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Psycholinguistics/What is a Word?

Introduction
Words are one of the most complex and powerful resources we as humans have at our disposal. As Geoffrey Hughes remarks, "people who are normally shrewd will be persuaded by banal advertising copy; those who are normally politically inert or pacifist can be mobilized to die for a slogan" (1988). It is only natural that we should be curious about the words we use, but the system is not simple,

The problem with asking "What is a Word?" is that there isn't really an answer. "Word" is not a technical term, and it can mean a number of things. In typing, a word is the characters between spaces. But in a polysynthetic language (e.g. Yupik), a single word by that description can carry the meaning of a whole sentence. Is it still a word? Some linguists consider individual morphemes (including bound morphemes) as words, in that they have meaning alone and designate word category. While this is a minority view (most linguists would consider even a whole sentence-worth of meaning as a single word in a polysynthetic language), there is still ample ground for disagreement and consideration between languages as similar as English and German. The German word "einfamilienhaus" means in English "single family house." This is a compound word formed from three parts: how many words is it, and is the number different in English, even though the components have the same meanings and order? Even in a single language, the answer is not clear. Take the sentence, “I walk to the place where he walks, soon we will be walking together.” Three versions of the verb “walk” appear: “walk,” “walks,” “walking.”  Are they three different words or just variations of one word? Obviously this has a huge effect on estimating the number of words in a language, or even the number of words a single person knows. Oldfield (in Lively et al., 1994) suggested that the average adult probably knows around 75 000 words. Crystal (2006) points out the difference between active and passive vocabulary: active vocabulary is the list of words a person uses comfortably, and passive vocabulary is the list of words a person is familiar with enough to understand, but wouldn’t use in his or her own speech or writing. For example, all speakers of English would easily use the word “cat,” but might not refer to “verisimilitude” with such ease (even if they understand its meaning).

This chapter aims to give a detailed discussion of words. It will talk about words themselves (their composition and classification as signs), the meaning of a word, relationships between words, ways of classifying words, the frequency of certain words, and changes in the lexicon that happen over time.

What Are Words Made Of?
At their most elemental level, words are made up of sound units called phonemes. A phoneme is the smallest contrastive unit of language, i.e. the smallest unit that can make a difference to meaning. The words “bat” and “rat” differ by only one phoneme, yet their meanings are distinct. Phonemes on their own have no inherent meaning: they only mean something when combined with other phonemes into longer strings. Brown (1958) gives the example of the English suffix "-er" which can mean either the agent of an action (e.g. "driver") or a comparative form of an adjective (e.g. "nicer"). Clearly, there is nothing about the sounds in "-er" which has independent meaning. The next largest unit we can divide words into is the syllable. “Bat” has one syllable, “battle” has two and “battlement” has three.

Some syllables (or groups of syllables) have meaning on their own and can be attached or removed from a word (called a base) in the process of affixation. This is morphology: the study of morphemes, which are units of meaning (usually) smaller than a word that combine to form larger words. Morphemes can be categorized in two ways. The first is bound vs. free morphemes. Free morphemes can exist on their own as words and have meaning. An example would be “nation.” Bound morphemes cannot function alone in the sentence and must attach to a free morpheme (or base), changing its meaning and often its syntactic category (see section on word classification). English has many of these, for example –s, which combines with verbs to give the third person singular present form (e.g. “walk” becomes “walks”), or –al, which turns a noun to an adjective (e.g. “nation” becomes “national”). These two examples bring us to the other dimension for classifying morphemes (Hudson, 2007). The former is called an inflectional morpheme: it does not change the meaning of the word in any way, but is present for grammatical reasons only. “She walk” obviously means the same as “she walks,” but is not grammatically acceptable. The second example is a derivational morpheme: its function is not grammatical but changes the meaning of the word and often the syntactic category. Here, the noun “nation” becomes the adjective “national,” which means “pertaining to a nation.” All inflectional and derivational affixes in English are bound morphemes, and most of the bases they attach to are free morphemes.

An example of concatenative morphology might look like this, where each cell in the table represents a different morpheme. This shows how words are formed by a process, rather than memorized individually (here, the noun "nation" becomes the third person present form of the verb "nationalize").

Here the issue of “what is a word” again appears: surely it is silly to consider each inflectional form of every verb of a language as a separate word (each English verb has either three or four inflectional forms and most languages have many more), but it is also silly to consider “nation” and “national” as the same word (not to mention “nationalize,” “nationalization,” etc.). So word-ness depends on whether a word’s morphological processes are derivational or inflectional.

This is where it is possible to have an exact definition: while “word” is a somewhat unclear concept, “lexeme” is not. A lexeme can be created by derivational affixation, which is why “national” is a different lexeme from “nation.” A lexeme has a distinct meaning and can be modified grammatically through inflectional affixation, which is why “nation” and “nations” are the same lexeme and differ only in number. Pinker (1999) explains the concept of listeme: an item that must be memorized (as part of the list of words one knows) because its meaning cannot be deduced based on its components. An example would be the verb "walk," or the "-s" that is added to make it third person singular. In the table above, each morpheme is also a listeme: it shows how words are made up of separate parts that have independent meaning and are combined into larger units that do not need to be individually memorized.

Words as Arbitrary Signs
The study of words is part of the study of semiotics, or symbols. There are three types of symbols: the icon, the index and the sign. While the icon and index are based on representation or indication of a concept respectively, the sign is the only truly arbitrary symbol of a concept. A simple way to think about it is with traffic: a slippery road sign is an icon, with an image of a car skidding on the road; a crumpled car on the side of the road is an index of a recent accident; a yield sign is a true sign- there is nothing about the white and red triangle that inherently means yield, just as there is nothing inherent in the sounds of the word “dog” that mean “a furry quadruped with a tail, etc.”. In his lectures on linguistic signs, the famous linguist Ferdinand de Saussure defined the sign as being composed of the signifier and the signified. In the case of a dog, the signifier is the word “dog” or “chien” or “Hund” or whatever, and the signified is the speaker and listener’s mental representations of the concept of a furry quadruped with a tail (Saussure, 1974). The arbitrariness of the relationship between words and their referents (or signified) is clear when we see how different the three previously mentioned words for “dog” are across languages. Even in onomatopoeic words, which supposedly are less arbitrary, there is no inherent relationship. Dogs in English say both “bow-wow” and “woof”—they sound nothing alike! The above diagram demonstrates the relationship between signifier and signified. You can see how they are both integral parts of the sign (represented by the oval containing both signifier and signified), and also how this relationship works in both directions. Awareness of one part of the sign entails knowledge of the other part.

Semantics
Semantics is the study of what words mean. A word’s denotation, also called conceptual meaning (Yule, 2006), is its exact meaning (as in “furry quadruped with a tail” above). This is what you will find in a dictionary. Words often also have connotations associated with them, which are more subjective and evaluative aspects of meaning. For example, the difference between “slender” and “skinny” is one of connotation: “slender” has a positive connotation, whereas “skinny” has a negative connotation. The same could be said of “frugal” and “cheap.” Yule (2006) also identifies associative meanings of words, which are secondary concepts associated with words. For example, “slender” might have an associative meaning of “pretty,” while “skinny” might have an associative meaning of “unhealthy.” Often a big semantic difference between words is that of register. Register is the formality level of a word- a word like “dude” belongs to an informal register, whereas “sir” is a higher, more formal register.

Meaning is not a simple thing. Some words are very easily linked to a concept; a violin, for instance, is always a violin and not a cello or a dill pickle or racism. But how sure can we be that that word and only that word refers to a violin and only a violin, and that all speakers of English conceive of the concept in the same way? Aitchison (2003) points out the difference between the “fixed meaning assumption” and “fuzzy edges.” She cites evidence from Labov (1973, in Aitchison, 2003), who asked people to identify an object as a cup, a vase or a bowl and found that the results varied greatly and changed based on what was inside the container, to prove that words do not have fixed meanings in the minds of all speakers but fuzzy edges that depend on all sorts of factors. Look at the two images to the right. The first is designed for drinking tea even though it has no handle. Is it a cup or a bowl? The second is an ancient bowl from Cyprus. Is it still a bowl, even though it has a handle? Some words refer to concrete things, that is things that can be perceived through sensory input. But other words refer to abstract things, such as racism, philosophy, or love. There is evidence to suggest that abstract words are harder to understand than concrete words. Schwanenflugel (1991) explains three theories for why this is: first, the dual-coding theory, posited by Paivio et al. (1971, 1986, in Schwanenflugel, 1991), which suggests two parallel systems (the logogen, or verbal system, and the imagen, or image system). Concrete words have stronger attachment to the imagen system and therefore activate both systems, whereas abstract words tend to activate only the logogen system. The second theory is the age of acquisition hypothesis (Gilhooly and Gilhooly, 1979, in Schwanenflugel, 1991), which states that because abstract words are acquired later in language development than concrete words, they have a lower frequency (and therefore take longer to understand) because subjects have less exposure to them. Third, there is the context availability model (Bransford and McCarrell, 1974; Kieras, 1978; Schwanenflugel and Shoben, 1983, all in Schwanenflugel, 1991), which argues that comprehension of words is based on information retrieval from the subject's knowledge base. This retrieval is slower as a result of weaker connections to contextual knowledge in abstract words than in concrete words.

Aitchison (2003) also discusses a widely-held theory in psycholinguistics, that the mind contains a “prototype” for each word that it considers to be the best example of that concept. So for the word “cat,” most people would associate that with a domestic house cat before extending it to include a tiger or a cheetah. Having a prototype in mind enables a speaker to extend the label to something that shares characteristics of the prototype, even if it is unfamiliar (Brown, 1958). Rosch and Mervis (1975, in Hampton, 1991) posit a "family resemblance score" with which an item's typicality compared to the prototype can be correlated.

Word Relationships
In their discussion of Saussure, Silverman and Torode (1980) say that “signs have value only by the differences between them,” meaning that words only have meaning based on what other words don’t mean and on the way they are combined with other words with different meanings. This is a helpful way of looking at language: words, while they may be the building blocks, only have meaning if one is familiar with the language more generally. This section focuses on the comparisons and relationships between words.

The cat example in the previous section brings us to an issue with trying to find the meaning of a word: what if a word has more than one meaning? This is a fairly common phenomenon called lexical ambiguity. Take the word “bat.” It can mean either a small flying animal or an item used in sports to hit a ball. This is called homonymy: a single word has two completely separate definitions that share the same phonological and orthographic shape (Yule, 2006). What about the word “head”: it can mean a body part, an important person at a company, one end of a bed, etc. This is an example of polysemy-these words are related in meaning, so they are considered just one word with multiple senses (Yule, 2006). Copestake and Briscoe (1997) identify two types of polysemy: constructional polysemy, in which one sense is contextually specific, and sense extension, in which the two senses are simply related and do not depend on context. The correct meaning can be inferred from the context, but how does this occur? Simpson (1994) outlines three basic models for how the mind deals with ambiguous words. Context-dependent models hold that only contextually relevant meanings are activated by the brain. Context-independent models say that activation of a particular meaning is not based on context but something else, often word frequency. The multiple access model proposes that all meanings are activated and processed, and only after this processing is the appropriate meaning selected. See the chapter on Lexical Access for more on this topic. Murphy and Andrew (1993) found that context influenced which antonym (see below) subjects chose for polysemous words, supporting the context-dependent model.

Two different words that share a meaning are called synonyms (Yule, 2006). Synonyms almost always have a different connotation or register, or slightly different associative meaning, leading most linguists to the conclusion that perfect synonymy does not exist. It is inefficient: there is no reason to remember two words with exactly the same usage and meaning, so when this situation arises one word falls out of use and the other takes over (see layering, below) or one word comes to have a more specialized meaning than the other. In English, this is often the case where an Anglo-Saxon word is joined by a Latin borrowing, giving us pairs like “chew” and “masticate.”

Two words that have opposite meanings are called antonyms. Murphy and Andrew explain that "words have opposites only if one dimension of their meaning is particularly salient, and if there is a word that is equivalent except for its value on that dimension" (1993). Antonyms can be gradable (meaning they take place along a scale, can be used comparatively and the opposite of one does not entail the other), for example “big/small” or “happy/sad.” Antonyms can also be non-gradable, like “dead/alive,” where the opposite of “alive” always means “dead.”  A third type of antonym is called a reversive, where one word means the reverse of the other, like “enter/exit” (Yule, 2006). Antonyms provide us with a fertile ground for euphemism, for example saying someone is “not a small person” (i.e. “a big person”).

Another way words relate to each other is through hyponymy. Although hyponymy is not well known, it is very common. Hyponymy refers to the degree of specificity of a word; a hyponym is more specific than a corresponding hyperonym, so a “rose” is a hyponym of “plant”, whereas “plant” is a hyperonym of “rose” or “orchid”. This way of looking at words emphasizes the hierarchical relationship between them (Yule, 2006), and relates to the idea of a prototype for each word. To go back to the cat example, above, this diagram shows the hyponymy relationship between those words.

Bengal Tiger ↑ Tiger ↑ Cat ↑ Mammal ↑ Animal

Word Classifications
Linguists categorize words to attempt to understand how they are organized in the brain. The parts of speech children are taught in school are a simplified version of this categorization. A part of speech is a syntactic category, which tells us what role a word plays in a sentence. Words are classified technically by class and by category; both will be discussed here.

Word class refers to whether a word serves a grammatical function or a lexical function. In other words, whether a word carries some of the content of the sentence or helps to string the content words together so we can understand their role. In the sentence “The bear climbed up the tree to get a piece of fruit,” the words “bear,” “climbed,” “tree,” “get,” “piece” and “fruit” are all content words, and “the,” “up,” “the, “to, “a” and “of” are function words. Another way to look at these words is as open or closed class. Open class words are nouns, verbs, adjectives and sometimes adverbs—more words can be added to this class as the need arises, and words can fall out of usage fairly quickly. Closed class words are function words—prepositions, personal pronouns, determiners, etc. that are fixed in a language. The class can’t be added to and it takes a very long time for any change to occur. This is why both French and Italian both use “tu” as a second person singular personal pronoun (in subjective case)—this has not changed since French and Italian were both dialects of Latin. This is also the reason why no matter how hard anyone tries, there will probably never be a singular gender-neutral third person personal pronoun in English to replace “he” or “she,” and why the usage of plural “they” for this purpose is likely here to stay (sorry, English teachers!).

Syntactic categories are another way of classifying words. All languages have syntactic categories. There are three clearly defined categories: nouns, verbs and adjectives. There are also numerous other small categories, like prepositions, determiners, articles, adverbs, conjunctions, etc. that are a matter of great debate among linguists and vary more cross-linguistically. Categories are usually taught based on their members (e.g. a noun is a person, place or thing, a verb is an action word), but are more accurately determined based on their role in a sentence. A noun is the only category that can be the subject of a sentence, or the object of a verb, as in “The dolphin ate the fish,” where “dolphin” and “fish” are the subject and object, respectively. A verb is the only category that can dictate what other positions must be filled for a sentence to be complete, as in “I gave the cake to my mom,” where the verb “gave” requires a subject, direct object and indirect object. All sentences have a verb, even one-word sentences like “Go!” where there is no noun in subject position (although semantically there is still a subject, it is just a rule of English that grammatical subject is not realized in syntax for verbs in the imperative mood). This tree diagram shows a simple sentence composed of a noun phrase and a verb phrase. Notice how even though the sentence doesn't make any sense, it is still grammatical because each position is filled by a word of the right syntactic category. The word category is labelled for each word, and all are open-class words.

The section on morphology, above, explained how syntactic category can be changed through derivational morphology, but morphology is not always necessary for this. Category can also be changed through a process called conversion, or zero-affixation, where a word (without changing its form at all) can fill a different role in the sentence and thus be part of a new category in addition to the old one (Adams, 1973). An example of this is “They tabled the motion,” where “table” (a noun) is being used as a verb. The verb "sleep" in the diagram above can also be used as a noun in the process of conversion, as in "have a good sleep." Further discussion of changes to words can be found in the section New Words and New Uses.

Word Frequency
As mentioned above, the average person is more likely to have “cat” as part of their active vocabulary than “verisimilitude.” This is obviously because of frequency: there are many more reasons to talk about cats than verisimilitude in everyday life. It doesn’t take a sophisticated study to determine that some words are more common than others, and many people have made lists of the most common words, both in specific languages and cross-linguistically. These don’t always line up perfectly: the most common word in English is “the” but for languages where use of the definite article determiner is not as robust as in English this would not be the case. All languages have words for food, people, water and some other basic concepts, and usually the more basic a concept is to human life and society, the more common it is cross-linguistically. The difficulty of determining the most frequent words is that speech and written language would yield different results. Given the difficulty, though, of recording all the words (or even a tiny portion of them) spoken by many people in many different parts of the world who speak the same language, from many different social groups, classes, ethnicities, age groups, etc., most of the available data are based on analyzing a corpus of writing. In speech, the pronouns “I” and “you” would likely be far more common than they are in writing. This graph shows the frequency of words used on Wikipedia in 2006. You can see that the first five are used significantly more frequently than the rest, and as frequency goes down the frequency difference between adjacent words goes down too. In other words, there is a greater difference in frequency of use between very commonly used words than there is between less commonly used words.

Frequency of a word has an impact on its retrieval time in the brain. Lively et al. (1994) report findings from Savin (1963) showing that people identified high-frequency words faster than low-frequency words from a background of white noise. Luce et al. (1984, in Lively et al., 1994) found that less acoustic input was required for people to recognize high-frequency words and Luce (1986, in Lively et al., 1994) found that lexical decision times were faster for high-frequency words. This, together with the active and passive vocabulary phenomenon, show that high-frequency words are more readily and easily accessed in the brain than low-frequency words, and are understood faster.

New Words and New Uses
The beauty of words is that we are all in control of them: everyone who is a competent speaker of a language is able and allowed to produce new words when needed and to alter the meaning of existing ones, and as long as grammatical rules are followed these new words will be understood even by people who have never heard them before (which is the power of derivational morphology, and shows that affixes must be stored separately in the brain from bases because they are constantly used and understood in novel combinations). A morphological process separate from affixation is that of compounding, as discussed in the introductory paragraph, where two words are joined and become one word with a meaning distinct from both of them. “Water bottle,” “flower-pot” and “racetrack” are all examples of compounds.

A nonce formation is a word created for one-time use by a speaker. If I describe a song as “Black Sabbath-esque,” even if you have never heard that word before you know what I mean. This nonce word is unlikely to catch on in common English, but it can happen that coinages are adopted into the everyday language. Aitchison (2003) outlines three criteria necessary for adoption: lots of examples, specific meaning, and morphological transparency (easily deduced meaning).

Different from a nonce formation but fulfilling a similar motivation is the concept of "transfers of meaning", described by Geoffrey Nunberg (1997). He gives the example of handing a valet your car keys and saying "This is parked out back." Clearly, it is not the thing you handed him (your keys) which is parked out back, but by referring to them you are making implicit reference to the car they go with (which is parked out back). No new word is being created in this process, but a nonce meaning is assigned to the signifier "this" (standing for the keys).

Words can also enter a language by borrowing from another language: this is why English has “pig” (from Anglo-Saxon) and “pork” (from French). This process was once more common with words entering English, but now more frequently exports English words to other languages in the fields of technology and culture (like computers and country music, which usually enter languages as phonetic adaptations of the English words rather than as literal translations, often even maintaining the English spelling).

Aitchison (2003) mentions layering, a process where a word comes to have more than one meaning (polysemy). Over time presumably this process will result in separate lexemes, or a new definition will take over the old. For example, Old English “saelis” meant “happy” or “blessed,” which turned into Middle English “sely,” meaning “pathetically innocent,” and finally became Modern English “silly,” meaning something similar to “stupid.” Yule (2006) discusses semantic broadening and narrowing, where a word’s meaning becomes more or less specific over time. He gives the example of “wife,” which in Old English and early Middle English meant “woman,” but through narrowing has come to its modern definition. Saussure differentiates between the “immutability” of language, meaning that no individual person has the power to profoundly change a language, and “mutability” of language, as in the principle that language changes over time, not due to individual efforts but the nature of language as a system (in Silverman and Torode, 1980). Linguistic change is based on necessity: I can’t decide to call a “cow” a “fireplace” just because I want to—no one would join me and it would be pointless. But when a new concept or object is created it needs a word, and this is what gives us words like “facebook,” “text” (as a verb) and “uncool”.

Another fascinating ground for language change (and one that is affected by individual efforts) is the realm of political correctness. It seems to most people that this changes every few years, which is staggeringly fast given the pervasiveness of most PC or non-PC terms. In my grandmother’s youth, the appropriate term for a developmentally delayed person was an “idiot” (with minimal negative connotation). When my mother was young, this had turned into an insulting term (retaining to a lesser degree the association with developmental disabilities), and the PC term was “retarded.” Nowadays, ask anyone under about 30 years old, and they will tell you that “retard” is insulting. Since “retard,” we have gone through such terms as “mentally handicapped,” “mentally challenged,” “differently abled,” “learning disabled,” “special” and countless others (and in a very short period of time: the postage stamp was issued in 1974 and the special Olympics picture was taken in 2009. This is staggeringly fast for language change). The sad truth is, each time a new word is decided on to be the new “neutral” term, it will be used as an insult. The same is true of racial differences, sexual preference, etc., clearly showing that blaming language for society’s attitudes is useless (Crystal, 2006).

Conclusion/Summary
This chapter has provided an overview of some aspects of words. While “word” is not a technical definition, the label “lexeme” allows us to be more specific. A short introduction to morphology was given, outlining the differences between bound/free and inflectional/derivational morphemes, and how new lexemes are formed by affixation. Words were defined as arbitrary signs, with no inherent relationship between the signifier and the signified. Denotation and connotation were discussed, as well as how clear the boundaries are between different words. Register was explained as differentiating words based on level of formality. The concept of a prototype was outlined as the best example of a given word, stored in the brain. The different relationships between words were identified: polysemy (multiple related meanings), homonymy (multiple unrelated meanings), synonymy (two words sharing a meaning), antonymy (two words with opposite meanings) and hyponymy (two words differing based on level of specificity). Words were categorized according to open (new words can be added) or closed (no new words can be added) class, and also according to syntactic categories. The frequency of words both cross-linguistically and in English was mentioned, as well as the effect of frequency on various lexical tasks. The ability of language to change both gradually and quickly was discussed through looking at the adoption of nonce formations and the process of layering. The phenomenon of political correctness was examined as an example of both rapid language change and the impact of social attitudes on language.

In conclusion, words are not static but dynamic: their meanings can change, divide, converge and disappear. Words are controlled by all competent speakers of a language, and are a remarkably fluid medium of communication.

Learning Exercises
The following are questions to enhance your learning and understanding of the above material. In answering, consider evidence from this chapter and from your own experience with words (or other research you have done in this area).

Word Relationships
Identify and explain the relationship between these pairs or groups of words. For example, hyponyms, synonyms, etc. There may be more than one answer. Answers are given at the bottom of the page. a) Seat-Pew b) Raise-Lower c) Cat-Feline d) Blue-Aquamarine e) Chair-Table f) Dark-Light g) Distasteful-Gross h) Foot-Head-Pay i) Visionary-Idealist j) Toilet-Powder Room k) Vista-Play (noun)-Scene l) Strong-Weak m) Animal-Calf n) Inebriated-Drunk-Wasted o) Present-Absent p) Bottle-Container q) Die-Pass Away

Essay Questions
1. Discuss the differences between Saussure's concept of the sign (signifier/signified) and Aitchison's idea of fuzzy edges (with evidence from Labov). Do they disagree, or do their ideas support each other? Do you agree with one or with both? Write a brief essay, using support from both authors.

2. We have learned that words are fluid. Explain the reasons and results of this fluidity, using both semantic and grammatical evidence. What kind of words are not fluid, and why? Write a short essay (several paragraphs). Come up with your own examples.

3. Most of the examples above come from English. Discuss the advantages and drawbacks of this in several paragraphs--is it more effective to look at words from the viewpoint of a single language, or to examine the concept of "word" always in a cross-linguistic context? If you are familiar with another language, discuss the processes and ideas identified in this chapter in relation to that language. Can you discover any radical differences, or do words exhibit similar behaviours and patterns regardless of language? If you do not know another language, verb paradigms, pronoun charts and many other simple tools can easily be accessed on the internet. Find a source like this for another language and compare it to English.

Labelling
The following are concepts that need labels. a) The process of change in measurements of groundwater radiation levels over time b) Moving back home with your parents after having moved out to go to university c) The condition of seeing real life as a two-dimensional world of violence as a result of playing too many video games d) The fatigue felt after reading a lengthy textbook on psycholinguistics e) Anxiety experienced over not knowing the answer to an exam question f) A person who lives a very modest life, while having a fortune in the bank Make up a new word to label these things. Your term can be made up of more than one typographic word (i.e. it can have spaces in it, as in "flower pot") but should be as succinct as possible. It must not be a phrase, but instead must function syntactically as one unit. (This is crucial if something is to be considered a word.) Then explain in a paragraph or two why your term is a good label for the concept, and why it could be adopted as the general term in English (although of course this probably won't happen).

BONUS: Identify all the morphemes used in your words. Are they free or bound? What categories do they create? Are they derivational or inflectional?

Answers from question 1
1: (a) Pew is a hypernym of Seat. (b) Raise and Lower are reversive antonyms. (c) Cat and Feline are synonyms, but Feline belongs to a higher register and is often restricted to scientific discourse. (d) Blue is a hyponym of Aquamarine. (e) Chair and Table share the associative meaning of "furniture". (f) Dark and Light are gradable antonyms. (g) Distasteful is of a higher register than Gross. (h) Foot is polysemous. It can share the associative meaning of "body part" (with Head) or be a synonym of Pay (as in "foot the bill"). (i) Visionary has a positive connotation, whereas Idealist often has a negative connotation. (j) Powder Room is a euphemism for Toilet. (k) Scene is polysemous. It can share an associative meaning of "theatre terms" with Play, or can be synonymous with Vista. (l) Strong and Weak are gradable antonyms. (m) Animal is a hyponym of Calf. (n) These words are of different registers. Inebriated is a formal register, Drunk is quite neutral, and Wasted is casual or colloquial. (o) Present and Absent are non-gradable antonyms. (p) Bottle is a hypernym of Container. (q) Pass Away is a euphemism for Die.

title: Psycholinguistics/What is a Word?


text:
Psycholinguistics/Language and Thought

Introduction
The relationship between language and thought has been a subject of considerable interest over the years. Arguments on the subject presented started as early as period 19th Century Ancient Greek. The 1940s saw the rise and popularity of Sapir-Whorf hypothesis that suggested that speakers of different languages think differently. Later on scientists raised criticism on the theory with most adopting the view that language and theory are universal. Particular concern has been directed in establishing whether there is a difference in how two people who speak differently also think differently. Recent research such as Leva (2011) however, suggests that the language people use may affect the way they think such that language conditions an individual’s perception of issues and the actions. This empirical evidence presented suggests that language shapes thinking putting to task the previously held theories on language universalism. The debate on the issue however continues. An understanding of this relationship has considerable implications for politics, education, marketing and other areas that involve human interaction. This paper aims to evaluate this relationship between language and thought. To achieve this, the paper aims to evaluate five major aspects; whether language dictates thinking, whether language organize thinking, whether people speaking different languages also think differently, whether multilingual individuals have broader thinking as compared to monolinguals and evaluating whether thought can exist without language. The paper is organized in two major sections; an evaluation of the various existing theories and concepts and subsequent section that specifically addresses the above specified questions of research.

Ancient Greek
One of the major philosophers of Ancient Greek on language and thought was Gorgias of the Sophist tradition. In both his works of Palamedes and On Not-Being, Gorgias presents his thoughts that among other issues touch on his conception of language and thought. His argument was that language captures neither human thought nor what human beings perceive. Gorgias perceives language as action and that the converse is true that language informs human actions thus suggesting that language and action are “not only correlative but also coterminous” (Consigny, 2005). Gorgias suggests that every utterance is an action and every meaningful action lies within the horizon of language. His world is very linguistic with every gesture, posture, and action – including inaction is meaningful. He considers words to acquire meaning from their role.

Whorfianism
This hypothesis has two major aspects; linguistic relativism and linguistic determination. Linguistic relativism considers the structural differences between languages, paralleled by non-linguistic cognitive differences in languages that manifest through the thinking of the speakers. Linguistic determination considers that the structure of language such as vocabulary, grammar and other aspects, strongly influences or determines the way its native speakers perceive or reason about the world (Andrew & Keil, 2001, p.444). The theory puts weight on the unconscious influence that language has on habitual thoughts (Skotko, 1997) highlighting that language comes first, and influences thought.

Cognition and Language
Recent decades have witnessed research and demonstrations indicating that language affects cognition. A mae theory related thinkithought considering the two as dynamically related. He argued that there is an emergence of vague thought, which is then completed in language. He considers it as an unfolding process that goes back and forth “from thought to word and word to thought. He argued that thought is originally non-verbal and language is non-intellectual and only come meet at around age two when thought turns verbal and speech turns rational. The concepts of thinking and cognitive are a result from the specific culture that an individual grows in. thus language has a major influence in the way a child as it acquires thought through words. His works have had substantial influence in study of mind and language. Cognitive science perceives the relationship between language and thought in a different way from Whorfism adopting the approach that thought does not equal language and thus both thought and perception are influenced by language, that in contrast language is influenced by thought as expressed by Geeorge Lakoff that; “Language is based on cognition” (Flohr, n.d). This approach perceives cognition and languages as existing side by side. It argues that human interaction with each other generates thoughts. To interact however, language is a vital element thus the theory suggests that language and thought are integrated and can therefore not be perceived separately. This is demonstrated by studies showing that changing how people talk changes how they think, learning new color words enhances a person’s ability to discriminate color, and learning new ways of talking about time imparts a new way of thinking about it (Leva, 2011).

Semantics and thought
In thought, ideas possess various orientations in such aspects as; time, space, epistemology, social interaction and context. These orientations influence the shape of language in various aspects and semantic resources of the various languages offer different prominence to different ones (Zelazo, Moscovitch & Thompson, 2007). For instance, English pays particular emphasis to tenses but the choice of particular tenses may vary from one telling to the next. Thus, this aspect is a choice taken in the actual act of producing the sound and not an underlying thought. Other language may pay particle attention to other orientations such as epistemology distinctions. Specific orientations express variable semantic choices and not necessarily, elements of thought may not directly influence consciousness of thought rather on semantic, linguistically imposed organization of thought. However, semantic choices usually feed back in the thought process so that an attempt to separate semantics from thought is misleading (Zelazo, Moscovitch & Thompson, 2007).

Aphasia and Thought
Although much about the brain is unknown, it has been noticed that damage to different regions of the brain develops specific types of aphasias or language disorders. Damage for example to the left frontal lobe results to speech impairments including slowness, needs effort, and poor words of sentence structures and although comprehension is retained, complex sentences in structure may not be clearly understood. Damage to left temporal lobe impairs fluency with such disorders as Wernickes aphasia where comprehension is undermined; speech may be fluent but may have errors in sound and word selection. Damage to superior lobes in the two hemispheres may result to the affected individual being unable to comprehend words (word deafness) thus being deaf for speech. The affected individual lacks comprehension of the words although they may hear the sounds, judge the emotional aspect and even identify gender of the source. BBC (2005) reports on a study done in UK where patients suffering from severe aphasia in that they did not understand or generate grammatically proper language. Although they could not comprehend differences in simple sentences when the order of words was interchanged, they nevertheless identified reversibility in simple sums. The findings that mathematical reasoning can be active without language is a strong indication that thought might not be dependent on language.

Animals, Thought and Language
Whereas there is agreement that animals use their brains, there have been discussions on whether they possess thought. In this context, thought is more than mere mental images, memories, and experiences and refers to the process of activating schemata to acquire new meaning, to reason, analyze and make decisions. When a dog buries a bone, or skips when its handler mentions some words, can this be considered as thought? Consciously, does a cat think to go hunting in a specific direction or is it led by instincts and memory? Some argue that animals are capable of language. A view expressed by Crist (2004) on prior investigation of the scientific controversy on if the honeybee dance is language concludes that it is a language – a dance language. Various authors however do not agree and express different views on the relationship of animals, thought and language. Descartes denied that animals have thought supporting his stand with the assertion that animals only communicate bodily movements and natural impulses and none has expressed using speech that is, word of sign that indicates thought alone and not natural impulse. Emphasizing the importance of speech, he argued that all human beings use it, however stupid or insane and “such speech is the only sure sign of thought hidden within a body” (Descartes as cited in Preston, 2001, p. 42). Human beings are able to respond in a distinct way to various circumstances – an aspect that is distinct from machines and other animals. Descartes came close to considering language as a criterion for thought as he considered it as necessary and sufficient for thought. It would seem plausible that genuine language is a sufficient indication for thought but his consideration that it is necessary for presence of thought may be questioned. The determination of whether animals such as dogs or cats can be considered to have thought may be considered a factor of whether their output can finitely be defined of is a mechanical response. A dog demanding to be fed may be considered too thin based on Descartes view to decide if they constitute genuine thought (Preston, 2001). Although Condillac (Coski, 2003) does not argue that animals are automata without thought or reasoned speech, he however does not consider animals to be at the same level with human beings. Animals have various limitations including; only animals that live close to man acquire human communication systems, the capacity of understanding the human language is highly limited, animals acquire this language out of need, they acquire this language through long habit and only then can they understand human speech without gestures, and they are passive receivers.

Language Dictates Thinking
The Whorfian theory was subjected to various criticisms from psychology. First, as argued by Steven Pinker, Wason and Jorhnson Laird is the lack of evidence that a language influences a particular way of thinking towards the world for its speakers (Skotko, 1997; Leva, 2011). By the 1970s, the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis had lost favor with most scientists with most adopting theories that considered language and thought as universal (Leva, 2011). The critics agreed that language expresses thought but criticized the idea that language can influence content and thought. The theory has been criticized for its extremist view that people who use a language cannot understand a concept if it is lacking in their language. Despite criticism on Whorf’s linguistic deterministic theory, recent research indicates that people who speak different languages really do think differently and that language does influence an individual’s perception of reality. Leva (2011) argues that language shapes the basic aspects of Guy Duetscher observes that language influences an individual’s minds not out of what it allows the individual to think but rather on what it obliges the individual to think (Jones, 2010). In real sense, speakers of a certain language do understand a concept even if it is not in their language as highlighted for example by the German word “schadenfreude’ which has no equivalent in the English language, English speakers do understand its meaning which is rejoicing from the bad luck of others. Another example is the Mandarin Chinese who although do not have words describing present, past, and future tenses, they nevertheless understand this concept. Language influences and enforces our thought process. Lev Vygotsky argued that thought is not only expressed in words but comes into existence through them (as cited in Perkins, 1997). In a related view Perkins (1997) points out that, “Although thinking involves much more than we can say, we would have far less access to that "more" without the language of thinking” (368). Research by Stephen Levinson shows for example that people who speak languages that rely on absolute directions perform better in keeping track of their locations even in unfamiliar grounds when place in the same locations with local folks although they may not speak the same language (Leva, 2011). How an individual perceives such aspects as time and space are affected by language. An example is that most European languages express time as horizontal whereas Mandarin Chinese express it as vertical. Similarly, English express duration of time in terms of length for example a “short” meeting whereas the Spanish use the concept of size for example “little” (Jones, 2010). Such other aspects include action orientation or conditional references that depict anecdotal hints of possible effects. An example of this is the cause and effect aspect difference exhibited from a video shown to English and Japanese speakers. For English speakers, they are likely to express it as “she broke the glass” with reference to the person who broke the glass irrespective of if it was accidental, whereas for the Japanese speakers it is expressed as “the glass broke itself” with less emphasis on the doer than if the action was intentional (Jones, 2010). These differences in language also affect how people construe what happened and affect eyewitness memory (Leva, 2011). For example in the above example, English speakers would on request to remember tend to remember the accidents more agentive thus identifying the door more easily than their Japanese counterparts. Language does not only influence memory, but also the degree of ease in learning new things (Leva, 2011). Children speaking a language for example that mentions base 10 structures more clearly than for example in English learn the base 10 insight sooner. The number of syllables the number word has also affects such aspects as remembering the phone number. People rely on language even in doing small things and the categories and distinctions in languages considerably influence an individual’s mental life. As expressed by Leva, 2011, “What researchers have been calling "thinking" this whole time actually appears to be a collection of both linguistic and nonlinguistic processes. As a result, there may not be a lot of adult human thinking where language does not play a role”.

Different Language, Different Thinking
Based on such prior works as Whorf hypothesis, authors in the past have been interested in establishing whether people using different languages think differently. Would it be expected that an individual speaking English and one speaking Japanese would think differently just because of the language they use? An examination of whether language influences an individual’s thought has its basis on the fact that languages differ from one another. An example of a statement “Michael went church” in English requires the use of the verb tense, which would not be possible in Indonesian. With Russian, the verb would connote not only the tense but also the gender. In Turkish, the same expression would give information on how the information was acquired. This example depicts the different requirements that languages demand from their speakers. Nevertheless, do these different languages remember their experiences differently due just to their different languages? Some scholars argue that this is so, that depending on the language; the different speakers will encode different aspects in order to apply them in their language. On the other hand, other scholars argue that linguistic utterances are wide such that just because Indonesian speakers have not included the same information as the Turkish does not meant they are not paying attention to that aspect – it only means they are not taking attention to the aspect. The argument is that all people think the same but just talk it differently (Boroditsky, 2009). Grammatical gender in languages is another aspect that shows that language influences how human beings think. In such romanticized language as Spanish, nouns can be masculine or feminine with words falling under the different gender is treated differently but those falling within the same gender being treated similarly grammatically. This reference for example of the Russians considering a chair to be masculine and a bed to be feminine affects and shapes how the individuals think. A word described in two languages that describe an item with one having a masculine and the other feminine word are likely to be described with different words by the two speakers even if they are being described in English, a language that has no grammatical genders. Similarly, when English speakers are grammatical gender systems, their their grammatical gender system is influenced. This depicts that some arbitrary uses of grammar do influence an individual’s perception of objects in real life (Boroditsky, 2009). Another common argument is that language under specifies meaning such that meaning is much richer than the communication process. The argument is that speakers compress their thoughts (putting thoughts into language), implying and not explicitly stating what their thoughts are whereas listeners deduce own versions from the language that is presented. An extension of this approach in cognitive science is the concept of the language of thought or mentalese. This suggests that when an individual wants to speak, they translate from mentalese to the spoken language. An extension of this approach is that human beings have the same cognitive architecture and mental processes thus the language of thought is universal although they express it using different languages (Saeed, 2003).

Multilingualism and Thought
An important consideration is whether being bilingual or multilingual affects how an individual thinks. Bilinguals for example change the way they perceive the world with the language they are using (Leva, 2011). Dr. Shai Danziger, a cognitive psychologist who was bilingual speaking both English and Hebrews confesses that he has different reactions to the two languages. He argued that an individual could exhibit different personalities depending on the language. Expressing his opinion that English is more polite than Hebrews, he gave an example that Hebrew Speaking Israelis who speak English are likely to think differently and to be more polite (for instance while driving) when using English than while using Hebrews (Jones, 2010). Luna, Ringberg & Peraccchio (2008) however qualify this assertion arguing that it is not enough for one to be just bilingual but one needs to be bicultural (having been inculcated in both cultures) in order to switch from one mental frame to another. Francois Grosjean (as cited in Flora, 2010) expressing similar argument however argues that thoughts can be visual-spatial and non-linguistic thus the effect of language comes into effect the moment the individual intends to speak. When using one language, bilinguals do not lose access to the other and this improves their processing time as it enables them to deep into their total language collection “in a natural quest for optimal self-expression and understanding” (Flora, 2010, p. 75). Emphasizing the importance of being multilingual, Flora (2010) points out that monolinguals are underutilizing their abilities. Another aspect expressed by Flora (2010) quoting a study done in Canada is that bilingual brains are healthier as they delay the onset of dementia four years on average, enhances attention, and cognitive control in children and adults and enhances the ability to learn other languages. Bilinguals are better at more divergent thinking for example in processing unrelated concepts and bilingual children are better able to process language at a fundamental metalinguistic level as compared to their monolingual peers (Flora, 2010).

Thought can Exist without Language
An example of this is as explained by Jones (2010) on the people of Tzeltal who use the concepts of “up the slope” and “down the slope” to explain left or right or some Amazon tribes who only count to two. Does it mean Tzeltal-speaking individuals do not understand the concepts of left and right or that those tribes in the Amazon do not understand there is more than two? In real sense, speakers of a certain language do understand a concept even if it is not in their language as highlighted by the German word “schadenfreude’ which has no equivalent in the English language, English speakers do understand its meaning which is rejoicing from the bad luck of others. Another example is the Mandarin Chinese who although do not have words describing present, past, and future tenses, they nevertheless understand this concept. Research indicates thought can exist without language. Babies and children exhibit interest in small issues even between three to four months whose study shows their concept that each object occupies its own space of five-months who exhibit some ability to do simple arithmetic despite having not acquired a language (Andrew & Keil, 2001). Further evidence that thought can exist before language is the magical shows by Renee Baillargeon whose stunts that defied fundamental principles of numbers resulted to young babies who had not yet acquired language to stare at those scenes more than when they stared at physically plausible ones. Another example of existence of thought without language is in the study by Susan Goldin-Meadow on deaf children. The children had not been exposed to sign language but they invented their own sign language to communicate their thoughts, feelings and needs (Andrew & Keil, 2001). Mental images are further provided as examples of thoughts without language. Some of the creative works of scientists and visual artists have been inspired by mental and non-linguistic images such as the James Watson discovery of double helix of DNA and the works of Albert Einstein, which are examples that thought, is possible without language (Andrew & Keil, 2001). In addition, psychological studies have shown evidence of visual thinking where people can mentally manipulate images, rotate them etc. that are mental processes that do not involve language (Saeed, 2003).

Conclusion
The relationship between language and thought has been a subject of debate for many years. The Ancient Greeks perspectives, the 1940s Whorf’s theory that argued that language precedes thought, the subsequent cognitive approaches that considered thought to coexist with language all represent the various arguments that have been held on issue. The empirical evidence presented suggests that language shapes thinking putting to task the previously held theories on language universalism. Through a review of literature, the conclusion is that language and thought have interactive relationship in that language dictates thought whereas thought also influences language. Further conclusions include; language organizes thought, people with different cultures and languages think differently, multilingual individuals have broader thinking as compared to monolinguals, and that thought can't exist without language. Present research in this are however is not exhaustive and thus the need for further research especially one that utilizes the new technologies in brain neurology.

Learning Exercise
After reviewing the chapter, please read the following, paying attention to the questions:

Language and thought as discussed in the chapter designates essentially, a distinctive element of human knowledge and communication, complex and mysterious in nature that closely embraces concomitance. Various theories postulated over the years advanced in the chapter, attempted to evaluate critically the possibility and extend of a thought-language relationship vis-à-vis the human intellectual difference in the world. Every theory was cognizant of the utility of language despite its complexity. Sapir and Whorf, Rene Descartes, Bertrand Russell, Noam Chomsky, Wittgenstein, Frege Gottlob, Lev Vygotsky and many other scholars for instance, were confronted with the same paradigm of language-thought relationship, bringing forward different opinions not because of their difference in language that determined each ones thought process, but due to the universality of the objects of thought. In understanding the relationship between language and thought, I have used the following analogy to support a number of questions presented. A professor of philosophy flew to Brazil for a holiday period. During his time in Brazil, he was caught by the Brazilian authorities drunk and disorderly in public and was arrested. When he was brought before the court and asked to defend himself, he said the following words “I don’t know why I died long time ago, when it was raining I died and the river washed me away. My clothes died too and the wristwatch I had. This house belongs to me”. Using his words, a person might say that the man is insane without subscribing him even for a medical test. However, in reality and despite his language, is the professor unintelligent? Absolutely not. To what extent then can language depict in reality the thought ability and process of another?.

'''Do animals not communicate? Moreover, if they do, how do they? ''Animals cannot communicate without a definite language. We all agree that animals are irrational beings. If then language dictates or has a relationship with our thought process, how does it relate with the irrationality of the animals? When a dog barks at night, it communicates to the owner that a stranger may be around. A person can train a dog to take a responsibility of guarding a home and the dog responds by doing so. Training the dog involves a use of language be it sign language or verbal language. '''If the dog does not have a form of language, how can it be able to articulate to persons demands and act so as commanded? In addition, if then the dog has language and it is an irrational being, don’t you think, if language determines the thought process, it could have dictated a dog to think?''' Rene Descartes argument that animals only use bodily movements and natural impulses but not speech raises many questions. '''Is language only speech language? Alternatively, is it only the people who can communicate through speech who are able to think?'

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title: Psycholinguistics/Language and Thought


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User:Midas~enwikiversity

Midas is a fourth year Psychology student at Dalhousie University.

Jan 17 2011

The first thing I learned about language is that it is not just a set of symbols and/or words, it has to be productive and generative. That made sense to me because a language would not make sense unless it had a set of words, meanings and rules to facilitate efficient communication between sender and receiver of the language. The way Kanzi the bonobo chimp leaned certain aspects of language reminded me of young children's first acquisition because it is demanding in nature. A fact that I found interesting is that language development seems to be independent of technological development, which could be seen as evidence to something innate about language. I also found interesting the idea that language might dictate the way we think. This raises the question that perhaps people with different languages think differently? How about bilingual people, or people with more than two languages? Would they have a broader scope of thinking? A counter argument could be that you can have a feeling/thought that you do not have a word for. So maybe different languages do not influence or dictate the way we think after all. Our discussion on brain localization of functions started with talking about Franz Joseph Gall's Phrenology. Although science does not support this study anymore, I cannot help thinking that Gall's contribution might have raised the question "is there a localization of brain function?". Later we examined all the different types of brain imaging. Using these technologies we found a lot of evidence for localization of function but also that it is not as simple as that because the pathways and connections between brain parts are as important as the parts themselves. Although the brain works as a whole, there is also specific parts that seem to be mainly responsible for specific things, example Broca's area and speech production.

Jan 24 2011

At the beginning of this week we talked about how language tends to be lateralized to the left hemisphere while the actual acoustic analysis of speech is bilateral. After that we discussed different aspect of language like prosody, organization... etc. I found interesting that Chomsky argued for an innate language acquisition mechanism which reminded me of the fact that we earlier learned that language development is independent of technological advancement. Which I thought could be evidence to support Chomsky's argument. We also talked about neuroplasticity in young people and that the critical period for language acquisition is when we are young. I benefited from the next class a lot because I found our discussion of ways to do research very useful, not only for this class but other classes as well. I learned a very useful tool for referencing on papers such as Mendeley and Refworks. On the next class, we started by talking about the ratio between letters in a language and the sounds. Even thought a language could have a fewer letters than another, it could still have the same sounds because a letter could signify a sound consisting of a consonant and a vowel, which equals two letters. What I found interesting was the fact that human sign language can be as rich as acoustic languages. It is amazing how humans find it necessarily to communicate even if they cannot produce and/or hear sounds by other people. So perhaps it is not language or language acquisition that is innate, but the need to communicate is what is innate in humans. Language is an important characteristic that separates humans from animals. Humans are able to communicate their ideas and thoughts to other individuals. They also record it in many ways such as books and the internet for others to see. When people receive this knowledge, they build on it which facilitates further advancement because they did not have to start from scratch (because of the knowledge passed on by their predecessors). Perhaps if animals could use language they would be competing with humans over the world. Or maybe I need some rest because I am starting to not make sense...

Jan 31 2011

We started the week by an introduction of Acoustic Phonetics where we talked about speech recognition. After we examined an example of speech recognition software we came to an appreciation of the amazing job our brains do. Our brains are able to lump phones into phonemes and process speech effortlessly. On the other hand, we have to program computers, sometimes to a certain person’s voice or a limited vocabulary, and still make more errors than human beings. This reminds me of the example of someone calling your name at a party, and how you are able to respond even if there is a lot of background noise and you are having a conversation with someone else. Even using today’s technology, the computer’s accuracy in doing such a task is questionable. We also learned the importance of context and humans’ ability to somewhat anticipate what a person could say next. Again, a computer would probably fail at doing this while human beings do this unconsciously. When we talked about context I could not help thinking about how a person’s bias could influence what he hears/mishears or things like conditioning and learning. Later, we talked about the function phonotactic constraints serve for word recognition. We also talked about how the brain functions to segment auditory data into words we can understand and even fills in the gaps in words so we can hear them intact. Additionally, we examined the relationship between information we get from the moving of the lips and actual auditory information. In the last class of the week we broke down the process of learning to read into different parts. We also talked about Phonological and Orthographic awareness across different language speakers and IQs. After that we examined different processes and models of word recognition and reading.

Feb 7 2011

Unfortunately, we only had one class this week because of the weather and Munroe day. However, on the day that we did have class (Monday), we introduced morphology and morphological typology. We also discussed some evidence for rule versus association based understanding. Morphology is a sub level of linguistic analysis that examines morphemes, words, affixes... etc. By looking at cross-linguistic examples we can see that there is a lot of recursivity, which suggests that perhaps we have rules we use to interpret the meaning of words. Stanners and Sonnenstuhl provide evidence for rule based recognition while Rumelhart & McClelland and Joanisse & Seidenberg provided equally compelling evidence for associations. This leads me to think that this issue is similar to many phenomenons in psychology that if taken to one extreme do not provide a complete explanation (black vs. white -> maybe its grey!). Is it illogical to suggest that the two processes of rule application and association exist and function together? An example to support this would be the Finnish language where there could be 1000 verb forms! There has to be rules because people could not possible memorize such a big number of verb forms, however, evidence suggests that there is also a lot of memorization and association in the Finnish language.

Feb 14 2011

We started the week by talking about the concept of “word”. The first question we addressed is what a word means to us, not necessarily just the dictionary meaning, but the way it is pronounced, the placement in a sentence and the context in which it is used and how these assimilate in our minds. English is a good example of a language that has evolved over time. Some words can only be seen in old literature while some words are a product of today, like facebooked. Similarly, sign language seems to evolve to something that fits the norm if the community. When we were talking about how the same word could have different meanings depending on the context, the word “ass” was used to explain this notion. It could have several meanings like donkey or the Gluteus maximus muscle. We discussed how the context could influence what meaning we get from hearing the word. I also could not help thinking that the person that says the word could also influence what meaning we take. For example if we hear a nice elderly lady saying look at that “ass” we would probably think that she is referring to a donkey she saw somewhere as opposed the body part (or would we?). This is similar to context or maybe considered a part of the context. It took me a few seconds to realise that the word “and” had no meaning when we were asked “what does and mean?” I have never thought about the meaning of and. It is a function serving word and does not really have a meaning. We continued our discussion of words the following class and we looked at models of lexicon that attempt to explain how and which meaning we access when we are given a certain word. I found the spread of activation model interesting because I felt it overlaps with the learning theory view of schema. We also looked at how different parts of the brain are activated in response to words and sentences. In the last class, we started our discussion about sentence processing. We watched a video about a computer that could play Jeopardy, Watson. One of the people in the video describes his feeling as going from impressed to blown away, I think I was blown away as soon as I realized that the competitor in the middle is a computer! Although the system still has bugs, it could help us in understanding syntax even if the way a computer would understand a sentence is different from humans. How would a computer respond to an insulting sentence for example? We associate emotions with certain word sequences that may make us happy or angry. Will the computer reach a perfect language ability that it can feel emotions? Or maybe emotions don’t tie into language so neatly. We also talked about grammar as a system to form a sentence but does is not the same as meaning because and grammatically correct sentence could have no meaning. In the end, we discussed Chomsky’s universal grammar rules.

Feb 26 2011

We started the week by continuing our discussion of sentence processing, in specific, parsing. We looked at different models that try to explain how we break ambiguous sentences into phrases that we can understand. One model that I found particularly interesting is the Garden Path sentences model. The few seconds it takes us to figure out the meaning of the sentences are fun, but also gives us insight on how the brain seems to commit to certain parses that it finds difficult to get out of. However the faster reading times for the non-minimal sentences provide an argument against the Garden Path model. It would be interesting to see studies that try and integrate the models and the neuroimaging techniques that our modern day technology enables us to use. The next class we talked about brain areas associated with syntactic structure processing. These types of lectures tend to make me a little anxious because of my modest neuroscience background; however I found the way the research was presented to the class very efficient and easily understood. I found interesting the evidence that suggests that parsing in the brain comes before meaning which supports the Garden Path model we talked about last class. There seems to be evidence for the Garden Path model but I also some challenges, so maybe the model is not completely off track but is just incomplete? In the last class we talked a little in the beginning about the exercises for out chapters, and then we started talking about discourse which is essentially connecting the sentences in a meaningful way. Can we think of discourse as the process which integrates parsing and meaning making? What I found amazing was our ability (or maybe looked at as a shortcoming?) to infer information that was not stated in a story or sentence as in the example of the guy that visited Mario’s with his third wife. I believe that people somewhat tend to hear what they want or expect to hear. Like when someone mishears you and the word they he/she hears is something you were talking about earlier or that he/she expects you to say.

Mar 7 2011

In the first class we talked about the similarities and differences between language and music. When we were discussing the idea that if you had as much practice with music as you did language, you would be as good, a counter arguments came up that the uses of language are different from music. So, it would not have the same amount of use anyway. Wouldn’t Chomsky argue that this is not possible for language at all? Since we only have a language acquisition mechanism and not a music one? Maybe people with a musical talent have a “music acquisition mechanism”, is this what we call the musical ear? In the next class we talked about speech production and we examined reaction time differences between words and pictures. Wouldn’t it be interesting to examine perhaps if the word’s pronunciation difficulty influences or biases our errors?

Mar 14 2011

In the first class of the week we continued our discussion of speech production. A phenomenon that I found dazzling is the tip of the tongue phenomenon. I couldn't help thinking that what causes it is perhaps that other information about the an image is better recalled by the brain than the word for that image? Testing this would probably not be very easy as it would be time consuming (wait for the person to forget the word), and it could also be hard to measure if the participant actually forgot the word. Personal differences in memory have to also be taken into account. We also talked about – "What do you need to speak?" which is one of the things I believe I will probably still remember long after we have complete the course. As promised, the lecture about gesture did make me "super aware of gestures", which I am not sure is such a good thing. I thought that if gestures are so important, that perhaps the the origin of language is gestures? Is that why we still use gestures or do they serve a purpose? Perhaps they help the speaker or the audience visualize the ideas expressed which was one of the suggestions in class. When the volunteer from class came up to describe her favorite part of the cartoon we saw, I noticed how she used gestures especially in situations where she might have been trying to invoke a memory by a visual representation of something we just saw. Do people use more gestures when explaining things that the audience has seen or has experienced before? In any case, the use of gestures, in a way, supports the argument that visual information might be easier processed or remembered by the brain as in the tip of the tongue phenomenon.

Mar 20 2011

This week we talked about language development. We discussed the “critical period” hypothesis for language development and the famous case Genie as a case that supports this notion. There might be an over simplification going on if we blame it all on the “critical period” because we did not take into consideration how the social isolation and perhaps any other form of abuse that Genie had could have affected her language development, then again, when they tried to integrate her back into society she did not develop language fully as other children did. So does a critical period for language development exist? There is evidence for it, but I feel uneasy to attribute all of Genie’s normal language development problems to the critical period. In the next class we continued talking about language development and I thought it would be interesting to see if there is research done that compares differences in language acquisition for babies born to parents that speak different languages. What I am trying to say is that I think it would be interesting to see if there are any hereditary differences in the way babies of different races, for example, acquire language. One could argue that there is probably no difference because babies can discriminate between words in another languages (like Hindi to English born parents) that their parents cannot. We know we inherit many things such as the way we look from our parents, but are there more in terms of language? If not, then why did the different cultures of the world develop different languages?

Mar 28 2011

In the first two lectures, we talked about bilingualism, and while that is important, I will be talking more about the last lecture. In the last lecture we had a guest speaker talk about Aphasia. Her lecture raised a few questions for me. We talked about how some disorders have spokespeople who go around and educate people about the disorder for a number of reasons. The speaker hypothesized that since Aphasia is a communication disorder, it doesn’t have advocates who suffer from it to talk about it. She also stressed the importance of getting a lot of therapy soon after the stroke that caused the Aphasia to occur. She explained that the most “gains” she sees in her program is in people who start therapy sooner. I find this point strange because the lesion is supposed to heal making is easier to regain speech. How could the person that just suffered this lesion have more gains than a person that had time to heal and then was given therapy, or is it a completely different mechanism at work here? Aside from me finding this disorder sad, I wonder what the ethical issues for people who deal with Aphasia patients. Who makes the decisions for them (since they cannot communicate their needs/wants)? Also, if we follow a localizationist model and we know that therapy does help individuals regain at least part of their speech, is it the same area that is retrained or does a different part of the brain take on this new function (neuroplasticity)?

Apr 11 2011

To be honest at the beginning I was a little scared of this course but I appreciated that the instructor was very clear about what he expected from us in all the coursework. I think giving more weight to the blog entries and less to the learning exercise would be a good idea since the blog entries take much more effort combined than the learning exercise. Also, it encourages better attendance. I like to think of them as a different type of assignment. Also, since the blog entries are in a way the only method of accessing the student's understanding and attention in the actual lectures (more than the chapter and the other assignments at least), I feel they should be given more weight. Overall, this course was a great experience. What I liked most is that it has no tests but all the coursework is designed to get the students to think critically about the material and not just memorize it and answer some multiple choice questions. I wish I was able to attend the last week of debates because I am sure they were all great but unfortunately I was sick.

title: User:Midas~enwikiversity