Speech and Language

• • Language processing in adults:
  • Spoken language is universal in all human cultures(thought to have emerged over 70,000 years ago). It is naturally acquired by children without any training and is subject to a critical period(if a child is not exposed to language for the first few years of its life, it will be more difficult for the child to learn later)
  • However the acquisition of reading skills requires training and has no critical period.
• • there are about 6,000 languages on earth
• • What is a language made of:
  • A system of sounds
  • A lexicon(bank of words)
  • A grammatical system(syntax/morphology)
  • Each of these is unique for each individual language
• • Other species have languages but the rules and demonstration of this language is different to humans(eg bees have the waggle dance). While humans have language in signs(words made of speech and sounds) that is organised by a set of rules called a syntax
  • sign=words have sounds that have meaning
• • Key terms:
  • phonology
  • phoneme
  • morphology
  • morpheme
  • syntax
  • pragmatics
  • semantics
• • phonology=how phonemes are put together
• • phoneme=the minimal unit of sound that help distinguish two words
• • morphology=how morphemes are put together
• • morpheme=the smallest meaningful unit of language(dog vs dogs, dog is the smallest with meaning)
• • syntax=how words are combined
• • pragmatics=knowledge underlying the use of language in context(taking turns/the routines of language)
• • semantics=the meanings of words and sentences
• • English as a system of sounds:sounds
  • How many vowels are there in english-
  • 13 phonetically

  
• • the three of arabic are in every language system as they are in the three corners of the language spectrum
  • English is slightly larger than the average language system with 13 as the average is around 7
  • french people find it difficult to say shit because they don't have the i vowel just the e
• often described as a short closing and opening.

  • place=from your lips to the back of your throat
  • manner=how you create the sound that the consonant represents
  • vowels often last 300 milliseconds consonants last 40
• English as a bank of words:

  • A word is made up of a meaning and a sound, this is so that the relation of the meaning and the sound is arbitrary(random)
  • Often signs symbols and cues are confused.
  • cue=not intentional
  • symbol=intentional, direct representation of meaning
  • sign=intentional, indirect representation of meaning(arbitrary relation between meaning and what is meant)
• Letters are signs because they are intentional and have an arbitrary relation between their meaning and the shape of the letter(there is no reason it has to look like that)

  • However hieroglyphics was mostly a symbol language as the drawings represented concepts making a direct representation of the meaning.
• The majority of words are learned in childhood as a result of schooling and education.

  • However we don't know how you go from knowing 0 words to knowing words
  • Every time a word is said, the brain attempts to find that word within its lexicon(some words being ‘preactivated’ due to the context of the conversation/situation).
  • If you know 2 languages your two lexicons become mixed and in some ways slows down your first lexicon, as you become more fluent in the second language the lexicon stands alone.
• Representation of what a lexicon looks like

  • As words are linked, if words are activated, some of the linked words are also activated
  • It is unclear whether this network is in place from birth or whether it develops.
• The grammatical system of language:

  • syntax=the rules for combining words into meaningful phrases
  • morphology=rules for constructing meaningful words
• Morphology:

  • The identification, analysis and description of the structure of morphemes.
  • In the sentence. she was a good cook as cooks go, and as cooks go, she went.
  • There are 3 words with 2 morphemes
  • cooks=cook+s
  • went=go+past tense
  • was=be+past tense
• 3 groups of morphological complexity: from easiest to hardest

  isolating/analytic languages(english)

  • The number is not marked on nouns, you don't need to modify words to explain languages
• Agglutinative languages

  • The name of words is different for the word being used in a sentence but the morphemes are easy to divide into their separate parts
• Fusional languages

  • Where the suffix of the verb related to the grammatical mood, tens, aspect, person and number (up to 5 morphemes per word)
• Languages also evolve from generation to generation within different culture but when a language becomes too complicated, there is a chance that it will restart the cycle again and become an isolating language.
• Syntax:

  • Syntax is the order of words
  • There are 3 methods of word order-
  • SVO(subject-verb-object)(english)
  • SOV(subject-object-verb)
  • Free order(any word can go anywhere)
• Pragmatics: the meaning of words

  • The mental state and inference is needed to understand what some sentences actually mean as a different mix of words can be used to convey a different meaning. Therefore autistics don't often recognise it as they can't understand the mental state of others.
• Understanding speech:

  • Understanding speech is a fast, automatic, irrepressible and usually accurate response
• The cocktail party effect=if you hear your name in a crowded room you can hear it clearly, this shows that you are constantly processing sounds
• Producing speech:

  • Producing speech is slower,requires conscious effort and is prone to mistakes.
  • Speech production is not random and the errors created are not random either.
• There are 2 main kinds of errors in speech-

  Exchange:

  • where the phonemes are similar therefore are switched during production
• Language is complex made up of many layers

  • Language comprehension is much better than production
  • It is an encapsulated system in our minds
  • Our minds are completely specialised for the language we first learn
• Language acquisition:

  • Humans are linguistically gifted
  • There are up to 6,000 languages on earth, this means that it is likely that there are 2 or more languages around a baby at any one time.
• Noam Chomsky (1993)

  • The basics of the language systems that babies have to learn:
  • prosody=the ‘melody’ of speech, how we emphasise words and make speech more interesting
  • Conversational structure=take it in turns and answer and ask ect
• Phonology

  • Words=the meanings and sounds
• Grammar

  • Children can learn all of these basics in 16 months and from then they just hone those skills in that maternal language
  • In 4 to 6 years, children reach a level in their maternal language that adults can never reach in a second language. There are 2 areas of mastery to master language
  • Perfect command of the sound structure(no foreign accent)
  • Perfect command of the syntax and semantic system.
  • Along with this, it doesn't matter where the child is all of these stages are the same regardless of
• • There are 10 milestones of language that appear at different ages-
  • crying(birth)
  • cooing(6 weeks)(vowels)
  • babbling(6 months)(consonants)
  • Intonation patterns(8 months)
  • 1 word utterances/pointing(1 year)
  • 2 word utterances(2 years)
  • Word inflections(2 ¼ years)
  • questions/negotiations(2 ½ years)
  • Rare and complex constructions(5 years)
  • Mature speech(10 years)
• • Crying, cooing and babbling are all culture-specific, different babies from different cultures do these differently as their hearing is developed and they hear their mother say things long before they begin to speak, this leads to different inflections at this stage
  • If 1 word utterances and pointing don't happen at age one it is considered an early indication of autism. And if 2 word utterances don't happen at 2 years it is considered an indication of a language delay
• • Syntax emerges from 24 months(2 years) onwards but massively develops at year 3.
  • 2 years=few function words/single clause sentences/simple morphology
  • 3 years=more function words/multiple clause sentences/various tenses/complex morphology
• • There are 3 main theories-
  • Learning theories
  • Nativist theories
  • Usage based theories