Instructor’s Manual Cognition Van Selst

Chapter 9: Language

9.0 Chapter Overview

Characteristics of language, including approaches to analyzing language.

9.1 Chapter Contents

Linguistic Universals and Function
 Defining Language
 Universals of Language
 Animal Communication Studies
 Five Levels of Analysis
 Whorfian Hypothesis
Phonology: sounds of language
 Sounds in Isolation
 Phonemes into Words
 Speech Perception
Syntax: the ordering of words and phrases
 Chomsky’s Transformational Grammar
o Limitations
 Cognitive Role of Syntax
Lexical and Semantic Factors: the Meaning in Language
 Case Grammar
 Interactions between Syntax and Semantics
 Evidence for Semantic Grammar Approaches
 Propositions and Comprehension
Brain and Language
 Aphasia
 Generalizing from Aphasia
 Language in the Intact Brain

9.2 Chapter Summary

Language is our shared system of symbolic communication, a system quite unlike naturally occurring
animal communication systems. True language involves a set of characteristics, linguistic universals, which
emphasize the arbitrary connection between symbols and referents, the meaningfulness of the symbols, and our
reliance on rules for generating language. No known animal communication system contains these critical
features.

70
Instructor’s Manual Cognition Van Selst

Three traditional levels of analysis (phonology, syntax, and semantics) are joined by two others in
psycholinguistics (level of conceptual knowledge and the level of one’s beliefs). Linguists focus on an idealized
language competence as they study language, but psycholinguists are interested in the learning and the use of
language. Therefore the final two levels of analysis take on greater importance as we investigate language users
and their behavior. To some degree, we can use people’s linguistic intuitions to discover what is known about
language; to the extent that language processes are automatic, however, our intuitions provide little insight into
the processes behind our performance.
Phonology is the study of the sounds of language. Spoken words consist of phonemes, the smallest units of
sound that speakers of a language can distinguish. Surprisingly, a range of physically different sounds are
classified as the same phoneme; we tolerate a fair degree of variation in the sounds we categorize as “the same.”
This is particularly important in the study of speech recognition because the phonemes in a word exhibit a
characteristic known as coarticulation. There is much overlap among successive phonemes, such that an initial
sound is influenced by the sounds that follow and the later sounds are influence by what came before.
Therefore, speech recognition relies heavily on conceptually driven processes.
Syntax involves the ordering of words and phrases in sentence structure and features such as active versus
passive voice. Chomsky’s theory of language was a heavily syntactic scheme with two sets of syntactic rules.
Phrase structure rules were used to generate a deep structure representation of a sentence, and then
transformational rules converted the deep structure into the surface structures, the string of words that makes up
the sentence.
There are a variety of syntactic clues to the meaning of a sentence, so an understating of syntax obviously is
necessary to psycholinguistics. On the other hand, psycholinguistics had developed its own theories of
language, at least in part because of linguists’ relative neglect of semantic and performance characteristics.
Semantic factors in language are so powerful that they can sometimes override syntactic and phonological
effects. Theories of semantics breaks words down into morphemes, the smallest meaningful units in language;
cars contains the free morpheme car and the bound morpheme –s (signifying a “plural”).
As the study of language comprehension has matured, the dominant approach to semantics claims that we
perform a semantic parsing of sentences, assigning words to their appropriate semantic case roles as we hear or
read. This case or cognitive grammar approach is very similar to the prepositional approach to meaning
described in Chapter 8 (Memory) and represents the current status of semantic theory in language.
Extensive evidence from studies with brain-damaged people and more modern work using imaging and
ERP methods reveals several functional and anatomical dissociations in language ability. The syntactic and
articulatory aspects of language seem centered in Broca’s area, in the left frontal lobe, whereas comprehension
aspects are focused more on Wernicke’s area, in the posterior left hemisphere junction of the temporal and
parietal lobes. The study of these and other deficits, such as anomia, converges with evidence from imaging and
ERP studies to illustrate how various aspects of language performance can act as separable, distinct components
within the overall broad ability to produce and comprehend language.

71
Instructor’s Manual Cognition Van Selst

9.3 Key Terms

Acaluculia: disruption of mathematical abilities, difficulty with retrieval or rule-based procedures, due to brain
disorder or injury.
Agraphia: a disruption in the ability to write, due to brain disorder or injury.
Agnosia: deficit in visual object recognition, due to brain disorder or injury.
Alexia: inability to read or recognize printed letters or words due to brain disorder or injury.
Ambiguous: having more than one meaning, said both of words (e.g., “Bank” as associated with both ducks and
money) and sentences (e.g., “they are eating apples”).
Anomia (anomic aphasia): disruption in word finding; impairment in the normal ability to retrieve a semantic
concept and say its name, due to brain disorder or injury.
Aphasia: the disruption (a loss of all or some) of previously intact language skills caused by a brain-related
disorder or injury.
Apraxia: deficit in voluntary action or skilled motor movement due to brain disorder or injury.
Arbitrariness: one of Hockett’s (1960) linguistic universals. There is no inherent connection between a symbol
and the concept or object to which it refers; there is only an arbitrary connection between sound and
meaning. Contrast this with iconic communication systems, such as the bee’s waggle dance. It is arbitrary
that we refer to “duck” as a “duck” rather than “grandmother” or “bezel”.
Broca’s Aphasia: a form of aphasia characterized by severe difficulties in producing spoken speech. The
speech is hesitant, effortful, and distorted phonemically. This aphasia is caused by damage in Broca’s area.
Also called expressive or production aphasia.
Broca’s Area: site of brain damage associated with Broca’s aphasia; located at the rear of the left frontal lobe, a
region of the cortex next to a major motor control center.
Case Grammar: an approach in psycholinguistics in which the meaning of a sentence is determined by the
semantic analysis of sentence. The analysis involves figuring out what semantic role is being played by
each word or concept in a sentence and computing sentence meaning based on those semantic roles (case
roles).
Case Roles (semantic roles): the various semantic roles or functions played by different words in a sentence.
The semantic roles include which word names the overall relationship and which names the agent or patient
of the action. Other cases include time, location and manner (case grammar).
Categorical Perception: all the sounds falling within a set of boundaries are perceived as the same, despite
physical differences among them. The perception of similar language sounds as being the same phoneme,
despite the minor physical differences among them: for example, the classification of the initial sounds of
cool and keep as both being the /k/ (hard c) phoneme, even though these initial sounds differ physically.
Coarticulation: the phenomenon in which more than one phoneme at a time is affecting articulation; the
simultaneous or overlapping articulation of two or more of the phonemes in a word.
Competence: in linguistics, the internalized knowledge of language and its rules that fully fluent speakers of a
language possess, uncontaminated by flaws in performance.

72
Instructor’s Manual Cognition Van Selst

Conduction Aphasia: a disruption of language in which patients are unable to repeat what they have just heard.
Deep Structure: in linguistics and psycholinguistics, the deep structure of a sentence is the meaning of the
sentence; a deep structure is presumably the most basic and abstract level of representation of a sentence or
idea. A component of transformational grammar; phrase structure rules are used to generate a deep
structure representation of a sentence (contrast with surface structure).
Displacement: one of Hockett’s (1960) linguistic universals. Linguistic messages are not tied in time or space
to the topic of the communication; this implicates an elaborate memory system within the speaker or hearer,
which allows them to recall the past or anticipate the future; the ability to talk about something other than
the present moment. This feature of language allows us to displace ourselves in time, by talking about the
past or future.
Dysfluency: irregularity, error or flaw in otherwise fluent speech (e.g., Uh, Umm, …)
Flexibility (of symbols): the characteristic that enables the meaning of a language symbol to be changed and
enables new symbols to be added to the language. We can change the connections between symbols and
meaning, and invent new connections, because the connections are arbitrary.
Grammar: in linguistics and psycholinguistics, the complete set of rules that will (ideally) generate or produce
all the acceptable sentences and will not generate any unacceptable, ill-formed sentences.
Language: shared system for symbolic communication.
Linguistic Intuitions: one’s subjective judgment that a sentence is or is not “acceptable” or “correct”; the basis
for most theorizing in linguistics.
Linguistic Relativity Hypothesis (Whorf Hypothesis): the language you know shapes the way you think about
events in the world around you.
Linguistic Universals: features or characteristics of language that are common to all human languages.
Linguistics: the discipline that takes language, per se, as its topic. The study of language as a formal system.
Mental Lexicon: mental dictionary of long-term memory that holds words and their meanings.
Morpheme: smallest unit of meaning in language (un as in unhappiness).
N400: ERP function associated with semantic anomaly.
Naming: we assign names to all the objects in our environment, to all the feelings and emotions we experience,
to all the ideas and concepts we conceive of. The characteristic that human languages have names or labels
for all the objects and concepts encountered by the speakers of the language.
Onomatopoeia: when a name is based on its referent sound (buzz, hum, zoom, etc). Onomatopoeia is an
exception to arbitrariness.
P600: ERP function associated with syntactic anomaly.
Parse: separate or divide the sentence into phrases or other logical or meaningful groupings.
Performance: any observable behavior. In the context of linguistics: actual language behavior a speaker
generates, the string of sounds and words that the speaker utters; any behavior related to language, influence
not only by linguistic factors but also by factors related to lapses in attention, memory, and so on (contrast
with competence).

73
Instructor’s Manual Cognition Van Selst

Phoneme: a category or group of language sounds judged to be the same by speakers of a language (e.g., the
initial sound in the words cool and keep for speakers of English). Note that because of categorical
perception, we tend to judge some physically different sounds as the same (despite physical differences
among the category members) and other different sounds as different (as belonging to a different phoneme
category). English uses approximately 46 phonemes.
Phonemic Competence: the extensive knowledge or rules of permissible sound combinations; one’s basic
knowledge of the phonology of the language.
Phonology: the sounds of language and the rule system for combining them; the study of the sounds of
language, including how they are produced and how they are perceived.
Phrase Structure Grammar: accounts for the constituents of the sentence, the word groupings and phrases that
make up the whole utterance, and the relationship among those constituents. The underlying structure of
the sentence in terms of the groupings of words into meaningful phrases such as “[The green duck][swam
quickly].”
Problem of Invariance: speech sounds vary across people, places, and times; yet we categorize sounds as being
from the same phonemic category despite this large degree of variability. The sounds of language change
depending of what sounds precede and follow in the word. The problem of invariance is that this variance
is not a problem (although it would be for machine language processing).
Productivity: one of Hockett’s (1960) linguistic universals. Language is novel, consisting of utterances that
have never been uttered or comprehended before; new messages, including words, can be coined freely by
means of rules and agreement among the members of the language culture; language is a productive and
inherently novel activity. The essence is that we generate sentences rather than repeat them.
Prosopagnosia: deficit in (visual) face recognition due to brain injury.
Psycholinguistics: the study of the psychology of language, the study of language as it is used and learned by
people; the study of language behavior and processes.
Pure Word Deafness: disruption of the perceptual or semantic processing in auditory word comprehension.
Semantic Case (case roles): in a case grammar approach, the particular case played by a word or concept is
said to be that word’s semantic case. (case grammar).
Semanticity: one of Hockett’s (1960) linguistic universals. Language conveys meaning.
Semantics: the study of meaning.
Surface Structure: in linguistics and psycholinguistics, the actual form of the sentence, whether written or
spoken (contrast with deep structure); the literal string of words or sounds present in a sentence. A
component of transformational grammar; transformational rules are applied to the deep structure to produce
the words (or sounds) of the sentence, the surface structure.
Syntax: the arrangement of words as elements in a sentence to show their relationship to one another;
grammatical structure. The rules governing the order of words in a sentence.
Transformational Grammar: Chomsky’s theory of the structure of language, a combination of a phrase
structure grammar and a set of transformational rules.

74
Instructor’s Manual Cognition Van Selst

Transformational Rules: a component of transformational grammar. Transformational rules are applied to

transform an idea (the deep structure sentence) to produce the words (or sounds) of the sentence (the surface
structure).
Voicing: refers to whether the vocal cords begin to vibrate immediately with the obstruction of airflow (/b/ in
bat) or whether the vibration is delayed until after the release of air (/p/ in pat).
Wernicke’s Aphasia: one of two common forms of aphasia in which the language disorder is characterized by
a serious disruption of comprehension, as well as repetition, naming, reading, and writing. The syntactic
aspects of speech are preserved although the use of invented words and semantically inappropriate
substitutions can lead to “copious unintelligible jargon”. Also called receptive or comprehension aphasia.

9.4 Key People

Bock: automatic and conscious processes in language production; sentence planning & production.
Broca: Broca’s area & aphasia.
Chomsky: transformational grammar.
Fromkin: speech errors.
Hockett: linguistic universals.
Miller & Isard: problem of invariance & conceptually driven processing.
Miller: five levels of analysis of conversation: phonology, syntax, lexical/semantic, conceptual & belief.
Wernicke: Wernicke’s area & aphasia.
Whorf: linguistic relativity hypothesis.

9.5 Lecture Suggestions

9.5.1 Lecture Suggestions (effectiveness / student reactions)
 Smile.
 Reinforce question-asking behavior (e.g., precede your response with the phrase “good question”).

9.5.2 Lecture Suggestions (content)

 Demonstrate the differences between a Wernicke’s patient and a Broca’s patient by reading aloud, or
using audio or video materials to support the class presentation (see Table 9-6).
 Encourage students to be aware of speech errors (but warn against shallow processing of your
lecture).

9.6 Research Project Ideas

 Record 15 minutes of a lecture, an interview talk show, or radio talk show. Record and categorize
the speech errors observed.
 Identify one piece of evidence for each of Miller’s (1973) five levels of language analysis (see Table
9-2).

75
Instructor’s Manual Cognition Van Selst

9.7 Test Bank

9.7.1 Test Bank: Multiple-Choice questions:
1. Which of the following is a morpheme?

a. Ga as in Garage
b. Un as in Undo
c. Disposable as in disposable diaper
d. Puh as in Puh-leeze do not ask me about this

2. “Each unit of language has a physical resemblance to its referent” is a definition of

a. Ideographic System
b. Iconistic System
c. Symbolic System
d. Cognitive Economics

3. Which of the following is not included within Chompsky’s Transformational Grammar?

a. Deep Structure
b. Idea or Meaning
c. Surface Structure
d. Semantic Cases

4. The disruption (a loss of all or some) of previously intact language skills caused by a brain-related
disorder or injury:

a. Aphasia
b. Agnosia
c. Apraxia
d. Agraphia

5. ERP studies investigating semantically anomalous sentences reveal that these sentences produce a
distinctive

a. N400 ERP pattern

b. P600 ERP Pattern
c. Syntactic priming function
d. Expressive aphasia

6. ERP studies investigating syntactically anomalous sentences reveal that these sentences produce a
distinctive

a. N400 ERP pattern

b. P600 ERP Pattern
c. Syntactic priming function
d. Expressive aphasia

7. Your understanding of the function served by KEY in the phrase “THE KEY OPENED THE DOOR” is
most closely related to which theoretical view of language processing?

a. Craik and Lockharts “Depth of Processing” Account

b. Elaborative Encoding

76
Instructor’s Manual Cognition Van Selst

c. Chomsky’s Tranfomational Grammar

d. The Case Grammar Approach

8. Which of the following does not belong?

a. Broca’s aphasia
b. Conduction aphasia
c. Production aphasia
d. Expressive aphasia

9. Imagine giving subjects the following:

ANTS WERE IN THE KITCHEN
ANTS ATE THE JELLY
THE JELLY WAS ON THE TABLE
During recall, subjects report
“THE ANTS ATE THE JELLY THAT WAS ON THE TABLE”
This illustrates:

a. Semantic Integration
b. Dual-Coding Representation
c. Technical Accuracy
d. Source Misattribution

10. Which of the following is not associated with the concept of “arbitrariness”?

a. Onomatopoeia
b. Connections that are learned
c. Naming
d. Changes in definitions across time

11. Which of the following is not associated with the concept of “arbitrariness”?

a. Connections that are learned

b. Flexibility
c. Naming
d. Iconicity

12. The smallest unit of meaning in language is

a. phoneme
b. morpheme
c. lexicon
d. syntax

13. The background characteristics of language have been proposed to change how people view the world.
This reflects:

a. Semantic Functionality
b. Encoding Specificity
c. The Case Grammar Approach
d. The Whorf Hypothesis

14. Which of Miller’s (1973) five levels of language analysis is the analysis of word meaning and the
integration of word meaning within phrases or sentences

a. Deep structure

77
Instructor’s Manual Cognition Van Selst

b. Semantic analysis
c. Phonological analysis
d. Syntactic analysis

15. Which is not a speech error?

a. Shift
b. Exchange
c. Voicing
d. Perseveration

16. “To beer a pour” is an illustration of

a. A speech error
b. A spectrogram
c. A blend
d. Phase structure grammar

17. The number of phonemes in English is approximately

a. 200
b. 100
c. 50
d. 25

18. Shared symbolic system of communication:

a. Language
b. Linguistics
c. Arbitrariness
d. Flexibility

19. Mental lexicon:

a. Semantics
b. Syntax
c. Grammar
d. Sentence planning

20. Which is not associated with transformational grammar?

a. Phrase structure rules

b. Semantic rules
c. Transformational rules
d. Sentence generalization by rule

21. The internalized knowledge of language and its rules that fully fluent speakers of a language have:

a. Competence
b. Language behavior
c. Articulation
d. Processing fluency

22. Three variables are relevant to the production of consonants in English. They include all but

a. Place of articulation

78
Instructor’s Manual Cognition Van Selst

b. Manner of articulation
c. Voicing
d. Authorization

23. Sentence structure is synonymous with

a. Grammar
b. Case grammar
c. Syntax
d. Semantics

24. The inability of a native Spanish Speaking Monolingual individual to differentiate “EYES” from “ICE”
reflects

a. Semantic Categorization
b. Morpheme-based processing
c. Categorical Perception
d. Syntactic Analysis

25. Coarticulation is most likely to be encountered: (choose the best answer)

a. In most phrases
b. In barbershop quartets
c. Only when voicing
d. Only with transformational perception

9.7.2 Test Bank: True/False Questions:

26. Spreading activation is a linguistic universal. FALSE

27. We begin our utterances when the first part of the sentence has been planned but before the syntax and
semantics of the final portion have been worked out. TRUE
28. Agraphia is an inability to do mathematical computations. FALSE
29. The study of linguistics was one of the foundations of the cognitive revolution. TRUE
30. Sign language is a true language. TRUE
31. Linguistics is the study of language as it is used and learned by people. FALSE
32. Understanding productivity is argued to be the key to understanding language. TRUE
33. The syntactic structure of sentences can prime your use of those same syntactic structures. TRUE
34. In sentence production, information that is more readily available generally occurs earlier. TRUE
35. In speech, pauses between words are greater than pauses within words. FALSE
36. In the case grammar approach, a semantic case is the same thing as a case role. TRUE
37. With sufficient exposure, the ERPs to nonsense words look like ERPs to meaningful words. TRUE

9.7.3 Test Bank: Fill in the Blank / Short Answer:

38. Identify the three basic and two additional levels of analysis that are used in language comprehension:

1. Phonology
2. _______________ (SYNTAX)

79
Instructor’s Manual Cognition Van Selst

3. _______________ (LEXICAL or SEMANTIC)

4. _______________ (CONCEPTUAL)
5. Belief

39. Identify two weaknesses of the transformational grammar approach.

40. How do the approaches of transformational grammar and case grammar differ?
41. What is the “mental lexicon”?
42. Provide an example of a statement in which semantics overpowers syntax.
43. Provide an example of a garden path sentence.

9.7.4 Test Bank: Essay Questions:

44. The text states, “Recent data show that we begin our utterances when the first part of the sentence has
been planned but before the syntax and semantics of the final portion have been worked out or selected.”
What are the predictions of Chomsky’s transformational grammar?
45. How do the effects caused by damage in Wernicke’s and Broca’s areas differ? Be sure to use appropriate
technical terms.
46. Discuss the strengths and weaknesses of using patterns of preserved and impaired language functions
after brain damage or injury to learn about human language processing.

80