text:
User talk:Grechukk

 Hello Grechukk, and welcome to Wikiversity! If you need help, feel free to visit my talk page, or contact us and ask questions. After you leave a comment on a talk page, remember to sign and date; it helps everyone follow the threads of the discussion. The signature icon in the edit window makes it simple. All users are expected to abide by our Privacy policy, Civility policy, and the Terms of Use while at Wikiversity.

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title: User talk:Grechukk


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User talk:Chantel

 Hello Chantel, and welcome to Wikiversity! If you need help, feel free to visit my talk page, or contact us and ask questions. After you leave a comment on a talk page, remember to sign and date; it helps everyone follow the threads of the discussion. The signature icon in the edit window makes it simple. All users are expected to abide by our Privacy policy, Civility policy, and the Terms of Use while at Wikiversity.

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And don't forget to explore Wikiversity with the links to your left. Be bold to contribute and to experiment with the sandbox or your userpage, and see you around Wikiversity! If you're a twitter user, please follow http://twitter.com/Wikiversity. --Ottava Rima (talk) 19:14, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: User talk:Chantel


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User talk:Hilaryy

 Hello Hilaryy, and welcome to Wikiversity! If you need help, feel free to visit my talk page, or contact us and ask questions. After you leave a comment on a talk page, remember to sign and date; it helps everyone follow the threads of the discussion. The signature icon in the edit window makes it simple. All users are expected to abide by our Privacy policy, Civility policy, and the Terms of Use while at Wikiversity.

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title: User talk:Hilaryy


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User:Grechukk

I am a fourth year student at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, majoring in Psychology. I have taken several classes pertaining to the subject of languages/linguistics and am excited to learn more about the topic from a psychological perspective in the Psycholinguistics (PSYO3190) class I am currently enrolled in at Dalhousie. I love working with children, especially special needs children, so am aspiring to combine all of my interests and become a speech-language pathologist and work with special needs children. The Psycholinguistics class at Dalhousie will be writing a Wikiversity textbook, and I will be responsible for the chapter on Acoustic Phonetics. I am excited to take an in-depth look at this topic and share what I learn with the cyber-world.

January 10, 2011
I was very intrigued by the discussion of Kanzi the Bonobo chimp and his language-learning journey. Although there are many differences between humans and chimps, I couldn't help but see some similarities between the characteristics of Kanzi's language abilities and the language abilities of a low-functioning child with autism. I am not generalizing all people with autism, but have worked with some children with autism who, like Kanzi, use language exclusively as a way to obtain a need or desire. It has been suggested that Bonobos thought patterns are altered by language acquisition, enabling them to acquire more high-order functions (e.g. Kanzi could understand and play Pacman). That being said, one may assume that instinctive language learning abilities can provide nothing but advantageous thought patterns, but is it possible we are missing something because of our thought pattern? Of course I understand the vitality of language in order to best function in our society, but a common pattern of thinking found in those with language learning instincts, I believe, can be highlighted when you look at people with autism. Generally speaking, those with autism struggle to learn language and as it is difficult for most people to understand them, they have a hard time understanding others. Very similarly to typical Bonobos versus language-acquired Bonobos, typical brains seem to be wired differently compared to the brains of those with autism spectrum disorders. I think it is important for the world to realize this and make note of its specialness. For example, had it not been for this difference in wiring Temple Grandin may not have made such tremendous strides in the agricultural world. She has stated that her success had stemmed from her alternative way of thinking. Many other great minds have also been speculated to lie on the autism spectrum (Mozart, Einstein, Newton, to name a few; however, these theories are controversial and viewed quite skeptically by many). On this note, I will ask again: is it possible we, the typical language learners of humanity, are missing something because of our thought pattern? I believe the answer, undoubtedly, is yes. Maybe there is more that we can learn from these chimps.

January 21, 2011
Learning to fluently speak and understand a new language later in life seems amazing when you take prosody into account. Prosody helps a listener to segment a phrase into individual words and sounds that can be given meaning. Things become tricky when you realize how much prosody can vary from one language to the next. That being said, understanding fluency and melody (AKA prosody) of one language and being able to use it to help you better understand and segment speech in that language does not mean you can rely on the same cues for learning and understanding a different language. I wondered if it helps, though, to know more than one language? I’ve heard that the more languages you know, the easier it can be to learn some, often selective, other languages but always thought it was because of grammatical similarities. I never really took prosody into account and now believe it cannot be ruled out. As previously stated, prosody is like a melody or a song. Those who play one or more instruments are usually more musically inclined than someone who cannot play any music, and therefore are more likely to readily pick up new instruments. Could it be this way for speech? Could practice make perfect, in the sense that the more languages you know, the more sensitive you are to prosodic cues? I think it must be true. Take learning your times tables, for example: it is a conscious effort at first but the task soon becomes effortless and prepares you for different types of math problems. Thinking a little deeper, I wondered if the musically inclined are more perceptive to prosodic cues and therefore learn not only different types of music but also language more easily. Upon further inspection I found studies (e.g. Thompson, Schellenberg & Husain (2003)) that lead to the conclusion that musicians are indeed more receptive to prosodic cues and more likely to extract information from these cues. Thompson, Schellenberg & Husain (2004) later linked these findings more specifically to the emotional cues of prosody when they found that both music and drama lessons helped when trying to identify emotion of the speaker. So, although I am not sure if knowledge of music could help you to learn the grammatical aspects of language, it seems to help one to understand prosody and therefore the messages being spoken by others. It may be quite a long shot, but maybe music could help those who are anti-social to better function around people and within society by giving them a better understanding of emotion. Food for thought.

THOMPSON, W. F., SCHELLENBERG, E. G. and HUSAIN, G. (2003). Perceiving Prosody in Speech. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 999, 530–532. doi: 10.1196/annals.1284.06.

THOMPSON, W. F., SCHELLENBERG, E. G. and HUSAIN, G. (2004). Decoding Prosody: Do Music Lessons Help?. Emotion, 4(1), 46-64. doi: 10.1037/1528-3542.4.1.46.

January 29, 2011
Our textbook, The Pyschology of Language by Timothy B. Jay, notes that Read (1981) found that early spelling attempts to show what children hear in speech. What children hear is quite relative though, which gives variation to the attempted spelling we see in young, elementary school-age children. Obviously dialect could play a role in determining regional variations (e.g. a young Cape Bretoner may think to spell the number three like “tree,” how it is sometimes pronounced by those with thick Cape Breton accents, but a child from Toronto probably will not make this mistake, at least not for that reason), but from where do the personal variations arise? Could it stem from a process similar to the allophone-phoneme relationships that vary from language to language? If that is the case, children over-generalize sounds and have different schemas for similar sounds. If a child is not familiar with the “mb” combination in “number” (i.e. has never heard other, more uncommon words with this combination like “combination” or “lumber” for example), he or she may implicitly assume that the “mb” sound is an allophone for the phoneme /b/ and spell number as “nuber” or a similar way missing the letter m. It is interesting and almost robotic how learning to read seems to shape these schemas to be equivalent among all literate people of a language, and a lot of this learning process seems to depend on memory in English. Using an example presented in class, there is no way to figure out the proper spelling of “yacht” because the grapheme-phoneme relationship is so weak – one must simply remember it’s spelling. It was also brought up in class that Turkish has a very strong grapheme-phoneme correspondence (GPC), and English does not. This made me wonder if there is any difference between the memories of speakers of a language depending on the GPC of that language, for example English speakers versus Turkish speakers. The GPC must affect the complexity of a language, and does one’s way of thinking change depending on the complexity of the language(s) they speak? If this were the case, would the world be different if we all spoke different languages? I highly doubt the difference in thinking is so drastic that it could have a world-changing effect, or even a person-changing effect, but it may alter peoples’ perspectives.

February 6, 2011
In class on Monday, January 31, we talked about morphology and realized the languages of the world are largely diverse. We learned that languages lie on a typological continuum ranging from extremely analytic (like Chinese, where whole words represent morphemes and have a low morpheme-word ratio) to very polysynthetic (like some Native languages, where each word contains many morphemes and have a high morpheme-word ratio). Thinking about the morphological diversity alone, I became amazed when I realized just how complex languages are without even taking phonology, prosody, or aspects of language other than morphology into account. I then realized that this diversity could allow for new languages to be invented, which is extraordinary considering there are already approximately 6900 languages in the world. Yet, despite the diversity, when it all comes down to it, all languages are saying the same things/expressing the same message (i.e. whatever you can say in one language, you can say the same thing in another language, just in a different way). Every language is productive and can come up with new sentences and express new things, which means all languages can convey the same ideas. For instance, think about the phrase "I have a headache": it only has one meaning, but this meaning could be expressed in at least 6900 different ways in the world, not including variations within a language (e.g. "my head hurts" conveys a similar idea or message). Although a sentence like “We are supposed to get 20 cm of snow tomorrow” is not unusually heard here in Canada, it would probably not be heard in Tanzania, but it is still possible to say it in Swahili. I think this is extremely fascinating. Is there an infinite amount of possible languages, or a limit so high it might as well be infinite? Technically, I believe changing one aspect/rule of a language could create a novel language; it would just be very similar to another. If you think about swapping even one rule of one language with the rule of another, and did this for all 6900 languages, there is a possibility for a lot of new languages to be developed. Now try swapping two, and three, and the number quickly reaches infinity, or very close to it. To put things in perspective, the animal kingdom does not even nearly contain the same possibilities. It is crazy to think that this small part of the animal kingdom (it really only applies to humans, and is only one of the many special characteristics of humans) can be more diverse than the kingdom itself. The more I learn about language, the more it fascinates me.

February 11, 2011
Breaking down and understanding grammar involves breaking sentences into smaller, meaningful pieces (parsing). Additionally, one must use their working memory to remember the meaning of each segment and how it relates to each part of the sentence. That being said, working memory must have an effect on the ability to understand grammar. Does decreased working memory decrease a person's ability to understand grammar and language? This alone would debunk Chomsky's notion that the grammar of a language is perfectly hard-wired in the brain of a native speaker. I realize it is core content words that one uses (or can possibly rely on, depending on the complexity of the sentence) to understand a sentence, but if working memory plays such a big role, what happens to patients who lose their short term memory due to a traumatic brain injury? Things must lie on a continuum; I am not convinced that grammar comprehension is all or nothing. I believe this continuum must be at least partially based on working memory. Going back to the idea of memory loss, this can indeed happen in varying degrees. Some people may lose working memory, some may lose long-term memory, some may lose both. Also, one's memory loss may be sporadic or conditional, as in the case of people with Alzheimer's disease. Memory loss can also differ in severity. In this case, one person may be able to comprehend longer sentences than others, but it would depend on the functioning of their working memory. However, I don't believe this continuum exists only for those with memory loss. There was an interesting question posed in class about run-on sentences that really got me thinking. We realized that run-on sentences are often grammatically correct but discouraged in order to limit confusion. This seems like a very subjective concept. What really defines the limits of sentence length? If it's true they are unaccustomed only to avoid confusion, the grammatical abilities of the reader/listener must set the constraints on sentence length. If breaking down sentences, remembering the smaller parts and reattaching them to infer a greater meaning is how we understand a sentence, then the whole meaning of a sentence depends strongly on working memory. Those with better working memories should be able to link more clauses together and understand the full meaning of longer sentences. Also, the sentence "The horse raced past the barn fell," used as an example in class, could exhibit a possible continuum in a different way. This sentence would not require as much working memory, as it is not a very long sentence, but would rely on deriving possibly meaning of parsed portions of sentences and properly connecting these meanings - another major ability needed to fully understand grammar. The sentence is not implicitly understood and was probably easier for some to understand than others. Let's be honest, some people still may be a little confused by it - I know it took some thinking to really follow it myself! The thinking part also suggests that understanding grammar may not be as implicit as once speculated. Therefore, I see this as real-time proof that Chomsky's idea is wrong. Additionally, I am beginning to realize the importance of working memory in one's life. I also saw and highlighted it's benefits on January 29 when I wrote about grapheme-phoneme correspondence. Who knew it had a greater use than cramming for an exam?! Let's just hope that using it, strengthens it, and makes it last so that us students can continue optimally functioning in life for a long time.

February 20, 2011
The topic of discourse discussed this week was very interesting to me. We discussed many aspects and theories, such as the fact that it could be organized and understood in very different ways depending on the language being used. This really made me wonder about what makes language so universal. The only thing that seems common among all languages is that it is used to communicate. Things like syntax, phonetics, phonology and even the letters used are variable. To me, this is fascinating. Similarly, discourse itself can be organized in different ways to convey different, or like meanings. Using an example from our textbook (Jay, 2003), there is coherence between the two sentences: “My uncle drank too much last night. He lost his job yesterday.” Coherence allows one to assume that the two sentences are related and combine their meanings to create something like a story. A major question involved in this process is: how do we combine this information and understand the ultimate message being conveyed? Do we continually add the information together, or do certain words prime all possible meanings and proceeding words eliminate certain meanings? Additionally, how do we all come to the same conclusion? Can we even ever know for sure that there is mutual understanding in a conversation? The subjectivity involved in discourse is what intrigues me most. Understanding discourse must depend on experience; otherwise why aren’t we all always “on the same page.” Why must we explain things multiple times to some people, but not others, and why does saying things a different way allow some people to better understand, even though the meaning does not change? Take jokes and riddles as an example – some people are better at solving them. Why is this? I think that more creativity or exposure to jokes/riddles could definitely play a part. If it is based on creativity, are people born with this predisposition? Is it something that develops? I think it must be associated with “thinking outside the box,” as this would allow people to consider more possible meanings for a given discourse. I’ve heard of people often associating creativity more strongly with left-handed individuals. Left-handed individuals are also more likely to show right-hemispheric dominance – could there be a link here? Maybe those with language dominance in the right hemisphere, who are more likely to be left-handed, are more likely to be creative, and because of this are more likely to understand discourse? Or is understanding discourse based on experience? I’ve talked a lot about my realization of the major role working memory can have in language comprehension. If this is the case for discourse, long-term memory must also be involved. This would mean that one understands discourse because they’ve already heard the statement, or something similar. More experience would allow one to entertain more possible meanings. However, this would require us to recall every statement we’ve ever heard to understand something new and/or recent. It would make more sense for us to use both tactics, and combine statements, creatively and categorically, as they come. This theory can lead to more questions, though. If we use creativity to categorize topics/statements, we can be sure that everyone’s categories will be different. Thus, how can one be sure we truly understand one another? Even though two people can agree that some discourse makes sense and that they both understand what it means, can we really be sure we are all “on the same page?” It is entirely possible that certain things can differ in meaning for different people. This displays how complex this one aspect of language can be. The more I learn, the harder time I have understanding psycholinguistics as my mind opens to vast amounts of avenues and possibilities.

Jay, T. (2003). The Psychology of Language. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Prentice Hall.

March 6, 2011
After editing my classmate’s chapter on Hemispheric Lateralization, I felt enlightened. My mind was racing, I was very intrigued and one “what-if” was leading to another. The part of the chapter concerning the Right Hemisphere is what I think intrigued me most. My classmate highlighted the fact that “the right hemisphere is most often responsible for the prosodic and emotional elements of speech and language (Purves et al., 2008). “ These things could be related to the pragmatic aspects of language, as understanding prosody and emotion within language can help one to pick up on social cues and/or underlying meaning of what is being said; they help take language out of a most literal context. I wondered if people with Down syndrome, who are typically known to have strong pragmatic understanding but are often lacking in other areas of language, are more right-hemisphere dominant as far as language is concerned? Also, what about those with autism who can sometimes display the total opposite: major lack of pragmatic ability, but possibly in tact abilities in many or all other areas of language? I thought that this might also apply, to a lesser extent, to males versus females. Females are generally known to be more in touch with their emotions, so I thought it might be possible that females have more right hemispheric lateralization than males. As I continued through the chapter I learned that women tend to have larger corpus callosums compared to men, creating a stronger connection between the right and left hemisphere. Thus, is it possible that people with autism have smaller corpus collosums than most men? Autism is more prevalent in males than in females, which would further support this idea – even if a woman had a smaller than average corpus callosum, it would probably be less likely to be smaller than the average male. If this is true, I wonder what the influences it’s growth? I realize this is a loaded question and if the answer were so cut and dry, would not have so many people suffering from social isolation associated autism spectrum disorders. However, I think it would be very interesting to investigate this idea – maybe it would lead to big things!

March 13, 2011
I really enjoyed last Wednesday’s class on gestures. We watched a Sylvester & Tweety cartoon and I realized that Sylvester never speaks and simply uses gestures to communicate. I watched Sylvester and Tweety a lot growing up so I was surprised that this was the first time I thought about this fact, and also even more fascinated at how well he has to communicate with gestures for it to go unnoticed. I think that often, gestures do go unnoticed in a conversation, yet, as we saw with Sylvester, they can convey so much information that it surprises me. That being said, it seems we must implicitly process and understand most gestures. Since they are often used for social purposes, I wondered whether those with autism understand gestures implicitly? Are they helpful to them? Gestures are sometimes more straightforward in speech because they do not have factors such as pitch or intonation that can change their meaning (e.g. in the case of questions), so would this help or hinder understanding in those with autism? I know that signing is often used for purposes of communication, especially those with low-functioning autism, but some people in this population take things so extremely literally that I think it may be possible that a gesture could confuse them. I would hypothesize that a lot of people with autism would not benefit from or understand gestures such as emblems (e.g. the middle finger), but use of metaphorics, which are used with things of more abstract meaning (e.g. time), may be helpful for their understanding. Furthermore, we recognized that gestures are probably most often used to help the speaker formulate words and externalize their ideas so that the listener best understands their message. I wondered just how implicit and universal gestures are – do people who are blind gesture? They would never have had the chance to learn gestures by seeing them used by another person, so if they do, do they use the same gestures as others? I think that gestures can be so important for communication, and when you realize their complexity it is amazing how naturally they are processed and used.

March 20, 2011
Wednesday's lecture on segmental boundaries and the development of speech really got my wheels turning. First of all, I find it amazing that babies can segment speech at all. For example, it was mentioned that they begin to realize that certain sounds cannot occur together, the example used in class being /c/ and /t/. However, what about the word act? This isn't even the most uncommon word, and I am sure it is used quite a bit around young children. If speech acquiring babies have older brothers or sister's, I am sure the phrase "Act like a big boy/girl" is said around them on a fairly regular basis. I think that these "uncommon" gatherings of sounds are quite subjective, and that there must be more cues being used when one is learning to speak and attempting to segment speech. It is speculated that infants 6 months old are quite sensitive to word boundaries, but it is not until around 9 months of age that they can discriminate stress patterns within a language. To me, this was very intriguing. I would have thought that it would be the opposite, especially since some sounds that occur together in one language are against the rules of another. For instance, there is a common last name "Nkrumah" in Africa, but this /n/ and /k/ combination does not really happen word initially in English. The name of the former Ghanaian president, Kwame Nkrumah, would probably be segmented improperly by a native English speaker from Canada. Based on common Canadian English, it would make more sense to segment his name as "Kwa Menkru Mah." However, I had no trouble understanding his true name when I heard it spoken to me, and I think it is because of the stress patterns. Ghanaians still speak English, but some of their words break the rules of our Canadian English. Would this mean that a baby first understands dialect, and then works up to understand a particular language more generally? Wouldn't this put babies who are spoken to in multiple languages behind for sure, because they would be exposed to more combinations of words and thus have a more difficult time identifying word boundaries, seeing as how these combinations can often be language specific? I really speculated that identifying stress patterns would come before identifying word boundaries, especially since "motherese" so prominently highlights stress patterns and pitch. I believe this is definitely something to think about; babies never cease to amaze me!

March 26, 2011
On March 25, 2011, our Psycholinguistics class had the pleasure of learning about aphasia from Linda Wozniak of Dalhousie's School of Human Communication Disorders. I was completely amazed with the videos and facts she told us and immediately got thinking about the brain regions involved in language as well as the causes of language disorders. Non-fluent aphasics have difficulty producing speech, but over-learned and over-used expressions, like responses to "How are you?" (e.g. "Not bad, and you?") continue to come out automatically. I thought that this must mean that these phrases are stored in a particular region of the brain, apart from majority of language and vocabulary. I found it particularly interesting that very usual responses as simple as "yes" or "no" were often difficult to produce. These responses often come out just as automatically as "Not bad and you?", so why are these shorter, simpler answers so much more difficult to produce? The trigger, "How are you?", must play a role in this. The trigger for "yes" can vastly vary, so maybe it is the combination of trigger + response that is stored in a different place - maybe within our long term memory. If this is true, could it mean that increasing our long-term memory, or at least increasing the number of automatic phrases contained within our long-term memory, could be helpful in protecting against some effects of aphasia? Although this would not eliminate aphasia altogether, it may provide someone with non-fluent aphasia with more resources to use for communication purposes even before any recovery from therapy is noticed. My younger cousin would always respond to "I love you" with "moon and back" (translation: to the moon and back..). Maybe a regular saying like that could be saved in the brain of an aphasic and could bring loved ones great comfort in such difficult times. Maybe we should all be using regular, telegraphic, phrases to communicate, especially to communicate the most important things? Just kidding... but maybe it would be helpful for future aphasics!

Additionally, I was astounded to realize that even global aphasics, who have very poor comprehension and can often only speak one word (if any), maintain relatively good understanding of intonation and social cues of language. They even use these aspects alone, using extremely minimal words, to communicate. Is it possible that pragmatic aspects of language are, too, stored in a different area of the brain? Maybe learning to focus and relying more on these cues on a regular basis could help prevent the most drastic of measures from occurring after a brain injury, and even facilitate therapy afterwards by giving one something to use as a base on which to build upon.

April 3, 2011
Prepare to have your mind blown (if you haven't already heard what I am going to tell you). In one of my other classes, Behavioral Neuroscience, we are currently learning about sleep. Our professor informed us that dolphins are able to make half of their brain go to sleep while the other half stays awake and allows them to function. Although their mode of communication may not necessarily be language, I still think it's amazing that they are able to function with only half of their brain being conscious. It made me wonder if they can speak and communicate efficiently when this is happening? Seeing as how we learned that language is (mostly) lateralized to one hemisphere of our brains, if we had the ability of sleeping with half of our brain, would we lose the function of speech when/if that language-dominant half were asleep? My guess would be no, not altogether ("sleep talking" would probably explain things). However, would we be able to control what we think and/or thus say? When I thought about these factors, I was even more completely amazed that dolphins can still function with half their brains. This must mean that their core functions are spread throughout their entire brains to allow them the ability to continue to control their actions with only half their brain; I would assume their brains are not lateralized as in humans. Thus, could it be that the hemispheric lateralization of our brain functions concentrates our abilities (e.g. language) so that they can be optimized and more specialized? In other words, is it because of our lateralization that we are able to use such a complex thing as language to communicate and function at a higher level? Although we do not have the ability to "sleep" one side of our brain at a time, I am happy to have language and realize it may not be possible for us to "sleep" our brains because of it. I think it's a worthwhile sacrifice, though.

April 10, 2011
Debate 5, which occurred on April 6, 2011, was about the integration of minority languages versus the dominant language of society into schools for early school-aged children (ages 4-12). I found the arguments to be quite similar to the debate I was involved in, Debate 1, concerning the introduction of Ebonics as the language of instruction where it is dominant in the Oakland, CA School Board. In both of these debates, there was a lot of emphasis on language being a part of culture, but how much of culture really depends on language? Of course it plays some kind of role in cultural identification, especially when it comes to minority languages as language alone can associate one with a small yet recognizable community, but this question continued to make me think. I read a book for another class ("Africa: Altered States, Ordinary Miracles", by Richard Dowden) and it was heavily focused on the diverse cultural values of the people in Africa. In one chapter on Senegal, it was noted that when the French controlled the country throughout the colonial era, a great majority of the country began to speak French. However, it was also noted that the indigenous people continued to be very committed to their Muslim culture and values and felt no connection and often rejected the French culture and values. In this case, the language they spoke helped them to survive and get by in a French-speaking majority society, but the Muslim culture was definitely retained and even today remains quite unaffected. I think language can often be a little too tied to culture, especially with regards to minority languages, and to me this can be especially worrisome. Considering the "melting pot" that Canada is, there would be no way every minority language could be accommodated in the school system in every prevalent community. I do not believe that learning a majority language in school takes away ones culture; culture can most definitely be observed in the home. Making minority languages the languages of instruction often seems to be an attempt to "save" a culture, but maybe we should be looking at other ways to do so (i.e. speaking the language at home can maintain it's use among children, if that is the parents wish). Learning English and becoming bilingual can only better a child's future, and it seems to be common knowledge now that it is easier to learn a new language at a young age. So why are we depriving some children of this opportunity? Bilingualism or instruction of English in school should never "strip" a person, family or community of it's culture. In addition to the Dowden example, there was an example brought up in class of Gaelic in Cape Breton. In the highlands, Gaelic is offered as a language course. Although I am not from the highlands and do not know Gaelic, I still feel hugely connected to the Scottish culture that is so prevalent in Cape Breton. Don't get me wrong, I think the total extinction of these languages is a major shame, but if I was spoken to in Gaelic in school and at home, starting at a young age, I feel I would be at a disadvantage in society. Mastery of the majority language is, more often than not, crucial to reaching your highest potential. English is such a universal language today that it can often be huge tool in surviving and thriving just about anywhere in the world. Thus, I have a hard time seeing more good than bad in the integration of minority languages in school systems, especially for early school-aged children.

Thanks for an awesome semester and I hope you have an amazing summer!

title: User:Grechukk


text:
Language teaching/Teaching reading

Introduction
"If you can read this, thank a teacher" -Anonymous

There are many considerations that need to be taken into account when teaching an individual to read. It is estimated that the average child comes to school with a speaking and listening vocabulary of 24,000 words (Adams, 239), so teaching an individual to read should be easy if you just need to help them match spoken words which they already know with letters to create a visual meaning. However, this is not normally the case. Children between the ages of 3 and 5 begin school and their abilities vary greatly, anywhere from gifted, to at risk of a learning disability. Some may speak a few different languages, some may be slow learners, a child may be gifted and find it boring to read or listen to books that are at a level suitable for the rest of the class, others might be the youngest in their class and be expected to perform at the same level as children almost a full year older. With such diversity in the school system, one needs to ask what is the best way of teaching reading to students who are just learning to read? There is a century-old debate over the efficacy of teaching reading through phonics (sound-based) versus the whole-word method (meaning-based)(McGunness, 2004). Since reading is a great way of increasing one's knowledge and vocabulary it seems reasonable that there should be guidelines for teachers to follow as they teach students to read. The curriculum is a good indicator of what a student should know or learn during a specific grade but since research is always advancing how is one supposed to stay upto date with the newest learning styles. Teaching reading is difficult because a teacher must adapt their teaching style to the student and figure out the best way to teach. This disscussion brings us to a very widely debated topic: What is the right way to teach reading? Good teaching enables students to learn to read and read to learn.

The Alphabet Method
This method is one of three synthetic methods and it was thought of as one of the earliest attempts at teaching reading. First children need to learn to recoginize the letters and then gradually begin to recognize words. The New England Primer (1690) and the Webster's American Spelling book (1793) were both based on this method. The Greeks and Romans appear to have used the alphabet method as well. Studies have shown that people who learn to associate a name with a letter are learning how to discriminate different visual forms (an A is differnt from a D) as well as associate a sound, name and meaning with that symbol. The weakness of this method is that sounds of the letters do not always indicate the sound that needs to be pronounced(Dechant, 209). an example of this in the english language can be seen below. Often if parents do not want their children to know information they spell it out, so can a child really learn to read by pronuncing letter names? if we take a look at a line from from the Webster's American Spelling Book we can see how unneccessary complicated it is to spell out the words in order for the individual to read.
 * No man may put off the law of God.

Using the alphabet method one would be taught to say it like this: "En-o, no, emm-ai-en, man, emm-ai-wy, may, pee-you-tee, put, o-double-eff, off, tee-aitch-ee, the, ell-ai-double-you, law, o-eff, of, gee-o-dee, God." It has been said that the alphabet method did nothing more then teach children how to spell, however, many people claim they have indeed been taught to read by the alphabet method. In this method children learn to identify letters, they do not learn to read the word (Anderson, 205).

The Synthetic Phonic Method
The phonic method is the second synthetic method used by teachers. This method was introduced in 1782 by Noah Webster. This method focuses on the phonetic sound of letters. This method has a few problems associated with it because various letters can suggest many different sounds. For example, the "ou" can be found in words such as, sour, pour, would, couple, and sought, all of which have varied pronouncation of "ou". (Dechant, 209). The general idea of phonics it that the student learns to read by their prior knowledge of the sounds and names of the alphabet. From their knowledge of the sounds the individual is encouraged to read by sounding out the word.

The Syllable Method
The syllable method is the third synthetic method. In this method, syllables are combined to form words. It is used in some African languages such as Sundanese Dinka. A syllable approach is an essential part of today's reading programs since the structure of words is based on syllable analysis. Gleitman and Rozin (1973) advocate the use of the syllable as a unit of reading, whereas Goodman (1973) rejects this approach and suggests that the syllable is a complex relationship between morphology and dialect. He believes that the syllable method does not consider reading as a psycholinguistic process (Dechant, 209-210).

Analytic Method (Meaning-based)
The following three methods for teaching reading are called analytic methods because they begin with the word, phrase or sentence and are then broken down into basic elements (Dechant, 210).

The Word Method
The word method is the most commonly used analytic method used in teaching. It is also termed the sight or configuation method, although often in error. It was introduced to Europe in 1648 in a book written by Comenius. There are various ways of teaching this method which include:
 * Analytical Phonics
 * Kinesthetic Method-Fernald (1943) (Dechant, 210).

The Sentence Method
In the 1990's, this method of teaching reading was emphasized by Huey (Dechant, 210-211). Huey put forth the idea that the sentence was the true unit in a language, not the word or letter, and therefore the sentence as a whole was the true unit in reading. The problem with this idea is that those who are just beginning to read need to identify the basic units of the sentence inorder comprehend what they will read

The Phrase Method
This is the third method which is mentioned less often then the other two methods. In this method the student would learn to read parts of sentences instead of the whole sentence.

Which is the Best Methodology?
Although there has been lots of research done, there is no research that provides a definite answer. Therefore the techniques that a teacher uses to teach depends on their philosophy of teaching (Schickedanz,) Teaching is very different from what it used to be in the 1980s. Technology is evolving, classrooms are becoming more and more culturally diverse, which in turn widens the range of intelligence levels. It is nearly impossible for a teacher to teach reading in a large classroom setting in a way that will foster each child's individual learning styles. Students vary in many ways, some individuals learn better in a group environment where they can interact with others, some especially those with Attention Deficit Disorder (ADHD) get distracted easily when working around others, some children need it to be quiet in order to concentrate, others are hands on learners while others learn best by listening. A lot of books talk about teacher observation as one of the roles a teacher is expected to do. Smith et al (2008) state, "the potential for professional development lies in learning from students." This illustrates the idea of student observation: that teachers can observe students' individual reactions to styles of teaching and choose the methods that work best for each student.

Assessing Reading Ability
There are two ways a teacher can assess reading ability of a student. The first is to find out how well the student learns and provide feedback to assist the learner. The second way is to measure the progression that is being made. Essentially the teacher is measuring word fluency and comprehension. Another way that psychologists use to test reading abilities is through the Weschler Scale which can be used to diagnose learning disabilities.

Comprehension
Comprehension is the active process of deriving meaning from the text. It involves word knowledge as well as thinking and reasoning. Good readers are aware of how well they understand the text they are reading. A good way to assess comprehension is to ask higher order questions, questions about the main idea and view points, not the minor details. Readiing comprehension is the idea of combining prior knowledge with the knowledge learned in the text. Prior knowledge therefore is related to a persons life experiences. This is where tests such as the Education Quality and Accountability Office testing also known as the EQAO test which is a Canadian provincial wide testing. The EQAO testing can fall short and a wide variation of results can be found from year to year. When a reading comprehension question talks about underground transportation and tickets, children in rural areas may not have prior knowledge about needing a ticket to take public transportation. Similariy, students that live in cities may have no knowledge or limited knowledge about living on a farm and thus the reading comprehension scores will be lower when given stories about this topic than if they were asked about public transportation.

Fluency
The goal of reading instruction is to ensure individuals learn to read accurately and fluently. Fluency in reading means being able to read text accurately, quickly and with expression. If a person is fluent in reading a language, it means that they can focus on the meaning of the text because they do not have a problem with word recognition. Fluency in reading is important because it is closely related to comprehension (McGuinness,189). Repeated reading and partner reading are examples of promoting fluency through practice. “The fluent reader sounds good, is easy to listen to, and reads with enough expression to help the listener understand and enjoy the material.”- Charles Clark

Technology
The growth in technology has a huge impact on students with learning disabilities but specifically reading disabilities such as dyslexia, slow readers, problems with reading comprehension or other types of struggling students. Programs such as Kurzweil, electronic storybooks are used to help students overcome learning challenges. Some problems with these types of technology is the high cost, currently Kurzweil costs about $1500.00, although for the most part the Canadian government give students with disabilities funding towards these types of programs. Word processors such as Microsoft Word are also thought to aid students in both reading and writing.(page 89)

Reading Programs
There are many programs worldwide that are designed to enhance and develop reading skills of individuals of any age at any level. Some of these programs and products include Kumon, Hooked on Phonics , Sylvan

The Effects of Early Intervention
Schools should work together with parents and teachers to create an environment to foster learning. Parents and teachers can do many things to help students one of which is to act as a role model.

Parental Involvement
A meta analysis of 14 intervention studies representing 1174 families showed that parental involvement does have an impact on a child's ability to acquire reading skils. The studies showed that parental intervention for children in kindergarden through to grade 3 showed similar results. Studies show that parents are most helpful when they are trained to teach specific skills to their children. Training parents to listen to their child read also had a similar effect.

Teacher Involvement
It is necessary for teachers to assess children that are at risk of having a reading disability and to keep records of progress so that the parents stay informed and also in case documentation is needed to diagnose a student with a learning disability later on. It is important for teachers to be aware of the risks and make sure students do not fall behind because research shows that children who get off to a poor start rarely catch up (Lerner,2000) There are many articles and books that teachers can read in order to stay informed on evidence-based teaching styles for students at risk. One of which includes that by Coyne et al. (2006). Teachers are not normally prepared to work with students who have learning disabilities because there training is in a specialization such as French, English, or Physics(Lerner, 317). so this article helps teachers learn how, when and what to teach students at risk of a learning disability.

Roles of a Teacher
As a teacher a common question may be asked by the students: Why do we need to read? The response - because you will need to know how to read when you are older - is not really a sufficient answer for a child. If an individual finds out something they did not know before, the interest in learning to read should motivate that person to read. Similarly, if a child begins to want to know more about the stories or poems that have recently been read to them, that eagerness to learn has been sparked and the willingness to learn exists. Therefore, making them good candidates for reading instruction. * Students need demonstrations of how an efficient reader reads fluently therefore it is good for teachers to read to their class and promote literature (Valencia, 58) as well as: * Foster an environment that promotes reading in a fun and interactive way.
 * Teachers can assess fluency of their students and provided feedback as students read aloud to them.
 * Teachers should help students choose books that are at the appropriate reading level, not to easy and not to hard.
 * Teachers are encourages to ask their students questions about the material they are reading inorder to help them develop good reading comprehension.
 * Guide students to read material at a suitable level that has quality not just Captain Underpants.
 * Promote reading with other students.
 * Teachers should promote reading in the home, after all practice makes perfect.
 * Teachers can improve a students comprehension by asking asking questions about the text: what is the main idea, and asking students to use prior knowledge to predict what will happen.
 * Test out different teaching skills or different children to see what works.
 * Teachers should be organized and plan ahead so that they can devote their time to teaching (Schickendanz, 14)
 * Keep parents/guardians informed, this will benefit not only the child but the parents and teachers as well(Schickendanz, 102)
 * Teachers should take an active role in identifying at risk students so that they can get the required attention to succeed (Smith, 2008)

Resources
There are many online interactive games and hand held games such as leapfrog technology that can help students to improve their reading skills on their own, often times with out even knowing they are doing so. Many television programs for children also have online learning to keep a child's interest. They can learn to read with or about the characters they see on television.

Test Your Comprehension
Questions:
 * 1) Students that are having trouble with their visual and auditory process are showing precursors for what?
 * 2) Why is it important that teachers evaluate struggling students and keep files regarding the individuals progress?
 * 3) What are two methods teachers can use to teach reading?
 * 4) The ____________ is a Canadian province wide test that the government uses to assess the reading abilities of students.
 * 5) What are two ways to access the reading ability of an individual? What abilities do these tests assess?
 * 6) What are some technologies and programs outside of the school system that can aid students who are experiencing difficulties in reading? What is the main problem with these resources?
 * 7) Which of the following are roles of a teacher?
 * a) Teachers can assess fluency of their students and provided feedback as students read aloud to them.
 * b) Teachers should help students choose books that are at the appropriate reading level, not to easy and not to hard.
 * c) Teachers are encourages to ask their students questions about the material they are reading inorder to help them develop good reading comprehension.
 * d) Guide students to read material at a suitable level that has quality.
 * e) Teachers should promote reading in the home, after all practice makes perfect!
 * f) All of the above are roles of a teacher
 * g) Only a) and c)

Teaching Reading Crossword
Use the following crossword to test your knowledge of the above material on teaching reading.

DOWN 1. A scale used by psychologists that can help diagnose students with learning disabilities. 2. In 1782, Noah _______ introduced the synthetic phonic method of teaching that focuses on the phonetic sound of letters. 3. A good reader that can understand what he/she is reading and is able to answer questions about main ideas and is able to give their point of view of what they just read would be said to have good reading _____________. 4. Teaching ______ vary from teacher to teacher and may need to be adjusted from time to time inorder to create the best learning enviroment for the class. 7._________-word reading is a widely used technique of teaching reading. 9._______ put forth the idea that the sentence was the true unit in reading. 10.________-based teaching research is used by teachers but many find it hard to stay informed since it is constantly changing. 12. Teachers are encouraged to ___ their students questions about the material they have just read in order to develop and assess reading comprehension. 15. Parents and Teachers should act as a _____ _______ for students. 17. _________ should work with parents and techers to foster a learning environment. 18. Of the meaning based methods the paragraph method is the ________ likely to be used. 21. Teachers should ________ students to read books at a level suitable for them. ACROSS 4. Students should be encouraged to use past _________ and knowledge to help them read. 5. An example of this could be when a teacher is reading a book that she read previously to the class and a student continues to interupt her, the teacher says to the class, "Today I want you to listen to the story and try and find something you do not remember about the story, and tell me about once I finish the story". She did this in order to foster a pleasant learning environment for all students. 6. An example of this would be a child who is able to read text in a book accurately, quickly and with expression. 8. Teachers and parents need to _______ responsibility with regards to reading instruction. 11.__________ involvement has been shown to have a positive impact on a childs reading skills in addition to what is being learned at school. 13. After giving the child the resources students and parents most _________ responsibility to the student. 14. A costly program that is often used by students who have a reading disability. 16. Hooked on __________, Kumon, Sylvan and many other reading program help students develop and enhance their reading skills. 17. Parents and teachers should help students with book _______ so that they learn to read a variety of books and not just books such as Captain Underpants. 19. The ______-_______ method which includes the alphabet method, phonic method, and the syllable method is also known as the synthetic method. 20. Another name for the analytic method is the _________-based method. 22. A person that has a ________ _________ can use coping strategies such as technology and reading programs to overcome learning challenges 23. Children have many ____________ that they can use to help them with reading these include, online interactive games, as well as hand held games such as Leapfrog.

Food for thought

 * Who taught you to read? Was it a teacher, your parents, or a friend?
 * What reading style were you taught?
 * Do you think it is fair for students with reading disabilities to have access to computers and other programs when others students do not?
 * Do you think the government should subsidize the cost of after school reading programs? After all aren't students sent to school to learn these skills?
 * Who should be primarily responsible for teaching children to read?
 * Should teachers have to cater to each individual student or to the majority of the class through their teaching styles in order to teach reading?
 * Which method would you use to teach reading to some one?
 * At what age should children be able to read?
 * Do you think there is a critical age at which an individual can no longer be taught to read? if so why or why not?
 * Do you think that programs such as Kumon and Sylvan should be integrated into the school classroom setting?

Answers to Questions Above

 * 1) Precursors to learning disabilities include early problems with auditory and visual processing. A little more background: Auditory processing involves phonological awareness auditory discrimination, auditory memory and auditory sequencing and bleading. Visual processing abilities play a huge role in visual discrimination of letters and words, and visual memory.
 * 2)  It is important to keep a record of a students development so that if there is a possibility of a learning disability there is proof. Without documentation a child would have to be assessed prior to being tested for a learning disability. Keeping documentation speeds up the process to allow struggling students get help when they need it.
 * 3) The synthetic (or sound-based method) as well as the analytic method can be used to teach students to read.
 * 4) The EQAO or Education Quality and Accountability Office testing is a test that the Canadian Government uses to test the reading abilities of students. This test falls short in some areas but it is a great way for the government to compare school and teaching methods to see what is working and what isn't.
 * 5) Two ways to test the reading abilities of a students is through comprehension and fluency tests. Reading comprehension assesses the students ability of word knowledge, as well as their thinking and reasoning abilities. Fluency is the ability to read text accurately, quickly and with expression
 * 6) Computer programs such as Kurzweil and Microsoft Office as well as programs such as Hooked on Phonics and Kumon can aid students that are experiencing reading difficulties in over coming some of their challenges. The main problem with these programs is the cost, however students with reading disabilities may receive funding from the Canadian Government that aids the students.
 * 7) f) is the correct answer. All of them are roles that teachers should use as well as many others to facilitate their students in reading.

title: Language teaching/Teaching reading


text:
Psycholinguistics/Components of Speech

Introduction
In order to adequately understand the processes of speech, as well as the many theories regarding speech perception and word recognition, it is necessary to first understand the components at the root of those theories. These components, which are discussed in detail below, include:
 * Prosody
 * Phonological Rules
 * Cross-Linguistic Phonetics

Human language is segmental in nature, and can be broken down into several different units that be identified by physical (using acoustic or articulatory change points) or auditory means (using changes in the quality or quantity typically related to phonemic changes). When combined, the segments of language can produce more complex and abstract meanings. These segments, in order from least to most complex, are:
 * Phone – any sound in human language and therefore are considered to be the minimal unit of language.
 * Phoneme – phonological units which are used to make meaningful contrasts between segments. The set of phonemes used by speakers varies from language to language, with each language having its own specific set of phonemes.
 * Cluster – groupings of vowel and consonants. Clusters follow the phonological rules of a language.
 * Syllable – a specific language unit that consists of a syllabic element called a nucleus, and all other segments associated with it. The nucleus typically refers to a vowel, while those consonants that precede it are referred to as the onset and those following the vowel are referred to as the coda.  Multiple syllables can be present in a word and many people are familiar with the common ‘tests’ for assessing how many syllables a word is composed of.
 * Morpheme – the smallest unit of meaning in a language. Multiple morphemes may exist in a single word.  For example, affixes are considered to be morphemes.  For this reason, some morphemes can stand alone, while others such as –s and other suffixes do not.
 * Word – the smallest free form unit in language, or in other words the smallest unit in language that, on its own, has pragmatic and/or semantic value.
 * Phrase – a single word or collection of words that create one unit in a clause. There are multiple types of phrases that are categorized on the basis of how they are structured.
 * Clause – the structure of a clause can vary from language to language. In English, a clause consists of a subject and a predicate and therefore makes up one complete thought in a sentence. Two main types of clauses exist: independent and dependent clauses.  Independent clauses can stand alone in a sentence whereas, without the presence of an independent clause, a dependent clause sounds incomplete.
 * Sentence – consists of one or more clauses. Simple sentences can consist of one clause (an independent clause), while more complex can be composed of up to several clause (both independent and dependent).

The components of speech work amongst these units of speech to provide each language with a distinct sound and identifiable qualities. These interactions are discussed more fully below.

Prosody
When listening to computer generated speech systems, people often note that the speech sounds awkward and unnatural (for an example click here). This synthetic speech lacks a human quality that can be partly, if not mostly, attributed to its lack of prosodic cues. Prosodic cues are those qualities of human speech, above the level of the segment, that can enhance the meaning of a speaker’s utterance simply by the way a speaker delivers the utterance. Therefore, the information communicated by prosodic cues is beyond the words chosen to communicate a specific thought. For instance, if a speaker slows the rate of their speech and adds emphasis to each word, it may be inferred that the speaker is being sarcastic. Sarcasm, irony and emphasis are commonly communicated through prosodic cues.

Suprasegmentals
Prosodic cues are a suprasegmental property, which refers to a feature of language that may extend across the specific segments listed above, which in turn affects the meaning of an utterance, or even a whole word, phrase, or sentence. The suprasegmental properties of speech include:
 * pause
 * stress (accent)
 * pitch
 * intonation
 * rate

Pause
The easiest of these properties to understand are believed to be pause and word stress. These features act as an indication of breaks or segments in continuous speech, which encourages easy comprehension of speech. In relation to the segments of speech, pauses are commonly located between clauses or sentences – the idea of pausing at commas or periods while reading is a great example of this. Observing pauses at these points allows for greater comprehension of what you are reading and divides long strings of words into manageable and understandable components. It should be noted that by following this line of thought, it would seem that dividing smaller segments of language would not aid in comprehension. For example when reading a passage from a book, one’s comprehension would be greatly impeded if pauses were made between each syllable of a word – or worse yet after each phoneme!

Stress/Accent
A much less obvious prosodic feature is stress or accent. Accent, in this case, does not relate to language dialect and instead refers to stress of a syllable. In general, stress (accent) refers to a combination of the loudness, length, or pitch of syllable in a word, or a word in a phrase/sentence. When stress is placed on a syllable, the length, loudness, and/or pitch of that syllable is increased when compared to the same syllable unstressed. The stress on any particular syllable can cause drastic changes in the meaning of a word. For example, the word 'record' in English can be said two ways and the placement of syllable stress determines the meaning of each the word. If the stress is placed on the last syllable of the word (i.e. record’), the word may act as a verb and mean to document or keep track of something. Comparatively, if stress is placed on the first syllable of the word (i.e. rec’ord), the word may act as a noun and refer to a tally of some sort or music disc.

Pitch/Intonation
Variations in speech can also be created by pitch and, in turn, intonation. While pitch refers to the vibration frequency in a person’s vocal cords when speaking, intonation refers to the changes in pitch over time. For example, more vibration in a speaker’s vocal cords results in a higher pitch and it is a shift to higher pitch at the end of a speaker’s sentence that often indicates that a question is being asked (intonation).

Pitch can vary across most aspects of speech from phonemes to words to sentences, causing subtle to notable changes in the interpretation of a speaker’s speech. On the other hand, changes in intonation are commonly found across a whole phrase or sentence, as illustrated in the example above. However, changes in intonation can also be found across single words and syllables. This fact can be demonstrated by the ability of a speaker to ask a one word question.

Rate
Finally, the rate of speech refers to the number of phonemes or words produced by a speaker or perceived by a listener per second. The rate of speech by the speaker can directly influence the understanding by the speaker’s listeners. Rate of speech and enunciation have a reciprocal relationship, meaning that as the rate of speech increases, enunciation decreases – or vice versa. When a speaker’s ability to enunciate clearly decreases, the listener’s ability to pick up on other cues also decreases, which in turn can negatively affect a listener’s comprehension.

It is important to realize that often these properties co-occur, in particular with pitch, stress, and timing variation often existing simultaneously. For example, in some language stressed syllables have higher or lower pitches than do unstressed syllables.

Gathering More Information: Emotional Meaning
Prosodic information helps to provide listeners with information that allows for insight into the direct meaning of a statement, whether it is a word, phrase, or even an utterance, as well as information regarding the speaker’s emotional meaning. Emotional meaning from prosodic information may give further insight to a speaker’s statement, reflecting the emotional state of the speaker or the emotional connotation of the statement. For example the rate of a speaker’s speech can act as a cue to infer emotional meaning. When a speaker has an increased rate of speech in comparison to that which is typical of them, a listener may infer that the speaker is anxious. Conversely, if the speaker’s rate of speech is much slower than usual a listener may infer that the speaker is sad or depressed.

Phonemes
While similar prosodic cues are present across languages, each language has its own distinct set of phonemes that comprise it. A phoneme is not simply a physical sound and should not be confused with a phone. A phoneme is a distinctive sound segment in a language that is used to demonstrate contrast in a language. The convention in linguistics is to denote a phoneme between two slashes. For example, /j/ is a phoneme. On the other hand, a phone is any sound in a language and is considered the smallest unit that can be identified in speech. Phones are denoted between a set of square brackets. For example, [j] is a phone.

The contrastive nature of phonemes allow for changes in meaning to be noted by the slightest change in a phoneme. This distinction is made by the brain of a listener who has had experience with the language they are engaging in and from that experience it takes little effort for the brain to detect slight changes.

Minimal Pairs
When two words are identical, except for one phone that is located in the same place in both of the words, the noted difference is called a minimal pair. In other words, a minimal pair is a test that proves that two phonemes are contrastive and not simply variants of the same phoneme. For example, in English an example of a minimal pair are the words ‘hut’ and ‘hat.’ These two words are identical in every way except for the phoneme /u/ in ‘hut’ and /a/ in ‘hat.’  By making the simple change in the middle segment of the word, the meaning of the whole word changes.

Allophones
A group of phones that produce varying sounds, yet do not change the meaning of a word are called allophones. This definition means that different sounds, or phones, can make up on phoneme and therefore allow it to be pronounced – potentially – in more than one way. For example, when the ‘p’ in the word 'pin' is aspirated (or formed with a puff of air) the phone is denoted by [ph]. However, when unaspirated the phone is denoted simply as [p]. Although in the context of the word ‘spin,’ when the phone changes from [p] to [ph] the meaning of the word remains the same indicating that they are allophones and are classified as a single phoneme.

Phonological Rules
Phonology is the set of sounds in a language composed of phonetic and phonemic units. The distinction between phonetic and phonemic units can be made based on the distinction listed above between phones and phonemes. Phonology also includes the rules that guide the combination of these units.

In each language, phonemes can be predicted and understood using a set of phonological rules. These rules vary between languages and reflect the regularities of that particular language. Through experience a speaker internalizes the implicit rules specific to a given language. Though an infinite number of combinations of phonemes can be created, the combinations which are considered acceptable and are used in a language is significantly less. For example, the word 'shime' does not actually exist in English even though it does not violate any phonological rules.

The specific rules that outline the permissible combinations of phonemes are called phonotactic rules. These rules specifically apply to syllables, as well as more generally to words. As a result, word phonotactics are based on syllable phonotactics. Similarly, multisyllabic words follow both syllable phonotactic rules and word phonotactic rules.

An example of an impermissible phoneme combination is /stl/. No word in the English language includes such a combination and if asked to pronounce the combination, a native English speaker would most likely hesitate before pronouncing the combination of sounds. When spoken, the sounds would likely feel and sound unnatural to the speaker because even though the technique of ‘sounding out’ the letters individually can be applied, the combination is not present in English and would therefore be unfamiliar to the speaker.

The fact that these specific rules vary from language to language indicates the importance of learning of phonological rules in the acquisition of a new language. The uniqueness of each language’s phonological rules and corresponding combination demonstrate the importance of experience with a language in order to reduce the number of phonological errors made.

Cross-Linguistic Phonetics
One does not need to be a psycholinguist to recognize the different sounds that occur across languages. Those who have ever attempted to learn a new language may be especially aware of these distinctions. When a native English speaker attempts to learn French or Spanish they may feel that the ‘rolling’ of sounds off the tongue feels or sounds unnatural. Similarly with other languages, a native English speaker may find the creation of sounds at the back of the throat unfamiliar as well. These differences are an indication of the importance placed on certain sounds, or phonemes, in one language and, in certain cases, not in another language.

In each language there are a set of phonemes which are deemed to be meaningful and purposeful, while others are considered to be unimportant. In English, this can be demonstrated by what people consider to be purposeful speech and what is considered to be babble or nonsense. As mentioned above, phonological rules determine the combination of permissible phonemes, however not all permissible phonemes are actually used in a language. For instance, the combination “baba” on its own has no meaning in English and as a result would be ignored or disregarded by an English listener. On the other hand, this combination of sounds is purposeful in languages such as Mandarin and therefore would not be ignored by a Mandarin speaking listener.

The prominence of particular sounds, or lack thereof, makes each language unique and interesting. However, if misunderstood these differences can and have been made the basis of hurtful stereotypes. For example, it has become ‘known’ in Western popular culture that native speakers of Asian languages cannot produce the ‘l’ sound in English. This ‘inability’ can lead to embarrassing situations where the intended meaning of the speaker is lost to mispronunciation. This common belief is very much a misunderstood phenomenon of cross-linguistic phonetics and an unfortunate over-generalization.

It is true that native Korean and Japanese speakers have some difficulty producing the ‘liquid sounds’ of English, such as ‘l.’ However, this rule does not extend to all Asian languages or all speakers. The struggle to produce these sounds are also not a reflection of the speaker themselves, rather it is a reflection of the phonemes that are valued in the speaker’s native language. In Korean and Japanese, the ‘liquid sound’ of ‘l’ is not produced and instead ‘l’ is produced similar to how ‘r’ is produced in English. Therefore, as speakers transition from language to language, it is not an inability to produce a given sound that causes the difference in phoneme production. Rather, these differences result from years of experience with the phonological rules of one’s native or more primary language, which then influence the way other languages are used.

Though there are distinct differences that occur in phonetics across languages, there are also sounds that occur in most, and sometimes all, of the world’s languages. These similarities across diverse languages are speculated to result from the limitations of the human articulatory and auditory systems. As a result of these limitations some phones and combinations of phones become favoured across speakers of different languages and are therefore used more readily.

American Sign Language
When considering the components of speech, it is common for people to fail to consider the components of sign language. This may seem to be a logical conclusion – speech is a stream of spoken words and its components are features of this spoken stream. However, American Sign Language (ASL), and other forms of sign language, can be broken down into components very similar to those of spoken speech. Furthermore, it has been argued that sign languages, ASL in particular, can be broken into segments or units in a way similar to the division of spoken language. Researchers have gone so far as to state that sign language is a system that possesses levels that correspond to the phonological, morphological, and semantic, syntactic, and pragmatic levels of spoken language. For example, the finger-spelled English words that exist in sign language are viewed as a grouping of one or more morphemes that come together to produce a single sign.

Properties that function similar to the suprasegmental properties of spoken language are said to operate across the segments of sign language. The suprasegmental properties of sign language include body language and facial expression, which can occur across one or more segments of a sign. These features of sign language have been said to operate similar ways as do pitch and stress with the segmental phonemes of spoken language.

ASL Terminology
Though the similarities between sign language and spoken language seem apparent, it should be noted that the obvious differences between spoken and sign language called for a set of new terminology for referring to the comparable terms that applied to spoken language.

In sign language, the equivalent of phonology is cherology. In turn, the phonemic units have been termed cheremes and the sign units that represent phonetic elements that are present in spoken language are termed primes.

The concept of cherology was developed in the mid 1960’s by Dr. William Stokoe, a professor at Gallaudet University – an educational facility for the deaf and hard of hearing. In a time when little was known about ASL and therefore how to perceive it, Dr. Stokoe authored and co-authored several influential books on the topic including Sign Language Structure and A Dictionary of American Sign Language on Linguistic Principles.

To explain the contrastive units (cheremes) that exist in sign language, distinctive parameters were set to clarify contrasts. These contrasts are determined by differences in:
 * hand configuration
 * place or location of sign in relation to the signer
 * direction of movement of the sign in relation to the signer or in the hand configuration
 * orientation of the sign

These features of a sign serve to distinguish between the meanings of signs and can even be looked at in a way similar to minimal pairs. However to avoid the traditional English definitions of these parameters being considered to be the exclusive definitions in the current context, these distinctive parameters were provided with a distinct name.
 * ‘location’ is termed Tabula (Tab)
 * ‘hand configuration’ is termed Designator (Dez)
 * ‘movement’ is termed Signation (Sig)

When signs in ASL differ only on one contrastive aspect the two can be considered to be a minimal pair. For example, in ASL the signs for mother and father are very much the same and differ only by the location of the sign in relation to the signer.

Similar to spoken language, there are also a set of phonological rules that a signer must learn to adhere to through experience with the language. Furthermore, these phonological rules tend to vary depending on the specific sign language being considered. In American Sign Language, these phonological rules include the fact that one hand is considered the dominant hand and can take on any shape, while the hand considered to be non-dominant can only take on one of seven basic shapes. Another phonological rule of ASL states that the non-dominant hand can either take on one of these seven basic shapes (creating a dominance condition) or match the shape of the dominant hand (creating a symmetry condition). Finally, as is the case in spoken language, some combinations of primes are not permissible in sign language and are unused.

Debate
The many similarities between sign language and spoken language can serve as an indication that sign language is no less complex or rich than spoken language. As blatant as the similarities between these two forms of language may seem, some debate exists surrounding focus on them. Some academics have argued that by simply drawing an analogy between ASL and spoken language, the important differences that exist between the languages are overlooked.

While it is important to appreciate the uniqueness of all languages and to investigate the components of each language independently of one another, the analogy between the two languages plays an important role in the understanding of language. By drawing a comparison to a language which is familiar to a speaker or signer, it helps to promote greater appreciation for the languages of others. Also, the comparison between languages provides valuable insight into evolution of a language and the components which humans find necessary or helpful in speech and comprehension.

Learning Exercise
This learning exercise is designed to provide added clarity to the information presented in the chapter. It can be used to check the knowledge gained after reading the chapter or as a hands activity to aid in understanding. The answer key for the exercise is can be found here.

Part 1
Before you begin the rest of the exercise, it is important that you clearly have the defintions of a minimal pair and an allophone clear.

1. a) Using your own words, provide the definition of a minimal pair. Make sure to provide all of the main characteristics.

b) Following the same procedure outlined in a), provide the definition of an allophone.

In the following pairs identify if the words or signs are allophones, minimal pairs, or neither. If the pair is identified as a minimal pair, indicate the single difference (distinctive feature) that occurs in the minimal pair. As indicated above, an example in English may be the phoneme /u/ in ‘hut’ and /a/ in ‘hat,’ while in ASL an example may be the place or location of sign mother or father in relation to the signer.

2.	Catch - Cash

3.	Persist - Missed

4.	Liege – Lease

5.	Messed – Confessed

6.	‘p’ – punctuate/compromised

7.     Soot - Suit

8.     /l/ – let/tell

9.     Match - Attach

10.    Beige - Bays

Part 2 - American Sign Language (ASL)
As mentioned in the chapter, American Sign Language (ASL) has distinctive features that may vary between signs to create a minimal pair.

1. Fill out the table below with the distinctive features that exist between signs. Also list the ASL terms for these distinctive features.

2. Use your knowledge of minimal pairs in ASL and the following three ASL signs to fill out the corresponding cells in the table below. The first example is filled in for you.

The American Sign Language sign for  'boy.'

The American Sign Language sign for  'woman.'

The American Sign Language sign for  'man.'

a) Which pair of signs, if any, are minimal pairs? b) What distinctive feature makes these signs a minimal pair?

Using the same general procedure as outlined in Question 2, identify whether or not the following signs have a minimal pair. A table does not need to be constructed, however it may aid you in identifying the existence of minimal pairs.

3. ASL signs Home – Yesterday

American Sign Language sign for  'home.'

American Sign Language sign for  'yesterday.'

4.	ASL signs Soon – Train

ASL sign for  'soon.'         ASL sign for  'train.'

5.     ASL signs Know – Think

American Sign Language sign for  'know.'

American Sign Language sign for  'think.'

For more American Sign Language (ASL) resources check out Lifeprint.com. All images belong to Lifeprint.com.

title: Psycholinguistics/Components of Speech