PSYC 305 Study Guide - Final Guide: Computational Linguistics, Applied Linguistics, Linguistic Universal
Cognitive Psychology
Study Guide Spring 2018 Exam 3
(Language, Reading, Problem Solving, Decision Making, Mental Imagery, Emotion)
Chapters 9, 10, 12, 11, 13
Garber & Goldin-Meadow (2001)
Models/tasks/vocab/people/neuroanatomy
Tips: reread all applicable section summaries. Don’t forget lecture material.
Chapter 9 (Language):
Linguistics the scientific study of language and its structure, including the study of
morphology, syntax, phonetics, and semantics. Specific branches of linguistics include
sociolinguistics, dialectology, psycholinguistics, computational linguistics, historical-
comparative linguistics, and applied linguistics.
Psycholinguistics the study of the relationships between linguistic behavior and
psychological processes, including the process of language acquisition. The study of
language as it is used and learned by people.
Competence Internalized knowledge of language and its rules that fully fluent speakers of
a language have.
Linguistic intuitions The term 'intuition' seems to refer to the unreflective take or
awareness that the speaker has of linguistic form, whilst 'judgement' seems to refer to the
formation of a report on the basis of that intuitive take or impression. one's subjective
judgment that a sentence is or is not "acceptable" or "correct"; the basis for most
theorizing in linguistics.
Performance the actual language behavior a speaker generate, the string of sounds and
words that the speaker makes
Dysfluencies irregularities or errors in otherwise fluent speech
Linguistic universals features or characteristics that are common to all languages
ex. semanticity, arbitrariness, flexibility, naming, displacement, productivity
Semanticity language conveys meaning
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Arbitrariness there is no inherent connection between the units (sounds, words) used in a
language and the meaning referred to by those units
ex. "whale" is a small word, "microorganism" is a big word
Flexibility connection between meaning and symbol is arbitrary, so we can change that
connection and invent new ones
Naming assigning names to all the objects in our environment, to all the feelings and
emotions we experience, to all the ideas and concepts we conceive of
ex. dog, cat, knowledge, justice, cause, idea
Displacement ability to talk about something other than the present moment
ex. past tense, future tense
Productivity we generate sentences rather than repeat them; we create sentences on the
spot rather than recycle them
Miller’s Five Levels of language analysis
1) phonology- analysis of the sounds of language as they are articulated and
comprehended in speech
2) syntax - analysis of word order and grammaticality; the arrangement of words as
elements in a sentence to show their relationship to one another; or sentence structure eg.
rules for forming past tense & plurals, word ordering in phrases and sentences
3) lexical or semantic - analysis of word meaning and the integration of word meanings
within phrases & sentences
4) conceptual - analysis of phrase & sentence meaning with reference to knowledge in
semantic memory
5) Belief - Analysis of sentence & discourse meaning with reference to one's own beliefs
and one's beliefs about a speaker's intent & motivations
Phonology analysis of the sounds as they are articulated and comprehended in speech;
sounds of language and the rule system for combining them
Phoneme basic sounds that compose a language; the category or group of language
sounds that are treated as the same sound, despite physical differences among the sounds
(ex. 'p' in pot and spot)
Categorical perception all the sounds falling within a set of boundaries are perceived as
the same, despite physical differences among them
ex. audio of someone going from "bat" to bad"
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Problem of invariance variability in sounds
Coarticulation more than one sound is articulated at the same time
ex. b-ae-g turns into bag
Context conceptually driven processing
Syntax analysis of word order and grammaticality; the arrangement of words as elements
in a sentence to show their relationship to one another; or sentence structure
Chomsky’s transformational grammar words come in phrase structure groupings, and the
groupings can be modified or transformed
convert the deep structure into a surface structure, a sentence ready to be spoken
phrase structure - the underlying structure of a sentence in terms of the groupings of
words into meaningful phrases, such as "[The young man] [ran quickly]."
Deep structure an abstract syntactic representation of the sentence
Surface structure the actual form of a sentence, whether written or spoken; the literal
string of words or sounds present in a sentence
Ambiguous sentences having more than one meaning, said both of words and sentences
Bock and cognitive role of syntax; syntax and semantic interactions
we need syntax to help the listener figure out meaning, to minimize the processing
demands of comprehension as much as possible
syntax helps listeners determine meaning and helps speakers convey it
syntactic burden on speaker more than listener
syntax is related to speaker's mental effort
syntax and semantic interactions
syntax is a clue to how to understand sentences
ex. I'm going downtown with my sister vs. It's my sister I'm going downtown with
Fillenbaum; syntax and semantic interactions
sometimes we comprehend not what we hear or read, but what we expect to hear or read
two kinds of normal sentences were shown, threats and conjunctives such as "John got
off the bus and went into the store;" threats were then altered to be "perverse," and
conjunctives were disordered;" more than half the time, subjects saw no discrepancies at
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