules) can be found at all levels of
language processing, e.g.,
Morphemes phonemes
Plural -> /s/ or /z/

Syntax morphemes
Past tense, e.g.,
I am kissing Jo
I did kiss Jo
Jo was kissed by me
I was kissing Jo
Jo was being kissed by me
Jo is being kissed by me

I am finding Jo
I did find Jo
Jo was found by me
I was finding Jo
Jo was being found by me
Jo is being found by me

Structure is the recurrent theme in this

presentation
David Pierre Leibovitz - Language

Language is Symbolic
Words represent objects, ideas, events
Past, future
Intentions, desires
Propositional (truth values) not always

David Pierre Leibovitz - Language

Purpose - Communicate
Sentence Types
Declarative (to inform)
I am a Cognitive Psychology student.

Imperative (to command)

Ensure your cell-phones are quiet!

Interrogative (to ask)

How are you?

Speech Act Theory types

Make verbal commitments, convey thanks, give warning, etc.
The high level intention or purpose of an utterance.

Speech is interactive (social)

What we know (context)
modifies what we say and how we say it (stress, intonation); and
modifies what we understand from what is said

Readers are active participants continually forming hypotheses

about what is about to be read/said, e.g., completing other
peoples sentences, or, in my case, arguing against a sentence
before it is being completed!
Thematic relations
David Pierre Leibovitz - Language

Linguistic/Structural Levels
Lexicon memory used by most levels

Phonemes
Basic vowel & consonant sounds

Morphemes
Smallest units of meaning. Prefixes and suffixes, e.g., suffix /s/ (more than one),
prefix /un/ (opposite).
Note that the morpheme /s/ is represented by different phonemes, e.g., bed/z/
and ant/s/, and there are rules for producing these forms.
Adult: go/went, blink (with rule to create blinked)
Child: go/goed/went, blink/blinked

Lexicon of (root) words

Syntax (grammar)
Semantics (meaning)
Thematic Roles
Scripts/Frames
Context

Pragmatics
Includes signs (pointing), facial expressions, emphasis, double meanings, etc.
Intended meaning, e.g., Its hot in here please open the window

David Pierre Leibovitz - Language

Phonology
Phoneme
Basic vowel & consonant sounds

Outline:
X-Ray analysis
International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)
Vowel Categorization
Critical period
Acoustical Properties
Ear
Praat
David Pierre Leibovitz - Language

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Phonology X-Ray Database

Look at: http://psyc.queensu.ca/~munhallk/05_database.htm
to see an x-ray film of people talking.
Used to understand how all phonemes produced
Used to identify differences and similarities amoung
phonemes, i.e., to categorize them much like the Periodic
Table of Elements

David Pierre Leibovitz - Language

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International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)

http://hctv.humnet.ucla.edu/departments/linguistics/VowelsandConsonants/course/chapter1/chapter1.html

Phoneme: basic
vowel and
consonant sound
IPA: A categorized
table of phonemes
Website fully
interactive
Audio samples

David Pierre Leibovitz - Language

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IPA - Vowels

Any given
language uses
a subset of
these
possibilities
Child
effortlessly
learns needed
vowel
categories
Critical period
2nd language
Motor accents
Discrimination

Innate,

unsupervised
categorical
learning
David Pierre Leibovitz - Language

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Acoustical Properties
Ear
Praat

David Pierre Leibovitz - Language

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Ear Cochlea

(http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/hearing.html)

David Pierre Leibovitz - Language

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Uncoiled Cochlea
(http://www.vimm.it/cochlea/cochleapages/overview/index.htm)

David Pierre Leibovitz - Language

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Frequency

(http://universe-review.ca/I10-85-cochlea2.jpg)

Large cavities lead to low

frequency resonances,
e.g.,
Tuba
Bass Violin
Long pendulum

Small cavities lead to high

frequency resonances,
e.g.,
Piccolo flute
Soprano
Short pendulum

Stiffness also matters

Physically, this leads to a
linear separation of sound
by frequency, e.g, an
auditory prism
David Pierre Leibovitz - Language

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Ear Hair Cells Birdseye

David Pierre Leibovitz - Language

(www.sickkids.ca)

18

Ear hair cells

David Pierre Leibovitz - Language

(www.sickkids.ca)

19

Single Hair Cell

(www.sickkids.ca; http://www.unmc.edu/Physiology/Mann/pix_4b/hair_cell.gif)

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Ear - Summary
The ear hears not like one microphone
but like 15,000 microphones, each
attuned to a different frequency!

David Pierre Leibovitz - Language

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Praat

(http://www.fon.hum.uva.nl/praat/)

praat PSYC2700 Example

Volunteers to play with it
Word segmentation
Frequency domain (spectrogram)
Formants peaks in frequency spectrum
due to resonance
A complicated pattern matching problem
Each speaker is different so how to categorize
vowels?
Current speech-to-text systems are
unusable
David Pierre Leibovitz - Language

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Morphemes
The smallest unit of meaning
Suffixes
Plural: girl girl/s/
Note that the /s/ morpheme can be represented by
two phonemes, or even separate lexical entries,
e.g.,

fit/s/
bed/s/
fly/s/
die/s/

fits
bedz
fliez
dice

(morphological rules for these)

(writing syntax, not spken)

Prefixes
Opposite: happy /un/happy
David Pierre Leibovitz - Language

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Syntax
You should all know by now the complexities of
grammar rules.
So I wont bother you with any more slides on
syntax!
Note that some sentences are
syntactically/lexically ambiguous which is why
modern translation software is so poor, e.g.,
Time flies like an arrow.
(Is time an adjective, noun or verb?)

Aside: Semantic meaning ambiguity

Homonyms in speech
Went to the bank.
Bank is a noun, but is it a money bank or a river bank?
David Pierre Leibovitz - Language

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Semantics, Pragmatics, Meaning

For non-linguists, semantics is equivalent to
meaning and encompasses linguistic semantics,
pragmatics, multiple sentences, context etc.
However, for linguists, semantics is at a single
sentential level and propositional.
Pragmatics:
Includes signs (pointing), facial expressions,
emphasis, double meanings, analogies, e.g.,
My karma ate my dogma.

Intended meaning, e.g., Its hot in here please

open the window

David Pierre Leibovitz - Language

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Thematic Roles
The semantic role of a noun phrase in a
sentence. Also called theta role or -role in
linguistics.
Agent, experiencer, patient/theme, instrument, cause,
location, goal, source, etc.

Davidsubject presented the slidesobject

David is syntactic subject and thematic agent

The slidessubject were presented by Davidobject

David is still thematic agent, but slides are now the
subject in this passive form

The book also uses themes in another sense a

high level summary or main purpose, topic, etc.
David Pierre Leibovitz - Language

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Schemas Frames & Scripts

In computer science (AI), frames/scripts are high level
semantic knowledge used to make inferences to better
understand sentences
Frames are spatial models about objects (relationships).
Restaurant frame: tables, chair, food, money, customers,
waiters/waitresses, chef, low lighting,

Scripts are process models of behaviours (events, actions)

Restaurant script: get seats, order food, eat, pay, leave (~ 1 hour).
Sub-scripts include drinks at bar, bathroom breaks, return bad food,
meet friends, slow service.

In linguistics, frames are set of related semantic

structures (schemas + scripts)
A selling frame (different than a buying frame) with relationships
between buyer and seller, goals of highest/lowest price,
item/service transfer, legal transactions,

They are learned and enable predictions (inferences) or

filling in missing information (slots & fillers)
David Pierre Leibovitz - Language

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Deep/Surface Phrase Structure

Transformational grammar has the following components
1. Lexicon, e.g.,
NP
N {David, he/him, Jo, who/whom}
V {kissing/kissed, see/saw/seen, was/being, did/doing}
Adj {red, tall, smart}
N
Det {the, a}

S
VP
V

NP

2. Generational (phrase structure rewrite) rules, e.g.,

S NP VP
NP (Det) (Adj) N
VP V (NP)
VP V S

VP
V

NP
N

that produces an intermediate deep structure, e.g.

David

saw

him

kissing

Jo

3. Transformational rules that produce surface structures, e.g.,

Passivize, e.g.,
He was seen kissing Jo by David
*him kissing Jo was seen by David
David saw Jo being kissed by him

(The asterisk is linguistic convention indicating ungrammaticality)

Wh-movement, e.g.
H: David saw who kiss Jo? Who did David see kiss Jo?
J: David saw him kiss whom? Whom did David see him kiss?

Passivize & wh-movement

(In this case, passivization comes before wh-movement)

J: He was seen kissing whom by David? Whom was he seen kissing by David?
D; He was seen kissing Jo by Whom Whom was he seen kissing Jo by?
J: David saw who being kissed by him? Who did David see being kissed by him?
H: David saw Jo being kissed by whom? Whom did David see Jo being kissed by?

Synonym: 1 deep multiple surfaces; ambiguity: multiple deep 1 surface

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Q&A
Any question about this or any other
aspect of the course?
Anyone else want to play with praat?

David Pierre Leibovitz - Language

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