PSY 369: Psycholinguistics Introductions & Brief History of Psycholinguistics.
PSY 369: Psycholinguistics
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Transcript of PSY 369: Psycholinguistics
PSY 369: Psycholinguistics
Language Comprehension:Semantic networks
Overview of comprehension
The cat chasedthe rat.
Input
catdogcapwolftreeyarncat
clawfurhat
Wordrecognition
Language perception
ca
t
/k//ae/
/t/
Syntacticanalysis
cat
S
VP
ratthe
NP
chased
Vthe
NP
Semantic &pragmaticanalysis
Different approaches Immediacy Principle: access the meaning/syntax of the word and
fit it into a syntactic structure Serial Analysis (Modular): Build just one based on syntactic information and
continue to try to add to it as long as this is still possible
Interactive Analysis: Use multiple levels (both syntax and semantics) of information to build the “best” structure
Minimal attachment Garden path sentences (Rayner & Frazier, 1983)
S
NP
the spyVP
V
sawNP
the cop
PP
P
with
NP
the revolver
S’
but the cop didn’t see him
S
NP
the spyVP
V
saw
NP
NP
the cop
PP
P
with
NP
the revolver
S’
but the cop didn’t see him
MA Non-MA
The spy saw the cop with the binoculars.. The spy saw the cop with the revolver
Conclusion: participants didn’t use semantic information initially, built the wrong structure and had to reanalyze. Supports a serial model.
<- takes longer to read
Interactive Models
The evidence (that was) examined by the lawyer … The defendant (that was) examined by the lawyer…
Other factors (e.g., semantic context, co-occurrence of usage & expectation) may provide cues about the likely interpretation of a sentence (e.g. overriding purely syntactic principles like Minimal Attachment)
Trueswell et al (1994). Local semantic feature like Animacy
Taraban & McCelland (1988). Expectation The couple admired the house with a friend but
knew that it was over-priced. The couple admired the house with a garden but
knew that it was over-priced.
What about spoken sentences?
All of the previous research focused on reading, what about parsing of speech?
Methodological limits – ear analog of eye-movements not well developed
Auditory moving window Reading while listening Looking at a scene while listening
Summing up Is ambiguity resolution a problem in real life?
Yes (Try to think of a sentence that isn’t partially
ambiguous) Many factors might influence the process of
making sense of a string of words. (e.g. syntax, semantics, context, intonation, co-occurrence of words, frequency of usage, …)
Semantics Two levels of analysis (and two traditions of
psycholinguistic research) Word level (lexical semantics, chapter 11)
What is meaning? How do words relate to meaning? How do we store and organize words?
Sentence level (compositional semantics) (chapter 12)
How do we construct higher order meaning? How do word meanings and syntax interact?
Separation of word and meaning Words are not the same as meaning
Words are symbols linked to mental representations of meaning (concepts)
Even if we changed the name of a rose, we would not change the concept of what a rose is
Concepts and words are different things Translation argument – we can translate words between
languages (even if not every word meaning is represented by a single word)
Imperfect mapping - Multiple meanings of words e.g., ball, bank, bear
Elasticity of meaning - Meanings of words can change with context
e.g., newspaper
Semantics Meaning is more than just associations
Write down the first word you think of in response to that word.
CAT
“Dog”, “mouse”, “hat”, “fur”, “meow”, “purr”, “pet”, “curious”, “lion”
You cannot just substitute these words into a sentence frame and have the same meaning.
Frisky is my daughter’s ______. Sometimes you get a related meaning, other times
something very different.
Semantics Referential theory of meaning (Frege, 1892)
Sense (intension) and reference (extension) “The world’s most famous athlete.” “The athlete making the most endorsement income.” 2 distinct senses, 1 reference
Now In the 90’s Over time the senses typically stay the same, while the references may change
2013 Bleacher report
Word and their meanings Semantic Feature Lists
Decomposing words into smaller semantic attributes/primitives
Perhaps there is a set of necessary and sufficient features
Features “father” “mother” “daughter” “son”
Human + + + +
Older + + - -
Female - + + -
Word and their meanings Semantic Feature Lists
“John is a bachelor.” What does bachelor mean?
What if John: is married? is divorced? has lived with the mother of his children for 10 years but they aren’t
married? has lived with his partner Joe for 10 years?
Suggests that there probably is no set of necessary and sufficient features that make up word meaning
(other classic examples “game” “chair”)
Meaning as Prototypes Prototype theory: store feature information with
abstract prototype (Eleanor Rosch, 1975)
chaircouc
h
tabledesk
1) chair1) sofa2) couch3) table::12) desk13) bed::42) TV54)
refrigerator
bed
TV
refrigerator
Rate on a scale of 1 to 7 if these are good examples of category: Furniture
Meaning as Prototypes Prototype theory: store feature information with
abstract prototype (Eleanor Rosch, 1975) Prototypes:
Some members of a category are better instances of the category than others (prototypicality effect)
Fruit: apple vs. pomegranate What makes a prototype?
Possibly an abstraction of exemplars More central semantic features
What type of dog is a prototypical dog? What are the features of it?
We are faster at retrieving prototypical of a category than other less prototypical members of the category
Meaning as Prototypes The main criticism of the model
The model fails to provide a rich enough representation of conceptual knowledge
How can we think logically if our concepts are so vague? Why do we have concepts which incorporate objects which are clearly
dissimilar, and exclude others which are apparently similar (e.g. mammals)?
How do our concepts manage to be flexible and adaptive, if they are fixed to the similarity structure of the world?
If each of us represents the prototype differently, how can we identify when we have the same concept, as opposed to two different concepts with the same label?
Meaning as Exemplars Instance theory: each concept is represented as
examples of previous experience (e.g., Medin & Schaffer, 1978)
Make comparisons to stored instances Typically have a probabilistic component
Which instance gets retrieved for comparison
dog
Meaning as Theories A development of the prototype idea to include more
structure in the prototype (e.g., Carey, 1985; Keil, 1986)
Concepts provide us with the means to understand our world
A lot of this work came out of concepts of natural kinds They are not just the labels for clusters of similar things They contain causal/explanatory structure, explaining why
things are the way they are Similar to “scientific theories”
They help us to predict and explain the world
Meaning as Networks Semantic Networks
Words can be represented as an interconnected network of sense relations
Each word is a particular node Connections among nodes represent semantic relationships
Collins and Quillian (1969)
Animal has skincan move around
breathes
has finscan swim
has gills
has featherscan fly
has wingsBird Fish
Representation permits cognitive economy Reduce redundancy of semantic features
SemanticFeatures
Lexical entry
Collins and Quillian Hierarchical Network model Lexical entries stored in a hierarchy
IS A IS A
Collins and Quillian (1969) Testing the model
Semantic verification task An A is a B True/False
Use time on verification tasks to map out the structure of the lexicon.
An apple has teeth
Collins and Quillian (1969)
Animal has skincan move around
breathes
Bird
has featherscan fly
has wings
Robin eats worms
has a red breast
Testing the model
Sentence Verification time
Robins eat worms 1310 msecs
Robins have feathers 1380 msecs
Robins have skin 1470 msecs
Participants do an intersection search
Collins and Quillian (1969)
Animal has skincan move around
breathes
Bird
has featherscan fly
has wings
Robin eats worms
has a red breast
Robins eat worms Testing the model
Sentence Verification time
Robins eat worms 1310 msecs
Robins have feathers 1380 msecs
Robins have skin 1470 msecs
Participants do an intersection search
Collins and Quillian (1969)
Animal has skincan move around
breathes
Bird
has featherscan fly
has wings
Robin eats worms
has a red breast
Robins have feathers Testing the model
Sentence Verification time
Robins eat worms 1310 msecs
Robins have feathers 1380 msecs
Robins have skin 1470 msecs
Participants do an intersection search
Collins and Quillian (1969)
Animal has skincan move around
breathes
Bird
has featherscan fly
has wings
Robin eats worms
has a red breast
Robins have feathers Testing the model
Sentence Verification time
Robins eat worms 1310 msecs
Robins have feathers 1380 msecs
Robins have skin 1470 msecs
Participants do an intersection search
Collins and Quillian (1969)
Animal has skincan move around
breathes
Bird
has featherscan fly
has wings
Robin eats worms
has a red breast
Robins have skin Testing the model
Sentence Verification time
Robins eat worms 1310 msecs
Robins have feathers 1380 msecs
Robins have skin 1470 msecs
Participants do an intersection search
Collins and Quillian (1969)
Animal has skincan move around
breathes
Bird
has featherscan fly
has wings
Robin eats worms
has a red breast
Robins have skin Testing the model
Sentence Verification time
Robins eat worms 1310 msecs
Robins have feathers 1380 msecs
Robins have skin 1470 msecs
Participants do an intersection search
Collins and Quillian (1969) Problems with the model
Difficulty representing some relationships How are “truth”, “justice”, and “law” related?
Effect may be due to frequency of association(organization and conjoint frequency confounded) “A robin breathes” is less frequent than “A robin eats worms”
Assumption that all lexical entries at the same level are equal
The Typicality Effect A whale is a fish vs. A horse is a fish Which is a more typical bird? Ostrich or Robin.
Collins and Quillian (1969)
Animal has skincan move around
breathes
Fishhas finscan swim
has gillsBird
has featherscan fly
has wings
Robin eats worms
has a red breast
Ostrichhas long legsis fast
can’t flyVerification times: “a robin is a bird” faster than “an ostrich is a bird”
Robin and Ostrich occupy the same relationship with bird.
Collins and Quillian (1969) Problems with the model
Smith, Shoben & Rips (1974) showed that there are hierarchies where more distant categories can be faster to categorize than closer ones
A chicken is a bird was slower to verify
than A chicken is an animal
Animal
Bird
has featherscan fly
has wings
Chicken lays eggs
clucks
Spreading Activation Models
street
carbus
vehicle
red
Fire engine
truck
roses
blue
orange
flowers
fire
house
applepear
tulips
fruit
Words represented in lexicon as a network of relationships
Organization is a web of interconnected nodes in which connections can represent:
categorical relations degree of association typicality
Collins & Loftus (1975)
Spreading Activation Models
street
carbus
vehicle
red
Fire engine
truck
roses
blue
orange
flowers
fire
house
applepear
tulips
fruit
Retrieval of information Spreading activation Limited amount of
activation to spread Verification times depend
on closeness of two concepts in a network
Collins & Loftus (1975)
Spreading Activation Models Advantages of Collins and Loftus model
Recognizes diversity of information in a semantic network
Captures complexity of our semantic representation (at least some of it)
Consistent with results from priming studies
Spreading Activation Models More recent spreading activation models
Probably the dominant class of models currently used Typically have multiple levels of representations
Meaning as networks There may be multiple levels of representation, with different
organizations at each level
Sound based representations
Meaning based representations
Grammatical based representations
Today’s focus
Meaning beyond the word Not all meaning resides at the level of the
individual words. Conceptual combinations Sentences
Move to compositional semantics
Conceptual combination How do we combine words and concepts
We can use known concepts to create new ones Noun-Noun combinations
Modifier noun Head noun
“Skunk squirrel”
“Radiator box”
“Helicopter flower”
Conceptual combination How do we combine words and concepts
Relational combination Relation given between head and modifier “squirrel box” a box that contains a squirrel
Property mapping combination Property of modifier attributed to head “skunk squirrel” a squirrel with a white stripe on its back
Hybrid combinations A cross between the head and modifier “helicopter flower” a bird that has parts of helicopters and
parts of flowers
Conceptual combination How do we combine words and concepts
Instance theory has problems Modification? (brown apple) Separate Prototypes? (big wooden spoon)
But sometimes the combination has a prototypical feature that is not typical of either noun individually (pet birds live in cages, but neither pets nor birds do)
Extending salient characteristics? When nouns are “alignable” (zebra horse) But non-alignable nouns are combined using a different
mechanism (zebra house)