psy 369: psycholinguistics representing language
Post on 19-Dec-2015
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Some of the big questions
“the horse raced past the barn”
ProductionHow do we turn our thoughts into a spoken or written output?
Some of the big questions
Comprehension
“the horse raced past the barn”
How do we understand language that we hear/see?
Some of the big questions Comprehension Production Representation
How do we store linguistic information, how do we retrieve that information?
Lexicon
SemanticAnalysis
SyntacticAnalysis
WordRecognition
Letter/phonemeRecognition
FormulatorGrammatical EncodingPhonological Encoding
Articulator
Conceptualizer
Thought
Lexicon
SemanticAnalysis
SyntacticAnalysis
WordRecognition
Letter/phonemeRecognition
FormulatorGrammatical Encoding
Phonological Encoding
Articulator
Conceptualizer
Thought
The mental lexicon How are words stored? What are they made
up of? How are word related to each other? How do we use them? Mental lexicon The representation of words in
long term memory Lexical Access: How do we activate the
meanings (and other properties) of words?
Lexical primitives Word primitives
Morpheme primitives Economical - fewer representations Slow retrieval - some assembly required
Decomposition during comprehension Composition during production
Need a lot of representations Fast retrieval
Lexical primitives Lexical Decision task
See a string of letters As fast as you can determine if it is a real
English word or not “yes” if it is “no” if it isn’t
Typically speed and accuracy are the dependent measures
Lexical primitives Lexical Decision task
table
vanue
daughter
tasp
cofef
hunter
Yes
No
Yes
No
No
Yes
Lexical primitives Lexical Decision task
daughter
hunter
Pseudo-suffixed
Multimorphemic
daught
hunt -er
-er
Takes longer
Lexical primitives May depend on other factors
What kind of morpheme Inflectional Derivational
Frequency of usage High frequency multimorphemic (in particular if derivational
morphology) may get represented as a single unit Compound words
Semantically opaque butterfly
Semantically transparent buttonhole
Lexical organization How are the lexical representations
organized? Alphabetically? Initial phoneme? Semantic categories? Grammatical class? Something more flexible, depending on your
needs?
Lexical organization Factors that affect organization
Phonology Frequency Imageability, concreteness, abstractness Grammatical class Semantics
Lexical organization Phonology
Words that sound alike may be stored “close together”
Tip of the tongue phenomenon (TOT)
Brown and McNeill (1966) More likely to approximate target words with
similar sounding words than similar meanings
What word means to formally renounce the throne?
abdicate
Lexical organization Frequency
Typically the more common a word, the faster (and more accurately) it is named and recognized
Typical interpretation: easier to retrieve (or activate)
However, Balota and Chumbley (1984) Frequency effects depend on task Lexcial decision - big effect Naming - small effect Category verifcation - no effect
A canary is a bird. T/F
Lexical organization Imageability, concreteness, abstractness
Umbrella
Lantern
Freedom
Apple
Knowledge
Evil
Try to imagine each word
Lexical organization Imageability, concreteness, abstractness
Umbrella
Lantern
Freedom
Apple
Knowledge
Evil
Try to imagine each word
How do you imagine these?
Lexical organization Imageability, concreteness, abstractness
Umbrella
Lantern
Freedom
Apple
Knowledge
Evil
More easily remembered
More easily accessed
Lexical organization Grammatical class
Grammatical class constraint on substitution errors
“she was my strongest propeller” (proponent)
“the nation’s dictator has been exposed” (deposed)
Word association tasks Associate is typically of same grammatical class
Lexical organization Grammatical class
Open class words Content words (nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs)
Closed class words Function words (determiners, prepositions, …)
Lexical organization Semantics
Free associations Most associates are semantically related (rather than
phonologically for example) Semantic Priming task
Lexical organization Semantic Priming task
nurse
shoes
Responded to fasterRelated
Unrelated
“Priming effect”
doctor
doctor
Lexical organization Semantics
Words that are related in meaning are linked together
Lexical networks (next lecture)
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