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Psycholinguistics/Morphology

Introduction

Language is an arbitrary method of communication that has many aspects, from speech production, comprehension, and even evolution in terms of the extinction of some words or languages and the creation of new. However, language is also highly structured and can be broken down into smaller units such as phrases, words, morphemes, and phonemes. Since words are just a set of arbitrary symbols, have you ever wondered how words are structured so that we understand their semantic meaning? The topic of this chapter is morphology and it addresses this issue, but what is morphology? Morphology is defined as the study of the internal structure of words (Aronoff, 1983), and discusses one of the above layers of language, morphemes. We will discuss the history and background of morphology, the concept of morphemes, the types of morphemes, morphological theories, the morphological structure of words and the difference in morphology usage and processing in native versus non-native speakers.

The History of Morphology
Morphology is in some ways both the most ancient and one of the youngest sub-disciplines of linguistics and grammar. It is said to be an ancient study because there is much evidence that the first linguists were mainly morphologists (Haspelmath, 2002). The term morphology is attributed to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe who coined it in the biological context during the nineteenth century. It is for this reason that it is also known as a young sub-discipline (Aronoff, 2005; Haspelmath, 2002). Morphology is defined as the study of the internal structure of words (Aronoff, 1983) but more specifically it is the study of the covariation of the form and meaning of words (Bauer, 2003; Haspelmath, 2002). Although the existence of morphology has been long known, it was overshadowed by phonology and syntax in the early days of generative linguistics. If the internal structure of words was considered at all it was simply placed among syntax or phonology (Spencer and Zwicky, 1998). The era of classic linguistics came to an end with the works of Chomsky who initiated generative grammar, in which a system of rules is capable of generating an infinite number of sentences (Katamba, 1993). For example, in Aspects of Theory of Syntax, Chomsky claimed that certain types of complex words must be treated in a separate or expanded lexicon, effectively separating derivational morphology from syntax (Aronoff, 1983). Due to the influence of Chomsky and others, the discipline of morphology began to flourish and is now a primary aspect in the study of language.

What is a morpheme?
Language is a multilayered, structural process that can be decomposed into many subunits based on the complexity of the element such as, discourse, phrases, words and phonemes. Morphology is focused on the component of language that is responsible for the formation and semantics of words, the morpheme. A morpheme refers to the smallest meaningful unit of language that a word is made up of. There are many different types of morphemes. Morphemes are described as either being free or bound (Haspelmath, 2002). A free morpheme is a unit that not only has a meaning but is also capable of standing alone; these are often called the “root” of a word. In contrast, although a bound morpheme has a meaning, it must attach to free morphemes; these are often affixes which are found cross-lingually. Furthermore, bound morphemes have additional divisions. The addition of a bound morpheme to a root has two possibilities, it can change the grammar of the word or it can change the semantics of a word (Spencer and Zwicky, 1998). The first, termed inflectional morphology, acts to create a new word-form, in which a word-form is a variant of a word that only changes a minor aspect such as tense, number or possession. For example, the addition of –ed to pass only changes the tense. The latter, termed derivation, acts to create new words or lexemes that have a new semantic meaning. A lexeme is an abstract entity containing sets of word-forms that are stored in the lexicon (Bauer, 2003). An example of derivation is the addition of in− to dependence because it completely changes the semantic meaning. Inflection and derivation will be further discussed later in the chapter.

Special Morphemes
There are also special cases of morphemes including allomorphs, and unique morphs. An allomorph refers to a morph that realizes a morpheme in a specific context but has another morph in a different context (Katamba, 1993). An example of allomorphy is "A" and "an", in which, “A” is used when the realized morpheme begins with a consonant while “An” is used if the morpheme begins with a vowel (Bauer, 2003). Unique morphs refer to morphemes that only exist in a certain expression of a particular language, for example the allomorph cran− in the English word cranberry (Bauer, 2003). It is important to remember that while special morphemes do exist, inflectional and derivational morphemes are the main types of morphemes and they are further discussed below.

Inflectional Morphology
Inflection is the aspect of language that is concerned with the relationship between word-forms and lexemes (Haspelmath, 2002), and is a syntactically driven process of word-formation that normally occurs through affixation and does not change the semantic meaning of the base (Katamba, 1993).

Types of Inflection
Although there are many types of inflection, here however, we will focus on the main division of irregular and regular inflection. Another noteworthy distinction is that of contextual versus inherent inflection. Inherent inflection is not fully determined by syntax even though it does have some syntactic relevance and it deals with what the message is about, i.e. singular vs plural, tense, etc. (Bauer, 2003). Contextual inflection on the other hand, is determined solely by syntactic structure and includes gender, noun class and number (Bauer, 2003).

Regular vs. Irregular Inflection
Regular inflection refers to word-forms that can be decomposed into its affixes and bases while the root retains the semantic meaning. Irregular inflection is not capable of this. Irregular inflection refers to the cases of special word-forms that do not retain a root, and therefore cannot be broken down, for example, bought-buy. The distinction between regular and irregular inflection refers primarily to the proposed differences that occur in their processing and storage in the lexicon (Clahsen et al., 2010). Many studies have explored regular and irregular inflection through their priming differences (Marseln-Wilson, 2007). For example, Sonnenstuhl, Eisenbeiss and Clahsen (1999) found that while regular inflection (walked-walk) yields a full priming effect, irregular forms (taught-teach) yield a reduced priming effect; this result was interpreted from the view of dual-mechanism model approach. The dual-mechanism model postulates that regularly inflected words have a morphological representation in the lexicon while irregularly inflected words are stored as whole word-forms that cannot be broken down and are therefore less effective primes; this is a view that is widely held (Clahsen et al., 2010). Therefore, the distinction that exists between regular and irregular inflection is based on the effects on the base and semantics, as well as their differences in processing.

Inflectional Categories
Inflection has been characterized by four main morphological properties or categories: configurational, agreement, inherent and phrasal (Anderson, 1982).

Configurational Properties
Configurational properties help determine which inflection is used through reference to the position and function of the word in a phrase of some other syntactic structure (Katamba, 1993). Configurational properties vary as a function of the class of the word (verb, noun, adjective). For verbs, configurational properties generally refer to the clause that helps determine the relationship of the verb to the noun (Katamba, 1993). While for nouns, configuration is associated with the concept of case (grammatical or oblique [semantic]).

Agreement Properties
Agreement Properties refer to characteristics of a word that are determined by the syntactic relations to the other words (Haspelmath, 2002; Katamba, 1993). Types of agreement include NP agreement and noun agreement, in which NP agreement indicates the relationship between noun and person or determiner (Haspelmath, 2002).

Inherent Properties
Inherent properties are the properties that can be used according to the agreement rules (Katamba, 1993). Inherent properties include gender, number, and tense and it is these properties that are responsible for determining the words that modify them, such as their adjectives (Haspelmath, 2002).

Phrasal Properties
Phrasal Properties are the properties that belong to the whole syntactic phrase but are expressed through a single word (Katamba, 1993). Often, phrasal properties refer to a different type of bound morpheme called a clitic (Spencer and Zwicky, 1998). A clitic can be attached to independent words by syntactic rules. An example is –‘s in the sentence, The Mayor of Lancaster’s limousine, in which it’s the mayor’s limousine but the ‘s is on Lancaster (Katamba, 1993).

Derivational Morphology
Derivational morphology is the second main branch of morphology and it is concerned with the formation of new lexemes through the addition of bound morphemes. Unlike inflection, derivation acts to change the semantic meaning of a root and/or the class of the word (i.e. noun to verb) (Bauer, 2003; Katamba, 1993).

The Nature of Derivation
In recent literature there have been three main descriptions of derivation. One account considers derivation to be a simple lexical selection choice (copying an affix on to a word) while another sees derivation as a process or set of morphological operations (Spencer and Zwicky, 1998). The third account of derivation is that of Jackendoff and Bybee, in which derivation is a set of static lexical relations (Spencer and Zwicky, 1998). Advocates of word syntax who reduce the concept of derivation to the selection and application of an affix from the lexicon hold the first account; however this view is dependent upon the existence of an internal hierarchy (Spencer and Zwicky, 1998). The second view, in which derivation is a set of operations, eliminates assumptions about lexical organization by having affixation become a process instead of a selection (Spencer and Zwicky, 1998). The argument of Jackendoff and Bybee is that all derivates have to be listed in the lexicon and that derivational rules simply state “is lexically related” (Spencer and Zwicky, 1998). While these three accounts of derivation are prominent, the actual nature of derivation is still under speculation and subject to scrutiny.

Types of Derivation
There are four main types of derivation: featural, functional, transposition and expressive. Featural derivation acts on the inherent features of words such as gender, while having no effect on the category of the base (Spencer and Zwicky, 1998).  Functional derivation was first distinguished by Kurylowicz who identified that not only did these derivations change the category of the word but also differed semantically from its base, for example recruit→recruiter (Spencer and Zwicky, 1998). Functional derivation is contrasted with transposition, which is a derivation that results in a simple change in category with no affect on function, for example walk→walking (Haspelmath, 2002). The other notable type of derivation is expressive derivation. Expressive derivation does not act on the category or function of a word but instead pertains to the subjective perceptions of the speaker (Spencer and Zwicky, 1998).

Productive vs. Non-productive Derivation
Morphological rules can be productive or non-productive, in which productive derivations can be further modified to create new words while non-productive derivates cannot, for example, the suffix –al is a non-productive derivate (Haspelmath, 2002). So why would languages have non-productive rules? Simply because they can. Like simple words, non-productive words can merely be listed in the mental lexicon because the lexicon must contain all the information that is not predictable from general rules (Haspelmath, 2002). Just like the differences that exist in inflection processing, there are processing differences between productive and non-productive derivation as well (Clahsen et al., 2010). Through various priming studies, it has been shown that like irregular inflection, non-productive derivation results in a reduced priming and a full whole-word frequency effect, suggesting it is stored in a whole word-form manner in the lexicon (Clahsen et al., 2010). Productive derivation on the other hand, is believed to have a lexical representation through combinatorial entries in which they have a full lexical entry but have a similar internal morphological structure to that of regular inflection, in order to allow for full priming effects (Clahsen et al., 2010). Overall, productive and non-productive derivation differs not only on generative capabilities but in processing and priming effects as well.

Telling Inflection from Derivation
Numerous criteria have been proposed in order to address how we determine inflection from derivation. It is important to note that many of these criteria have exceptions, and act more as heuristics than laws. We will discuss a few of the criterion and a more comprehensive summary table (Table 1) can be found at the end of this section.

1.	Syntactic relevance: While syntax is relevant to inflection, it is not relevant to derivation (Haspelmath, 2002).

2.	Obligatoriness: This criterion states that inflectional choices are made from a set of obligatory options imposed by the syntax. In derivation, however, no such obligation exists (Katamba, 1993).

3.	Productivity: Productivity refers to the generality of inflection versus derivation. Derivational processes are generally more random while inflectional processes seem to apply more automatically in general (Katamba, 1993).

Table 1: A list of properties of inflection and derivation that helps them be distinguished from one another (Haspelmath, 2002).

The Past-Tense Debate
One area of constant controversy in morphology is how the past tense of English verbs are mentally represented and processed. The focus of the debate is between the classic views of mental computation, a rule based system or a parallel distributed processing model (connectionist model) (Marslen-Wilson and Tyler, 1998). More recently, Pinker and colleagues proposed a dual-mechanism model for how the past-tense of inflected verbs are processed (McClelland and Patterson, 2002). English inflectional verb morphology contains both regularly and irregularly inflected verbs, with the majority being regularly inflected and only 160 verbs being irregularly inflected (Tyler et al., 2002). Although it is widely accepted that irregular forms are stored as wholes, the mechanism of regular inflection is less certain (Tyler et al., 2002). Some believe that regular inflection involves the same mechanism as irregular inflection, a view held by connectionists such as McClelland et al. (Joanisse and Seidenberg, 2005). Others believe that two separate mechanisms exists, in which, regular inflection involves combinatorial rules while irregular inflection involves whole-word storage in the lexicon (Joanisse and Seidenberg, 2005). Both approaches are supported by behavioral, neuropsychological and neuroimaging evidence, however the evidence has been controversial and inconclusive.

Dual-Mechanism Approach
Pinker and colleagues proposed a hybrid model called the dual-mechanism approach that consisted of a rule-mechanism for regular inflection and an “associative net” for the exceptions (irregular inflection) (Joanisse and Seidenberg, 2005). The associative net is required because irregular inflection is unpredictable and therefore it is unlikely that irregular inflection is acquired through rules (Marslen-Wilson and Tyler, 1998). A rule is said to be acquired suddenly and uniform in its application. It is also supposed to be independent of the frequency, meaning and phonology of the verb to which it applies (McClelland and Patterson, 2002). . Therefore three key aspects of the dual-mechanism theory are that the acquisition is sudden, application is uniform and independent of other factors, and that the mechanism that is involved in regular inflection differs from that of exceptions. Although this theory has undergone revisions these concepts have continued to be emphasized (McClelland and Patterson, 2002).

Connectionist Approach
The connectionist approach was proposed by Rumelhart and McClelland and consists of an associative network, in which, relationships are learned between phonology and past-tense forms in English. It basically works as a neural network in which the connection weights are adjusted by occurrences of correct and incorrect experiences (McClelland and Patterson, 2002). The connectionist model states that the regular and irregular inflection operates by a single mechanism and that the acquisition of language is more gradual than the dual-mechanism model proposes (McClelland and Patterson, 2002). Overall, the two prominent theories in the past-tense debate make opposite predictions from one another.

Rebuttal
Issues have arisen in the data that initially were used to argue and support the dual-mechanism model (Haskell et al., 2003). This has led connectionists to challenge much of the initial basis of their rivals. It was based on the data of Marcus et al. that acquisition of language was sudden, however, when Hoeffiner evaluated this data he found a more gradual acquisition, and when he did is own analysis it was found to be even more gradual (McClelland & Patterson, 2002). Another key aspect of the dual-mechanism approach was that application is uniform and independent of other characteristics but it has since been found that application is sensitive to phonology (McClelland and Patterson, 2002). The third primary aspect of the dual-mechanism model was the idea of two separate mechanisms. This aspect will be further examined in the evidence below.

Correlating Neuropsychological and Neuroimaging Evidence with Behavioral Effects
Much of the evidence that exists in the past-tense debate is based on the comparison of behavioral priming effects in aphasics and correlating the behavioral effect to the particular brain area of the person’s deficit. If the dual-mechanism model is correct in the statement that there are two separate mechanisms for regular and irregular inflection than a distinction should be made evident by the presence or absence of dissociations, in which no dissociation based on morphology should exist if only one mechanism is involved (Marslen-Wilson & Tyler, 1998). Tyler et al. have examined priming effects in both non-fluent aphasics (Frontal lobe/Broca’s Area damage) and semantically impaired patients (temporal lobe damage) in multiple studies (Marslen-Wilson and Tyler, 1998; Tyler et al., 2002). In all cases Tyler et al. found the same pattern, in which, non-fluent aphasics had no significant priming of regular inflections (walk→walked) but had significant priming of both irregular (take→took) and semantic (cello→violin) pairs, while semantically impaired patients demonstrated the opposite pattern (Tyler et al., 2002).

While damage to the frontal lobe impairs regular inflectional priming, and damage to the temporal lobe impairs irregular inflectional priming, is the deficit morphological in nature or due to some other factor? Multiple studies have shown that the dissociations are more likely to be phonological in nature and not morphological. Joanisse and Seidenberg (2005) demonstrated that the dissociation is more likely to be phonological through fMRI and the use of regulars, non-words, pseudoregulars and true irregulars as primes. The concept was that if the dissociation seen in the frontal lobe (inferior frontal gyrus specifically) was due to the morphological properties than both types of irregulars (true irregulars and pseudoregulars) should contrast equally with regular words and non-words. Their results showed that this was not the case and that although true irregulars contrasted with regulars and non-words, pseudoregulars did not. This suggested that the dissociation was due to phonological properties instead of morphological properties (Joanisse and Seidenberg, 2005). Further support for a phonological dissociation comes from research demonstrating that irregular pairs are more similar to regular pairs than semantic pairs (Tyler et al., 2002). Event-related potentials have demonstrated that both regular and irregular pairs elicit a left anterior negativity (LAN) while semantic pairs do not (Marslen-Wilson et al., 2000). It is also known from previous research that purely semantic primes do not last over long delays. However, it has been shown that irregular priming does withstand long delays just as regular priming does. This makes the account that the dissociation often observed is the result of phonological properties, not morphological ones, more plausible. Regular verbs require phonological parsing of their internal structure while irregular verbs are stored as wholes and no such parsing is required (Tyler et al., 2002). One common characteristic of non-fluent aphasics is difficulty in phonological assembly and disassembly (Tyler et. al., 2002). It is these difficulties in phonological parsing that are believed to account for the differential dissociations.

Overall, the evidence in existence for either side of the debate is highly controversial, and the results of neuroimaging studies are inconclusive. While some evidence points to the fact that there is little significant difference in brain activation for regular and irregular priming, it cannot be concluded that the same mechanism leads to the activation in each case (Joanisse & Seidenberg, 2005).

Morphology Usage in Native vs. Non-Native Speakers
There are many distinctions between first language (L1) and second language (L2) speakers, such as processing being slower in L2 speakers and the absence of the left anterior negativity and delay of other ERP components in L2 speakers (Mueller, 2005). Ullman proposed that processing one’s native language involves two different memory systems: lexical store for memorized words (declarative memory) and a mental grammar (procedural memory) that includes the combinatorial rules. Ullman also proposes that maturational changes lead to the attenuation of the procedural memory and increased use of the declarative (Ullman, 2005). This predicts that in late L2 leaners, morphological decomposition is underused so that most processing relies on lexical storage.

Regular and Irregular Inflectional Processing

There are many experimental studies that have led to consistent results on how regular and irregular inflection is processed in native speakers. For example, consistent priming differences between regular and irregular inflection have been found in different languages (Marslen-Wilson, 2007). A study by Sonnenstuhl, Eisenbeiss and Clahsen (1999) found that regular priming pairs yielded a full priming effect while irregular priming pairs only yielded a partial effect (Clahsen et al., 2010). These results were interpreted under the dual-mechanism model where regular primes are morphologically decomposed into a root and affixes, which yielded a full prime, while irregular forms are stored as wholes and cannot be broken down (Clahsen et al., 2010).

Derivational Processing
Priming studies as well as word-frequency studies have been used to examine derivational morphology processing in native speakers. Results have shown that non-productive derivation parallels the pattern of irregular inflection, demonstrating a reduced priming effect and whole-word frequency effects (Clahsen et al., 2010). Productive derivation on the other hand produces a full priming effect similar to regular inflection but also demonstrates a whole word frequency effect similar to irregular inflection (Clahsen et al., 2010). This pattern is the result of the fact that productive derivation has a lexical entry (its stem) but is also broken down based on their internal morphological structure. This indicates that a considerable proportion of derived words are stored in the mental lexicon (Marslen-Wilson, 2007).

Regular and Irregular Inflectional Processing
The results for morphological processing in second language speakers have been controversial, with some research claiming they found differences while other did not (Clahsen et al., 2010). Neubauer and Clahsen (2009) found that in L2 speakers, the frequency of a word has an effect on the lexical decision time for both regular and irregular words but that this is only true for the irregular words in native speakers (Neubauer and Clahsen, 2009). This suggests that L2 processing relies more heavily on lexical memory than L1 processing. Neubauer and Clahsen also performed a priming experiment that demonstrated that both L1 and L2 speakers experience a partial prime for irregularly inflected words, while only L1 experienced a full priming effect with regularly inflected words (Clahsen et al., 2010).

Derivational Processing
Derivational morphology in non-native speakers has only been examined in a few studies. One area of focus is whether transfer exists from L1 to L2. Koda (2000) tested Chinese and Korean L2 learners of English in a judgment task that required them to decide if a word could be broken down into further meaningful units. Koda was interested in whether one’s native language has an influence on L2 processing. In terms of Koda's experiment, if L1 does have an effect on L2 processing, Koreans should be better at the task due to more derivation in their language. (Clahsen et al., 2010) However, the results showed no evidence that L1 affects L2 processing (Koda, 2000). Current evidence does suggest that effects of morphological structure seen in L1 are weaker in L2, in which, stem-priming effects are reduced in L2. This is consistent with Ullman’s idea that L2 processing is less affected by their combinatorial structure than L1 processing (Ullman, 2005).

Overall, there are some distinctions in morphological processing of both inflectional and derivational nature between native and non-native speakers. Clearly, further research is required in order to confirm certain findings, especially in the area of derivation.

Questions
1. Which of the following words are morphologically complex, i.e contains 2 of more morphemes. For each complex word come up with 2 semantically related words.

Fights, independent, bubble, researched, rewrite, staying, stay

2. Is each of the following words derived or inflected? What is the root?
 * Independent
 * Walked
 * Bought
 * Formal

3. Identify the words with prefixes by underlying the prefix.

 * Unable, independent, receive, establish, uncertain

4. Decompose the following words into morphemes and identify the root in each case.

 * Researcher, discouraged, kingdom, unfaithful, believable, truth

5. Divide the following words into the smallest meaningful units and describe the morphological processes of how the original word is form (i.e. Inflection or derivation)

 * Unhappiness, discourages, describing

6. The following words have been separated into its component morphemes. Identify each morpheme as bound or free.

 * Readings
 * Encouragement
 * Horses
 * Independently
 * Jumps

7. Some of the following words contain suffixes, identify them by underlining the suffix.

 * Happiness, unkind, roses, judgement

8. Which 5 words from the list below are inflectional? Which are derivational?

9. Classify the affixes by their function (i.e. what the force the morpheme to become, such as noun, verb, adjective)

 * Reading
 * Joyful
 * Creative
 * Dependent
 * Destiny

Quiz
Fill in the Blanks

1.	A ___________________is a unit of language that has a meaning and is capable of standing by itself, while a _________is unit that must be joined to another unit.

2.	Teach and Taught demonstrate _______________inflection.

3.	The dual-mechanism model states that _____________inflection is stored as whole word-forms while _____________inflection has a morphological representation in the lexicon.

4.	_______________ results in the formation of new lexemes

5.	______________derivation changes both the category and semantics of a word while ___________ only changes the category.

Multiple choice

1.	Which of the following are not ways to tell inflection from derivation?

a)	Syntactic relevance and semantic regularly

b)	Obligatoriness and allomorphy

c)	Type of meaning and agreement

d)	Applicability and concept

2.	The past-tense debate refers to how verbs are mentally represented and processed. What are the two main theories?

a)	Connectionist model and Dual-mechanism model

b)	Connectionist model and rule based model

c)	Rule based model and dual-mechanism model

3.	What is does the associative net refer to?

a)	It refers to the concept of the connectionist model

b)	It refers to the mechanism used for processing irregular inflections

c)	It refers to the mechanism used for processing regular inflections

4.	Event related potentials show that both regular and irregular pairs in priming tasks elict a ______  while semantic pairs do not.

a)	N400

b)	P100

c)	LAN

5.	Who experiences only partial priming effects with regularly inflected words?

a)	Non-native speakers

b)	Native-speakers

c)	Infants

d)	Youth

True or False→if false, correct the statement

1.	Morphology is the area of linguisitics focused on the formation and sound of a word.

2.	A word-form is a variant of a word that changes a major aspect.

3.	Inflection is concerned with the relationship between word-forms and lexemes

4.	The four properties of inflection are: configurational, agreement, inherent and transposition.

5.	Productive derivation is thought to have both a full lexical entry (like irregular inflection) and an internal morphological structure similar to regular inflection.

6.	Everyone is in agreement on how verbs are processed in the English language.

7.	The dual-mechanism model is a hybrid between the connectionist model approach of McClelland and the rule-based model of Chomsky.

8.	There is some problems surfacing around the evidence initially used to support the dual-mechanism approach.

9.	Language Processing relies more heavily on morphological decomposition in second language learners.

10.	In native speakers non-productive derivational processing parallels that of irregular inflection

Answers
The answers to the exercises are below the reference section.

Fill in the Blanks
1.	A _______free morpheme____________is a unit of language that has a meaning and is capable of standing by itself, while a ____bound morpheme______is unit that must be joined to another unit.

2.	Teach and Taught demonstrate ______irregular_________inflection.

3.	The dual-mechanism model states that _____irregular______inflection is stored as whole word-forms while ____regular_____inflection has a morphological representation in the lexicon.

4.	_______derivation________ results in the formation of new lexemes

5.	______functional________derivation changes both the category and semantics of a word while _____transposition_______ only changes the category.

Multiple choice
1.	Which of the following are not ways to tell inflection from derivation?

a)	Syntactic relevance and semantic regularly

b)	Obligatoriness and allomorphy

 * c)	Type of meaning and agreement

d)	Applicability and concept

2.	The past-tense debate refers to how verbs are mentally represented and processed. What are the two main theories?

 * a)	Connectionist model and Dual-mechanism model

b)	Connectionist model and rule based model

c)	Rule based model and dual-mechanism model

3.	What is does the associative net refer to?

a)	It refers to the concept of the connectionist model

 * b)	It refers to the mechanism used for processing irregular inflections

c)	It refers to the mechanism used for processing regular inflections

4.	Event related potentials show that both regular and irregular pairs in priming tasks elict a ______  while semantic pairs do not.

a)	N400

b)	P100

 * c)	LAN

5.	Who experiences only partial priming effects with regularly inflected words?

 * a)	Non-native speakers

b)	Native-speakers

c)	Infants

d)	Youth

True or False→if false, correct the statement
1.	Morphology is the area of linguisitics focused on the formation and sound of a word. False→formation and semantics

2.	A word-form is a variant of a word that changes a major aspect. False→minor aspect

3.	Inflection is concerned with the relationship between word-forms and lexemes→True

4.	The four properties of inflection are: configurational, agreement, inherent and transposition. False, configuration, agreement, inherent and phrasal

5.	Productive derivation is thought to have both a full lexical entry (like irregular inflection) and an internal morphological structure similar to regular inflection. True

6.	Everyone is in agreement on how verbs are processed in the English language. False→ this is the issue termed the Past tense debate, with a dual mechanism model vs. connectionist model approach

7.	The dual-mechanism model is a hybrid between the connectionist model approach of McClelland and the rule-based model of Chomsky. True

8.	There is some problems surfacing around the evidence initially used to support the dual-mechanism approach. True

9.	Language Processing relies more heavily on morphological decomposition in second language learners. False, L2 learners rely mainly on lexical storage

10.	In native speakers non-productive derivational processing parallels that of irregular inflection. True

Questions:
1.	Which of the following words are morphologically complex, i.e contains 2 of more morphemes. For each complex word come up with 2 semantically related words.

Fights

independent

bubble

researched

rewrite

staying

play

2.	Is each of the following words derived or inflected? What is the root?

Independent (Derived, dependent)

Walked (inflected, walk)

Bought (inflected, Buy)

Formal (Derived, Form)

3.	Identify the words with prefixes by bolding the prefix.

Unable, independent, receive, establish, uncertain

4.	Decompose the following words into morphemes and identify the root in each case.

Re-search-er

dis-courage-d

king-dom

un-faith-ful

believe-able

true-th

5.	Divide the following words into the smallest meaningful units and describe the morphological processes of how the original word is form (i.e. Inflection or derivation)

Unhappiness-->Un- derivation, Ness-inflection

discourages-->Dis-derivation, s-inflection

describing-->ing-inflection

6.	The following words have been separated into its component morphemes. Identify each morpheme as bound or free.

Read-ing-s-->free, bound, bound

En-courage-ment-->bound-free-bound

Horse-s-->free, bound

In-depend-ent-ly-->free-free-bound-bound

Jump-s-->free, bound

7.	Some of the following words contain suffixes, identify them by bolding the suffix.

Happiness

unkind

roses

judgement

8.	Which 5 words from the list below are inflectional? (bold)

9.	Which 5 words from the list below are derivational?(italized)

10.	Classify the affixes by their function (i.e. what the force the morpheme to become, such as noun, verb, adjective)

Reading (verb→noun)

Joyful (noun→adjective)

Creative (verb→adjective)

Dependent (verb→adjective)

Destiny (verb→noun)

title: Psycholinguistics/Morphology


text:
Psycholinguistics/Acoustic Phonetics

Introduction
Acoustic phonetics is the study of the physical features of speech sounds, in particular those that are linguistically relevant and can be detected by the human ear, and the medium in which they travel. All sounds are produced by movement of molecules (typically of air); they move in a vibrating-like fashion, creating periods of rarefaction (farther apart) and compression (closer together) between molecules. T the air, they create many cycles that, as a whole, can be referred to as a wave. The speed of the vibrations (compression + rarefaction) is called the frequency and is a very common measure of sound. The unit of measurement for frequency is Hertz (Hz) and 1 Hz is equal to 1 cycle/second. Humans are typically able to detect sound waves with frequencies of 20-20,000 Hz traveling through air. Acoustic phonetics uses the frequencies of these sound waves to precisely analyze speech. By combining the knowledge of articulatory phonetics and with use of a spectrograph, researchers have been able to pin point exact values and acoustic characteristics and use them to define particular vowels and consonants. For this reason, acoustic phonetics is especially important when considering vowels, as they are more difficult to define within the realms of articulatory phonetics (See the chapter on Articulatory Phonetics for more information). The logistics of how this is done is extremely interesting and will be explained below, along with the unique characteristics of common, American English speech sounds. I will begin by physically describing speech sounds (jump to Speech Sounds), move on to explain the spectrograph and spectrogram (The Spectrograph), and finalize the chapter with information on how to read the spectrogram and use it to identify particular speech sounds (Reading a Spectrogram). It is valuable to note that the information below may not apply to all languages, as speech sounds and even the way of producing identical speech sounds can differ between languages.

Speech Sounds
Physically disrupting the placement of air molecules (or molecules of another medium that sound can travel in) produces sound, but acoustic phonetics is concerned only with speech sounds. To produce speech sounds, we push air from the lungs through the glottis which makes the vocal chords vibrate. These vibrations occur in a pulse-like manner, pushing air out of the mouth or nose and displacing air with each pulse. The variations in air pressure due to these pulses can be represented as a waveform, which is what acoustic phonetics uses to characterize speech sounds. While articulatory phonetics (see this Wiki page for more information) defines speech sounds using manner/place of articulation, acoustic phonetics looks at the properties of the sound waves produced and links them to articulatory characteristics (this will be better explained in the section “Reading a Spectrogram”; jump to it).

What is considered linguistically relevant?
There are many possible speech sounds that can be used in a language but not every sound is used in every language, and the same sounds can be used in different ways depending on the language or dialect. In the latter case, acoustic phonetic properties of a word can change from language to language, and even dialect to dialect. For example, the acoustic characteristics at the end of the word “checker” would differ in British English compared to American English. The speech sounds actually used in a particular language are considered relevant, while any others are not considered when studying acoustic phonetics of that language. An example of a sound not heard in English but used in other languages are clicks, such as the (post)alveolar click [!]. Press play below to hear what a click sounds like; in this example, [!] is being spoken with [a] in the sequence [ǃa: aǃa:].

There are also sounds that can be made by the vocal tract, like coughs and burps, that are not considered relevant speech sounds in any language. To sum up, the relevance of a speech sound depends on the language you are interested in, and as a general rule, acoustic phonetics looks at the speech sounds meaningfully produced within a language. Some of the major components of speech sounds are described below.

Characteristics of Speech Sounds
Speech sounds can be classed as either sonorants or obstruents. Sonorants include nasal stops, approximants and vowels, and have even, periodic waveforms that compress air molecules at regular, repeating intervals. Oral stops, affricates and fricatives are obstruents and display uneven, aperiodic waveforms.

To produce nasals, the velum is lowered and air flows through the nasal cavity (e.g. /m/ and /n/ in "man"). Approximants occur when there is more constriction in airflow through the vocal tract compared to vowels, but less constriction than with consonants (e.g. glides, like /y/ in "yo" or /w/ in "waffle"). Vowels are produced when articulators are completely separated and air flows freely, without constriction, through the vocal tract (/a/, /e/, /i/, /o/, and /u/ are all vowels in English and can make different sounds, depending on the environment in which they are found; e.g. /u/ in "tune" and /u/ in "sun" are pronounced differently).

Frequency

The frequency of a wave refers to the number of times a waveform completes one full cycle within a second. It is measured in Hertz (Hz), which is equal to the number of cycles per second. The thumbnail to the right is an example of a sinusoidal wave. The wavelength represents one cycle. You can see that the cycle contains two crests: one peak (where the wave is furthest above the baseline, or has the highest amplitude above the baseline) and one trough (where the wave is furthest below the baseline, or has the lowest amplitude from baseline). The wave begins to repeat itself after both crests have occurred. The crests correspond with rarefaction and compression of the molecules within the medium through which the sound is traveling. This repetition occurs in all periodic waves, but not aperiodic waves.

Frequency is the more objective term for pitch, which can sometimes be quite subjective. The higher the frequency of a sound, the higher its pitch will be. The human ear can detect sound with frequencies between 20-20,000 Hz, but most speech sounds are within the range of 100-6000 Hz. To put this into perspective, an average male would speak with a lower pitch, therefore his frequency would be towards the lower end of that spectrum (approximately 120 Hz on average).

Calculating Frequency
It is not always easy to calculate the frequency of waves because not often is there a perfect ratio of one cycle/second. For this reason, there is a formula used to calculate frequencies: frequency (Hz) = number of cycles / time (sec)

In the image above, assuming that the horizontal axis represents time in seconds, we see that 1 cycle occurs in about 6.25 seconds. Using the formula for frequency, we can determine that this wave has a frequency of 0.16 Hz.

frequency (Hz) =  1  (number of cycles) / 6.25 (time in seconds) = 0.16 Hz

This tells us that the pitch of this sound is extremely low. If you recall the range of perceptibility allowed by the human ear, this tone would not even be heard by humans.

Intensity
The intensity of a sound wave is measured in decibels (dB) and represents the power and loudness of the wave. Intensity is correlated with the amplitude of the wave, or how high above (compression) or below (rarefaction) the baseline the wave reaches in each cycle. In this case, amplitude is an objective measurement of loudness, which is a more subjective measure of sound. Humans can typically hear from 0 dB to 120 dB, at which point sound is painfully perceived. Loudness of sound can be affected by distance as well as the composition of the propagating medium - the more efficient the propagating medium, the louder the sound. For example, think about the difference in loudness between shouting in air versus shouting underwater. One practical use for this concept is sound proof rooms, which would be built using highly efficient materials to absorb as much noise as possible, decreasing both the loudness of a sound and it’s distance travelled.

Timbre
Timbre (also known as "tone") refers to the shape/pattern of the waveform. Each speech sound has a unique shape responsible for giving it a unique sound. That is, the timbre of a sound is what makes it possible for us to differentiate one sound from the next and combine different sounds to communicate different meanings using language.

However, most speech sound waves are not as simplistic as the examples used above in the frequency section. In fact, the above examples would be a waveform of a pure tone, which is computer-generated (artificial) and does not occur in any natural sound. Rather, speech sounds are composed of multiple sinusoidal waves (shown on top in the image below) that combine to create a more complex wave, characteristic to the specific sound (shown on bottom).

Although the bottom waveform looks quite complicated, it is often broken down into its various sinusoidal wave components (i.e. the top waves, which vary in frequency and amplitude) for analysis. This is typically done on a computer using Fourier Analysis (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourier_analysis for more information).

Each individual sinusoidal wave is called a harmonic. When looking at speech sounds, the focus is mainly on the first four harmonics. The intensity decreases from the first harmonic up so that the lowest harmonic is the loudest, and as you move to a higher harmonic they get quieter. The frequency increases by multiples of the first harmonic, otherwise known as the fundamental frequency (Fo). The frequency of the sound wave as a whole is equal to the fundamental frequency, or the frequency of the lowest (1st) harmonic.

The complex shape of the waveform is due to the shape of the vocal tract when producing sounds, which reinforces some frequencies more than others. Since we make different shapes with the vocal tract to produce specific sounds, it makes sense for the waveform to change as the vocal tract changes to create each unique sound.

Quality
The quality of sound allows us to differentiate one musical instrument from another, or likewise one voice from another when dealing with speech. The quality of a sound depends on the shape and material of the propagating and closing media. Using music as an example, a trumpet (brass instrument) sounds different when compared to a clarinet (wooden instrument), or the vocal tract (as used by singers); But the trombone (another brass instrument) has a similar sound. Thus, the material of the apparatus can create a distinct sound class that can be further divided by shape. Different shapes lead to different harmonics. We learned that the fundamental frequency underlies the harmonics of a sound and provides the basic frequency of a sound. Thus, different harmonics, caused by different apparatus shapes, create different sounds. These changes are are considered to be changes in quality.

Learning Exercise 1

In the above graph, the x-axis values represent time in seconds and the y-axis values represent loudness (amplitude) in decibels (dB).

Questions

1. What is the frequency of this wave?

2. What is the amplitude/intensity (in dB) of this wave?

3. With such pitch and loudness, would humans be able to hear this sound?

Click here for answers.

The Spectrograph
A spectrograph is a device used to measure and analyze the energy of waves. Spectrographs have been used in acoustic phonetics since the 1950’s and have been extremely useful in breaking down and analyzing phonetic segments of speech. The energy input (the wave) is converted into a spectrogram, which is the output of a spectrograph.

Spectrogram
The spectrogram is a photo displaying properties of time, frequency and intensity of the speech sound. Below is an example of a spectrogram that displays the word “buy.”

The time is represented on the x-axis (horizontally) while the frequency is indicated using the y-axis (vertically), and the darkness of the band indicates intensity; that is, darker bands are more intense (thinking back to intensity as described for waveforms, this would tell us that the wave of the speech sound has a higher amplitude). With such information we can determine the duration of sounds, link them to specific phonemes and understand transitions (i.e. going from one phoneme to another) and patterns within speech segments.

There are two types of spectrograms that emphasize different components of sound. The narrow-band spectrograms make the pitch and harmonics easily visible, while wide-band spectrograms, as is the exemplified spectrogram for "buy," seem to highlight the formants and time which makes it easy to identify the cycle of a wave.

Formants
The dark, horizontal bands shown on a spectrogram are called formants. Formants represent speech sounds in characteristic ways, emphasizing certain frequencies with higher amplitudes. These frequencies represent the harmonics of the speech sound. The vocal chords vibrate more easily and intensely at the values of the formants or harmonics of a sound.

Each speech sound has a unique pattern or combination of the first three formants (called F1, F2 and F3, respectively) found on a spectrogram above the fundamental frequency (F0). These patterns occur consistently, no matter who the speaker, but the frequencies at which they occur often differ as they depend on the fundamental frequency of the speaker.* The fourth harmonic (F4) is also considered at times and represents the quality of the speaker’s voice. Therefore, F4 is completely variable and dependent on the speaker unlike the patterns of F1, F2 and F3. Formants above F4 are usually very faint, if visible at all, and as far as acoustic phonetics is concerned they do not necessarily give us any important, additional information about a sound. Conclusively, the shape of the wave, which represents timbre, is reflected in the values of the formant frequencies on a spectrogram, with emphasis on F1, F2 and F3.

 * Remember, the fundamental frequency (F0) is the lowest frequency of a complex sound and is equal to the pitch of one’s voice. One’s individual F0 remains constant, but F0’s often vary between speakers.  The harmonics (represented by the formants) can occur only at frequencies that are multiples of F0.  Using a hypothetical example, a speech sound may show a pattern of F1 occurring at the 4th harmonic, F2 occurring at the 6th harmonic and F3 occurring at the 11th harmonic.  The pattern of the harmonics will remain consistent as long as that specific sound is being produced, but the frequency of the harmonics may change with each speaker, representing the different pitches of different voices.  So if one’s fundamental frequency is 100 Hz, we can determine the frequency of each formant by multiplying the associated harmonic by F0.  Thus, formants associated with this sound will appear at 400 Hz for F1 (F1 occurs at the 4th harmonic, therefore F0 (100 Hz) x 4 = 400 Hz), 600 Hz for F2 (F2 occurs at the 6th harmonic, so F0 x 6 = 600 Hz) and F3 will appear at 1100 Hz (11th harmonic, 11 x F0 = 1100 Hz) on the spectrogram.  The formula for this is:

•	where # represents the particular harmonic you’re interested in.

In the example stated above, we re-arranged the formula to find the frequency of the particular harmonic so that it was:

freq. of # harmonic = F0 x  # harmonic;  i.e., freq. of 3rd harmonic = 100 Hz x  3 = 300 Hz

F1 & F2
The first and second formants are particularly important when it comes to vowels. Contrary to most consonants, producing a vowel sound does not require contact between articulators, thus they are difficult to define and describe within articulatory phonetics. Using formant patterns, acoustic phonetics makes it possible to define specific vowels and differentiate them from one another. F1 predominantly describes the height of the tongue when the vowel is being produced and F2 reflects the place of the tongue and rounding of the lips when producing a vowel.

The basic rule is that high frequency F1 values are inversely related to the height of the vowel when being produced. This means that high vowels like [i] (sounds like the “ee” in beet) have low F1 values, and low vowels like [a] (sound like the “o” in cot) have high F1 values. Furthermore, F1 and F2 will be further apart for front vowels, like [i], and closer together for back vowels, like [a]. Below is a chart listing vowel sounds of American English and their places of articulation.

Chart reproduced from http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~krussll/138/sec5/ipavsna.htm

Note: High vowels are sometimes called “close” vowels, and low vowels are sometimes referred to as “open.” These pairs are essentially synonymic in this situation. The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) uses the terms open/close and describes vowels more precisely. There is an exhaustive Wikipedia page that lists and describes all sounds and charts: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Phonetic_Alphabet. Please note that not all of these sounds are observed in American English.

Reading a Spectrogram
This section describes how some sounds pertinent to American English are transcribed on a spectrogram.

Sonorants
Sonorants are a sound class including vowels, nasals (e.g. [m] and [n]) and approximants (e.g. glides like [j], which sounds like "y" in yo-yo, or laterals like [l] or [r] in "later") and are produced without constricting airflow in the vocal tract.

Monophthongs
Monophthongs are vowel sounds produced with a still tongue. They are single vowels that produce flat formants sometimes termed “steady states.” However, monophthongs do not always appear perfectly on a spectrogram, as they are often affected by surrounding consonant sounds. The vowels in the section “ F1 & F2” describe monophthongs.

Diphthongs
Diphthongs are functionally single sounds, but when being produced the tongue changes position moving from the position of one vowel sound to another. They are often referred to as “gliding vowels” since they smoothly transition from one formant to the other and are frequently made up of a vowel/glide combination. This is shown on a spectrogram as a change in F1 frequency corresponding to the individual monophthongs; going from a low vowel to a high vowel would cause F1 to lower. Likewise, if the production of the vowel sound requires movement toward the front of the mouth, F2 will rise and move further away from F1. Sometimes the positions of the lips are also altered when producing diphthongs. Moving the lips from a rounded position to an unrounded position causes F2 to increase in frequency, and it will decrease if the lips transition oppositely.

Nasalization

It is important to realize that there is a difference between nasalized vowels and nasal vowels. A nasalized vowel is surrounded and affected by a nasal stop. For example, the vowel often sounds nasal when pronounced in the word “man,” because both [m] and [n] are nasal stops. In this instance, a monophthong is being influenced by the surrounding consonants and we would be able to see this from a spectrogram.

Nasal vowels are always produced nasally, regardless of surrounding sounds (i.e. air flows through the nasal cavity to produce the sound), but they are not typically produced in English; French is an example of a language containing nasal vowels (e.g. in the word meaning “end” – fin). Nasal vowels resemble some oral vowels but, on a spectrogram, contain a “nasal” formant at approximately 250 Hz and two other significant formants located above the “nasal” formant. The higher formants are still characteristic of the particular nasal vowel, but the nasal formant below remains at 250 Hz for any nasal vowel.

Rhoticised Vowels
The term “r-coloring” gives reference to rhoticised vowels. Rhoticised vowels exist when [r] influences a surrounding vowel. However, there are language that can have rhotic vowels without the influence of [r] (similar to nasal vowels in nasalization). Both types of rhoticisation occur in English. On a spectrogram, F3 lowers when rhoticisation is present.

Although "bed" and "red" are very similar words, you can see that their spectrograms appear to be quite different. The vowel in "red" is rhoticized by the initial [ɹ] and we can clearly see that F3 is lowered, especially when comparing it to the "bed" spectrogram.

Other Sonorants
Approximants and nasals make up the consonant sonorants and have more specific characteristics on a spectrogram than vowels. Examples are listed below:

•	Laterals (class of approximant; e.g. [l] like the "l" in lady): have additional formants at 250 Hz, 1200 Hz and 2400 Hz.

•	Nasals (e.g. [m] and [n] in "man): have additional formants at 250 Hz, 2500 Hz and 3250 Hz.

•	Rhotics (class of approximant): e.g. [ɹ] occurs post-vocalically, normally at the end of English words (e.g. "r" in summer), and is shown on a spectrogram as a lowered F3 and F4.

Obstruents
Obstruents are consonant sounds produced when the vocal tract is constricted and airflow is therefore obstructed in some way. Stops, affricates and fricatives make up the obstruent class of sounds, and each produce unique characteristics on a spectrogram.

Stops
Sometimes the formant patterns appear non-existent at points on a spectrogram. This lack of activity indicates the production of a stop. If the stop is voiced, it will be shown by a series of marks along the bottom of the spectrogram. These marks are called a “voice bar” and do not occur in voiceless stops.

Because there is nothing shown on the spectrogram in the presence of a stop, we cannot infer place of articulation based on the spectrogram. Phoneticians rely on surrounding sound information and transitional information, like whether there are aspiration or frication marks, to figure out which stop may be occurring.

Click here to see the spectrograms of "bed" and "red," which both contain the voiced stop [d]. You can see the voice bar and an absence of activity above it, as well as aspiration completing the stop.

Fricatives
Fricatives are the most extremely aperiodic type of sound shown on a spectrogram. They appear as irregular, vertical striations within the higher frequencies. The resonant frequencies seem to be inversely related to the size of the oral cavity (how far forward obstruction takes place) so that frequency increases as the size of the oral cavity decreases. For example:

•	[h] constricts the airway toward the back of the throat, so that the oral cavity is fairly large; it’s frequency is typically 1000 Hz

•	[f] is a labiodental fricative that constricts the airway using the teeth and lip toward the front of the mouth; it’s frequency is higher at about 7000 Hz

So, the further back constriction exists, the higher the frequency of the noisy striations from fricative on a spectrogram.

Below is a spectrogram of the word "sing." There is silence before the onset of the word, where you can identify the noisy, high frequency "s" sound.

More information on sonorants and obstruents can be found by clicking on these links to the sonorants and/or obstruents sections in the Articulatory Phonetics chapter.

Transitions
Transitions occur when you move from a vowel or sonorant to the next consonant (recall that moving from one vowel sound to another is a diphthong). Transitions are used to identify specific stops and can reinforce what we know about fricatives. For example, transitioning from an alveolar or labial consonant to a vowel causes F2 to rise before front vowels but lower before back vowels. If the vowel precedes the consonant, the pattern is reversed so that F2 falls into the consonant coming from a high, front vowel and will rise coming from a back vowel.

By identifying vowels, which have standard formant patterns, we can “work backward” and infer the place of articulation of the preceding consonant, as the initial section of the second formant of a vowel can vary slightly depending on the preceding consonant. So, in the word “bee,” we have a labial consonant [b] followed by a frontal vowel [i]. We can easily identify the [i] vowel based on it’s unique formant pattern and the rising of F2 with the transition into the vowel tells us that the preceding consonant could be alveolar or labial. Additionally, you can notice the voice bar at the beginning due to the voiced stop [b] and aspiration before the beginning of the vowel sound.

Transitions are described based on a locus. A locus is a reference point at which the transition seems to originate. In the example above, the locus could be used to help determine whether the preceding consonant is alveolar or labial. Loci are specific to placement of articulation and are located in the middle of the frequency range for a particular placement. Take alveolars, for example: the highest F2 frequency occurs in transition to a front vowel, and the lowest in transition to a back vowel. The locus of alveolars is located halfway between these points, in the middle of the frequency range, which is approximately 1800 Hz. Bilabials have a F2 locus at about 800 Hz, and velars have a locus of 3000 Hz for front vowels and 1200 Hz for back vowels. With two, high F2 loci, velars consistently fall when transitioning to vowels.

Voice Onset Time
Voice onset time (VOT) is also of use when trying to identify specific speech sounds. In particular, VOT highlights differences in aspiration of stops on a spectrogram. If stops are released before voicing begins (VOT), we will see a puff of air that signifies aspiration. In a voiceless stop, the aspiration is represented as aperiodic waves in high frequencies and the voicelessness continues after the stop is released.

VOT differences for English words "die," (top) which begins with a voiced stop, and "tie," (bottom) which begins with a voiceless stop, are shown on the spectrograms above. The aspiration at the beginning of "tie" is longer and highlighted and we can infer that the stop is released before voicing occurs.

Learning Exercise 2
1. There are 4 spectrograms below. Try to identify which month of the year is being said in each using your knowledge of acoustic phonetic characteristics. To narrow things down a bit, I've given an either/or option for each spectrogram.

Hint: Look for stops and fricatives to help identify or eliminate possibilities. Recall formant patterns of vowels (i.e. high vowels typically show low F1, etc.), as well as patterns of rhoticization and nasalization to fill in other blanks. Good luck! :)

You can click on the photos to make them larger.

Spectrogram 1: Is it May or September?

Spectrogram 2: Is it October or December?

Spectrogram 3: Is it February or November?

Spectrogram 4: Is it August or July?

Click here to find the answers.

2. The spectrogram below is of the sentence "Don't stop believing." Can you section the sentence into it's individual words? Use your knowledge obtained from this chapter and the previous learning exercises to identify the beginning/end of each word.

Click here to find the answers.

These spectrograms were created using Praat. Download the program so you can make your own creations at http://www.fon.hum.uva.nl/praat/.

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

title: Psycholinguistics/Acoustic Phonetics


text:
User:Hilaryy

Hilary Van Loon

 * Originally from Ottawa, Ontario, I have spent the last four years in Halifax pursuing a Bachelor of Science degree in Psychology at Dalhousie University. I am interested in pursuing a PhD in Sports Psychology in the future, and hope a background in Psycholinguistics will help me both understand and accommodate the different communication abilities and preferences of the coaches and athletes I will be working with.

January 17
I have wrestled with the concepts of absolute and relative location or direction on more than one occasion. More than one family road trip has been tarnished by my inability to identify the cottage we were renting as "Northwest of Muskoka" (Dad, that's EXACTLY what I said, above it and to the leftish!) or the dog's kennel as "20km south of the city". My excuse is that I am a product of a different generation, one in which my peers rely on gas stations and fast food restaurants to convey direction. Everything is described in relation to something bigger or more prominent, some building or landmark that is an extension of our society's preoccupation with consumerism. I cringe when my 8 year old cousin tells me her house is a little bit past the McDonalds, but the reality is that the language of absolute directions is an acquired skill that, in my opinion, is no longer being explicitly developed. North and South are the vocabulary of absolute directions, and much like French or Spanish vocabulary, they are learned and reinforced through repeated exposure and practice. I would be as uncomfortable following directions to a church that asked me to turn East onto such-and-such a street as I would be following directions written in Dutch. The mini experiment Dr Newman conducted in class that asked the participant to arrange the animals in the same direction when sitting in a new orientation made me think about the geographic language I am comfortable with, and the one that I think in. I'm going to make yet another concerted effort to develop my ability to use cardinal directions. When I really think about it, it makes me a little bit uncomfortable to know that I describe most things as they relate to myself, like I am the point around which these things orbit.

January 24
A few years ago, I travelled to New Zealand and spent six months travelling around the country, soaking in their culture and getting to know the locals. Friday's lecture on phonotactic rules made me wonder about the structure of Maorie, the language of New Zealand's native population. Maori has the same vowels as English (a, e, i, o, u), but only 10 consonants (p, t, k, m, n,. ng, wh, r, h, and w). These letters make similar sounds as they do in English, except that 'wh' sounds like an 'f'. While phonotactic rules in English allow consonants to be paired together, such as in frame or stain, every consonant must be followed by a vowel in Maori. Similarly, all Maori words end with a vowel. I learned a few basic words and phrases in Maori while I was travelling, but I paid little attention to the rules that guided and restricted the formation of their words. I think its really interesting that English and Maori share most of the same sounds, but follow a completely different set of phonotactic rules.

January 31
The concept of elision was discussed during lecture this week, and I was very curious about this deletion of a sound from words, and its prevalence in other languages. Having a fairly good grasp of the French language, I am familiar with "liaisons", which are prevalent in both written and spoken French. Elisions occur formally when an article ends with a vowel and precedes a word that starts with a vowel. The words are joined together and the vowel at the end of the article is replaced with an apostrophe, so that "le arbre" is always written as "l'arbre". I found it very interesting that French has made formal grammatical accommodations and rules that mandate elision in certain contexts. I can't think of any such examples in written English. French also uses less formal liaisons in spoken communication. Liaisons occur when the final sound of a word is drawn out and linked with the first sound in the following word, so that no pause occurs in between the two. It occurs most often when the first sound of the second word is a vowel. For example, the phrase "une amie" sounds more like "unamie", or "les hommes" is pronounced "lesommes". There are situations in which a liaison is not possible, where it is mandatory, and where it occurs in variation based on dialect or accent. I find it interesting that, in English, elision is the result of poor pronunciation or annunciation, usually as a result of laziness, whereas in French, proper use of the liaison reflect a greater grasp of the language and a more native-language-sounding French accent.

February 7
This weeks class schedule was disrupted by the snowstorm and Munro day, so the only material covered was morphology during Monday's lecture. I was reading a little more about morphology in English, and came across an example that reminded me of standardized testing questions. The article was demonstrating how people can extrapolate or expand a rule to cover many different words. The example they used was "cat is to cats as dog is to dogs". This reminded of the questions that are often used as SAT questions or on other standardized tests. I remember getting tripped up by these questions, where you would be given one pair of words, and then asked to infer their relationship and extrapolate it to find the most similar matching pair. The relationships between the words could be really complex, and you really had to sift through the different aspects of the words to figure out what they had in common. I was never really sure what these questions tapped into, or what skill set they were evaluating. I guess it tests your abstract thinking, and people who have a greater understanding of the words can infer more complex relationships. I would be interested to know how these questions would work in other languages that dont use bound morphemes?

February 14
Word meaning and vocabulary size are a particular area of personal interest. When I was young, my dad made an active effort to teach me to read before I started school. This extra time and practice mean I was a better reader than many of my classmates, and as such, reading was something I really enjoyed. If offered an escape and a distraction, and also served to boost my confidence as it was something I excelled at. When my little sister was about to start school however, my dad was away for several months, and so she didn't learn to read until after she started school. I think this difference in experience had a significant impact on the subsequent course of our academic careers. I have always been an avid reader and have sought out books to challenge myself, whereas my sister hasn't read a book that was assigned for school in many years. This piqued my interest about the relationship between reading ability and vocabulary size, and the subsequent benefits of having a large vocabulary. I did a little bit of research and found several studies that linked early reading ability to academic success later in life. It makes sense that the more words, sentences, meanings, etc a person is exposed to, the more words and contextual meanings they will have access to later on. I wonder then why more parents don't make a more conscious effort to teach their children to read at an earlier age. If reading ability is such a strong predictor of a variety of intellectual abilities later in life, maybe the curriculum in kindergarden needs to be re-evaluated. For example, I know that in Ontario, kids start school at the age of 3, whereas in Nova Scotia most chidlren don't start school until they are 4. Does this difference, which would most likely also reflect a similar delay in learning to read, lead to differences in reading ability and vocabulary size later in life? I think this may be something school boards and the ministry of education may want to take a look at in order to help kids get the best possible start in their education.

March 7
I read an excerpt from a very interesting book the other day, entitled Music, Language and the Brain (A. D. Patel, 2010). According to Patel, infants are born with two distinct sound systems, one for language, and one for music. While these are disting systems, they are closely related, and learning in one system impacts the other system. For example, Patel states that in learning their native language, children develop a "mental framework of sound categories" that impacts their interpretation of their cultures dominant forms of music (9, 2010). I started thinking about the appreciation I have for music of other cultures, and how this may be influenced by the way my brain has developed to accommodate the English language. I would argue that most people appreciate music that is similar to their `native`music most easily, which may stem from the way our sound system influences our ability to perceive truly and clearly. For example, I remember reading that in Western music, there are certain note combinations that you rarely, if ever, see. To our ears, they do not sound desirable. However, these note combinations may be found in the music of other cultures, and vice versa. I would be very interested in learning more about how exposure to a wide variety of types of music influences ability to learn languages. Classical music is often played to babies in utero, but maybe playing italian opera or french folk music would lay the foundation for a sound system that would facilitate multiple language development later on in life. I wonder if exposure to different variations in pitch and timbre through music would correlate at all to language acquisition later on in life.

title: User:Hilaryy


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Psycholinguistics/Reading

Reading is the process of decoding a set of written symbols that have been assigned linguistic meaning, for the purpose of communicating ideas. This chapter will explore reading from a psychological perspective, detailing the components of written language that allow widespread understanding and communication, how people initially learn to read, the roles of phonological skill and other predictors of reading success. As well, it will explore major cognitive theories of reading and the physical correlates of online reading processes. It should be noted that this discussion of reading is heavily biased toward alphabetic languages in general, and English in particular.

Literacy and Thought
Literacy – the ability to understand, generate, and manipulate written text – is highly important for day-to-day functioning in most modern societies. While language itself, particularly expressive ability (through speech or signing) may be an innate human trait,, the ability to read is not. Written communication is still very new from an evolutionary standpoint, having only developed within the past 10,000 years, and all new readers require extensive training to gain this skill.This separation from spoken communication has led to suggestions that reading is not simply the process of converting written representations back into speech, but an entirely separate way for a speaker to perceive and understand language. According to David Olson, learning to read is simultaneous with the discovery of organized linguistic structures (1996), and he points to the effects of literacy on many different aspects of cognition and linguistic performance to demonstrate this. For example, readers of alphabetic languages – which employ a set of  graphemes that are linked to  phonemes - begin to perceive words not just as discrete objects, but, in fact, as made up of those constituent letters. Literacy enables readers to complete phonemic segmentation tasks – adding or deleting phonemes from a word, such as deleting /f/ from fish to yield ish – which are impossible for nonreaders. Children demonstrate this phonemic awareness in attempts to spell unknown words: they may use letters whose names sound like the phonemes they are attempting to represent (e.g. spelling lady as lade), implying that they are beginning to process speech in terms of new categories given by letter names. Learning to read also gives readers the tools to judge grammaticality based on written cues rather than meaning gleaned from aural comprehension, improving performance on grammatical judgment tasks. This goes hand in hand with the development of proper punctuation use – an ability that also improves with greater literacy, since it is tied to understanding of the grammatical structure of clauses and sentences. Of course, acquisition of these skills is gradual, developing along with mastery and fluency in beginning readers. Nevertheless, evidence appears to show that literacy has substantial effects not only on perception and performance on linguistic tasks, but also on a speaker's relationship to the structure and function of their native language.

Learning to Read
A well-regarded model of reading development originated by Dr. Linnea Ehri, a graduate professor at CUNY, supports data from studies of children (ranging from preliterate to fluent readers) that reveal broad developmental phases through which they must progress. While by no means the only possible model of reading development, and perhaps inapplicable in the face of bilingualism, the major stages of learning she describes provide a useful and influential framework for thinking about reading development and continue to be used as a basis for further research. Using a conceptually modified version of an earlier stage model, Ehri posits that when learning an alphabetic language - such as English or German, which use graphemes to represent phonemes - children begin as logographic readers, move on to novice and mature alphabetic reading, and eventually progress to orthographically fluent reading. Although each phase of development tends to have progressively more influence on the strategies used to decipher text, these phases should not be seen as entirely discrete, sequential stages. They are more bidirectionally related groups of decoding strategies and linguistic knowledge that are gained over time, expanding the reader's arsenal of reading skills.

Logographic Reading
Logographs are visual symbols that stand for entire morphemes or words, rather than individual phonemes. While mature reading in languages such as Chinese and Korean is based upon logographic systems, readers of alphabetic languages use logographic techniques to begin the process of learning to recognize written words. Logographic reading involves the recognition of text and letters as meaningful units and mapping particular sounds to visual symbols. This is accomplished by recognizing salient features of words - such as letter shape, logo colours, and other arbitrary visual markers - in order to label the word in semantic memory. Since at this stage, word identification is entirely reliant on these markers, this phase is referred to as visual-cue reading. Direct connections between letters and sounds are not yet involved, so recognition is limited to whole words, which may be reported as semantic equivalents rather than specific pronunciations of the presented words. Logographic readers tend to show knowledge of words that are inextricably linked to highly familiar visual features, such as their own names or common corporate logos. However, they have no strategies for recognizing unfamiliar words.

Alphabetic
Alphabetic readers have begun to use grapheme-phoneme relationships to decode words. For the first time, readers recognize that words are not just holistic visual symbols, but are made up of constituent letters that correspond to particular sounds. There is a shift away from linking whole words with general semantic information in memory, and toward the more systematic method of connecting spellings with unique pronunciations. This phase can be divided into two substages of development: novice and mature reading. Novice alphabetic readers rely on phonetic-cue reading, in which certain salient phonetic features of words are used as memory cues. The first and/or last letters of the word and their corresponding phonemes are often used, such as /m/ and /k/ in milk. In this way, letters begin to be directly connected to pronunciation in a reader's mental lexicon.

However, phonetic cues are not sufficient to differentiate words that share some letters and sounds. Mature alphabetic readers begin to use phonological recoding to identify words: they use implicit rules to draw consistent connections between written letters and spoken phonemes, and blend those constituents into whole words, a process known as cipher reading. This ability becomes progressively more fluent with practice, shifting from slow, verbal "sounding-out" to quick, internal blending of phonemes. Strategies of decoding also progress with more exposure to print: readers begin with sequential decoding, in which single graphemes correspond to single morphemes, and are later able to implement hierarchical decoding, in which graphemes label preceding or following phonemes (e.g. the i in city and the e in cell both label the preceding c as an /s/). Eventually, phonological recoding is used to establish words in memory and allow identification of words by sight. Words are processed using recoding, and eventually the pattern of letters is "bonded" in memory to phonetic knowledge of the word. Recognition of the word spelling then automatically maps to its pronunciation and meaning, without the use of phonological rules.

Orthographic
Orthographic readers continue to use sight-word strategies, but their recoding skills undergo "progressive lexicalization". Readers learn to consolidate grapheme-phoneme patterns that occur across many words, enabling them to decode words based on larger units than before, such as morphemes and letter clusters. Experience with reading, and progressively automatizing the phonemic recoding of these common letter patterns, increases recoding efficiency. As well, using larger units within words to ease recoding eases the establishment of sight words in memory and speeds up later retrieval. It also provides more strategies for identifying unfamiliar words, such as drawing analogies to known words with similar morphemic relationships or spelling (e.g. pronouncing the nonword pednesday as penns-day rather than ped-ness-day, indicating an analogy to Wednesday ).

Phonological Awareness
Phonological awareness (PA) is the awareness of and ability to manipulate sounds within words. PA consists of both phonological synthesis – the ability to blend distinct phonemes into cohesive words – and analysis – the ability to break words into constituent parts – but the the two abilities are inextricable from one another. Early PA is extremely important in later mastery of reading in alphabetic languages: PA development predicts reading progress, studies indicate that preliterate phonological training improves reading performance, and reading disabilities are retrospectively associated with phonological problems. One reliable indicator of PA and its link to reading ability is invented spelling: one study found that performance on PA tasks accounted for 93% of variance in guessed spellings of unknown words. More phonologically accurate guesses on these tasks predict better early reading skills. Conversely, limited PA skill interferes with later acquisition of grapheme-phoneme correspondence rules and word recognition skills.

Linguistic Consistency
Phonological abilities are generally associated with reading performance in the early years of learning, but this association declines in the later grades of elementary school. de Jong et al.'s study found that differences in reading acquisition among Dutch students after the end of grade 1 could be explained by individual reading ability rather than phonological ability. However, phonological influence on reading acquisition in American children was observed for much longer, until grade 4. This is likely due to the difference in grapheme-phoneme consistency between Dutch and English: Dutch has a much more consistent, or transparent, orthography than that of English, which is highly irregular. Accuracy in word decoding takes much more time to develop in learners of non-transparent languages, since fluent phonological recoding depends on the ability to reliably map written letters to pronounced sounds, a process made much more difficult when graphemes do not always represent the same phoneme. Indeed, in a 2003 analysis of major European languages, English was ranked as the most orthographically inconsistent. Accordingly, a 2004 study found that by the end of grade 1, German and Dutch children showed 85% accuracy in reading nonwords - and Swedish children 90% accuracy - while English readers lagged significantly behind at 50% accuracy and did not catch up until grade 4.

Models of Reading
Multiple theories have been proposed to explain the cognitive processes underlying reading ability and comprehension. Although models abound in the literature, each giving slightly different precedence to visual input (bottom-up) and conceptual context (top-down), this chapter's limited space will focus on the connectionist and duel-route cascaded (DRC) models. These theories have been continuously investigated and developed over the past two to three decades. Both are computational models of cognitive theories, focusing on word recognition and processing. This approach - implementing a theory of cognition in a computer program - allows a real-life examination of how closely the model's output matches the human behaviour it is meant to explain.

Connectionism
Multiple variations on connectionist models have since been devised, but the original model of visual word recognition and pronunciation was put forward in 1989. This model is based on the principle of parallel distributed processing (PDP): processing is distributed across a network of working units, and is conducted in parallel rather than sequentially. They posit a three-layer model, composed of sets of orthographic and phonological units, and an interspersed level of "hidden" units that function only as mediators and do not receive exogenous input or produce output. The aim of this model is to create a "minimal model" of reading aloud and making lexical decisions, in which little is hard-wired and most processing structure is left to be developed through learning. Its key feature is that it uses a single procedure for regular, irregular, and non-words when mapping orthographic representations to phonology, rather than dividing processing into multiple routes depending on the category of input.

There is no discrete lexicon of known words, and no underlying set of pronunciation rules to be consulted: computation uses learned experience with grapheme-phoneme correspondence instead. Connections between units are weighted to increase or decrease the propagation of activation, and this weighting is modified by learning. Initial, random weights are modified by backpropagation: the model's results are compared to correct output, and weighting is shifted accordingly to modify phonological output. Orthographic units are activated by particular clusters of letters, while phonological units are activated by clusters of phonemes, and the hidden units mediate between the two sets of representational units. In this model, lexical decision tasks (dividing stimuli into words and nonwords) are completed by analyzing patterns of activation: real words have more recognizable orthographic and phonological patterns than nonwords.

This system is similar to the way in which people associate orthographic and semantic information with phonological representations of words: nodes associated with the appearance and meaning of a word, as well as its sound, may all be activated to some extent upon its presentation. As well, the level of grapheme-phoneme correspondence in different languages can be represented through varied weights on connections between orthographic and phonological units. However, this model is also limited to monosyllabic words (though this has recently been extended to polysyllabic words ) and cannot compute syllabic stress, nor can it address the effects of semantic  priming or context.

DRC
The dual-route cascaded model is a computational model of word recognition and reading aloud. In contrast to connectionist models, DRC proposes a hard-wired cognitive structure, consisting of two discrete cognitive paths for reading: the lexical nonsemantic route and the grapheme-phoneme correspondence route. Both routes proceed through multiple interacting levels, each made up of meaningful units (e.g. letter features, whole letters, phonemes, or words).[[Image:1_1_twoRouteModelInReading.JPG|thumb|325px|right|upright|A flowchart depicting the dual processing routes postulated by Coltheart et al. The "phonological" route is discussed here as the GPC route, and the "direct" route as the lexical semantic route.

(Chart created by Bastian Schledde)]] The lexical nonsemantic processing route is used to identify and read known words aloud. The basic letter features present in a word activate all relevant letter units at once. A letter activated in a certain position within the word increases the activation of all orthographic (whole-word) units with a letter in that position. The combination of letter activations eventually activates one particular orthographic unit, which excites the corresponding phonological lexicon unit (linking known word meaning with pronunciation). This phonological unit activates the relevant phoneme units, which produce spoken output sound-by-sound.

Unfamiliar words or nonwords are processed via the grapheme-phoneme correspondence (GPC) route, the relatively slower pathway of word identification. This route converts individual written letters into phonemes using GPC rules, by mapping letters or sets of letters onto their single corresponding phonemes. The visual features of an unknown word activate corresponding feature and letter units, as in the lexical nonsemantic route, and the GPC route sequentially matches each letter with a phoneme. Once all the phonemes meet a certain threshold of activation, they will be combined into a pronunciation. This route bypasses orthographic and lexical units, relying entirely on "sounding out" words for identification.

The DRC model is highly successful in tests of reading: it successfully read 7,980 of 7,981 words in its lexicon aloud when they were presented. In addition to modeling reading aloud, it can model both surface and phonological dyslexia by modifying the activation of each route, and can even recreate the reading delay introduced by naming the colour in which a colour name is written rather than reading the word itself (the  Stroop effect). However, the model is limited to monosyllabic words, has no method for computing lexical stress, and its performance on the lexical decision task is crude at best.

Visual Perception
Eye movements can be tracked as indicators of cognitive processing during reading. While looking at objects, scanning a field of view, or reading text, the eyes flit back and forth in very fast movements called  saccades. These movements have a latency of 150-175 milliseconds, a planning delay implying that control of saccades is in concert with comprehension of visual input. Cognitive processing focuses on the visual information taken in during the 200-300 millisecond fixations between saccades (since the speed of eye movement is too great for any visual information to be taken in during a saccade itself). The purpose of these movements and fixations is to bring relevant visual information into the area of vision with the highest acuity. This region is the fovea, comprising the central 2° of the visual field, and is surrounded by the parafoveal region (ranging approximately 5° on either side of the point of fixation). Objects outside the parafoveal region fall into peripheral vision.

Fixation lengths in reading text vary greatly depending on a variety of factors. Average fixations tend to be longer when reading aloud or following along with an audio track than when reading silently, since the eyes move more quickly than the voice, necessitating frequent pauses to allow the voice to catch up. In normal reading of English text, fixations last for 200-250 milliseconds on average, and the mean saccade size is 7-9 letter spaces. The reader acquires necessary visual input within the first 50-70 milliseconds of fixating on a word, without sequential letter-by-letter scanning. The type of word being read affects likelihood of fixation: content words are fixated upon 85% of the time, while  function words (e.g. the and and) are only fixated upon 35% of the time   Probability of fixation also increases with word length: 2-3 letter words are fixated 25% of the time, while words with 8 or more letters are nearly always fixated upon. As well, more frequent words are more likely to be skipped, as are words whose possible meanings are constrained by the context of the sentence. Between fixations, saccades generally move forward in the text. However, 10-15% are regressions: saccades may move backward a few letters to continue processing, or skip back by multiple words or sentences if the reader is re-evaluating the text. Thus, visual processing may consist of both first-pass (initial) and second-pass processing. In general, increased complexity of a text results in longer fixation times, shorter forward saccades, and more frequent regressions.

The perceptual span refers to the size of the visual field acquiring information. Readers of alphabetic languages read left-to-right show a perceptual span with boundaries of 3-4 letters to the left of the current word, and 14-15 letters to the right. The left boundary is defined by the beginning of the current word, while the right boundary is defined more by the total number of letters present. This asymmetry is reversed in languages read right-to-left, such as Hebrew. The perceptual span is not identical to the area in which words can be positively identified, however: in alphabetical languages, the word identification span is only 7-8 letters from the fixation point in the direction of reading, not the full 15-letter span of overall perception The most advantageous place for fixation has been identified, in fact, and is close to the centre of a word. This optimal viewing position is the location of minimal recognition delay: the further from this area fixation occurs, the more likely a re-fixation will be.

The study of eye movements involved in reading can further understanding of the cognitive processing involved in deciphering text. For example, a study of Finnish readers in 2002 used eye tracking to describe different processing strategies for reading complex, multi-topic texts. Adults were given reading tasks and grouped according to the strategies used, defined by patterns of eye movement within the text. Fast linear readers generally read forward with very infrequent regressions, mostly focused on topic headings. Slow linear readers functioned in much the same way, but with relatively lower first-pass processing speed. Nonselective reviewers, in contrast, made many regressions to previous sentences, and their regressions were unrelated to the place in topic structure of the sentences being reread. Finally, topic structure processors focused most of their fixations on topic headings and topic-end sentences, and were shown to have the greatest working-memory capacity. The differences between the groups illustrated a variety of functional reading strategies in use by adult readers.

Neural Basis
Consistent with the tendency toward left-hemisphere specificity in language processing, most of the brain areas showing activation during reading are located in the left frontal cortex. Consistently activated areas include the frontal operculum and the posterior superior, middle temporal, and inferior temporal gyri. There are many cortical areas involved in various sub-processes of reading, ranging from phonological processing to linguistic motor output, but two of the most well-known in terms of function and localization are the frontal operculum and the visual word form area.

The frontal operculum, located within Broca's area, on the ventral surface of  Brodmann’s areas  44 and  45 in the left inferior frontal gyrus, has been implicated in specific reading processes. It shows consistently greater activation when reading pronounceable nonwords aloud in comparison to real words, implying a role in phonological processing, and is also more active when processing low-frequency words with little grapheme-phoneme consistency. Indeed, patients with lesions of this particular area show acquired phonological dyslexia (preserved ability to read known words aloud, but severe deficits in pronouncing nonwords). As well, the lesioned patients show greater difficulty in response to low-frequency words with low spelling-sound consistency than to low-frequency, high-consistency words, consistent with previous results.

The visual word form area (VWFA) is a left-lateralized inferotemporal area of the fusiform cortex that shows activation in response to visual word stimuli, and can be identified in nearly any literate person. Its activation is specific to linguistic input, and is not contingent upon spatial location, size, font, or case of presented words. Activation also does not vary depending on stimulus presentation to the right or left visual field: visual word form information is directed in both cases to the VWFA. Interestingly, the VWFA is equally activated by real words and by readable pseudowords, but shows less activation with visually similar consonant strings containing illegal letter combinations. Its response pattern is thus constrained by the orthographic rules of the reader's native language. The VWFA is also the likely source of a known event-related potential (ERP) component, a sharp negative electrical spike over left inferior temporal electrodes at 180-200 milliseconds after word stimulus presentation.

Chapter Summary
The ability to comprehend meaning in text is dependent upon many different cognitive and physical abilities that develop in complexity over time. Young readers develop the association between words and meanings through stages that gradually prioritize visual word features, phonological cues, and direct links between spelling and meaning. The skill and ability of a mature reader depends not only on the learning process, but also their own early phonological awareness and the consistency of their native language.

Reading can be modeled in many ways, but the dual-route cascade model and connectionist model remain two of the most intriguing theories. Both have unique advantages, and use contrasting methods to successfully model word identification, reading aloud, and various forms of dyslexia. Such theories model cognitive processes, but physical correlates of online processing have also been studied, including eye movements, fixation patterns, and the span of perception during reading. Specific neural correlates have also been found for reading processes: the frontal operculum and visual word form area are consistently activated in response to linguistic stimuli.

Literacy is a relatively new skill in evolutionary time, but is of paramount importance in most modern societies, built as they are around written communication. As well, increased reading skill is correlated with changed perception of how words are built, and with vast improvement on tests of grammatical ability and phonemic segmentation. Thus, the ability to read appears to shape the reader’s relationship with not only the world around them, but with their own native language as well.

Learning Exercise
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title: Psycholinguistics/Reading