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Lecture Outline Interaction of Syntax & Semantics

Issues: (a) How is language structured?
(b) Language comprehension
(c) Language in the brain

1. Major Features of Language

– Symbolic, (mostly) arbitrary, productive
– Hierarchical taxonomy of language
– Phonemes, morphemes, words, phrases, sentences “The cat chases the dog”
– Lexical ambiguity, syntactic ambiguity
comprehended more easily than
2. Language Comprehension “The dog was chased by the cat”
– Role of vision in speech perception, McGurk Effect
– Language processing is predictive, N400 BUT
– Lexical access & context effects
– Syntax & semantics interact
“The ice cream was eaten by the policeman”
4. Language and the Brain comprehended as well as
– Broca’s aphasia, Wernicke’s aphasia 1 “The policeman ate the ice cream” 2

(not reversible)
1 2

Broca’s aphasia:
Language in the Brain
Difficulty with production: Slow, halting speech.
Simple grammar: no function words (be, of, the).
Comprehension largely intact.
Well I had trouble with...oh, almost everything that
happened from ...eh, eh...golly..., word I can remember,
you know, is ah...when I had the ...ah biggest...a....that I
had trouble with, you know....that I had trouble with

Paul Broca

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Wernicke’s aphasia:

Fluent speech, but makes little sense (word salad).

Made-up words, word substitutions.
Difficulty with comprehension.

Boy, I'm sweating, I'm awful nervous, you know, once

in a while I get up, I can't mention the tarripoi, a
month ago, quite a little, I've done a lot well, I impose
a lot, while on the other hand, you know, what I mean
I have to run around, look it over, trebbin and all that
sort of stuff.

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Carl Wernicke

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Language Acquisition Lecture Outline

Mama! (8 months) Issues: (a) What must be learned?
(b) How does it happen?
Wash hair. (1 year, 4 months) 1. What must be learned
– Distinguishing sounds, parsing into phonemes & words, meanings, rules
Don t tickle my tummy, Mommy! (1 year, 11 months) – Without grammatical feedback, using universals

My Grandma gave me this dolly, Cara. My Grandma is my

Mommy s Mommy. I have another Grandma, too. She s
my Daddy s Mommy. And Aunt Elli is my Daddy s
sister. (2 years, 9 months)
2. How does language development proceed?
– Discriminating phonemes, motherese
– Holophrastic stage, telegraphic stage, learning syntax
– Learning word meanings
– Critical period effects

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Language is Complex! Distinguishing Sounds

• Comprehend and generate millions of
sentences • Babies hear lots of sounds, only some of
– Effortlessly and fast
which are language
– Most sentences completely novel – Traffic, dishwashers, vacuums, ...
• Know > 100,000 words
• First job in language acquisition:
• No other species does this, all normal
distinguish language sounds from other
humans do
sounds

• Bottom line: learning language is a big job

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Parsing Language Sounds Assigning Meanings

• Then need to parse it into phonemes
– Chop it up into atomic units of language sound
• Must also parse phonemes into words
• Once have words, need to assign meanings
• Problems:
– Same sound can refer to different things
– Different sounds can refer to same thing

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2

Learning Rules
• Must learn how words are combined
– Grammar
• Must generalize to novel sentences
– So can t just memorize wordings
• Need to acquire rules that can be applied to
new sentences
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Linguistic Universals
• Language is very complex
• Acquisition task is not well constrained
– Irregular mappings from sounds to meanings
– Little negative feedback
• All normal humans acquire language
• Suggests linguistic universals
– General language principals
– Embodied in every language (innate)
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Development: Phonemes
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No Grammatical Feedback
• Adults usually do not correct children s
grammar or pronunciation
– Only correct meaning
• Furthermore, correcting
grammar/pronunciation does not even help!
• Kids correct themselves despite little
negative feedback
Development: Phonemes
• In 1st year, infants can discriminate all phonemes
from all languages
• Gradually lose discriminations that are not
important in their own language
• See video of infant sucking procedure
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EFlxiflDk_o) (0:57-5:06)
Motherese
• Adults help kids by speaking motherese
• High pitch, slow rate, exaggerated
intonations
• Falling pitch and pausing signals phrase
boundaries
– Aids parsing
• Infants prefer to listen to motherese
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Holophrastic Stage
Major Stages
• One word utterances
• Holophrastic (one-word) stage
• No syntax, need context (gestures, affect) to
disambiguate
• Telegraphic (two-word) stage

• Undergeneralization & overgeneralization

• Learning syntax/rules (syntactic for first ~75 words
overgeneralization)
• Do understand some phrases

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Telegraphic Stage Learning Syntax/Rules

• Two word utterances • Start learning syntactic/grammar rules

• Correct use of word order: • Examples:

– subject-action – Past tense
– action-object – Nonsense words

• Can convey a lot of information succinctly

(like a telegraph)

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Learning Rules: Past Tense

Learning Rules: Nonsense Words
• Learn general rules that apply to new cases
• 4-5 yr-olds know
– Plural of wug is wugs
– Past tense of rick is ricked
• U-shaped curve for irregular past (went) • Implies language learning is generative, not
just imitation
– Initially, use appropriate form (went)
– Learn rule (add -ed) and overgeneralize (goed)
– Relearn correct past tense (went)

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Learning Word Meaning Learning Word Meaning

• By age 5, kids know 10,000 to 15,000 words • Input gives clues about parts/wholes
– This is a rabbit; these are his ears
• Learning an average of ~10 new words/day! – his cues the fact that ears is a part

• How? • Inherent bias that new words refer to shape

– If something is a biff , children will claim
• Video of preferential looking procedure other objects with same shape also biffs
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EFlxiflDk_o) (9:15-11:33)

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Critical Period Effects

Critical Period Effects
• People who learn language after age 10-12
never acquire native ability
– People raised in social isolation
– 2nd language learners
– American sign language

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Critical Period Effects

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