Psy1302 Psychology of Language

1. Psy1302 Psychology of Language Peggy Li pegs@wjh.harvard.edu

2. What is Psychology of Language? Psycholinguistics or psychology of language is the study of the psychological and neurobiological factors that enable humans to acquire, use, and understand language. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psycholinguistics

3. Why psycholinguistics? • Why do you want to study psycholinguistics?

4. Why psycholinguistics? Language is Special It is a very remarkable fact that there are none … without even excepting idiots, that they cannot arrange different words together, forming of them a statement by which they make known their thoughts; while on the other hand, there is no other animal, however perfect and fortunately circumstanced it may be, which can do the same. René Descartes

5. Why psycholinguistics? People and Language

6. Why psycholinguistics? Thought Exercises • Imagine a life without language… • How would our lives be different? • What is language is good for… • What can we achieve with language?

7. Why psycholinguistics? • Imagine a life without language… • How would our lives be different? • What is language is good for… • What can we achieve with language?

8. Why psycholinguistics? Language provides a window to our mind What is so special about language? Maybe nothing if you are a snail or a camphor tree. But language is paramount among the capacities that characterize humans, setting us off from even the most perfectly formed and functioning of the other beasts on earth; so, as a matter of species pride – if nothing else – we would hold up language as a marker of our humanity and thus a focus of our scientific interest. (Gleitman & Liberman 1991: xix)

9. Why psycholinguistics? Practical Reasons From an application oriented stance: • Education: Teach or learn a language • Engineering: Create machines that can process language the way humans do • Other Reasons?

10. Why psycholinguistics? Bilingualism Application: Learning and Teaching Language

11. Why psycholinguistics? Public Policy Making Application: Learning and Teaching Language • Bilingual Education • Foreign Language Requirement • Oral vs. Manual Education for deaf children • Cochlear Implant?

12. Why psycholinguistics? Public Policy Making Application: Learning and Teaching Language http://www.pbs.org/saf/1205/features/cochlear.htm

13. Why psycholinguistics? Engineering Application: Engineering Natural Language Processing (some examples) • Text-to-Speech • Speech Recognition • Machine Translation • Information Retrieval

14. Why psycholinguistics? Text-to-Speech Application: Engineering • Design and Implementation Issues • Where are we in the technology? http://www.research.att.com/~ttsweb/tts/demo.php

15. Why psycholinguistics? Speech Recognition Application: Engineering • Design and Implementation Issues • Where are we in the technology?

16. Why psycholinguistics? Machine Translation Application: Engineering • Design and Implementation Issues • Where are we in the technology? http://www.nbc.com/nbc/The_Tonight_Show_with_Jay_Leno/headlines/

17. Why psycholinguistics? Machine Translation Application: Engineering Psychology 1302 is an intellectually stimulation class.  French: La psychologie 1302 est une classe stimulante intellectuellement.  English: Psychology 1302 is a stimulative class intellectually.  Spanish: La psicología 1302 es una clase intelectual que estimula.  English: Psychology 1302 is an intellectual class that stimulates.  Chinese: 心理學1302 年是智力上刺激的類。  English: The psychology 1302 was the kind which in the intelligence stimulated.  Korean: 심리학1302년은 지적이 자극 종류 이다.  English: Psychology 1302 the indication is magnetic pole type.  Japanese: 心理学1302 年は知的見地からは刺激のクラスである。  English: Psychology 1302 is class of stimulus from intellectual viewpoint. http://babelfish.altavista.com/

18. Why psycholinguistics? Interim Recapitulation • Language is unique to humans. • We discussed several reasons why we should care about psycholinguistics. • Examples from engineering suggest the capacity for language is complex, and some processes are still beyond our grasp. • We are excited to study this human capacity that we have taken for granted!!!

19. What is psycholinguistics? Language • What do we really know about it? • What kinds of problem do people face in language comprehension? In language production? • What kinds of problems do language learners face? • How do we study it? GAMEPLAN – POINT OUT SOME OF THE KINDS OF PROBLEMS PEOPLE FACE & OF WHICH WE ARE OFTEN UNAWARE…

20. What is psycholinguistics? whereareth the s ilen ces bet weenword s Word segmentation problem What kinds of problem do people face in processing language? Word boundaries are not necessarily evident in the acoustic waveform

21. What is psycholinguistics? Mistakes from Children What kinds of problem do people face in processing language? Word Segmentation Problem • Two dults • [Two adults] • I don’t want to go to your ami! • [I don’t want to go to Miami] • I am being have! • [I am behaving!] (in response to “Behave!”) • Oh say can you see by the donzerly light? • [Oh say can you see by the dawn’s early light?]

22. What is psycholinguistics? What kinds of problem do people face in processing language? Word Segmentation Problem Mistakes from Adults http://www.nbc.com/nbc/The_Tonight_Show_with_Jay_Leno/headlines/

23. What is psycholinguistics? What kinds of problem do people face in processing language? Top-down influence Word Segmentation Problem th e w h i teh o u se i s u n d e ra tt a ck The white house is under a tack. The White House is under attack.

24. What is psycholinguistics? What kinds of problem do people face in processing language? Top-down influence Word Segmentation Problem I scream. You scream. We all scream for ice cream. Show: Context influences what one hears. Word segmentation problem  What information is stored? (e.g. words & meaning) How is the information retrieved?

25. What is psycholinguistics? What kinds of problem do people face in processing language? Word Segmentation Problem Word Segmentation and Language Learning • Adults can use top-down information (knowledge of words and the world) to help them with word segmentation. • What about infants who have none or few words in their vocabulary?

26. What is psycholinguistics? Word Segmentation Problem What kinds of problem do people face in processing language? Word Segmentation Problem From the difficulties and errors, one can come to appreciate the efforts of: • the natural language processing engineers • the non-native speaker • the native speakers • the language learner

27. What is psycholinguistics? What kinds of problem do people face in processing language? Language Acquisition: Word Meaning

28. What is psycholinguistics? Gavagai! What kinds of problem do people face in processing language? Language Acquisition: Word Meaning What does “gavagai” mean?

29. What is psycholinguistics? What kinds of problem do people face in processing language? Language Acquisition: Word Meaning What does “gavagai” mean?(Quine, 1960’s problem of radical indeterminacy of translation) Thumping Rabbit? Hopping Mammal? Scurrying Chinchila rabbit? Animal? Stay! Carrot eater? Look! vegetarian? Meal! Ears? Rabbit only until eaten! Long ears? Cheeks and left ear! Brown? Fluffy? What a cutie! That’s not a dog!

30. What is psycholinguistics? Same problem the child faces What kinds of problem do people face in processing language? Language Acquisition: Word Meaning

31. What is psycholinguistics? Ambiguity Resolution What kinds of problem do people face in processing language? Garden path sentence: The novice accepted the deal before he had a chance to check his finances, which put him in a state of conflict when he realized he had a straight-flush. Did any of you do a double-take – i.e., re-read the paragraph?

32. What is psycholinguistics? What kinds of problem do people face in processing language? Ambiguity Resolution (In Comprehension) Ambiguities abound Want Ads (Personals?) “FOR SALE: Mixing bowl set designed to please a cook with round bottom for efficient beating.” Recommending an inept employee (or employer): “I most enthusiastically recommend this person with no qualifications whatsoever.”

33. What is psycholinguistics? What kinds of problem do people face in processing language? Ambiguity Resolution (In Comprehension) http://www.nbc.com/nbc/The_Tonight_Show_with_Jay_Leno/headlines/

34. What is psycholinguistics? What kinds of problem do people face in processing language? Ambiguity Resolution (In Comprehension) Book by Fred Gwynn

35. Semantic ambiguity Meaning ambiguity Lexical ambiguity Part of speech or category ambiguity Structural ambiguity Syntactic structure ambiguity I saw[the man] [with binoculars]. Isaw[the man [with binoculars]]. Multiple ambiguities What is psycholinguistics? Ambiguities at different levels What kinds of problem do people face in processing language? Ambiguity Resolution (In Comprehension) http://www.criticism.com/linguistics/types-of-ambiguity.php

36. What is psycholinguistics? What kinds of problem do people face in processing language? Ambiguity Resolution (In Comprehension) Headline:Iraqi head seeks arms What makes headline humorous: The headline can easily be read as a disembodied head searching for arms (body parts) or wanting to have them attached. Ambiguity type: Semantic. Identification and explanation: The homograph "head" can be interpreted as a noun meaning either chief or the anatomical head of a body. Likewise, the homograph "arms" can be interpreted as a plural noun meaning either weapons or body parts. http://www.criticism.com/linguistics/types-of-ambiguity.php

37. What is psycholinguistics? What kinds of problem do people face in processing language? Ambiguity Resolution (In Comprehension) Headline:Teacher strikes idle kids What makes headline humorous: The headline can easily be read as "teacher hits idle kids' even though it was meant to mean that the walkout of teachers has left pupils idle. Ambiguity type: Lexical Identification and explanation: "strikes" can occur as either an verb meaning to hit or a noun meaning a refusal to work. Meantime, "idle" can occur as either an verb or an adjective. http://www.criticism.com/linguistics/types-of-ambiguity.php

38. What is psycholinguistics? What kinds of problem do people face in processing language? Ambiguity Resolution (In Comprehension) Headline:Stolen painting found by tree What makes headline humorous: The headline can easily be read as the representation in (1): A tree found a painting, which is humorous because trees, being inanimate, generally don't find things. Ambiguity type: Structural. Identification and explanation: The headline's two alternative syntactic representations make it structurally ambivalent: (1) A tree found a stolen painting. (2) A person found a stolen painting near a tree. http://www.criticism.com/linguistics/types-of-ambiguity.php

39. What is psycholinguistics? What kinds of problem do people face in processing language? Qs addressed by Psycholinguistics Ambiguity Resolution (In Comprehension) • At the word level(e.g. bank -- $ or river) • Do we access multiple meanings/words at once? Or only one at a time? • Do we use context to guide our lexical access? or only to help decide which to discard? • At the sentence level(e.g. I saw the man with binoculars) • De we construct multiple structures? Or only one? • Do we use context to guide our selection as to which sentence structure to build? Or only to help decide which to discard?

40. What is psycholinguistics? What kinds of problem do people face in processing language? Speech Articulation Producing Speech • Complicated coordination of lips, jaw, tongue, & other body parts in order to produce speech Why did Ken set the soggy net on top of his deck. I have put blood on her two clean yellow shoes.

41. What is psycholinguistics? What kinds of problem do people face in processing language? Speech Planning Producing speech Message (idea to be expressed) PUTTING THE MESSAGE TOGETHER Are these separate levels of processing? Or handled in one big translation process? Select words Construct phrases Insert sound structure Insert prosodic structure Add inflection Speech articulation

42. What is psycholinguistics? What kinds of problem do people face in processing language? Speech Rate Producing Speech • Conversation rate: ~200 words per min. • Auctioneers: ~250 wpm • Speed of rapping: • Guinness Book ~723 syllables in 51.27 sec.  846.1 syllables / sec Ricky Brown

43. What is psycholinguistics? What kinds of problem do people face in processing language? Speech Disfluencies Producing speech • 6 disfluencies per 100 words (e.g., Oviatt, 1995; Bortfeld et al., 2001) • Difficulty of conversation topic • Type of speech act (phone, face-to-face, monologue, machines) • Spouse vs. strangers • Gender differences

44. What is psycholinguistics? What kinds of problem do people face in processing language? Speech Errors Producing Speech • Freudian slips? • We can use slips (i.e., breakdowns in processing) to study the building blocks of language Presidential slips: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KjweYD5mXv8 http://www.reuters.com/news/video/videoStory?videoId=65846

45. What is psycholinguistics? What kinds of problem do people face in processing language? Recursion Speech Productivity I know what I believe. I will continue to articulate what I believe and what I believe - I believe what I believe is right.

46. What is psycholinguistics? Other topics Other topics in Psy 1302? • For the next lecture, we will discuss What is “language”? We will explore how human language differs from other animal communication systems. • After which, we will explore evidence for the biological basis for language. • For other good stuff covered in class, see syllabus.

47. Psy 1302 This course will: • Survey major research areas in psycholinguistics • Survey different techniques scientists use in the field • Hopefully spark your interest in psycholinguistics • There is so much more to be explored and so much we don’t understand!!!

48. Psy 1302 Digression Scientists Wanted! • The Harvard Lab for Developmental Studies is seeking motivated students to work as research assistants. Research in our lab offers a window into the minds of children. • Opportunities available for psych credit or work-study pay. An 8 to 10 hour per week commitment is required. • Please contact Raegan Tennant at tennant@fas.harvard.edu

49. Psy 1302 Readings for this week • Chapters 1 & 2 from your textbook or Old Edition (2004) Newest edition (2007)

50. Psy 1302 Homework Assignment Answer the following questions • What is language? • What is communication? • What are differences between human language and animal communication systems? • What makes (human) language special? Consult the Hocket handout for a list of features that is true of human language. Which features of human language are unique to humans, and which are not?