Language Processing: …otherwise Known As Psycholinguistics

Language Processing

…otherwise known as Psycholinguistics

What’s the big deal? 

It is actually something of a miracle that we manage to speak and understand as well as we do…

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However, It is the work of our brain which could also access the linguistics storehouse to speak and understand what is spoken besides acquire and store the mental grammar (Fromkin & Rodman, 1998:361)

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Understanding the brain and its organization is useful for assessing the plausibility of language processing & its production.

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It’s a pretty big deal after all…

Brain & Cerebral Cortex

Language Centers of the cere bral cort ex: Brain   A one-quarter-inch thick membrane covering the brain consciousness, thinking, learning, emotions, language

It s M aj or re gio ns : 

frontal lobes 

motor activity, planning & moving, processing of affective info., spoken language (Broca' s area_includes morphosyntax, grammatical morphology) 

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temporal lobes 

language perception (Wernicke' s area_back of the auditory cortex) 

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parietal lobes 

somatosensation, spatial perception 

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occipital lobes  vision 

Basic Auditory Functionality

Introduction to Auditory & Language Processing

DEFINITIONS The ability to interpret or attach meaning to auditorially received information to then formulate an expressive response

A Spoken Utterance 

Starts as a message in the brain/mind of the spea ke r

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It is put into linguistics form and interpreted as articulation commands through motor nerves

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Emerging as an acoustic signal through sound waves

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Those signals are processed by the ear of listener and sent to the brain/mind through sensory nerves, where it is interpreted.

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So, comprehension, the process of understanding an utterance, requires the ability to access the mental lexicon to match the words in the utterance we are listening to with their meaning.

In other words…. 

The comprehension of speech shows perceptual unit occur in different levels into:  Phonemes _ Phonology  Morphemes + Words _ Morphology  Sentence _ Syntax  Lexically Meaning_Semantics  Intended Meaning_Pragmatic  Text_Discourse

PROCESSING MODELS

Top - Down

Bottom - Up

Language Processing /Top Down  Language info in mind of listener, not auditory 

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signal listener uses knowledge of language and world to interpret speaker’s message Process acoustic signal using lexical/semantic knowledge  

familiar processed quicker discriminate significant features

Auditory Processing/Bottom Up  Acoustic signal must be processed before  

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being influenced by higher order knowledge Process acoustic info before linguistic info Sound identification necessary prerequisite to speech-language development Tallal research: children with LD have deficits in rapid transition of both linguistic and nonlinguistic signals

TOP DOWN

BOTTOM UP

Language Processing

Auditory Processing

Knowledge of language & world to interpret

Acoustic Information before linguistic interp

Semantic knowledge

Acoustic knowledge

Stress comprehension and intake

Stress production and output

SLP viewpoint

Aud viewpoint

Depth of Processing Model Top Down Effect of context on coding Amount of processing item receives determines retention / forgetting Shallow Processing

Analysis of incoming sensory information

Deep Processing

Semantic and abstract analysis

Continuum of Processing

Auditory Processing

Language Processing

Transition Area Both Auditory & Language Processing

Frequency effect 

The more frequently a word is used, the more easily we can access it.

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This frequency effect is as effect when the psychologists examine the individual process language

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The more easily we can access a word, the shorter language processing occurs in the brain/mind,

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and vice versa…

heckling

hospital

Written Language processing 

Written language may work in a fairly similar way, only using the primary visual cortex as an input pathway instead of the auditory cortex. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_processing on 10 January 2009, at 09:40 P.M.)

Ambiguity 

Definition: A word or a sentence is ambiguous when it can be interpreted in more then one ways

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Levels of ambiguity: 1) 2) 3)

Lexical ambiguity Surface structure ambiguity Deep structure ambiguity

Lexical ambiguity 

Sometimes, we have miss interpretation when hearing some words with same pronunciation but different spelling

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It belongs to homophones that leads to lexical ambiguity

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For instance: the words to, too and two are all pronunced /tu/ but they refer to different meaning

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Surface structure ambiguity Definition: Sentence which are ambiguous in surface level of syntactic relationship

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For instance: “old men and women are advised to apply for their benefits” The old men and the old women …… b) The old men and women ….. a)

Deep structure ambiguity 

Definition: Sentence which are ambiguous on deep structure level of logical relationship

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For instance: “Cheating students will not be tolerated” a) b)

Some one who is cheating students …… Students who are cheating …..