PSY 480.

24: Psycholinguistics
Introductions & crash course in
Traditional Psycholinguistics
What is “psycholinguistics”?
What is “psycholinguistics”?

Psycho Linguistics

The study of language

from a psychological perspective.
 What is “psycholinguistics”?

Psycho Linguistics
Mental Processes Linguistic Theory
- Short Term Memory - Phonology
- Long Term Memory - Morphology
- Encoding - Syntax
- Retrieval - Semantics
- Mental - Rules
Representations
 Psycholinguistics : A brief history

1900 10 20 50 60 70 80 90 2000

Pre-psycholinguistics:
The ancient Greeks:
• Noticed that brain damage could cause aphasia
•Aristotle: objects of the world exist
independent of language and that definite
words are subsequently allied to these objects
 Psycholinguistics : A brief history

1900 10 20 50 60 70 80 90 2000

Pre-psycholinguistics:
Paul Broca (1861):
•described a patient who could say only one
word..."tan."
• damage to part of the left frontal cortex
("Broca's Area”)
 Psycholinguistics : A brief history

1900 10 20 50 60 70 80 90 2000

Pre-psycholinguistics:
Karl Wernicke (1876):
•Found that damage to posterior part of the
temporal lobe caused a different kind of
language problems.
• Wernicke's Area
 Psycholinguistics : A brief history

1900 10 20 50 60 70 80 90 2000

Pre-psycholinguistics (1800s):
Philosophers of Language:
•Wittgenstein: underlying logic of language
• Russell: reference andlanguage universals
• Frege: sense and reference (meaning)
 psycINFO 16
Pre 1920

Psycholinguistics : A brief history

1900 10 20 50 60 70 80 90 2000

Pre-psycholinguistics:
Merringer & Meyer (1895):
• Speech errors reveal properties of linguistic
system
 psycINFO 16
Pre 1920

Psycholinguistics : A brief history

1900 10 20 50 60 70 80 90 2000

Pre-psycholinguistics:
Wilhelm Wundt:
• Physiologist
• Established the first psychological laboratory
• Wrote about language
• Early theory of language production
 psycINFO 16
Pre 1920

Psycholinguistics : A brief history

1900 10 20 50 60 70 80 90 2000

Pre-psycholinguistics:
Ferdinand de Saussure:
• Linguist
• Separation of historical linguistics and
descriptive linguistics
 psycINFO 3990
1920-50

Psycholinguistics : A brief history

1900 10 20 50 60 70 80 90 2000

Pre-psycholinguistics:
• From the 1920‟s to the mid 1950‟s Psychology was
dominated by behaviorism
• John B. Watson (1920): Is thinking merely the
action of language mechanisms?
• Leonard Bloomfield (1935): Language
 psycINFO 2911
1951-60

Psycholinguistics : A brief history

1900 10 20 50 60 70 80 90 2000

Dawn of psycholinguistics (50s):

Lashley (1951):
• Neuropsychologist
• Argued that the structure of a sentences must
be more than just associations between
adjacent words
 psycINFO 2911
1951-60

Psycholinguistics : A brief history

1900 10 20 50 60 70 80 90 2000

Dawn of psycholinguistics (50s):

1951: Social Science Research Council
• Conference which invited many of the most
prominent psychologists and linguists
• Often identified as the “birth” of
psycholinguistics
 psycINFO 2911
1951-60

Psycholinguistics : A brief history

1900 10 20 50 60 70 80 90 2000

Dawn of psycholinguistics (50s):

1953: Another conference
• Included psychologists, linguists,
anthropologists, and communication engineers
• First time the term psycholinguistics is used
• „Birth‟ of Cognitive Science
 psycINFO 2911
1951-60

Psycholinguistics : A brief history

1900 10 20 50 60 70 80 90 2000

Dawn of psycholinguistics (50s):

Defense department funds projects:
• Machine translators
• Machine speech processors
• The beginnings of the field of artificial
intelligence research
 psycINFO 2911
1951-60

Psycholinguistics : A brief history

1900 10 20 50 60 70 80 90 2000

Dawn of psycholinguistics (50s):

B. F. Skinner (1957):
• Behavioral psychologist
• Published Verbal Behavior
• In-depth analysis of language within the
behavioral framework
 psycINFO 2911
1951-60

Psycholinguistics : A brief history

1900 10 20 50 60 70 80 90 2000

Dawn of psycholinguistics (50s):

Noam Chomsky :
• Linguist
• (1957) published Syntactic Structures
• (1959) book review of Verbal Behavior
Chomskyan revolution
 Major proposals/innovations
 Develop a grammar that can generate an infinite
number of grammatical sentences
 Transformational-generative grammar
 Language acquisition - innate universal grammar
 Limited explicit instruction for language learners
 Arguments against behaviorist accounts of
language
 Often credited with the downfall of behaviorism
 psycINFO 4221
1961-70

Psycholinguistics : A brief history

1900 10 20 50 60 70 80 90 2000

Psycholinguistics (60s):
George Miller
• Cognitive psychologist
• Collaborated with Chomsky
• Beginnings of the search for the psychological
reality of linguistic rules
 psycINFO 4221
1961-70

Psycholinguistics : A brief history

1900 10 20 50 60 70 80 90 2000

Psycholinguistics (60s):
The search for psychological reality
of
syntactic transformations begins
• e.g., studies by Bever, Fodor, and
Garrett
 psycINFO 8137
1971-80

Psycholinguistics : A brief history

1900 10 20 50 60 70 80 90 2000

Artificial intelligence (60s &70s):

Computer theory began to have an impact:
• Newell & Simon: computers are symbol manipulators,
information processing approach
• Collins & Quillian: natural language processing requires
an
explicit representation of conceptual knowledge
• Networks of proposition & spreading activation
 psycINFO 8137
1971-80

Psycholinguistics : A brief history

1900 10 20 50 60 70 80 90 2000

Psycholinguistics (70s):
Psycholinguistic research begins to drift away from linguistics:
• Mounting evidence against psychological reality of
transformation
• New competing linguistic theories (e.g., generative
semantics)
and rapid change to existing theories
 psycINFO 8137
1971-80

Psycholinguistics : A brief history

1900 10 20 50 60 70 80 90 2000

Psycholinguistics (mid70s):
Psycholinguistics without linguistics:
• Began to shift focus away from syntax
• Higher levels of comprehension (e.g., meaning and
discourse)
• Lower levels: word recognition and sub-lexical
perception
 psycINFO 16,838
1981-90

Psycholinguistics : A brief history

1900 10 20 50 60 70 80 90 2000

Psycholinguistics (80s):
Psycholinguistics further splits:
• More drifting away from linguistic, focusing on cognitive
psychology (i.e. incorporation of more information processing
ideas)
• Splits within psycholinguistics: experimental
psycholinguistics and developmental psycholinguistics
 psycINFO 16,838
1981-90

Psycholinguistics : A brief history

1900 10 20 50 60 70 80 90 2000

Psycholinguistics (mid to late 80s):

Rise of connectionism:
• Neural network models are (re-?)introduced to
psychological
theory, including models of language
• Attracts a lot of excitement and debate
 psycINFO 36,758
1990-now

Psycholinguistics : A brief history

1900 10 20 50 60 70 80 90 2000

Psycholinguistics (90s & today):

Cognitive Science starts to re-unify linguistics and
psycholinguistics
(& neuropsychology, philosophy, anthropology, computer
science)
• Linguists begin paying attention to psycholinguistic findings
• Psycholinguists start using linguistic theory again
Psycholinguistics
 A multidisciplinary field
 Psychology
 Linguistics
 Computer science
 Neuropsychology
 Philosophy
 Anthropology
 And more
What is language?
 A difficult question to
answer:
“Language is a purely human and non-
instinctive method of communicating ideas,
emotions and desires by means of voluntrily
produced symbols.”
Edward Sapir (1921)
What is language?
 A difficult question to
answer:
“A language is a set (finite or infinite) of
sentences, each finite in length and
constructed out of a finite set of elements.”
Noam Chomsky (1957)
What is language?
 Some generally agreed upon conclusions
 Symbolic (representational)
 Elements are used to represent something other than
itself
 Voluntary
 Language use is under our individual control
 Modalities
 Spoken, written, signed (sign language)
 Assumed primacy of speech - it came first
 Language is systematic
 There is hierarchical structure that organizes linguistic
elements
Psycholinguistics
 “Psycholinguistics turns out to be the
study of the mental representations and
processes that are involved when one
uses a particular language phenomenon
while being engaged in a particular
language skill… what exactly is meant
by a mental representation and a
mental process?”
Sandra (2009) pg 293
Mental Representations
 “Representation – presenting something again in a different
form (breaking the word down morphologically). Think about
how music may be represented in multiple ways: notes on
paper, groves on a vinyl record, pits and lands on a CD (which
in turn represent 0‟s and 1‟s of a digital code).”

 “Mental representations are similar – they represent information

that has to be store both in a particular code in a particular
medium (formed by the structures of the brain). The code(s) of
psycholinguistics are scientific constructs, forming an interface
between the physical realization of language and its encoding in
the brain. These scientific constructs often borrow terms and
distinctions theorized in linguistics.”
From the Sandra (2009) chapter
Mental Processes
 “Mental processes are operations on mental representations
(ultimately translated into brain processes). “Many
psycholinguists conceive of a mental process as a procedure
that maps one type of mental representation onto a different
one.” pg 295
From the Sandra (2009) chapter
Hello there!
 Multiple levels of analysis
 Word order important (don‟t say “There
Hello!”)
 Each word composed of a sequence of
sounds
 Sentence is uttered in a particular tone of
voice (signified by the “!”, rather than a
“Hello there?”)
 Used to signal particular part of a social
interaction (would say it at the beginning of
the interaction, not when leaving or in the
 Levels of analysis
language

 Phonology structure pragmatics use

 Morphology
medium of grammar meaning
 Syntax transmission (semantics)

 Semantics phonetics phonology morphology syntax lexicon discourse

 Pragmatics
 Levels of analysis
language

 Phonology structure pragmatics use

 Morphology
medium of grammar meaning
 Syntax transmission (semantics)

 Semantics phonetics phonology morphology syntax lexicon discourse

 Pragmatics
Phonology
 The sounds of a language
 Phonemes, allophones &phones
 Phonemes - abstract (mental) representations
of the sound units in a language
 Rules about how to put the sounds
together
 Includes sound structures like syllables, onsets,
rhymes
 Phonology
allophone phoneme
s s
pill [ph]
Listen to the „p‟ sound /p/
spill [p]

Rule: If /p/ is used in word initial position you add

aspiration (a puff of air), if word internal don‟t
aspirate
Articulatory features
 Point of articulation
 Six major points:
 Larynx, soft palate, tongue body,
tongue tip,tongue root, lips
 Manner
 How the articulator
moves: nasality,
aspiration, etc.
 Configuration of other
organs
 Voiced, rounded, etc.
 Phonology
+ voice - voice
/b/ /p/

bilabial

/d/ /t/
alveola
r see mixed features
Phonemes
 Languages differ in two ways (with
respect to phonology)
– the set of segments that they employ.
•English has about 40 phonemes
•Polynesian has ~11 Hawaiian
•Khoisan („Bushman‟) has ~141listen to clicks
- the set of phonological rules
Phonological Rules
 Some non-words are “legal” and some
– “spink”
are not is okay
– “ptink” isn‟t
– (but notice that apt is, as is captain)

– In English the segment /pt/ isn‟t acceptable

in the word initial position
Psychological reality of phonemes
 Miller & Nicely (1955)
 Participants were presented phonemes
embedded in white noise.
 When they made mistakes, confusions
between phonemes which varied by one
feature were more common than those that
varied by two/b/features
/p/

/d/ /t/
Psychological reality of phonemes
 Liberman et al (1957) categorical
perception of phonemes
 Presented consonant-vowel syllables along a continuum
 The consonants were /b/, /d/, and /g/, followed by /a/
 for example, /ba/.
 Asked whether two syllables were the same or different
 Participants reported
 Various forms of /ba/ to be the same
 Whereas /ga/ and /ba/ were easily discriminated.
 Levels of analysis
language

 Phonology structure pragmatics use

 Morphology
medium of grammar meaning
 Syntax transmission (semantics)

 Semantics phonetics phonology morphology syntax lexicon discourse

 Pragmatics
 Morphology
 Morpheme – smallest unit that conveys
meaning no internal morphological
yes structure
/y/, /e/, /s/ none have meaning
in isolation
happy, horse, talk
unhappiness un- -happi- - un- negative
horses ness -ness state/quality
talking horse- -s -s plural
talk- -ing -ing duration
Morphology
 Morpheme Productivity
 Free morphemes: can stand alone as words

 Bound morphemes: can not stand alone as words

 Affixes, pre-fixes, suffixes, infixes

 Inflectional rules

 used to express grammatical contrasts in

sentences
 e.g., singular/plural, past/present tense

 Derivational rules

 Construction of new words, or change

grammatical class
Phonology & morphology interaction
 Allomorphs: different variations of the
same morpheme
Plural rule in English
The plural morpheme takes the form:
/-iz/ If the last sound in a noun is a sibilant consonant
“churches”
/-z/ if the last sound in a noun is voiced
“labs”
/-s/ if the last sound in a noun is voiceless
“bets”
Morphology
 Language differences
 Isolating languages: no endings, just word order
(e.g., Chinese & Vietnamese)
 Inflecting: lots of inflections (e.g., Latin & Greek)

 In Classic Greek every verb has 350 forms

 Agglutinating languages (e.g., Turkish, Finnish,

Eskimo)
 Eskimo:

angyaghllangyugtuq = he wants to acquire a

big boat
Angya- „boat‟; -ghlla- „augmentative meaning‟;
-ng- „acquire‟; -yug- „expresses desire‟; -tuq-
third person singular
Psychological reality of Morphology
 Speech errors
 Stranding errors: The free morpheme typically moves, but the
bound morpheme stays in the same location
 they are Turkingtalkish (talking Turkish)

 you have to square it facely (face it squarely)

 Morpheme substitutions

 a timeful remark (timely)

 Where's the fire distinguisher? (Where's the fire
extinguisher?)
 Morpheme shift

 I haven't satten down and writ__ it (I haven't sat down and

written it)
 what that add__ ups to (adds up to)
 Psychological reality of Morphology
 Wug test (Gleason, 1958)

Here is a wug. Now there are two of

them.
There are two _______.
 Levels of analysis
language

 Phonology structure pragmatics use

 Morphology
medium of grammar meaning
 Syntax transmission (semantics)

 Semantics phonetics phonology morphology syntax lexicon discourse

 Pragmatics
Syntax: the ordering of the
words
 A dog bites a man.
Syntax: the ordering of the
words
 A dog bites a man.
 A man bites a dog.

• Same words, but different word order leads to a

radically different interpretation
Syntax: the ordering of the
words
 A dog bites a man.
 A man bites a dog.
 A dog was bitten by a man.

•Not just the linear ordering

• It is the underlying set of syntactic rules
Syntax: the ordering of the
words
• The underlying structural position, rather
than surface linear position matters.
Syntactic Ambiguity (wiki)

 The same linear order (surface

structure) may be ambiguous with
respect to the underlying structure
– Groucho Marx shot an elephant in his pajamas

Good shot How he got into my pajamas

I‟ll never know
Syntactic Ambiguity
Generative Grammar (wiki)

 The pieces:
– Grammatical features of words
• Dog: Noun
• Bite: Verb
– Phrase structure rules - these tell us how
to build legal structures
• S --> NP VP
(a sentence consists of a noun phrase followed by a verb phrase)
• VP --> V (NP)
• NP --> (A) (ADJ) N
 Generative Grammar
 Recursion: you can embed structures
within structures
 NP --> (A) (ADJ) N (PP)
 PP --> Prep NP
 So we NP‟s can be embedded within PP‟s which in turn may
be embedded within NP‟s.
 The dog with the bone of the dinosaur from the cave with the paintings
of the animals with fur bit the man.

 The result is an infinite number of

syntactic structures from a finite set of
pieces
Psychological reality of syntax
 Derivational theory of complexity
 The more transformations, the more
complex
 The boy was bitten by the wolf
 The boy was bitten. (involves deletion)
 No evidence for more processing of the second
sentence
Psychological reality of syntax
 Derivational theory of complexity
 The more transformations, the more
complex
 The boy was bitten by the wolf
 The boy was bitten. (involves deletion)
 No evidence for more processing of the second
sentence
 Evidence for (trace)
 Some recent evidence or reactivation of
moved constituent at the trace position
Transformational grammar
Deep structure Surface
S structure
S

NP VP NP VP

The car
VP NP PP VP NP PP

was put the in the was put (trace) in the garage

ca garage
r

probe
Some
Movement transformation “activation”
of car
 Levels of analysis
language

 Phonology structure pragmatics use

 Morphology
medium of grammar meaning
 Syntax transmission (semantics)

 Semantics phonetics phonology morphology syntax lexicon discourse

 Pragmatics
Semantics
 The study of meaning
 Arbitrariness

“What‟s in a name? that which we call a rose

By any other name would smell as sweet.”
 Words are not the same as meaning
 Words are symbols linked to mental representations of
meaning (concepts)
 Even if we changed the name of a rose, we wouldn‟t
change the concept of what a rose is
Separation of word and
meaning
 Concepts and words are different things
 Translation argument
 Every language has words without meaning,
and meanings without words
 e.g., transmogrify, wheedle, scalawag
 Imperfect mapping
 Multiple meanings of words
 e.g., ball, bank, bear
 Elasticity of meaning
 Meanings of words can change with context
 e.g., newspaper
Semantics
 Philosophy of meaning
 Sense and reference
 “The world‟s most famous athlete.”
 “The athlete making the most endorsement
income.”
 2 distinct senses, 1 reference
 Over time the
senses typically
stay the same,
while the
Now references may
change In the 90‟s
Semantics
 Two levels of analysis (and two traditions of
psycholinguistic research)
 Word level (lexical semantics)
 How do we store words?
 How are they organized?
 What is meaning?
 How do words relate to meaning?
 Sentence level (compositional semantics)
 How do we construct higher order meaning?
 How do word meanings and syntax interact?
Lexical Semantics
 Word level
 The (mental) lexicon: the words we know
 The average person knows ~60,000 words
 How are these words represented and
organized?
 Dictionary definitions?
 Necessary and sufficient features?
 Lists of features?
 Networks?
Word and their meanings
“John is a bachelor.”

 What does bachelor mean?

 What if John:
 is married?
 is divorced?
 has lived with the mother of his children for 10
years but they aren‟t married?
 has lived with his partner Joe for 10 years?
Lexical Ambiguity
 What happens when we use
ambiguous words in our utterances?
“Oh no, Lois has been
hypnotized and is jumping
off the bank!”
Money “bank” River “bank”
Lexical Ambiguity
 Psycholinguistic evidence suggests
that multiple meanings are considered
 Debate: how do we decide which
meaning is correct
 Hmm…
Based on: frequency, „bank‟ usually means
context
the financial institution, but
Lois was going fishing with
Jimmy today …
Compositional Semantics
 Phrase and sentence level
 Some of the theories

 Truth conditional semantics: meaning is a logical

relationship between an utterance and a state of affairs in

the world
 Proposition:

 A relationship between two (or more) concepts

 Has a truth value

 Jackendoff‟s semantics

 Concepts are lists of features, images, and

procedural knowledge
 Conceptual formation rules

 Cognitive grammar

 Mental models - mental simulations of the world

 Levels of analysis
language

 Phonology structure pragmatics use

 Morphology
medium of grammar meaning
 Syntax transmission (semantics)

 Semantics phonetics phonology morphology syntax lexicon discourse

 Pragmatics
Pragmatics
 Sentences do more than just state facts,
instead they are uttered to perform
actions
 How to do things with words (J. L. Austin, 1955
lectures)
 Using registers
 Conversational implicatures
 Speech acts
Pragmatics
 Registers: How we modify conversation
when addressing different listeners
 Determine our choice of wording or
interpretation based on different contexts
and situations
 Speech directed at babies, at friends, at
bosses, at foreigners
Pragmatics
 Conversational implicatures
 Speakers are cooperative
 Grice‟s conversational maxims
 Quantity: say only as much as is needed
 Quality: say only what you know is true
 Relation: say only relevant things
 Manner: Avoid ambiguity, be as clear as possible
Pragmatics
 Speech acts: How language is used to accomplish
various ends
 Direct speech acts
 Open the window please.
 Clean up your room!
 Indirect speech acts
 “It is hot in here”
 “Your room is a complete mess!”
 Non-literal language use
 e.g., Metaphors and idioms
Language is complex
 Even though it feels simple to
produce and understand language,
it is a very complexlanguage
behavior
structure pragmatics use

medium of grammar meaning

transmission (semantics)

phonetics phonology morphology syntax lexicon discourse

Some of the big questions
 Comprehension
 Production
 Representation
 How do we store linguistic information?
 How do we retrieve that information?
Some of the big questions
How do we turn our
thoughts into a spoken
Production or written output?

“the horse raced past the barn”

A model of sentence production
 Three broad stages:
 Conceptualisation
 deciding on the message (= meaning to
express)

 Formulation
 turning the message into linguistic
representations
 Grammatical encoding (finding words and
putting them together)
 Phonological encoding (finding sounds
and putting them together)

 Articulation
 speaking (or writing or signing)
Some of the big questions
How do we
understand
language that we Comprehension
hear/see?

“the horse raced past the barn”

 Conceptualiz
er
Thoug
ht
Semantic
Formulator Analysis
Grammatical
Syntactic
Encoding Lexicon Analysis
Phonological
Encoding Word
Recognition

Letter/phoneme
Articulator Recognition
Storing linguistic information
 Tale of the tape:
 High capacity: 40,000 – 60,000 words
 Fast: Recognition in as little as 200ms (often before word
ends)
 How do we search that many, that fast!? – suggests that there is a high
amount of organization
 Or something much
more complex
“The world’s largest data bank of
examples in context is dwarfed by
the collection we all carry around
subconsciously in our heads.”
E. Lenneberg (1967)

Excellent reading: Words in the Mind, Aitchison (1987, 2003)

Storing linguistic information
 Interesting questions:
 How are words stored?
 What are they made up of?
 How are words related to each other?
 How do we use them?

 Some vocabulary
 Mental lexicon The representation of words in long term memory
 Lexical Access: How do we activate (retrieve) words and their the
meanings (and other properties)?
 Theoretical Metaphors: Access vs. retrieval

 Often used interchangeably,

but sometimes a distinction is
made
 Activate - finding the
representation
 Retrieval - getting information
from the representation
Here it is
 Theoretical Metaphors: Access vs. retrieval

 Often used interchangeably,

but sometimes a distinction is
made
 Activate - finding the
representation
 Retrieval - getting information
from the representation

Open it up and see what‟s inside

Lexical primitives
 Word primitives horse horses barn barns
 Need a lot of representations
 Fast retrieval

 Morpheme primitives horse -s barn

 Economical - fewer representations
 Slow retrieval - some assembly required
 Decomposition during comprehension
 Composition during production
Lexical primitives
 May depend on other factors
 What kind of morpheme
 Inflectional (e.g., singular/plural, past/present tense)
 Derivational (e.g., drink --> drinkable, infect --> disinfect)
 Frequency of usage
 High frequency multimorphemic (in particular if derivational
morphology) may get represented as a single unit
 e.g., impossible vs. imperceptible
 Compound words
 Semantically transparent
 Buttonhole
 Semantically opaque
 butterfly
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
 Another possibility is that there are multiple levels of
representation, with different organizations at each level

Meaning based representations

Grammatical based representations

Sound based representations

Bock and Levelt (1994)
wool milk animal
Concepts
• with
SHEEP GOAT semantic
features

N Lemmas

Sheep Goat • grammtical

features

Lexemes
/ ip/ /gout/ •
morphemes
and sounds
i p g ou t Phonemes
Lexical access
 How do we retrieve the linguistic
information from Long-term memory?
 What factors are involved in retrieving
information from the lexicon?
 Models of lexical retrieval
 Recognizing a word
Input Search for a match
dog
cat cap
wolf
cat tree
yarn
cat
claw
fur
hat
 Recognizing a word
Input Search for a match
dog
cap
wolf
cat tree
yarn
cat
cat claw
fur
hat
 Recognizing a word
Search for a match Select Retrieve
Input
word lexical
dog information
cap
wolf
cat tree Cat
yarn noun
Animal, pet,
cat cat cat Meows, furry,
claw Purrs, etc.
fur
hat
The manhit the dogwith the leash.

S
NP

det N
The man
The manhit the dogwith the leash.

S
NP VP
V

det N
The man hit
The manhit the dogwith the leash.

S
NP VP
V NP
NP

det N det N
The man hit the dog
The manhit the dogwith the leash.

S
NP VP
V NP
NP PP
Modifier
det N det N
The man hit the dog with the leash
The manhit the dogwith the leash.

S
NP VP
V NP PP
Instrument
NP

det N det N with the leash

The man hit the dog

The manhit the dogwith the leash.

 How do we know which structure to build?

 Memory and comprehension
 Brief summary so far:
 What is the role of syntax in comprehension?
 Syntax is important for getting the right
interpretation during on-line comprehension
 Memory capacity may play an important role in
determining what kinds of information we can use
to comprehend sentences
 What about memory for language over the longer
term? What do we remember about sentences?
 Syntax may not be too important later, we
remember the meaning of sentences but not so
much the form (syntax) of the sentence
Propositions
 Good memory for meaning but not for form
 How do we represent sentence meaning?
 Propositions
 Two or more concepts with a relationship between them

A mouse bit a cat

bit (mouse, cat)
Propositions
 Good memory for meaning but not for form
 How do we represent sentence meaning?
 Propositions
 Two or more concepts with a relationship between them

A mouse bit a cat

bit (mouse, cat)
 Can represent this within a network framework
Meaning as Propositions
 Propositions
 A set of conceptual mouse
nodes connected by

agent
labeled pathways
that expresses the
meaning of a
cat
sentence patient
A mouse bit a cat

relation


or
 A cat was bitten by a
mouse
bit
 Deriving Propositions
 More complex example:
 Children who are slow eat bread that is cold
 Slow children
 Children eat bread
 Bread is cold

Past Eat

Slow Children Bread Cold

 Evidence for Propositions
 Memory better for sentences with fewer
propositions
 “The crowdedpassengerssquirmeduncomfortably”
 passengers crowded
 passengers squirmed Three propositions
 passengers uncomfortable

 “The horsestumbled and broke a leg”

 horse stumbled
Two propositions
 horse broke leg
Evidence for Propositions
 Bransford & Franks, 1971
 Constructed four-fact sentences, and broke
them down into smaller sentences:
 4 - The ants in the kitchen ate the sweet jelly that was
on the table.
 3 - The ants in the kitchen ate the sweet jelly
 2 - The ants in the kitchen ate the jelly.
 1 - The jelly was sweet.
Evidence for Propositions
 Bransford & Franks, 1971
 Study: Heard 1-, 2-, and 3-fact sentences only
 Test: Heard 1-, 2-, 3-, 4-fact sentences
(most of which were never presented)
Evidence for Propositions
 Bransford & Franks, 1971
 Results:
 the more facts in the sentences, the more likely Ss
would judge them as “old” and with higher confidence
 Even if they hadn‟t actually seen the sentence
 Constructive Model: we integrate info from
individual sentences in order to construct larger
ideas
 emphasizes the active nature of our cognitive processes
Alternative Representations
 Propositions are symbolic
 Problems:
 The referential problem
 The implementation problem
 The lack of scientific productivity
 The lack of a biological foundation
 Alternative
 Embodied representations (e.g., Barsalou;
1999; Glenberg, 1999)
Arguments against propositions
 Propositions are symbolic and amodal
 Referential problem:
 Disconnected with outside world (symbols referring to
other symbols)
 Implementation problem:
 Has been very difficult to develop a propositional parser
 Lack of scientific productivity:
 More work on what you can do with propositions than is
there evidence of the psychological reality of propositions
 Lack of a biological foundation:
 How do biological (or neurological) data constrain
propositions
Embodiment in language
 Embodied Representations
 Perceptual and motor systems play a central role in
language production and comprehension
 Theoretical proposals from many disciplines
 Linguistics: Lakoff, Langacker, Talmy
 Neuroscience: Damasio, Edelman
 Cognitive psychology: Barsalou, Gibbs, Glenberg,
MacWhinney, Zwaan
 Computer science: Steels, Feldman
Embodiment in language
 Embodied Representations
 Perceptual and motor systems play a central role in
language production and comprehension
 Words and sentences are usually grounded to perceptual,
motoric, and emotional experiences.
 In absence of immediate sensory-motor referents, words and
sentences refer to mental models or simulations of experience
 Simulation hypothesis
 Simulation exploits some of the same neural structures
activated during performance, perception, imagining,
memory…
 Language gives us enough information to simulate
Embodiment in language
 Evidence for Embodied representations
 Stanfied & Zwaan (2001)
 Presented participants with sentences

John put the pencil in the cup.

John put the pencil in the drawer

 See a picture and ask “does this describe what you read
about?”

 Reults: faster at saying horizontal pencil with drawer and vertical

pencil with cup
Embodiment in language
 Evidence for Embodied Representations
 Zwaan et al (2004)
 Presented participants with a sentence
A: The pitcher hurled the softball at you.
B: You hurled the softball at the pitcher.
 See two pictures and ask “are these pictures the same object”

A B

 Reults: faster at saying „Yes‟ when sentence matched the

pictures (e.g., sentence A and pictures in A, if the ball is small
and then gets big, it is coming towards you)