PSYC 251 Lecture 18: Mind and Brain Pt18
Ambiguity and Language
ď‚· Ambiguity
o Examples of language with multiple interpretatins
o Like illusions for perception, ambiguity and provide insight into cognitive processing
of language
ď‚· Lexical Ambiguity
o When a word has two different meanings
ď‚· Syntactc Ambiguity
o When same words can be grouped ttogether into more than onne phrase structure
ď‚· Referential Ambiguity
o When same word/ phrase can refer to two different things within a sentence
Aquisition of Language
ď‚· Critical Period
o Before age of 3
ď‚· Universal Sequence of Language Aquisition
o Language-specific speech perception precedes production
ď‚· Phonemes
o smallest unit of speech
 PHONES: actual sounds
 PHONEMES: perceived sounds
o Categorical Speech Perception
 multiple phones are heard as same phoneme
 Evident by 6 months of age
o "Perceptual magnet" Effects
 categorical speech perception in 6 month old kids
ď‚· Morphemes (Words)
o Challenges in Learning Words
 Detecting words in stream of speech
 Figuring out rules for combining morphemes to make words
 Figuring out what words mean
ď‚· Words are not separate in speech (listening to native language -> words...
listening to unknown language -> series of sounds)
o Past Tense Acquisition
 Stage 1
ď‚· small number of mostly irregular verbs: come, got, gave, looked, needed,
took, went
 Stage 2
ď‚· learns "-ed" rule: roll -> rolled
ď‚· overregularization: give -> gived
 Stage 3
ď‚· corrects overregularizatiion: give -> gave
ď‚· Mental lexicon
o Association and co-occurance ("chair" & "table")